The worst example I personally know of is one Judge Baker, a dismal fossil in Surrey, British Columbia, who should have been abandoned on an ice floe twenty-five years ago. The greatest personal intellectual insult I ever endured was having to stand up when that insufferable dolt entered the room. The proper treatment would be to spit on him. Thanks to that old prick, I lost a perfectly good car to a mechanic who botched a repair job. I wanted my car and my money back. But Baker the Bobo only awarded me the money. I did nothing wrong, but lost my car. The bad guy got my car. Citizen criminals. I mean, figure it out. The car belonged to me and I paid for repairs that did not happen. In a fair system, I should get my car and my money back. Some Judge.
Without detail, that is the reason I chose today to rip out the front area and create another parking spot. Don't ask permission if you know it will result in wasted time. The alternative was to discuss legalities with a Canadian about the existing parking. Instead I moved some old bushes and shoveled away the dirt. Now, there is a parking spot in front of the patio doors. The wheelbarrow tire was flat. Wallace got into the dirt and cleared out roots. We can now park over a foot closer to the building and can still pace around the areas that flood. It required ten man-hours of work, but at least we did not need to accommodate the Canuck "neighbour". (Before, one of us was always slightly parked on his turf.
Pudding-Tat has finally developed a taste for boiled chicken. It only took two years. She stays near the computer in the new music room. Speaking of music, I finally got details about the singing bass player in Davie. (His name is Bobby Pruitt.) He did not, as I heard, play at the Hard Rock Café. Instead, he set up outside a pool hall and faked it for a while. Since it was not repeated, he likely since teamed up with a band. This is a far different scenario than developing a true bass act. I had a buddy called Marty Stewart from Tsawwassen who couldn’t play at all. He used to stand outside a liquor store with an empty guitar case and make $20.
Once again, this is different than my show. I have yet to see a bass player that actually does a real full gig as a solo. A bass player standing there for a few minutes playing guitar riffs is not comparable to what I do.
I spent the afternoon over at Arnel’s, mostly computer maintenance and testing software. He’s got three laptops. We went over the operational parts of Cakewalk, Cool Edit Pro, DVDfab and Symantec/Norton Anti-virus. I’d figured out the system, but not the methods. Yes, it is easy to add the karaoke words to the correct format of file. Alas, that format does not appear to be MP3+G. He showed me how to change the MIDI tracks to different instruments, meaning I could have a drum play the piano beat, if so desired.
He mentioned a karaoke super-program that is priced in the stratosphere. I’ll find it, called Sonar 7. This advance means junking all the tunes I’ve done before and starting over. Arnel was unaware of the requirement for two monitors so I’m still going to have to solve that. Most karaoke music requires instrument changes, for they sound like they were played on a child’s xylophone and tin flute. This requires yet another module, called VST, which produces more realistic instrument sounds.
At least I realize now why most karaoke people just go pay the $15 per tune. I can’t afford that option. It also explains why those people don’t know a thing about computers. They just buy the equipment and plug in a disk. Even their request cards don’t have a blank asking for your key. Why bother, since they don’t know how to change it. Unmistakably, Arnel and I have chosen to approach the situation differently.
A quick word about the musical formats. It seems the original file must be in karaoke format, which breaks the music down into tracks, exactly like recording software. One of those tracks contains the lyrics. As far as I can tell, only this format allows you to change the key. Once exported as an MP3+G, it can only be played back as recorded. While I don’t yet know that for a fact, it is an omen. Everything I have is MP3.
The times are a-changing. I did a crossword puzzle last week where one answer was “WYSIWYG” (wizzy-wig).
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