Oh, I just couldn't think of anything else to write about this week.  Nothing much to report, except for a new piece of tech hardware to add to my piping addiction!

I have been lamenting that I did not have a decent way to record my lessons or practices. With my up coming sessions with Jori Chisholm I felt getting a portable recording device was going to be even more important.

I did some research and asked around to see what other pipers were using and finally settled on the Marantz PMD660 Digital Recorder.  This is a really nice piece of hardware, professional grade and all digital, even has phantom 48vdc mic inputs so I picked up a pair of matched MXL 603 stereo mic's and some XLR patch cords.  I'm all set for on site and at home recording, I can get 48kbit MP3's in stereo, very high quality PCM files as well.

Today I brought it over to Lopez to record my lesson with Helen just to get used to how it operates.  It is very easy to use but will take a little fiddling to get the input levels figured out for chanter and pipe recording.

One handy, and humorous feature is 2x audible playback.  Makes you sound like Chip and Dale, and Helen is very funny sounding at 2x speed... "ok, enough torture for today, ahem".

Well you just have to hear it to get the full effect.  Speaking of hearing things, if I get anything decent enough to listen to I'll post some sound files.  You may be in for a long wait though.