Beyond

I hope I never lose my sense of wonder. If that makes me naive, then so be it.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

plugging away

Yesterday was spent in the studio - pretty much literally. It was a nice day outside from what I saw of the world out there, the sun shining and a light summer breeze. But from 10 am until 5 pm, stopping at 2:30 for a little lunch, we worked on the midi tracks from last week.

Beside the word 'tedious' in the dictionary there could be a picture of this. Songs are listened to, then fragments of songs are listened to, the notes in that segment adjusted ever so slightly for timing or pitch, the fragment listened to again, more adjustments made, listen again, move on to the next segment, rinse and repeat. I move between getting tired of the songs and being amazed, on hearing the finishing product, that I wrote such a good-sounding thing. Thankfully, I land mostly on the side of the latter and I still like my music.

But, for all this, it is a step that makes the music better and better. If we didn't do the tedious work the finished product would be sloppy and not reach its full potential. Yes, we're not going to launch it when we'd hoped. But we also won't have done a rush job on it that doesn't do the songs justice. Tim is amazing in how he brings all the bits and pieces together, adjusting and tweaking and doing all that tedious work and bringing the songs to a place that still manages to surprise me.

And I returned home to some surprises. We are getting out house rewired, removing some electrical wiring and fixtures that are probably original to the 1940s. The first switchbox he opened was certainly vintage, with the wires sautered and taped (rather than using those little things we use nowadays that screw on and for which I'm sure there is a name that I don't know). D was off for the civic holiday so was able to help with the work. One discovery: on pulling off the board-and-batten siding near the back entry he confirmed that the construction of at least that part of the house is, indeed, logs and chinking. We'd wondered about that, so seeing the evidence is pretty cool. It also explains why the house is more than just cool in the winter! Logs with board & batten, and then siding. Insulation, anyone?

Today I'm home, with more electrical work going on. It's going to be a chaotic, disruptive couple of weeks. Oh well, we'd hate for life to get boring...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The "little screw things" are called "marretts".

(And I believe you mean "soldered" instead of "sautered" :-))

barb said...

Ah, I knew they had a name. And soldered... my non-handyman-ness is showing!