By: Annna [2001-05-05]

Ukulele Week: Day Six

losing steam - RADIOACTIVE STEAM!


I am a naughty vampire ukulele GOD!
Image stolen from Carol Lay


This time I mean it: not much to say.

I'm taking one of those one-day-one-credit seminars put forth by the Education department. They're under the banner of the Substance Abuse Prevention Program, which basically means I'm going to spend a day in the equivalent of a junior high school Health class.

On the other hand, it'll be one credit I'll never have to think about again. One upper division credit. Did I mention this is my third year and I'm graduating after summer term? You begin to see, perhaps, my predicament.

I don't know that I like the whole "trading chunks of time for credit" mechanism to be so obvious, though. At least I won't have to pay attention, like I would in a real class. The title of this seminar is "Who's Weird, Who's Not?"

This means, of course, nothing; they will have the same two motivational speakers they always have, the perky butch woman and the sleepy sweater-wearing guy, talk to us about whatever percolates from their brains to their mouths and then hand out articles that have nothing to do with the lecture. We will write short summaries of the articles and get one Pass/No Pass credit.

I sure hope the University of Oregon Substance Abuse Prevention Program never ego-searches and finds this page! Ha ha! Don't worry, they can't read anyway; ask me later about my adventures in the heroin class.

This lecture starts at eight in the morning. As I write this at midnight Friday, I have decided to record ukulele mp3s and scan things rather than go to a movie or sleep. I'll probably regret this Saturday morning, but it has brought forth fruit!

Less fruit than I thought, though. See, I decided to teach myself how to use the multitrack feature of Cool Edit 2000. And that's what I did, too, except that I froze my computer in the process, losing a fair version of Elvis Costello's "New Amsterdam." Ah, hell, it's lost forever; I should tell you guys it was an absolutely kick-ass version of Elvis Costello's "New Amsterdam." Much better!

Instead, here's what I have. It's only a minute, but it's extra creepy to make up for it. It's sort of my tribute to Bob Dylan's cover of "The Boxer" on Self Portrait. If you're a Dylan fan, you're quivering in terror already. For everyone else, here's the first verse of Leonard Cohen's The Future. 1.32 MB.

"We'll all be dead, and yet still alive... like Leonard Cohen!"

Enjoy.
Multitracking [2001-05-05 00:51:54] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Sandy Bull died just a little while back; he was the first guy that I heard do a whole band by multitracking. Steve Slack made a remarkable one-man CD, also. A one-man band! I heard a Cohen tune on a film soundtrack called "There Ain't No Cure for Love." Easy three-chord song, I got the lyrics off the 'Net.
Dr. John [2001-05-05 19:26:08] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Dr. John is going to play here June 10th, so I think that I'll go hear him because I like New Orleans pie-ano. He's big on Professor Longhair
Multistuff [2001-05-05 20:51:37] Jonas
Dave Grohl played all the instruments on the first Foo Fighters album himself -- oh no! there goes my indie credibility, oh well.

I don't know about Cool Edit 2000, but if Cool Edit Pro crashes, you can restore lost files and sessions, which has come in handy for myself on more than one occasion (two, in fact). Plus the easter egg in CEP is Pong!

Anyway, okay, this is by far the best produced song. If you took out the higher voice (and used an instrument that wasn't a ukelele), it would be positively haunting, just like Leonard should be. Yes, you should definitely play more Leonard Cohen. And the fadeout is wonderful.
Kazootjeit [2001-05-05 21:45:28] König Prüß, GfbAEV
About the box freezing up, sound and graphics files seem to take lots of memory. The box that I'm looking at now has an 80gig drive, but some of the sound set-ups seem to want a couple of gigs of RAM, too.
The box that I have now, more than five midi threads bog it, and .wav
files are more compact for me to try to manipulate than .mp3's
I think that if the temporary overflow went to disk, then the brain- freeze would be in an input que. Mimo:music-in, music-out
Costello! [2001-05-05 23:37:39] staniel
Pills and Soap! I haven't heard that one in a while. don't know how well it would work on uke tho.
day six delay [2001-05-06 00:21:58] Annna
Up at six, spent all day at damn seminar and doing homework. Going to sleep now. Ukulele finale Sunday afternoon.

SLEEP
Hey! [2001-05-06 17:54:19] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Hurry up!
More uke!
Yes [2001-05-06 19:47:55] Jonas
We've become addicted.
shutdown [2001-05-06 22:41:30] staniel
awww... Annna's tuckered herself out, pushing herself too hard trying to bring us fresh uke on a daily basis. sleep well, sweet maiden of the four little strings.
Greek Party [2001-05-06 23:26:53] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Maybe she went to that party at Upsilon Kappa Epsilon
TOGA! TOGA! TOGA! [2001-05-06 23:45:32] staniel
I have odd mental pictures of all of you people, and Annna crushing a beer can on her forehead has joined the ranks...
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