Have you ever noticed how music just seems to soothe the tensions of the day away? Especially if you're playing with friends? A couple of years ago we had a house fire. We all got out fine, but the ensuing mess not only stunk, but took a long time to get cleaned up, assess the damage, list all the items that were lost or damaged (inventory those storage areas now!) and replace them. All of those tasks coupled with the constant supervision of the rebuilding process, along with my usual duties (Notation...

I've had occasion of late to do some voice recording. In the past I've always done this type of thing late at night, to avoid local ambient noise (kids) and the tractors that rumble down our stretch of Pinnebog Road. Except during sugar beet harvest, when the rumbling goes on for weeks straight

Since I don't really need a full-blown studio setup (I'm only recording vocals) and since I'm on a budget (i.e. I'm really, really cheap), I decided to leverage experience from my...

The Huron County Fair is this week, and since we live in Huron County, we typically go to the fair one day during the week (“Kid” day, because it’s cheapest), buy the kids all a "rides" bracelet, and let them ride all the rides they can til they can't stand up straight anymore. Then they take any money they've saved up over the last however-long-they've-been-able-to-stand-not-spending-any period, and buy whatever they want with it. We've done this for a few years now.

This...

My Grandma (Lillian May Brickhouse Davenport) was quite a gifted musician from what I hear from my Mom and aunts and uncles. She had a lovely voice before illness took it away, and she played piano quite well. She even wrote some songs (she would have rocked if she had Notation Composer!) I remember her playing piano especially during family gatherings, and all her children (my Mom and aunts and uncles) would gather around to sing some family favorites. Such sing-alongs were a lot of fun....

We have a stone campfire ring in our backyard, and during the summer months we make pretty good use of it (on days when it's not windy, that is.) A few years ago as we were sitting around it, one of my kids brought out one of their "beginner" guitars (aka, small plywood-guitar-shaped-box.) It only had the bottom four strings left on it, and sounded pretty dead. They wanted me to play a song and sing for them, so on the spot I came up with something that had a little bass movement to...