Portable Mic Stand

Trying to work while traveling, you are always (I'm sure it's not just me) inventing a better mouse trap of functional production tools. In this case I was trying to make a light weight, collapsible mic stand that would easily fit into my brief case which also holds the Digidesign Mbox2 AD/DA converter/preamp, a large diaphragm condenser microphone, an sm 57 Sure mic, the cables for both, pop guard, and USB cable for the Mbox2.

I'm using 3/4" PVC pipe, cutting 2 16"(the length of the inside of the briefcase), 4 8", and 2 4" pieces, with locking pruning sheers .


Building the base.



You can see here, I used three T pieces, one connector piece, and four caps on the base legs for stability.

The mic base stands in a connector piece at the top of the pipe.

My Parent's walk in closet. The quietest place in the house.



I also made a stereo mic set up that attaches to the top. I don't have a picture but I may put one up later.
At the end of the night I recorded two pieces for the TV show I'm doing. Which I will start posting music from soon.

Instead of Working, Part Two

Instead of Working

I get to up and leave town whenever I like with this job, as long as I can work where I'm from. My parents house is bigger these days so I can usually find a room quiet enough, and far away enough from the rest of the goings on that I can record a guitar or some other live instrument if I need to. Sometimes I can get away with just using a midi program like Reason or EWQLSO to create a piece, or at least a descent mock up, and then have the live version done later. On this morning I started out building a work space solution for my midi controller, and lap top. it ended up looking like this.
Very nice...
...and very sturdy.

But just as I was ready to resign myself to a wonderful day of sitting inside digitaly encoding music for a TV show, and sighing at the sunlight shining through the windows. My Parents found a project for my brother (Cedric who was in town for the family reunion, as was I) and myself to help out with. So in the next few hours my parents, my brother, my wife and I built one of those swing/slide/climb play houses for the grand kids. It looked good after we finished, but it needed one last thing. So I spent the rest of the day making a pirate flag for it.

My Mom sewing on the skull and crossbones I cut from some old fabric.

My dad helping with the flag pole. He 's great to collaborate with. He also helped with the computer stand.

The flag.


Mom.The whole thing.

Bamboo

I was recently at a film editors studio looking at footage for a possible scoring job, and noticed that the guy was using a tablet and stylus instead of a mouse. My life changed in one second after seeing that. Until then I was obsessing over a solution for my aching wrist and lack tedious accuracy in my Pro Tools Edits. So I got this Bamboo Wacom tablet for like fifty bucks off Craig's List. It took some getting used to, but I love it.