December 31.

On December 1, I got this website up and running and showed up to declare that I would post something every day this month "as a means of accountability for doing things and sharing them with the internet."

Well, here we are at the end of the month and it appears I have accomplished what I set out to do. This month, I have:

As far as my metrics can tell me, that last one I mentioned - the post about dreams and fear - was the most popular post I wrote this month, and I'm not sure why. Maybe people identify with the idea of being afraid to succeed. I don't know, you'll have to tell me in the comments ;)

More generally speaking, what type of posts did you enjoy most, and what do you want to see more of in 2015? I tried to do a variety of things with the blog this month, from straightforward project updates to more reflective, idea-driven posts; from posts focused on what I'm doing to posts highlighting what others are doing. If there's a particular type of post you enjoy most (heh, that rhymed), tell me about it!

Also, now that my big December project is over, what should I tackle next? I'm always open to new suggestions so if there's something you'd like to see me try, tell me about that too! One suggestion was to sculpt something out of something and post it - I love that idea and I'll be doing it sometime in the next month or two.

Lastly: I'll be taking a few days off and then I'll be back to post regularly again. It won't be daily; more likely it will be 2-3 days per week.

It's been a great month! Thanks for being a part of it.

minimake: serving board!

I'm doing a few small projects with the leftover wood from the bed I built for Caitlin for Christmas. One of them was particularly fun and quick - I made a serving board for my brother Sam and his family. The board was already planed from one of the side rails of the bed, so I sanded it smooth and wiped it down with a tack cloth before applying a generous coat of teak oil. Teak oil is designed for hard woods (particularly teak - surprise!) so it seemed like a good match for the especially dense walnut I had been working with. After letting it soak in for 30 minutes, I applied a second coat and let that soak for 15 minutes before wiping the board dry with a cloth. I repeated this process for the other side of the board. The teak oil really brought out the grain of the wood and should protect the wood very well. I think the board will look quite nice with a baguette and an assortment of cheese on it. Now if only I had also given Sam a baguette and an assortment of cheese for Christmas...

Tri-State Station

Yesterday, we visited Tri-State Station, a model railroading club located amongst the outlet stores outside of Angola, Indiana. Elias and I had fun looking at all the displays and I also enjoyed photographing some of the trains and displays.

It was a unique photographic challenge I hadn't really taken on before - I learned a lot and the process of editing the photos is teaching me even more. I'd like to go back sometime and get more photos, but here's what I have for now. Click any of the images to enlarge:

A New Christmas Tradition

This Christmas, our family tried out what I think will become a new tradition - Christmas Crackers!

Christmas Crackers are a tradition in the UK which I first learned about while watching Doctor Who. A cracker looks like a tube that's twisted at the ends; when pulled, it tears open with a loud pop and several prizes come out. Last year my friend Derick gave us a set of crackers just after Christmas to use this year, so we've been looking forward to using them for a long time! Something I didn't realize until yesterday is that the crackers pop so loudly because they contain a strip of paper in the middle with some Silver Fulminate, which is highly unstable and explodes easily. Only a tiny amount is used and it's safely contained so there's no danger.

The crackers we got contained a slip of paper with lame jokes (dad-joke quality or better), a paper crown (these come in basically all crackers), and a small toy. My toy was a tiny set of bowling pins with a ball:

The pins are about 1" tall

All the crowns in our crackers were gold, though they sometimes come in different colors.

Derick also thought I looked like the Burger King mascot in my crown; I decided to take it as a compliment.

"Who wore it better?"     -Derick Lehman

"Who wore it better?"
     -Derick Lehman

It was a lot of fun to open the crackers before our Christmas meal and I think we'll continue the tradition for many years to come.

What's your favorite Christmas tradition?

Secret December Project: Building A Bed

I've told you all about one project of mine this month, and I shared the results of it a couple of days ago. But, for the past month and a half or so, I've been working on another project in secret. I couldn't share details here because it was a Christmas gift for Caitlin. Now that Christmas is over and she has her gift, I am excited to share it with you!

Secret December Project: Building A Bed

I first want to extend a big thank you to my brother-in-law Breagan, who let me use his garage/basement to prepare the pieces of this bed. He also provided plenty of tools I don't have (yet) including his planer, compound miter saw, and table saw. He also sourced the wood for me, having found a Craigslist seller who was getting rid of rough walnut for about $1 per board foot.

After selecting the boards I wanted to use, we planed them smooth and then cut them to length. On one or two boards that had some curvature only at one end we cut them short before planing. Next, we ripped them to 10" wide on the tablesaw, and I sanded the boards to make them even smoother. I then used my drill press to make holes where the boards would be bolted into the supports. This was done in two steps: first by drilling a hole just large enough for the bolt shank to fit through, and then a 3/4" wide hole about half the depth of the board thickness to allow the bolt head and washer to sit below the surface of the board.

The supports for the bed (which hold the frame together) were five 2x4's. I cut them to length, drilled a hole in the ends, and then embedded an insert nut in the ends so that the bolts could engage metal threads and tightly hold everything together. The headboard was made of three smaller boards which were planed, edge-glued together, and sanded smooth. I drilled five holes in the bottom edge of the headboard with five corresponding holes in the top edge of the frame rail at the head of the bed so that I could insert pegs to align and join the two pieces. My goal was to make it easy to disassemble the bed in case we move to another house or want to move the bed to another room.

I coated all the external faces of the frame and headboard with three coats of Minwax Polycrylic semi-gloss finish, and the inner faces got two coats each. I sanded between each coat and cleaned up the dust with a tack cloth.

The final steps before assembly were to cut some 1/2" plywood to size and to attach legs to the outermost 2x4 supports. I also attached small support rails to hold up the head- and footboard. This part is better explained visually in the gallery below, which depicts and explains the assembly process. Click any of the photos to enlarge; you can click or arrow your way through the enlarged images if you'd like. Mouse over the enlarged image to see the description.

I had a lot of fun doing this project and I'm so glad I finally get to share it. We slept on the bed for the first time last night and it didn't collapse, so we're off to a good start! I need to add a little bit more bracing for the headboard, which is currently only held in place by those five brass rods - I forgot to pick up the bracket I wanted last time I was at Lowe's. Overall I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! I hope that you have been able to spend it surrounded by people you love, and that you feel the nearness of our God who came to be with us. As the familiar carol reminds us: Veiled in flesh the Godhead see-- Hail the incarnate Deity! Pleased as man with man to dwell: Jesus, our Emmanuel.

In case you missed it yesterday, I completed my December project of recording O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Tomorrow I'll share the results of my other December project, which I've been occasionally teasing but also haven't really talked about because it was a surprise Christmas gift for Caitlin.

Grace and peace to you on this Christmas day!

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

I am not a vocal performer. I haven't been in choir since 6th grade, and my vocal training since then has only consisted of a few semesters of voice lessons with the excellent Wishart Bell while I was a student at Bethel.

I am moderately terrified to share the final product of my December Project with you. I wasn't able to complete the instrumentation to my desired outcome, I know that a few more vocal takes would have produced a better result, and I was basically stumbling around Adobe Audition in the dark (with a flashlight named Google) when it came to mixing and editing the final song.

I recorded the vocals for this song in my basement. Note the awesome wood paneling.

I recorded the vocals for this song in my basement. Note the awesome wood paneling.

But action trumps inaction. Doing something is always better than talking about doing something. Sharing is better than keeping everything for yourself. So, here it is:

I hope you enjoy it. Shoot, I hope you make it all the way to the end without giving up on me.

This blog was created to get me to make things and share them with people. I guess it's working.

Virtual Instruments

In the process of producing the Christmas song I'm recording this year I finally jumped into the world of VSTi's, or Virtual Studio Technology instruments. For a long time, I shied away from the idea of using MIDI for anything other than transmitting notes or other data because the first thing that comes to mind when I think of MIDI as a music format is the cheesy (albeit awesome and nostalgia-inducing) background music from Chip's Challenge back in the day, or the floppy disk full of movie themes in MIDI format I got from my friend Alex in grade school. Fun, but not really what you want for serious music.

Turns out things have changed a little bit since 1993.

After getting over my irrational fear and nerding out over how cool technology is, I programmed my arrangement of verse one of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel into Finale NotePad, along with a final chorus arrangement I plan to use. I saved this as a .mid file and loaded it into Pianissimo, a VSTi/virtual instrument I just discovered today. It normally costs about $70 but comes with a 14-day free trial. As soon as the first note played it was abundantly clear that virtual instruments are not at all what they were 20 years ago. This should have been obvious without even hearing the instrument, but sometimes I'm just a grumpy old man like that.

Trying out the Pianissimo virtual piano; had it play back the MIDI file generated from my arrangement in Finale NotePad.

I may end up just doing an instrumental version of the song as the official end of my December Project, depending on how competent my voice feels tomorrow and on how much time I have between finishing my secret other projects (just a few more days until the reveal!) and enjoying my time off from work (rest is important!) At any rate, I am very much looking forward to sharing the final results with you!

!

verse one

Because of some other projects I've been working on (secret until after Christmas), I won't be able to produce a full performance video of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel like I wanted to... but like I've said before, setbacks are all about finding wins, and my wins this time around is that I was able to put together a performance video for the first verse, and that I've technically completed what I originally set out to do: 

  • to successfully record and share at least one Christmas-related song by Dec. 24
  • to record a performance video for this song
  • to use at least two audio tracks in the production process.

The audio version I released yesterday was made from four tracks - two piano, two voice - but I'm really uncomfortable with how the harmony sounded, so for the video version below I removed the second voice track and its associated video.

I still very much hope to produce a full audio version containing a more complete arrangement and more verses before Christmas, but it's going to be a tight squeeze to get that done. We'll see :)

a demo, or: a test

I've been doing so much stuff today that I haven't had time to write yet, so here's a tiny update:

I've started recording a bit for my December Project, and it looks like I won't have time to make a full performance video of the entire song. As a test this evening, I did a few quick takes of the first verse and then had fun becoming more familiar with Adobe Audtion to mix the tracks together. This is from two piano tracks and two vocal tracks (second track shows up partway through, it's the bad harmony.)

Just trying something out. Full song coming in the next few days! Hopefully I can learn to sing better by then ;)

I'll have a performance video of just this portion tomorrow, and then I'll jump into recording all the audio for the final project!

C&P Music Recital

Tonight, our music lesson business hosted its first recital. It was a lot of fun to see the students perform, some of them for the first time in front of a crowd. Caitlin acted as MC, and I scurried around furiously trying to get a couple of good photos per performance while also managing these two brothers:

I've used the Canon XA20 and XF200 on other shoots, so I knew they'd handle the recital pretty well (and they did!) I was also pleasantly surprised at how well-lit the recital space was - we held the event at an assisted living community and had no idea what the room would be like coming in (I was expecting a dimly lit space like the nursing home chapels I visited with my dad as a kid).

Overall, it went very well; I am looking forward to sharing more in the next couple of days but for now I just need to chill on the couch and watch SNL with Caitlin. I spent most of the day doing woodworking for some Christmas gifts (all will be revealed after Dec. 25!) and then of course we had the recital tonight. It has been a good, tiring day.

Music Workstation

Yesterday I shared about a dream that finally came true, and about how fear had needlessly held me back from reaching my goals. Today I'd like to talk a little more about that project, this time from a nerdier, less reflective standpoint.

Getting everything hooked up was a simple enough affair - I simply opened up the Roland USB/MIDI interface, installed the driver from the included CD, and then plugged the MIDI ends into the PSR-6300 keyboard and the USB end into my computer. When I opened Finale NotePad, it recognized the UM-ONE and set it as the default MIDI IN device.

That's it.

I opened a blank document in Finale NotePad and when I pressed a key the note appeared before my eyes. It was a momentous (if undramatic) experience.

To my disappointment but not to my surprise, Finale NotePad (free software) is pretty limited in how it accepts and interprets MIDI data. It does not analyze note duration, song tempo (either through MIDI clock or inferred from your playing style), or other data such as pitch bend. It simply takes the pitch (MIDI note number) and inserts it on the selected staff at the specified duration. So, if you have the eighth note selected everything you play comes in as an eighth note, and so on.

Thankfully, Caitlin had a brilliant idea which eased the pain of Finale NotePad's limitation significantly: she suggested I use my ShuttlePRO v2 to facilitate note entry. The ShuttlePRO is a hardware controller that features a shuttle wheel, jog dial, and 15 programmable buttons. It's immensely useful to me when I edit photos and especially when I edit video, so when Caitlin made the suggestion I knew right away what a great idea it was (she's pretty awesome like that, coming up with good ideas all the time).

ShuttlePRO v2 from Contour Design

I programmed the five buttons above the dial to select whole, half, quarter, eighth, or sixteenth notes, the wheel to move forward or back one note at a time, the right side button to convert a note to a rest, the left side button to add a dot to the selected note, and one of the top row buttons to undo the previous action. I'm sure that I'll find useful shortcuts or macros to fill in the rest of the buttons, but just making that handful of shortcuts so easy to access without looking down or moving my left hand immediately made note entry much simpler. It's a far cry from real-time transcription as I play, but it's also way better than entering notes by using the mouse.

I quickly programmed the desired buttons using the Shuttle config panel.

Finally, to make everything easier to control at once, I removed the upper keyboard from my stand and laid my whiteboard on the top tier to act as a platform (it was the first strong-ish thing I could find that was the right size). The monitor, ShuttlePRO, keyboard, and mouse went on top of that. It worked really well and I plan to cut a piece of plywood to fit on that upper level for when I want to use a monitor/etc. or smaller gear such as my drum machine or Korg MS-20 mini.

REPOST!

So there you have them: all the nerdy details. I'd be happy to answer any relevant questions you might have in the comments!

Dreams and Fear.

Tonight, a long-held dream of mine came true. It was nothing earth-shattering, just something I had dreamed about since 1997. Tonight, I played a note on a MIDI keyboard and saw it appear on a music staff on my computer screen. Then I listened as the computer played back the pitches I had just played. Then I listened as the computer sent those pitches back into the keyboard and the keyboard played them back to me in the voice selected on its control panel. This all might seem simple or boring to you, but it is seriously cool to me. And yet, it took far longer to achieve than it should have.

Sometimes, failure to achieve a dream is due to something completely out of our control. Something happens that has nothing to do with us and suddenly the thing we wanted to accomplish is no longer possible. Other times, life delays the completion of a project and we have to pick up the (maybe literal) pieces from where we left off and figure out how to bring everything together again. Some dreams might be too big to chase right now and we have to lay low for a while, work on what we can, and gather the resources over time to make them eventually come true. And sometimes, things just don't go our way - maybe it hasn't been our day, our week, our month, or even our year - but we can still find wins and keep moving on our dreams. Sadly, none of these are the true reason it took me so long to achieve this particular dream.

I've had the MIDI/USB cable I needed for months; I've had the keyboard, computer, and software for years. I even had a successful attempt at using MIDI to communicate between two instruments earlier this year. So what kept me from this dream for so long? In a word: fear.

Two types of fear were the key players in keeping me from chasing this goal and succeeding much sooner. The first was a fear of being let down. I've achieved some goals in the past only to realize that they weren't all I anticipated them to be. Certainly I've also achieved goals that were very fulfilling, life-giving, and encouraged me to move forward - but I've also realized dreams that turned out to be less like a mighty zeppelin and more like a 3-week-old birthday balloon. I was afraid that the idea of using a keyboard for notation via MIDI would far outshine the experience of it.

The second type of fear that held me back was a fear of success. I admit that sounds odd but I think it happens more often than we might realize. I've experienced huge wins, achievements I'd count as milestones in my life, that left me empty. I've had goals that I thought would be some kind of pinnacles only to find they were mere foothills - that the thing I thought would bring satisfaction only served to reveal how much further I had to go. This, I think, was the primary issue that kept me from pursuing this goal sooner. What if I suddenly have the tools to make notation and arranging easier, and I fail to live up to the potential those tools give me? What if I suddenly feel a responsibility to do more with music? Sure, it's what I want to do; it's what I've been dreaming about all this time - but when it suddenly becomes possible I suddenly become timid.

I've said many times that I started this blog to force myself to do things and share them with the internet. Apparently it's starting to work a little bit. You have helped me overcome years of fear and inaction to achieve something I've dreamed about for 17 years.

What type of fear is most prevalent in your life? How will you overcome it to move toward your goals?

minimake: ornament decoration!

For the past few weeks we've had some clear glass ornaments and craft supplies available at the Help Desk for staff to decorate. I hadn't done one yet so today I picked up an ornament and some paint and set to it. The normal paints were missing so I ended up using sparkly paint.

My first step was to cover the bottom portion with blue paint and let it get mostly dry. After this I painted over the blue and about halfway up the side with white to create the effect of snow (with blue shadows below). After this had dried, I used green and painted two happy trees on the side of the ornament. I let these dry halfway and then added some white to highlight the branches with a bit of snow. The last step was to use "dimensional fabric paint" (which came in a squeeze bottle) to dot the top half with snow, accent the trees, and mark the horizon line more clearly. Here's the result:

It was a fun, quick project that I really enjoyed. Starting now I'm going to call this type of thing a 'minimake' project - something crafty or creative that is done quickly without being part of a larger project. Speaking of larger projects, I'm hoping to write out the general shape of my arrangement for O Come, O Come, Emmanuel over the next few days and get a lot of the recording done this weekend.

I'll leave you with a few more photos of the ornament:

Verse Selection

I have finalized the verses I plan to record as part of my December Project (a rendition of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel set to the traditional tune Veni Emmanuel). I especially like these verses not just for their poetic beauty, but also because they speak to many attributes of God that were exemplified in Jesus' coming to earth as a human.

The first verse speaks to the hope that Jesus brings as the physical answer to millennia of humanity longing to be reunited with the God it rejected, for the relationship to be restored on a deeply personal level. The second verse speaks to the joy we find in this restored relationship, with Jesus as the rising sun that eradicates darkness and pours life into a world ruled by death. The third verse speaks of Jesus as our protector and leader, showing us how to live and guiding us into God's love. The fourth verse again speaks of Jesus as our exemplar and ruler, the king of kings before whom all others reverently fall silent. He is the leader of his people, a just and kind ruler whose people can turn to him for wisdom and mercy in times of need.

The fifth verse is perhaps my favorite, depicting Jesus as the restorer of a fractured human race, not by homogenizing humanity but rather by eliminating our sad divisions - the differences we focus on that lead to hate, to war, to injustice. Jesus' life is filled with the removal of walls that were put in place to separate and divide people from each other. This could be its own blog post but to name a few instances I would point to his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, his willingness to socialize with despised tax collectors, and his public defense of the woman who had been caught in adultery (among many other examples). At this time of year, it may be cliché to point out that God came to earth as a baby, born among the animals in a smelly cave, the lowliest of births for the most exalted of men... but it all bears repeating.

God came here. The name Emmanuel even means God is with us. He lived and breathed and walked among us. He died to save us and he was resurrected from the grave in victory over death. Perhaps the wonder of Christmas resides as much in Jesus' death as in his birth, but above all this season is about celebrating one simple, mind-blowing fact: God loves us. I pray that you will feel his love this season and throughout your life.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O Come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, thou Root of Jesse's tree,
an ensign of thy people be;
before thee rulers silent fall;
all peoples on thy mercy call.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

Synthesis and Electronic Music

I have been fascinated by electronic music and music programming for a long time, at first more as a concept or technical exercise than an art form. It probably started in 1997 when my mom got a Yamaha PSR-530 keyboard for her classroom (she taught K-4th music) along with a MIDI interface box and Finale 3.7 for her school computer (a Power Macintosh 5400). The promise of being able to play notes on the keyboard and have them appear on the music staff seemed like pure magic. Unfortunately, due to either a problem with the MIDI box or a problem with how we set everything up, we never got that part of it working. I did, however, spend a lot of time writing out music after school and playing with as many features of the keyboard as I could wrap my head around.

Toward the end of my time as a student at Bethel College, the music department was getting rid of old gear, and I picked up a couple of keyboards for free, including a Yamaha PSR-6300. An early predecessor to mom's PSR-530, the PSR-6300 was a premier model in Yamaha's 1986 lineup. This one didn't have a power cord but I'm always happy to figure stuff out so I took it anyway. The first thing I did was to open it up and cut out the old power jack which took a nonstandard plug. As a temporary workaround (which has so far been permanent) I cut the end off of a cheap extension cord and spliced it into the wires which previously ran to the power jack. My plan is to eventually wire in a standard 3-pin power jack as is commonly found on computers and monitors.

Once I got the thing to turn on, I found that only two voices worked, and once you switched to the second one you couldn't go back to the first. I ordered a service manual and schematic diagram for the keyboard but never dug into it enough to sort out the problem. Finally, earlier this year, I did some additional research and found that the problem spot was likely buried deep inside the keyboard. I took the keyboard over to The Maker Hive in Elkhart, IN and made some new friends who helped me re-solder the bridge connector that had come loose. I put everything back together and it worked perfectly!

About a month after that, I ended up selling some of my camera gear and bought a bunch of music gear (I also paid off a student loan!) One of the items I purchased was the Alesis SR18 drum machine, which has MIDI input/output as well as a basic note sequencer that runs alongside the drum sequencer (ostensibly to program bass parts). The PSR-6300 also has MIDI input/output, so one of my first goals was to link the two units in order to control one with the other. It was easier than I expected and was just mind-blowingly cool. It felt like the dream I had held for the past 16 years was finally starting to take shape.

Another of the items I purchased at that time was a Korg MS-20 mini analog synthesizer. It's a modern recreation of a popular synth from the late '70s and early '80s. The newer model is functionally identical to the older model, except that it's scaled down somewhat (using 1/8" jacks rather than 1/4" in the patch pay) and that it has a MIDI input jack (via 5-pin and USB connections). The world of analog synthesis was another realm I had dreamed about for years but never been able to enter. It seemed so esoteric, versatile, and just plain cool, and I'm so excited to be able to experiment with it now.

Ever since my first exposure to a synthesizer (probably via Joy Electric's song Monosynth which incidentally was released in 1997) I've wanted to know more, to play with a real hands-on-switches hardware synthesizer. I fiddled a little bit with some software synths in college but they didn't really do it for me - it was too hard to mess around and figure out what everything does, but when you've got a panel full of knobs it's much more intuitive.

The main difference between a synthesizer and a keyboard is that a keyboard generally just plays back sounds that have been stored in it (especially newer ones) and while you may be able to modify or create expression with those sounds, they're more or less locked in. A synthesizer generates its own sound through the use of one or more oscillators which create an electrical version of sound waves, moving back and forth. Synths can produce different wave shapes which produce different timbres, or tone qualities. After that, the signal can be routed through any number of modules - filters that refine the sound, envelopes that define the volume of a sound over a period of time, low-frequency oscillators (LFO's) that can control some other aspect of the synth, and many more. Some synthesizers are an all-in-one package with pre-selected modules available for use, while others are entirely modular, being constructed in a cabinet of whatever modules the player chooses. These are then hooked together using patch cords. The MS-20 is unique in that it is semi-modular, with the ability to play it straight out of the box or to patch the signal through different modules as desired. It's not quite as flexible as I had hoped and some of the signal flow is a little confusing, but it's still an exciting world that I love exploring.

One thing I greatly admire about David Crowder*Band is their ability to use electronic sounds to enhance music in unexpected ways. Crowder further exemplifies this on his excellent solo album, Neon Steeple. Because of my respect for this aspect of his music and because part of the self-assigned challenge for my December Project is to use at least two tracks in the production process, I would like to use the MS-20 mini to enhance my rendition of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel in a non-melodic yet musical way. Figuring out how might prove to be difficult, but it's also going to be a lot of fun.

Tonight I played with the MS-20 and my Zoom H6 audio recorder in order to play with some of the non-melodic sounds the synth is capable of producing. I recorded them on the H6 and tried out the overdubbing feature which allows you to listen to one track while recording another over top of it. For the first track I tried to create a sort of wintry soundscape, and then on the second layer of audio I was just trying to create some kind of bleep-bloopy effect on top. This is what happened:

I was experimenting a bit with the Korg MS-20 mini as well as the Zoom H6 overdubbing and mixdown features. For the first track I tried to create a sort of wintry soundscape, and then on the second layer of audio I was just trying to create some kind of bleep-bloopy effects on top. This is what happened.

I'm not planning to use either of these elements directly in my song, but it was fun to play and get a feel for what I could do. I'm really looking forward to integrating some of this (particularly the wintry kind of sound) into O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

My goal with this song is to maintain a traditional feel that reverently acknowledges the glory of God coming to Earth as a human. I want the track to reflect the intense longing felt by a people awaiting the arrival of their Savior, and the joy we anticipate for his second coming. The final verse suddenly seems fitting, so I will leave you with it:

O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
  shall come to the O Israel!

Christmas Song Selection

I have decided which song I will record for Christmas this year as part of my December Project, and it is:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

I selected this song for a few reasons, enumerated below.

  1. It speaks to the theology of Christmas in a deep and meaningful way.
  2. The tune I'm using, Veni Emmanuel, is a beautiful and old French melody, dating from the 1400s or prior.
  3. The lyrical themes originated as early as the 800s, though the earliest recorded Latin text of the song is from 1710 (Germany).
  4. There are many widely-accepted verses, so I can choose the ones that carry the most meaning for me and include them in my recording.
  5. I was playing around on our piano today and came across a chord progression I liked - Gm6/4 moving to D major - and as I did a little more with it the melody of this song came out. It turned out to be in a key and range that was good for my voice so I felt my way through some chords for the rest of the song and settled on it as my choice.

One challenge I face with this selection is that I'm familiar with renditions of this song recorded by artists I regard very highly, including Peter Furler, Kevin Max, and David Crowder*Band - so it may be difficult not to borrow from their interpretations of the song. On the other hand, Christmas music is so widely recorded that people are used to hearing multiple artists record the same song.

I'm very much looking forward to recording O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and I look forward to sharing it with you!

Jeremy and Dayana

Yesterday I wrote about finding wins when you feel like you're losing. As part of that post I shared that a video I was working on wouldn't be done in time to include it in yesterday's blog post, which had been one of my goals.

Well, sometimes you have to go looking for wins, and sometimes the wins find you. Within 15 minutes of publishing yesterday's post, the rest of that video fell together perfectly and I was able to get it done very quickly.

Here it is:

If you want to learn more about Compassion or sponsor a child yourself, visit http://compassion.com

"But wait," says a hypothetical reader, "didn't you just say something like a week ago about not doing these videos anymore?" To which I respond: thanks for reading! You are correct. This is my last video from the Ecuador trip and probably my last video for Epic for a while. It feels good to cleanly close one chapter in my creative journey and move on to the next one.

This brings me back to my December project: recording a Christmas song! I'm still taking suggestions at this point and will probably start the recording process on Sunday or Monday.

Thank you for joining me as I attempt to move forward as a creative. It's remarkably encouraging to know that people have been reading along (readership has ranged from 7 to 78 over the past couple of weeks) and, as I had hoped, your support has helped me continue to do things and share them with the internet.

Finding Wins

I had a big plan for today, and today didn't quite go according to that plan. This is okay.

I have been working on a video that I had planned to reveal for today's blog post, and it won't be done until after midnight - so it won't be done today. This is okay.

I could have looked at my failure and thrown the whole "blog every day for a month" idea out the window. I've messed up now, so there's no point in continuing, right? That's what I might have said a few years ago, maybe even a few months ago. But this month is different. Because this month, I have decided that action is greater than inaction. That I'm going to use this website to move toward my ambition as a creative. That I'm going to finish things that were left unfinished for too long. That I'm going to find wins even when I feel defeated.

My win for today is to see the progress I've made and be satisfied with where I'm going as a creative. This month has been incredibly productive for me so far and having one day where I didn't hit a milestone doesn't mean I'm not moving.

Life doesn't always go as planned, dreams don't always come true, and people sometimes mess up. You might find yourself outside of where you need to be right now. This is okay. Find a win and use that to drive yourself toward your goal.

It's not so much about how close you are as it is about which way you're facing. If you find a perspective that points you in the right direction, any progress (no matter how small) will get you closer to whatever it is you're working toward.