Well, it seems I have either a) lost interest, b) lost time, c) found other things to do or d) all of the above with respect to this blog. My first post was way back on Feb. 25, 2002. Our dog, now almost one year old, accounts for b) and c) as well as becoming choir manager, and a) arises because, after walking the dog in the evening, I don’t feel much like spending another half an hour posting something.

Perhaps I should try posting just a sentence or fragment instead of paragraphs.

Anyway, my software find this week is Audacity. I decided to start digitizing choir concert tapes from years ago. I can record one side of a tape and then slice out the selections, creating mp3 files out of them. So far I have done one Bell’Arte Singers set of two tapes from Nov. 1998 and one Toronto Chamber Society concert from Nov. 1981. The TCS turned out all right. The BAS tapes have either been played too much or they weren’t recorded at a high enough level. Their sound is kind of rumbly and muddy. I tried the FFT filter from the Audacity library to cut out the low frequencies: less rumbly now but the vocal sounds still aren’t very clear.

As for the 1981 tape, I don’t have the program just the titles I wrote on the cover. Through the “miracle” of the Internet though, I can search for midis based on the titles and, from listening to those, I can determine the correct title and composer.