I helped a friend of my mom's get set up on GarageBand today. She wants to record a talk she's giving tomorrow and just got a bunch of equipment that she didn't know how to use. Since I (still!) have a cold and I'm trying to stay inside, we tried setting things up over the phone, me looking at my screen and she looking at hers. We got it to work just fine using the built-in mic, but once she hooked up her pre-amp and nice mic, something wasn't quite working. We tried a bunch of stuff and I finally had to say "I think we've reached the limit of how far I can go without seeing it in front of me. I think it might be something fairly simple, but without actually seeing it I just don't know." We decided that she'd bring her laptop and gear over to me and I'd check it out.
Sure enough, there was one little thing that I wasn't seeing that made all the difference. Turns out when I asked if the phantom power to the mic was on, she thought I was referring to a whole other little device that was for providing phantom power when you have the mic hooked up to a tape recorder. I tried just plugging the mic straight into the USB pre-amp and everything worked from there! Whew!
James Moore called me from KRUU last night. He was really nice and encouraging, saying how much he liked the pilot we submitted. We talked for a bit trying to decide if it's worth it to start a show that I would only be here for a month before going away for two months. It seems like while that's not the ideal, the options are also pretty open and he was willing to explore ideas, but he was pretty burnt out from a big week and a long day, and my head was pretty stuffy. He told me to think about it and get back to him Sunday or Monday. It'll also depend on B and how she feels about holding the reins by herself while I'm gone, although with the power of the interwebs, I'm thinking I could still actively participate pretty well from afar, especially since I HAVE my own recording equipment... It does sound like now that they've got so many quality shows, they are getting to the point where they can (and have to be) a little more choosy about what goes on. He said he was thinking of us for a 9 am slot though, which is pretty cool - not something at like 3am when not many people would probably be tuned in...
I got a little mini travel guitar for Christmas - group gift from the fam. I told G I really wanted it and would rather have that than lots of little things I don't need. I've been wanting a travel guitar for years because it's so stressful trying to take my actual guitar on the plane. It's a small sized guitar, and it really DOES fit in most overhead compartments if the plane is more than 3 seats across, but it just depends on the flight staff of the plane. Sometimes they'd actually store it for me in their coat compartment, other times they'd make me put it under the plane. This little Washburn Rover has a really great case that I wouldn't be afraid to send it under the plane if they made me do it for a little commuter flight or something. The other awesome thing about it is the neck on it is regular sized, so switching back to my big guitar is no problem. I'll be glad to have it in Colombia!
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