Movie Magic
My recording of the movie soundtrack was two weekends ago. It was in a recording studio downtown, so I had to go into the city on a Saturday. It also happened to be the first day of the Long Island Railroad strike, so what would have been about a 40 minutes train ride plus subway became a 2 hour ride - one on the Nice bus and one on the subway. Luckily the subway was running express, or it would have been more than 2 hours.
The recording itself took 3 hours. We spent the first 10 or so minutes getting to know the film maker (who brought snacks) and the sound engineer, and filled out paperwork.
Recording in a studio was fun to do once, but I don’t think I’d want to do it again. We were all wearing headsets so we’d hear the sound going into the recording, but the headset doesn’t block out live sound, so what you hear as you play is the recording plus the live sound, which is very disorienting.
The recording itself took 3 hours. Most of the time was spent on the concertmistress and the viola player trying to get in tune with each other. Most of the time the engineer and film maker were happy with the takes, but we always wanted to do another one. It felt like a lot of time to record music for a 11-minute short film. And only about 2 1/2 minute’s worth of music in it. At least that made the 4 hour round trip worth it.
But this is only the second time I get paid to play the piano, and it’s substantially more than the first time, when I played 4-hands with a friend at the church service where she was the director of.
- S
Which door does the rabbit want me to open?
The rabbit has been back for a few weeks now and has returned to normal. Even the fur is growing back on the front paw that got shaved so he could get an IV. We took the opportunity to limit his access to things, so now his enclosure is a little smaller, with the hutch and couch is now off limits unless with human supervision. La Professeure thinks he may have eaten something there.
He doesn’t seem to mind very much. He still has a wooden castle, an apartment (a sectioned-off part of his habitat that has a covering, a hippo structure and a wooden cube that he likes to sleep on, and tunnels leading in and out of it). He also has a teepee structure that he could hide in. But mostly he just destroys it every day and we would put it back.
Part of the restructuring makes it possible for three openings to the enclosure. The front entrance is the same as before, but a side entrance is made possible by unclipping two sets of gates that join together. (There’s a back entrance too, which we use to give him access to the couch and hutch, but he never asks for that one to open). He has learned where the front and side entrances are, and sometimes he would demand the front entrance to open, sometimes side. They are literally less than a foot apart, so I don’t know why he would prefer one over another. There are times when he knows one of the entrances is already open, and he still wants us to open the other one.
It’s hard to figure out what influences his preference at any one time. There must be something I don’t perceive. When I was small, my mechanical metronome’s axis broke so I told my parents I needed a new one. My mom’s response was, “well, can’t you just count better?” My dad “fixed” it by pulling the broken axis and placing it back in its place so it would still make some sort of ticking sound.
You can’t fix a problem you don’t perceive.
- N
Running a program
I had a busy weekend last week. La Professeure is upstate with her parents (her mom had to go to New Jersey for medical check ups so she went up to stay with her dad). But I had a concert to run, so I went by myself into the city. I realized there’s a print shop next to Penn Station that I could use to print out the program, so that was nice. I was worried the concert didn’t look like it was well-attended (it was memorial day weekend and it was rainy), but eventually enough people came in that we broke even. And this was held in the more expensive recital hall, and 3 people dropped out at the last minute.
I then went to watch Thorton Wilder’s Emporium with Wise Young Friend’s family. Little Boo-boo is back from his first year of college, so I had fun catching up with him. Schnookie is a sophomore now, so she is taking AP classes and thinking about colleges. She is very much obsessed with grades and extra curricular activities these days, which reminded me of my secondary school.
This week is relatively quiet, but next week we’ll go to the Poconos to attend the Japanese Pianist’s wedding. It’ll be a fun time - it’s held in her friend violinist’s vacation home, and it looks like a sizeable party will show up (~40), and some friends we haven’t seen for years. So we’re looking forward to it. And then the week after that ENT pianist is throwing a party at his home upstate, and the day after that is the last amateur musician’s concert of this season.
It’ll end my 3rd year running the concerts, and so far it’s been a rewarding experience. The fact that I have automated a lot of the work helps with my time commitment.
- D
Loading comments...