Ramblings From Justin Penney

Yeah right!

I did however not leave my property today. This memorial day vacation is really being a vacation for me. Just doing what I want without any pressure. I have had some bored times, but those were short.

The Bad Ideas played at Mike's Tavern on Friday. Ryan is on vacation and Glen from the Gaslights filled in. It went pretty well. Glen should have been pretty familiar with the songs as we've been on the same bill enough times. There was a pretty good crowd which makes playing all the better.

Saturday I bought some gloves for motorcycling and then rode down to my mom's house. While I was there Nathan called to see if I wanted to meet him and Mendy at Landahl for some mountain biking. I headed home, changed and loaded up Jacey's bike. I hadn't been on a geared mountain bike in over a year so it was very weird. Front suspension and gears... crazy. Her bike is shorter than mine and we put a really short stem on. I am able to pull the front end up really easy. A little too easy as I looped out while doing a wheelie! I wasn't able to get clipped out of the pedals so I fell over on my hip. The whole time felt really weird since the front wheel was suspended. Just completely strange.

I came home and showered up the headed to Mike's Tavern to check out No Man No. I seem to always show up just as they finish. I saw them. They were good. I will see them again. Rob's really personable and pretty funny on stage.

I rode my motorcycle up to Mike's. I took 435 down to Gregory and took that through Swope Park. That was a pretty nice ride. After I got home I watched a little TV and went to sleep.

Today I tried out our new tent! I set it up and sealed the seams. It went up really easily. I was surprised since I have never set up a tent before. Getting folded back up and in the bag was a little more challenging! Not bad though. Having two or more people would make the whole ordeal a trivial task.

I played around with my 4-track today. I sent my MOTU 828mkII off Friday so the 4-track is all I've got. I got a killer drum sound out of that thing. I was using Ryan's little 4 channel (they say 12 but there's 4 mic ins) Mackie board and mixing into one track on the 4-track. I had an Oktava MK-012 overhead, pretty much smack in the middle of the kit as a whole. I put a CAD M37 about 2 feet in front of the kick pointed right at the center. I had a CAD ST100 about 10 feet away in the concrete area. This souded huge! Even before I put it to tape hot it was really nice. Definitely soemthing to try on a project.

I've rearranging again. I'm flighty with my setup. I think that it's that I really don't have any limits. I have essentially one big room (partially separated) so I don't have anything forcing my decisions on layout. After building the little machine room though... I'm not living without that luxury! It's so much quiter sticking the computer somewhere else. This is even a little quiet cube shaped thing... just horrendous amounts of noise. I'm moving the "control room" over by the closet and using the closet as the machine room. This also make me central to the different areas.

I've been playing with the environments too. I have some carpeted and some concrete areas. I've been setting instruments up in the carpeted ara and micing close but having them pointed out into the conrete area. Sticking a ribbon or a room mic catches the reverb sound that make things feel a little more real.

# posted by Justin @ 10:24 PM