Helping Out the Kids

I was scrambling a bit to record a bunch of CDs for the kids Christmas show, complaining about all I had to do and, dare I say, whining a bit, when R asked me, "Whose idea was this, anyway?"

I had to shut up at that point, because it was my idea. You make your bed and sleep in it, right?

First, some background. The Arts council is doing a Christmas show like they do every year, and for the record, it is top-notch. It's really incredible, because they put on this wonderful show and it is free to the community. The performers are amazing, some of them professionals, and they dedicate the time and energy all out of the desire to do something for the community. I love this town.

Either way, they also do a kid's show, and it's a great time for the children. The kids, however, benefit from hearing the carols and then emulating them. Now the easiest way to do this would have been to choose a bunch of common and familiar carols, the kind that everyone has on a Christmas CD at home, and then the kids could simply sing to the discs. Or, choose popular songs like Jingle Bells or Santa Claus is coming to town, which everyone knows.

Instead, they had to include some pretty eclectic pieces, some of which I had never heard of. They ran into some problems with kids knowing how to sing the songs, so they decided to have one of the soloists, CH (amazing singer), from the adult choir sing them into a recorder and give them to the kids.

Next problem, how to record and distribute. Their plan was to record on a tape player, then give them out. This, of course, brought up two new problems. First off, who the heck still has a tape player in the modern world? Second problem, how do you duplicate 15 cassette tapes in the span of a few days?

Naturally, being the big sucker that I am, I offered to help. There is a recording program standard on all Macs that is simply amazing. I have no clue how to use it, but it's amazing, as told to me by my friend, KN, a recording engineer. I told CK that we could simply record on the computer, burn to CD, and easily make digital copies. She thought it was a great idea, I just had to figure out the program.

It actually wasn't that bad, and I'm sure I wasn't doing it optimally, or for that matter, getting the most out of the program, but we aren't at Carnegie Hall. They just needed something they could listen and practice to.

So we met one weekend and recorded. It went well, I thought, and the kids came along and it was kind of fun. Sure, I was bummed that my Saturday was shot, but sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for the kids and the community. Besides, it was only a few hours.

I then had to go home and format the CD, then burn it. This turned out to be a little trickier, because again, I didn't use the program properly. However, I did use it adequately, and I was able to compile a CD and burn 15 copies.

In retrospect, I was glad I could help, because one of the reasons why this is such a great community to live in is because people are able to get past their own self-interest and lend a helping hand to make things happen. I rather like being a part of that.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to stef ~ for the pic.