Monday, November 18, 2024

Our Evacuation from the Mountains of North Carolina after Hurricane Helene

 My article describing (in part) our experiences that led up to our evacuation from the North Carolina mountains after the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Helene. 


https://amsweatherband.org/index.cfm/weatherband/articles/our-evacuation-from-the-mountains-of-north-carolina-after-hurricane-helene/


Knowing that internet links have a habit of disappearing I’ll try to locate my original text that was submitted and post it here.

Rehearsal

Written 5 or 6 years ago, found in DRAFT mode, and just now published.

I still recall the days when our tenor section would rehearse separate from those who sang bass. These choir rehearsals took place during my high school years as I sang in various music productions. Rehearsal was what we did for most of the time.  We had to learn the songs, understand the parts, and recall the notes when we all sang together. It was easy to remember my lines when singing with a bunch of tenors. When the entire choir got together it was much more difficult. Its hard to remember but I guess we rehearsed 25-35 times for each production.

Recently I've started rehearsing again. This time it is not singing, but playing the semi-modular synthesizer. During the last two and one half years of synth experimentation rehearsing played a very small part of my exploration of this music.  Typically if I were to record a track on YouTube I'd rehearse two or three times and let her fly. My results typically revealed the lack of rehearsal. It was easy to argue that since this is modular synthesis there is a lot of room for "flexibility" (read: error).

For the past week or two I've been rehearsing for the possibility of being able to play publicly at an "open mic" event. We are not yet sure how much time we have to perform, but 10-15 minutes is the current guesstimate. I'm trying to pack the smallest synth footprint, so I'm limited to the Moog Mother32 stack (the Mother96), and one skiff. Additionally one midi controller and a set of headphones along with the mixer will complete the whole show.   I'll need a small portable table, and and multi plug power distribution and one long stereo cable.