Well I'm back. I know some of you were concerned that I would never blog again, but you can breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe it was post-school starting back blues, or maybe realizing I won't be done until at least May of 2011, but I just was kinda down last week and didn't feel like blogging. After a nice, relaxing weekend with my wife I'm back into the swing of things though, and am ready to be a great blogger again.
I don't even really know where to start. I don't want to try to summarize what's been going on, so I'll just touch on a few highlights. First of all, running sound for the men's retreat went pretty well. I recorded the sessions off of the board for fun, and then also took a short video to post. I mixed the two together before uploading...however Premiere Elements didn't have fine enough controls for me to align everything exactly, so it is a little off...still kind of fun though:
Speaking of music, I have been loving this song from Bethel in California:
I think that video is from one of their "Jesus Culture" conferences...is the song not incredible? Makes me wish I was still in charge somewhere just so we could do that song. My friend Ryan plays drums for Marathon's Greenville campus, and he showed it to me. I have pretty much been listening to it non-stop since then. I am playing drums for him at NHCC youth this week, and I think we are doing the song, so I am especially excited about that. I am going to buy the Jesus Culture CD/DVD, because I like some of the other songs too, but I want to wait for next month's allowance.
Along the same lines, I have been enjoying my new EP from Public Radio. There are a band that opened for our band when I was playing for Hannah Miller in Columbia, and they were so good. I was excited to have some of their stuff on a CD, but my favorite one isn't on there. Oh well. Taylor Swift is another artist I have been loving. People tell me that I'm kind of dorky because of that, but her songs are great!
I also have been learning about linear beats/fills on drums. It is a completely different way of thinking about drums for me, and it has really opened up my thought process. I'll admit it's difficult for me to think so precisely with beat subdivisions and hand/foot patterns, but the stuff you can do is so cool. I think it is used a good bit in gospel/r&b. These two videos helped me the most in learning how to do some of the stuff, but you can see tons of amazing linear grooves on YouTube:
I started running the subs a few dB's louder at Southside. James was saying he wished the kick hit him in the chest more. I already run the kick pretty much as hot as I can, so I figured maybe just running the subs hotter would fill everything out. We run pretty quiet (92ish dB C-weighted slow....ok, that is really quiet), so I think that is partly why the kick doesn't knock you out, but I figured it was worth a try. I have been very pleased with the results, maybe more so with the bass guitar. I made sure I wasn't overloading the amp at rehearsal, and everything has been great. Sometimes something in the stage floor rattles with certain notes on the bass guitar, but it isn't very noticeable.
So those are all my musical updates. Other than that my furnace wasn't working correctly. Our gas bill was ridiculous last month, and I noticed that our furnace was having a really hard time keeping up when the temperature dropped this past week. More accurately, it wasn't keeping up at all. Our realtor put a home warranty paid by the seller in the contract, and since we were dealing with a relocation company, I don't even think they read the contract when they accepted it. Sooo...I called the warranty place and someone came and checked out the furnace for free. Turns out there was some important screw missing and it couldn't pull the air it needed to. I need to remember to call our realtor and thank him for putting that warranty in there.
I think those are all the things worth mentioning from the past week. Kristi and I have just been hanging out and eating at Oriental House mostly. Oh, and I'm still running. Today was the first day I was able to push the whole time without my lungs hurting. Two weeks of misery isn't too bad for getting back into the swing of things.
I guess that's all I really want to write for now. I'm pretty excited about the inauguration tomorrow. It's a big day for America on alot of levels. Also, tomorrow a guy is coming to tune the piano, although I wonder if he will cancel if it snows. I know Kristi is hoping for snow...I'm going to go outside after 12 to see if it has started. If it has I'll have to get the pets up to experience it!
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1 comment:
The men's retreat was a good time. You did a great job with the sound. If you blog more often, then maybe you won't have to try to recall 10 days at a time. But for what it's worth, I totally could have done it.
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