Waltzing With Bears CD

I've been meaning to put together a CD of kids' songs for a while. I don't really want to be Raffi, but when families come into the coffee shops, the kids make a pretty appreciative audience, and, of course, I know a bunch of kids' songs from my Indian Princess "career". Also, it turns out to be lucrative, since the parents turn out to be more likely to tip when we play kids' songs than when we play regular songs.

At the Indian Princess planning meeting last Thursday, we were confirming that I'll be playing "Waltzing With Bears", as usual, at the campfire on Saturday night, and one of the guys said "You should record that song! My daughter loves it." That set me thinking that I really ought to get the CD done, and Now Was The Time, so I could have it available at the campout this weekend. Also, since we just got a new, screaming fast PC, it looked like the planets were aligned.

(Warren is generally un-enthusiastic about kids' songs, so I don't think he'll mind being "left out" on this one. Besides, getting back in to Jim's home studio (to do more-than-two-tracks recording) doesn't seem likely anytime soon.)

The new (tower) PC, as opposed to all my notebooks, has a Line-In jack -- not usually a thrill, but I've been without one for a long time. Line-In jacks are stereo (my notebooks' Mic jacks are mono), so I figured that I could record the voice on one channel and the guitar on the other. It took some crazy cable patching, but I got it wired up (with alligator clips for part of the path), and was able to record both sources, simultaneously, into Audacity with perfect separation. Of course, then the problem is that 100% of the guitar on the right and 100% of the voice on the left sounds funny. I had to separate the stereo tracks into two (identically long) mono tracks, and bring them into Cool Edit Pro's Multitrack view, slide each of them a little off center in the stereo pan (one to each side), and do a Mix Down. That basically bleeds the two tracks onto each other's side, so they sound "together" (but not Dead Center (aka mono)) in the stereo space.

And, it turns out that Audacity will play back the tracks it already has while recording a new one, so I went back and overdubbed vocal harmony on a few songs. That was pretty fun, singing along with myself. I blend really well with me...

Anyway, I recorded 12 songs, all day Sunday, and two more Monday night. I did some post production on Tuesday night to remove some of the glaring boo-boos, and Acacia and I burned 30 copies last night to take to the campout tomorrow. I don't know if that's optimistic, but I think that a lot of the kids will want to take one home with them. (I don't know if the Dads will be blessing or cursing my name after the 3 hour drive home from San Diego on Sunday.) I can bring any leftover CDs to Borders and get rid of 'em eventually.

Also, since I have 'em now, I posted links to MP3 versions of the songs on the KeithandWarren.com page. And, since kids always want to sing along, I worked up a lyrics sheet and put that up, too. That way I don't have to print up a bunch of copies myself and put 'em in the CD cases.