When my husband woke up on Saturday morning a little before noon, I made us omelets, maple bacon and toast to fortify us for loading the Jeep with the P.A.* equipment I needed to take to band practice.
For you music geeks who might be interested, I have a pair of Peavey SP-2 speakers that were probably made in the 70s, a QSC 100-watt power amp, one newer Peavey monitor, an ancient Sennheiser microphone that really needs to be refurbished, and a fairly new AKG D3800 microphone. One of the other band members has a Peavey CS800 power amp (we used my amp for the monitor) and a mixing board.
Fortunately, we loaded the Jeep a few hours before I needed to leave because it started pouring rain about an hour before practice. When I got there, we set up the P.A. pretty handily except that we came up short on speaker cables. Our bass player managed to retrieve some of his from a friend who lived nearby. The CS800 amp was half blown and was really only pushing 400 watts on one side. It also had a bad switch, so we had to jury-rig it with tape and slats of moulding to keep it powered up, but it worked well enough for our purposes.
It was wonderful being able to actually hear myself at band practice for the first time. Until Saturday we’d been running the vocals through a guitar amp, which I do not recommend. Eventually, volume creep by the guitarist and drummer began to overwhelm the vocals, but I believe it may have partly been the heavy-metal-inappropriate subtlety of the Sennheiser mic.
I’ve been so busy (and lazy) since I joined the band that I still haven’t written any lyrics to their original songs. Every practice makes me feel like the schoolgirl who didn’t do her homework. However, I’ve been listening to the songs a lot this weekend and I should be able to have two or three of them ready for our next practice. I know my husband is itching to "help me" write them, but I think I’d like to have a go at them on my own.
My musical goals from here on out:
- Daily warmup and practice
- Set aside lyric writing time several times per week
- Memorize the lyrics to all the songs
- Prompt the band to choose a name
- Get us a gig at a roller derby match when we’re ready
It’s nice to have a hobby!
*P.A. stands for "public address," in case you were wondering.
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