Holiday Update

Well, I figured I should post something before Christmas and the New Year came around!

I have been rather busy and have either not had the time, or when I did have the time lacked the motivation, to post.

Well, other than Trophy Day (trophy presentations) sessions, my first semester with Kid Chess is all but finished. There were some bumps in the road, certainly, but working with Kid Chess has been the single most rewarding work I have ever done! Not only do I have fun being with the kids and showing them new things, I also feel that I am really doing something important and good by enriching their minds and therefore by extension their lives! The results of my work appear to me much more apparent and tangible!

Bridget has just had another ultrasound down at Northside Hospital. Dr. Jeff Korotkin of Atlanta Perinatal Consultants has noted that the baby's size is barely above normal for twenty-five weeks of pregnancy. Based upon what we know about PHHI, in which a strong indicator of the presence of the disease is large size/birthweight, which is quite apparent by the twenty-fifth week of pregnancy, the fact that this baby is very nearly of normal dimensions is very encouraging to us. Perhaps this one won't have the same condition as Royce and Rowen, after all! As it is, the statistical odds are in our favour! Oh, and it's official: Baby is going to be another boy!

To help with income, I am now also working at a tax preparation software company in the area, called Personal Tax Services (PTS) (not UTS, for whom I did do temp work with in 2002) part time through tax season, assisting with technical issues. This might turn into something more permanent, so we will see. At any rate, it will at least buy me some time to figure out what to do, and have some money coming in over the next couple of weeks when there are no Kid Chess classes. So far I am enjoying the work; my coworkers are very nice people, as are my supervisors, and believe it not - I have my own office space! Not a cubicle, but an actual whole workspace within a room all to myself! That is a bit overwhelming!

Some of you might recall this, but the unthinkable happened four years ago. It was following the deaths of Royce and my Dad, as well as being suddenly unemployed, all within the span of six months. Afterward, I no longer felt musically inspired. It was as if all the wind went out of my sails. My last musical performance was during the 'Convoy' music show in September 2002 (organized by my sister Beth). 'Convoy' was a "musical tribute to the internal combustion engine", and all music performed by the artists present were appropriately automotive-themed. An example was the band Beth plays in, Silent Kids, performed "Double Life" by The Cars. I played bass on three songs onstage with Kenny Howes while he was still living in Atlanta (he is now in the Los Angeles area), "Drive My Car" by the Beatles (predictable where Kenny is concerned...LOL) , "Don't Worry Baby" by the Beach Boys (featuring Beth singing the lead vocal, but as it turned out, nice vocal harmonies from the rest of us as well), and "Little Old Lady From Pasadena". I also played bass on a song sung by Beth and Renée Nelson of Envie, our friend then-Homeroom drummer Tony Jenkins on drums, and Mitchell Parsons on guitar, performing "Dirty Back Road" by the B-52s. After that, nothing. I have not even picked up a musical instrument since November, 2002. With the exception of me singing a Rush tune onstage with my friends in Paine's Promise on their invitation during a show in October 2003, I have not even sung in public in the past four years!

Back in May, I started to have an urge to work on music again (writing and performing), but was hesitant, since it had been such a long time. Then Bridget got pregnant so the whole idea has been shelved indefinately. I need to know how things turn out with the baby's delivery, etc. I may get back into doing something in the Fall. I want to work on "solo" material as well as working with a band doing original music in a group setting. I will have to get some new gear to accomplish all this as well, and that might take a while due to finances.

While visiting various MySpace pages of musical artists (many whom I know), and listening to the tracks posted there, I got an idea: why not have my own MySpace music page? Yes, I have no recorded output, but in the meantime I could post samples of my singing. A lot of people still have not heard me sing at all, or at the very least not been exposed to my full singing range. I believe that I am technically a baritone, but I have a wide range in my "head" voice, allowing me to sing some tenor notes. And in falsetto, I can go quite high. The key is trying to make the falsetto notes not sound obviously falsetto. I can do it, but only with the drastic loss of volume. My most natural range is basically that of a baritone. My voice has been (favourably) compared to that of John Wetton (which is awesome, since JW is my favourite singer and a huge inspiration to me musically), but I can also be (I believe) favourably compared to the likes of Justin Hayward, David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel, Greg Lake, Eric Woolfson and others.
OK, all that being said, how do I get something recorded to showcase my singing? I am pursuing two different solutions. One is to simply record my vocals over songs being played from Standard MIDI files. There are tens of thousands available over the internet for free, although the quality of them varies greatly. So, I have to listen to them carefully and choose the best-quality files to use. I have software I can use to add reverb and chorus effects to my voice just like if I were in a recording studio. However, there is a distinct shortage of quality progressive rock MIDI files, so I may not be able to sing on many "prog" tunes, at least initially. The other solution is to remove vocal tracks from MP3 files of whatever songs I want to sing over, very much like karaoke. I use WinAmp as my default MP3 player on my PCs, and there is a free plugin that supposedly does a good job removing/suppressing vocal tracks from MP3 and Wave files. I can rip and create MP3 files from just about any song I want, prog or otherwise, from my CD collection, so the variety of songs I want would be there. The drawback here is that older songs may not be removed or suppressed enough to make a difference, and most of the prog songs I would want to sing would fall into this category.

So, once I decide on a path to take, I will begin testing the platform I will use and make the necessary adjustments and record the songs with my vocals as Wave files, then convert them to MP3 or whatever format is necessary to upload to MySpace. For music purposes, I think I will eventually create a seperate MySpace page for just my music-related stuff.

My mom Peggy arrived last night and will spend part of the Holidays with us, and then just as she leaves, Bridget's parents, Gus and Carolyn Reinwald, will stay through the New year. My sister Beth and her husband Josh are actually going to spend part of the Holidays in Las Vegas!

I had hoped to have some kind of online newsletter to send as an email Holiday card like I have done in recent years, but I have not had the time or energy to tackle that. That and I have not had the chance to scan a good pic of Rowen to include. I feel like a real ass for not staying on top of things better, as Holiday cards are commonly the only communication some of my friends receive from me all year (unless they check my blogging regularly, but a number of them don't even know about that yet). Maybe I can get something out in the eleventh hour, or even around the New Year...better late than never, right?

If I don't get to post again in time, everyone, please have a happy and safe Holiday Season and New Year!

Regards,

Bill