A little better and a little worse than last time. The better part is that, for the first time ever, the "regulars" weren't there, so there was no loud talking while I was trying to sing. The worse part is that I mixed (or, more accurately, failed to mix) the sound properly, so the vocal was way louder than the guitars (or, as Warren would have it, the guitars were way quieter than the vocal).
I guess I was partially being paranoid of feedback from my guitar, since it was the maiden run of my new, inside-guitar mic system. These are famous for feedback problems, so I was keeping it kind of quiet at first, and never remembered to revisit it. Of course, from where I'm standing, I hear the acoustic output of my guitar so it wasn't "way too quiet" to me, but there wasn't enough of it coming out of the speakers, so the room sound was embarrassingly bad. I know this 'cuz I did the mic-in-front-of-a-speaker trick for the recording, and most of it is unlistenable.
The other part is that, unless I can't hear what I'm doing, I just get into the performing part and completely forget about tinkering with the sound. And I guess I could hear the vocal (like, a lot!) and my guitar too (part in the speakers, and part acoustically), so off I went. And I never worry about Warren's volume, since he has lots of knobs to play with if he wants to get louder or softer -- I figure he's where he wants to be. Still, I feel like an idiot for doing the whole gig, oblivious to the terrible sound...
A few of the softer songs turned out semi-OK on the recording, although I couldn't find my mic and so had to use the store's, which seems to have an odd sound. Anyway, I guess I sang quieter on those songs, so the mix isn't so wrong. It was the first outing for "Alison", a song I've been strumming through for years, but finally realized that I could transpose it down a little for my voice (duh), and play it with a simple fingerpick pattern -- it sounds pretty nice that way (to me, anyway). The hardest part is *not* to imitate Elvis Costello's voice/accent/delivery when you're singing it. "Funny", not "Fuh-neh". I guess that's the one I'm gonna post as "Song of the Week" on the website.
We did have two old Toshiba friends show up, Sandy Crowley (with her daughter) and Marc Tanguay. Sandy asked for all the country songs -- who knew?
I also brazenly cleared off a small table of books, moved it into the main passageway toward the exit doors, and put the CDs and tip jar out there "where no decent soul could miss it", to quote Gordon Lightfoot. It increased our usual near-zero tip level at that store to $30-something, and moved 6 or 7 CDs.
No comments:
Post a Comment