Alright, well I’ve done it again. I started this tune over the weekend. I downloaded a new “refill” for my music software which contains new instruments or “patches.” One of them, what is both the stabby / pulsing bass and lead, really had me playing around and I ended up with this. At some point I decided to double up the lead and bass with the piano, then started cutting back and forth between them, and then eventually ended up with 4 distinct voices. It is also my first time using any sort of drum loop, which ended up being the ultra-light percussion running through the majority (not the boom-tick-tick, boom-boom-tick-tick).

I really like this one. I spent most of my time at work today listening to the near final mix. Somehow I’m still not tired of it, so that means it’s a winner! Enjoy it. And thanks to Stompp and eXode for all of their fantastic refills!! They’ve been continual sources of inspiration.

I’ve been home bound lately, mostly because I got sick two weekends ago and am slowly recovering. I’m not entirely sure, but I have the sneaking suspicion that my chimney deconstruction (still not complete, but I’ve got eight feet cleared) had something to do with it — inhaling all that soot and dust on the first two days. Man, I hate being sick.

One of my projects that I could still manage, whilst sickly, was to start converting my old VHS tapes to DVDs. I bought a Sony machine to do it and once I’ve finished I will take it up to Delaware to start in on my parents massive collection. Paramount are the many tapes my dad made, and continues to make, especially around Christmas time; we have them all the way back to 1981! There is some truly fantastic stuff in there that would be tragic to lose to the forces of electromagnetic entropy. And let us not forget the video of my 2nd grade, directorial debut, performance of Cats!

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I’m a big fan of the show Dirty Jobs on the Discovery channel. Every week I get to see Mike Rowe engaging in insanely dirty, greasy, messy activities that most of us never stop to think about. You can watch Mike get filthy doing jobs such as cleaning grease traps, processing human food waste, mining coal, emptying septic tanks, making charcoal, etc. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

So I’ve had my own dirty job over the past few days. I’ve been removing an old brick chimney/flue from inside the walls of my house. My house was built in the 1930 and, I’m almost certain, was initially heated by coal. To vent the coal smoke there is an old chimney that runs up the wall of the original kitchen (which has its own flue for what I presume was a wood stove). I believe this project qualifies as the dirtiest (corporally speaking) thing I’ve ever encountered or attempted. You cannot believe how dirty an 80 year old chimney is!

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