# Marcy Prochaska

### Hammered Dulcimer

## In which I discover EQ

The trio CD continues to near completion… still.

We are done recording, and I’ve got decent mockups of the graphic design, so all that remains is finishing.

Thursday evening we got together to listen to the CD. We agreed that the panning and balance among instruments seemed fine, and the volume from one piece to another seemed consistent. But in general, the guitar is just a little too bassy or muddy on some tunes, and the fiddle just a little too sharp.

I had already experimented a little with the EQ plugin to do a bass cut on the guitar and a high cut on the fiddle. It’s hard, with little computer speakers, to tell how much difference it’s making. Apparently not enough yet.

Yesterday I revisited the first four tracks and tried again. It’s certainly a learning experience.

One very useful thing I discovered is that you can have the plugin open during playback, adjusting and instantly hearing the change, even turning it on and off to compare to the original.

I’ve also been experimenting with what to adjust, too. I started with presets for bass cut and high cut, and have been modifiying the gain and bandwidth knobs — I only have a vague idea of how they work, but by tweaking one or the other or both I seem to be able to get the sound I want — at least on the computer speakers. We’ll see what happens with the CD player.

A very surprising discovery was that on one piece where the guitar starts with fingerpicking, the guitar track has a lot of bleed from the fiddle and dulcimer — perhaps that mic’s gain had been boosted to get a strong enough signal compared to flatpicking. So I added the fiddle EQ adjustment to that track as well, and I also understand now why everything sounded balanced even though the guitar track’s meter runs higher than the other two.

Two other discoveries, not EQ-related:

1. “Spootiskerry” is not a traditional tune. It was written by the late Ian Burns, copyright 1980. Thanks to Susan Songer (of The Portland Collection), I was able to get in touch with his daughter to get permission to include the tune. Whew!

2. For medium runs (500-1000 CDs), it’s only pennies more expensive to have them professionally replicated (manufactured), versus professional duplication (CD-Rs; actually more expensive than replication for this many CDs), having imprinted blank CD-Rs made and the graphics professionally printed, or doing everything ourselves.

Replication costs more up front, and you have to commit to a pretty high number of CDs, but the quality and appearance is better, it’s less time and work on our part, they’ll be shrinkwrapped, and even if we only sell 100, we’ll at least break even.

So — we’ve decided to have the CDs done by the same company (National Tape and Disc) that pressed my two solo albums.

Published in:

- Hanshaw Sessions

on January 21, 2006 at 9:31 am Comments Off on In which I discover EQ

## After twenty-two days

After a break of twenty-two days, I played the dulcimer today.

The break was to help my left hand heal from an inflamed tendon that has been bothering me since the fall. For the most part, it didn’t bother me too much over the holidays. It is still a little uncomfortable to wrap presents, do the dishes, sweep, read, and do other things that require the same kind of gripping or pinching motion. And now that I’ve been home and back at work — music work on the computer and housework — it’s been bothering me more. Oh well; we’ll see what the PT says at my appointment later this week.

First I tuned. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, probably because I’d kept it in the case.

Then I played.

It was so nice to play again.

I played “Spootiskerry” for no particular reason, then the original pieces The Hanshaw Trio is thinking of playing in a benefit the weekend after next: “Irksome Girl / Midnight Maze,” “Winter East and Kensington,” and “Harper’s Waltz” (all mine), and “Cherry on Top” (Craig’s).

Then I quit and wrapped my hand in the microwavable heating pad for a while.

I’ve been asked to accompany a choir on a Gaelic song at the end of the month, along with our trio fiddler Jerry, my Pas de Deux partner Lisa, and a few other musicians. That, the trio benefit, and the nursing home gig coming up next week are what motivated me to get out the dulcimer today.

I’m nervous about this Gaelic piece because it involves a lot of tremolos. This is not a technique I have used much (really only on “Fallen”), and I’m not good at it. A percussionist would use multiple bounces per stroke, which would be less hard on the hands. Since I haven’t developed the kind of control needed to do nice even multiple bounces, I either have to develop it in a hurry or move my hands super fast.

Neither sounds like a good way to reduce inflammation.

Published in:

- Hand injury

on January 11, 2006 at 3:50 pm Comments (2)

## Monthly Archives

I found this great plug-in today that displays monthly archives in a calendar format. Much nicer to look at than the default list.

Published in:

- Site updates

on January 11, 2006 at 3:30 pm Comments Off on Monthly Archives

## Pages

It’s that time of year when I have to manually change the copyright date on all my pages. I’m considering moving the pages into WordPress ‘Pages’ instead.

The advantage, besides enabling me to change the copyright date in just one file, is that it might be easier to edit and manage pages in WordPress — although I’m not yet convinced, after trying to copy the recordings page. I don’t like the way WordPress formats their HTML editor. The regular composing window is fine, but if I want to get into the HTML code, it’s all lowercase and almost entirely run together — I like to use uppercase in my HTML tags to make them easier to find, and I also like to use plenty of white space to make navigation easier. Hmmm.
The disadvantage (or should I say one of the other disadvantages) is that the URLs of all these pages will change, so that if anyone has bookmarks or links they’ll also need to be changed. I don’t really like the idea of doing that any more than necessary, but if it would be a good move in the long term, I’m willing to consider it.

So I may keep playing around with copying some pages into WordPress. You’ll see them in the sidebar under ‘Pages.’ The originals are all still there, and you can get to them directly or indirectly from the navigation links at the top of this page, between the header and the rest of the content.

Published in:

- Site updates

on January 10, 2006 at 5:28 pm Comments Off on Pages

## Upgraded to WordPress 2.0

I just finished the very time-consuming process of upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. I have so far only found one oddity: if you use the theme-switcher, you are redirected to a page that says “OK — the page has moved here” and you have to click again to get to the changed theme. Anyone know a fix for that? And if you find anything else that isn’t what it should be, please let me know.

Edit: The newest version of the theme switcher (0.5) fixes that redirect problem.

Published in:

- Site updates

on January 9, 2006 at 4:45 pm Comments Off on Upgraded to WordPress 2.0
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