short takes

I don't (yet) use Firefox as my main browser, but the password-managing extention mentioned in Security Mentor sure sounds handy.

Who will be eaten first? Not your usual Chick tract.

Today's letter from Rohrich VW informed me that it's time for scheduled maintenance and I should call them at my convenience to schedule it with them. I won't actually do it, but the candidate response that brought a smile to my lips was "my investors inform me that the time is not yet right for that diabolical ice-skating project, so I will have to decline". I do get my scheduled maintenance, but those guys are not going to touch my car again.

On a more serious note, with all the bad news about what's going on in the wake of Katrina, especially how the problem was foreseen and yet the government diverted most of the levee funding to Iraq (link from brokengoose), it's great to see that people from all over the country are offering crash space and sometimes travel assistance (link from browngirl).

recording challenges

I recently picked up a self-published solo CD from a dulcimer player I met. I have (ahem) some idea of how difficult it is to record a solo hammer-dulcimer album, which is why I've never done it. I mean, conventional wisdom is that if you're a band you'll spend an hour in the studio for each minute of final product; while in many cases being a soloist probably gets you a better ratio, I think it's probably at least that same ratio if you're a dulcimer player. There is so much that can go wrong.

This recording is credible; the playing is competent and the arrangements are generally good. (I think the CD is a couple years old; his live playing was pretty impressive.) One thing I noticed on the CD, though, is that there's one particular ornament that I think is very much over-used. That got me thinking about how that could happen.

The rest of this is not a criticism of the CD. It's just a ramble inspired by that recording and then veering off on its own.

It's possible to over-use an ornament withiin a single piece, but pieces go by pretty quickly when you're playing folk music so that won't stick with people for too long. If you use it on many pieces but you're used to playing background music, people might not notice. If you play focused music (concerts, not background) but don't play for an hour or more at a time, you might not reach the necessary threshold. And if you practice a fair bit -- like you probably do when preparing to go into the studio -- then you'll be hearing so much of everything you do that your perspective will be completely skewed. You may say "gee, I'm using that technique a lot", but then you'll say "well duh, I'm practicing for hours and hours, playing the same few pieces many times; of course I'm hearing that a lot". And then you'll probably dismiss it and go on.

The other thing is that recordings are different from live performances. Really different. Everything you do is there for posterity. You have no interaction with the listener, and no patter to break things up (unless you record that too). And a CD in the player may loop. The listener gets a more concentrated dose of your music than he would otherwise. Similarities between tracks magnify. And your senses were already dulled going in because of all that practice. And you probably did the final mix-down soon after the raw recording, because you were eager to get the CD out.

I have definitely recorded music that, in retrospect, I wish I'd gone back and done over. (Oy. That one note in "Christmas in the Trenches", and the speed problem on "Guenevere and the Fire", and... but I digress.) The schedule wasn't important enough to accept a sub-optimal performance, nor to rush the mix instead of taking a couple weeks to rest the ears, listen to other things, and not keep practicing those pieces. "Good enough" often sounds like a great idea at the time, but a year later when listening to the CD things are different.