Childhood Memories - The Singing Chapmans

     A few days ago, I was reminiscing with Monique about my uncle Freil's piano playing, and talked about the two record albums he made as part of a southern gospel music family group called "The Singing Chapmans".  Monique, of course, searched on eBay, found one of the albums, and ordered it for me.  It arrived yesterday, and I've been on pins and needles since then, wanting to hear it, and more, to share their songs so everybody else can enjoy the music too.

    Opened the package, took pictures, but got stuck trying to figure out how I was going to play it; and even more importantly, get the music digitized.  We had a couple of record players around the house, and one was a self-contained unit that would have been perfect if I just wanted to listen.  But Monique and I both remembered having a record player years ago that was perfect, with RCA audio outputs hardwired into the case.  Couldn't find it.  Gave up for the night.

Next day, I'm home from work, to see the old record player at my computer.  Monique had found it.  Actually, she found it exactly where we tried to look last night, but she went back and dug deeper.  I've seen old players quit working because they were band driven, and after years, the band can get old, brittle, not play right or outright break.  It was a worry in the back of my mind, but as it turned out the player was just fine.

    There was a bit of technical trouble getting all the working parts to work together.  First, my current computer doesn't have RCA input jacks.  All it's got is microphone in.  There are a number of ways around that, but I chose a bit of a hack.  Out in the shed, in my old audio/video cables box (from the days I did video production), was a "mic in/stereo in" connector.  The same box also had a 1/8" male to male stereo audio cable.  Lucky day!  Like a Rube Goldberg drawing... phono player to RCA out to converter to 1/8" to mic input on the computer.  :^)

    Still not ready.  The record played, I could hear it through the computer speakers (headphones, actually).  But the volume was so low, it was almost more imagination and wishful thinking than reality.  Google to the rescue - it suggested I see what the volume is in the SOUNDS controller.  When I checked, the volume was already maxed, but...  there was a "Microphone Boost" slider that offered up to 30db more volume.  

    Since the audio was so quiet, I slid that thing straight up to +30db and started the record back up.  It nearly broke my eardrums.
I yelled and jumped about half a foot straight into the air, scaring Monique at the same time.  After REDUCING the volume a bit... it was perfect!  And with that, suddenly Audacity was up and running, the audio check worked, audio levels set perfectly.  Roughly an hour later, the entire album is saved to my computer, one song at a time!!

Plus, I got to listen to music I haven't heard in 40 or 50 years.  Smiling the entire time.  It was like regaining a treasure I'd thought long lost.  Good memories of good times, music I never thought to hear again.

Next, I'll put the songs together with an image of the record album, and upload the videos to Youtube.  It may take a few days, but when I post again, there'll be something special for you to listen to.