Doing my taxes

Woo hoo - my federal refund?

$42.00

UPDATE: and my State? A $22 refund.

Go me!

When they told me that art is a process of discovery

I never knew that could mean discovering new things to do with laundry!

I put in a little over an hour running through the overdubs I'm scheduled to record tomorrow. I had ripped the tracks into I-Tunes and was playing things back on the computer to play along with

Now, I play the bowed psaltery, and will be adding it to a couple of tunes - mainly because a) I am not good enough to sing and play complex parts at the same time and b) I have a tendancy to hit the microphone with my bow if I'm not really really careful.

When the Korabushka came up, I started thinking about a sort of violin part I've had in my head since I heard someone play it somewhere with us, and decided to try and reproduce it on the psaltery.

Now the psaltery has lots of strings, and you often get resonance from strings other than the one you played - this can sometimes add a nice round quality to your sound. But on the quick part I was working on the low notes, it was just setting all the strings off and sounding like mush.

So I began thinking how nice it would be if I could figure out how to damp or mute the other strings just a little...

Then out of the courner of my eye, a solution appeared! My shoes and socks were lying on the floor next to my desk!

I picked up the sock and lightly laid it across the strings at the base, just above the pegs. It's PERFECT! It still allows the strings to resonate when you are actively bowing, but reduces teh ambient vibration considerably!

So, tomorrow I go into the studio with my whistles, my tambourine, my psaltery, and a sock. (Don't worry - I'll bring a clean one)