But that came after an interesting moment when I was unable to install the latest version of Audacity to my new work laptop due to lack of administrator privileges. How could I possibly record and mix my music for free without Audacity? Options ran through my head for five to ten minutes: I could quit writing music altogether and focus on writing novels; I could forget recording and just perform acoustically at coffee shops and open-mic nights; I could save money and buy equipment or my own computer. At last I remembered that I had downloaded an older version of Audacity to my previous computer. I tried that on the new one, and it worked just fine. Whew!
Tuesday morning I devoted more time to converting samples. I still have a lot more to convert. But this week I've begun to understand how drum-'n'-bass/jungle samples are created. If I take a standard hip-hop sample and play it faster, poof, it's a jungle sample. So all I have to do is create a hip-hop beat in my tracker in which all sounds are played a few steps higher/faster, and then speed up the sample in the tracker. Piece of cake and will save a lot of time vs creating a hip-hop sample, speeding up the whole sample in Audacity and then bringing it back to my tracker. We're on our way now.
On to Wednesday morning. I sat staring at a blank Word file for a few minutes before I finally started jotting down ideas for my novel. I now have a basic premise and some characters! Essentially the story will be about a younger scientist and an older professor with very different ways of doing things. No, that's not it at all. It's about a corrupt city official who will stop at nothing to acquire fame and power. No, that's not quite it. It's a boy-meets-girl story in which tragic loss make the relationship ever stronger. Ok, it's all of those things, really. Hopefully next week I'll be better able to describe it in a sentence. And I also want to add some mysterious elements, which is why I don't want to give away too much here. Not that anyone's probably going to read this anytime soon.
I'm enjoying the process so far. It's not my first time to get serious about writing a novel, but it may be my best idea for a novel so far. Maybe I'll get past the first two chapters this time, since I respect the idea of the novel a little more.
And my reading this morning was the G.I. Joe Yearbook #4 (1988), the final Yearbook. It's an interesting story in which the man posing as Cobra Commander is found out. The best part for me was the use of the Joes' two SEALs, Wet-Suit and Torpedo. Wet-Suit is probably my favorite Joe, and it was great to see them perform a covert beach landing on Cobra Island, changing from scuba gear to camo gear, complete with face paint. They don't accomplish much, but they survive, and seeing them run into the October Guard and fight alongside them was great fun. Almost as much fun as G.I. Joe Special Missions #8 from a couple months earlier, in which several of the most interesting Joes, including Wet-Suit and Beach Head, parachute into Southeast Asia on an ambush mission!
In the morning I'll probably finally see Yojimbo, on loan from Netflix, unless Tara decides to watch it with me soon. She actually remembers the character Yojimbo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! If she wants to see it, I'll watch something from my spaghetti western collection tomorrow.
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