An Interesting Discovery

As jedi jawa mentioned, I made my first public appearance with a clarinet in my hands since college at the community band practice Sunday night. In anticipation of that night, I got the horn out of storage and started to play around a bit. It also occurred to me that if I'm going to start playing again, I'd have to find a way to incorporate my playing with my ACIDPlanet stuff. One problem - my ACIDPlanet playing is confined entirely to USB MIDI controllers that only produce sound within ACID itself. ACID can record "live" sound, but would a crappy laptop (from a music production standpoint at least) do a decent job without a whole new hunk of equipment?

To my great surprise, yes. With a simple $15 PC mic plugged into what passes for a soundcard on the laptop, I can record a fairly decent quality sample of myself. I have to figure out how to boost the level a bit, but that's a minor inconvenience. So look for some live clarinet stuff in the mix in future ACIDPlanet projects.

This creates another problem, however, for which I blame jedi jawa, as he got me back into the clarinet thing in the first place. Now that I can suitably record "live" sounds and am no longer limited to USB controllers and VSTs, I must now go out and acquire some actual flesh and blood synthesizers - maybe even a woodwind-style synth controller. Oooh, the possibilities!