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Lotta not much
Nov. 3rd, 2023 08:25 amNot a lot going on here with me.
It's gotten cold so outdoor stuff is minimal.
I did set up the pickup tent yesterday, if there was anything wrong with it I wanted to find out within the return window. It's fine and I like it. I still need to determine an air mattress solution; if it's just me in there I can use one of my one-person mattresses, and probably even with two, I have two one-person mattresses but I would like to have a whole-bed solution as well. If nothing else it's slightly uncomfortable to kneel on the truck bed directly.
I'm singing with Out Loud Chorus. It's fun, they're doing pop stuff which is way different than the classical type stuff I've been doing most of my life. It's 1980s stuff which some of the people don't know because they're too young... I know a few pretty well like True Colors and the like, but I wasn't THAT into pop music back then. In any case I'm very much enjoying singing with the group so far, they're very friendly and fun. They are doing an Eric Whitacre piece (Enjoy the Silence) so that's somewhat in the realm of the things I'm used to singing.
I bought a new piano keyboard, again. Originally I intended to pick up a < $100 cheapo keyboard, but in the end I decided if I was going to spend $100, I could spend $250 and get a much better instrument. I decided that full size keys, velocity sensitive keyboard, MIDI and sustain pedal input were minimum requirements, and after watching a bunch of review videos, I wound up with a Casiotone LK-S250, a 61 note compact keyboard. It's barely bigger than the room the keys take up. It does not of course have weighted action, but I wanted something small and very portable and weighted action isn't going to happen in that realm.
10 years ago I bought a fairly decent electric piano, hoping to learn to play. I took lessons as a kid which 100% did not stick and I was never into it at the time. Of course at this point I can read music well though as a singer I don't read absolute notes (to the undoubted dismay of my high school choir teacher) but as intervals and relative notes, so I have a little ground to cover there. I'm using a piece of software I bought 10 years ago. The company is out of business but I still have the install EXE and serial number, it works and it does interface with the keyboard (MIDI hasn't changed since like 1980). I hope to stick to it. So far the lessons are almost maddeningly slow but it's starting from zero and teaching to read music. I figure I better go through it all; when I try to skip lessons in other places I often wind up finding I missed something important.
I have set up the keyboard right next to the computer I am on for hours a day, so I hope that will make it more likely that I'll spend some time on it every day.
Speaking of spending time every day, I have a lifetime subscription to Babbel that I bought a while back. I should see if I can stick to learning Spanish again. I always get frustrated because it's going on about niggly details of the language. I realize they're important and maybe it's best to get them down as I go but I find that when I watch stuff where people are speaking Spanish, I can understand a lot ahead of where I have gotten to in the lessons.
It's gotten cold so outdoor stuff is minimal.
I did set up the pickup tent yesterday, if there was anything wrong with it I wanted to find out within the return window. It's fine and I like it. I still need to determine an air mattress solution; if it's just me in there I can use one of my one-person mattresses, and probably even with two, I have two one-person mattresses but I would like to have a whole-bed solution as well. If nothing else it's slightly uncomfortable to kneel on the truck bed directly.
I'm singing with Out Loud Chorus. It's fun, they're doing pop stuff which is way different than the classical type stuff I've been doing most of my life. It's 1980s stuff which some of the people don't know because they're too young... I know a few pretty well like True Colors and the like, but I wasn't THAT into pop music back then. In any case I'm very much enjoying singing with the group so far, they're very friendly and fun. They are doing an Eric Whitacre piece (Enjoy the Silence) so that's somewhat in the realm of the things I'm used to singing.
I bought a new piano keyboard, again. Originally I intended to pick up a < $100 cheapo keyboard, but in the end I decided if I was going to spend $100, I could spend $250 and get a much better instrument. I decided that full size keys, velocity sensitive keyboard, MIDI and sustain pedal input were minimum requirements, and after watching a bunch of review videos, I wound up with a Casiotone LK-S250, a 61 note compact keyboard. It's barely bigger than the room the keys take up. It does not of course have weighted action, but I wanted something small and very portable and weighted action isn't going to happen in that realm.
10 years ago I bought a fairly decent electric piano, hoping to learn to play. I took lessons as a kid which 100% did not stick and I was never into it at the time. Of course at this point I can read music well though as a singer I don't read absolute notes (to the undoubted dismay of my high school choir teacher) but as intervals and relative notes, so I have a little ground to cover there. I'm using a piece of software I bought 10 years ago. The company is out of business but I still have the install EXE and serial number, it works and it does interface with the keyboard (MIDI hasn't changed since like 1980). I hope to stick to it. So far the lessons are almost maddeningly slow but it's starting from zero and teaching to read music. I figure I better go through it all; when I try to skip lessons in other places I often wind up finding I missed something important.
I have set up the keyboard right next to the computer I am on for hours a day, so I hope that will make it more likely that I'll spend some time on it every day.
Speaking of spending time every day, I have a lifetime subscription to Babbel that I bought a while back. I should see if I can stick to learning Spanish again. I always get frustrated because it's going on about niggly details of the language. I realize they're important and maybe it's best to get them down as I go but I find that when I watch stuff where people are speaking Spanish, I can understand a lot ahead of where I have gotten to in the lessons.
