Looking for a place to work quietly (for writing), I shuffled stuff around in the basement “office” that has become “the cats’ room” and a dumping ground for books, files, electronics and other things. Under all that stuff though is a big table; in our other house, it was Mike’s desk and that was the intention here, too, but it never quite worked out that way. So… I cleared off enough room for my laptop, coffee and papers/books/whatever.
Today, after a lazy start, I was compelled to finally unpack the USB turntable Mike gave me two Christmases ago (yes, I am incredibly embarrassed that I had yet to unpack this gift) and to unearth my record collection (housed in a very big plastic bin). There was enough room on the newly cleared table to safely set up the turntable so I lost a good 3 hours going through some audio memories. I started with some K-Tel compilations and moved through a series of 12″ remixes (Nena 99 Luftballoons, Wham! Young Guns (Go For It), Frankie Goes to Hollywood Relax!) and 45 rpm singles (Peter Schilling Major Tom, Lindsay Buckingham Go Insane, Talking Heads (Nothing But) Flowers) until I realized I was stuck in a wormhole with no bottom in sight.
On my way to excavating the records, I came across a bag filled with, among other things, about a dozen pieces of my larger artwork from the 80s and 90s. Naturally, I photographed some of them for posterity…
Left to right: Elvis in ’92 (11″x17″), paper collage and typewritten note, 1992; What a Grrrreat Party, (9″x12″) mixed media including advertisement clippings, wine labels and watercolour, 1993; Plumber Tut, (11″x15″) watercolour on paper, framed with corrugated cardboard, 1994.
Not surprisingly, this nostalgia detour meant I have done very little writing today. On the other hand, it has been a nice mellow day of re-charging.
I’d be interested to know your experience with the USB turntable. I got one after last Xmas when they were on sale and haven’t unpacked it yet. There is some vinyl I need to get into the computer!
My first problem was trying to install Audacity on the Macbook — they didn’t play well together to the point that Audacity couldn’t even see the turntable when it was plugged in. Through a little fiddling I was able to get it to play and record through GarageBand so I was content. The quality is acceptable but it’s not as great as I’d like (ultimately, the result is either tinny or flat, I fiddled for an hour to get a happy medium to no avail. I stuck with slightly tinny).
I recorded about 6 or 8 songs before I put it away so I could get other stuff done but now it should just be a matter of pulling it out of storage, set up and go the next time I have a window.
I’ve had little luck with Audacity too, at least on my Mac. Right now my main computer is a laptop running Ubuntu, and there is Audacity for Linux IIRC. I should just take some time and fiddle with the darn thing.