It's been a few days. Real life has been pretty time-consuming. I wanted to pop in with a bit of news. A few posts ago, I mentioned a Hi-8 video, and an audio cassette tape, that might be out in the shed, and that might have Freil playing music on them. That's an exciting possibility. Today I went to see my folks, and Mom found TWO audio tapes that have Freil recorded on them. Plus ONE cd that definitely has him playing, one that MIGHT have him, and another one that probably doesn't, but going to check out just in case. These are all home recordings/burnt CDs. Nothing professionally generated. But still, there's a potential treasure trove of music I've never heard him play, or music I haven't heard in many years.
So, tomorrow I'll root around the house for a tape player with headphone out (or RCA jack, either is fine). Don't know offhand where one is, but we have a LOT of old stuff. There ought to be at least one player around here that will work. I don't know what kind of quality to expect from the CDs, but the tapes were probably recorded on the ubiquitous radio-shack type of player/recorder that we used in the 70's. It won't be high-quality, so my goal is to rescue the song as best as possible. As long as it's recognizable as his piano playing, that'll have to be good enough. Really excited to hear them!!
On a side note, I've been getting a lot of use out of Audacity recently. Maybe it'll have some feature that will clean up low-quality recordings on old tapes? Soon enough to tell when I find the hardware to play them on.
I jumped the gun just a bit. Searched the house, found several tape players. One was busted. One only played high squeaky sounds. One played, but only though a built-in amp, and only output to RCA jacks. From all I've read, plugging that into my mic input jack would have likely burned out my computer's audio board. At the moment, uploading the audio tape is at a standstill. Got feelers out with some friends, and family. If that doesn't work out, the next step is to buy a new one. Bottom line, it's going to take longer than expected. Still excited, just have to let all the options play out before spending any money.
In the meantime, practicing a new song to record for YouTube. Still have most of the Singing Chapmans "Redeemed" album to write about. And still have all the songs from their "Introducing" album. Plus rebuilding something like a decade of blogs from my original Grace Notes, including midi files and sheet music. We're talking years worth of projects. At least I won't be bored.