andrew dodson

I’ve very much looking forward to this weekend. I don’t plan on doing much until Sunday rolls around. I’ll have church stuff as usual, and I’m recording the CKCB concert at Transy Sunday night. In the mean time, here’s some random blogging:

Christmas Shopping

I need to get my Christmas shopping started. Fortunately, I think I can do most, if not all, of my shopping in Frankfort this year. In the event that I do have to go to Lexington, I’ve decided that Monday nights would probably be best. That way, I won’t have to fight much traffic. I will definitely not be going to Lexington on a Saturday to do Christmas shopping.

iPod Rip

I like to keep my iPod and iTunes music collections well organized. Fortunately, the iTunes interface already does a pretty good job of that. My issues come from having an iTunes music collection on my work computer, as well as at home. The iPod gets stuck in the middle. The newer versions of iTunes let me transfer purchases from my iPod to iTunes, so that’s good for when I download something at work and want to put it on my computer at home. I’m also a big geek, so I like to keep my play counts, smart playlists, ratings and things like that organized. I came across this software that will allow me to transfer playlists created on my iPod to my iTunes libraries. It will also sync all of my meta data (play counts, ratings, etc.) between the iPod and iTunes libraries. The software is free to try for 10 uses and $15 to purchase. I only plan on using it every couple of months, so the trial uses should last me a good while before I have to purchase the full version.

Psalms & Romans

My daily Scripture reading this week has been one chapter per day of my two favorite books of the Bible - Psalms and Romans. I started with the idea of “Through the Psalms in 150 days.” But, since most are fairly short, I wanted to add something else to it. So, Romans is the filler for now. Once I complete Romans, I’ll move on to another book.

The ESV

In relation to my daily Scripture reading, I’ve grown to love reading out of the ESV more. Frequent readers of my blog know that picking a translation is like Russian roulette in my world. For the last several months, the 2nd edition of the New Living Translation had been my first choice. But, for the past month, I’ve used the ESV exclusively and haven’t been able to put it down. I tried reading out of the NLT a few days ago, only to pick up the ESV again.

Not only is it an extremely accurate translation, but it’s so accessible. Think of any situation where a Bible could come in handy, and you’ll find a copy of the ESV. On your personal computer, Internet, hand-held devices, and more. In most cases, you’ll find a free copy of the ESV in these situations.

The Case for Christ

Related to my post on reading yesterday, I’ve been reading The Case for Christ. I’ve been pleased to read about the amount of credible evidence in support of Christianity. Apologetic books only help to strengthen our faith, and I strongly urge Christians to study apologetics. I’m only a fledgeling when it comes to defending my faith, but I’m growing. I’m about a third of the way through the book and hope to make more headway this weekend.

There’s a new book company out that is already known as “NetFlix for books.”  Paperspine specializes in renting books to people, much like NetFlix’s movie rental service.  Pick the books you want, they mail them to you, you read them, you send them back and get more books.  There are different levels of subscriptions to suit your reading needs.

I’m by no means an avid reader.  I try to read a lot, but I usually start a book, only to get halfway through and stop reading.  Later, I’ll pick up another book and do the same.  There are many books I’ve purchased that I’ve yet to read.  I’d like to have more books, but I can’t see the sense in buying them if they’re only going to sit on the shelf for years - literally.  But, I have a desire to read more.  One of my daily goals is to sit down with my Bible and a good book and read.

So, is Paperspine my answer?  For ten bucks a month, I can have two books at once.  I can read them at my leisure and send them back when I’m done with them.  No clutter on bookshelves.  I’d be out $120 per year, and hopefully I could read at least one book per month.  Since I’d be paying monthly, would that give me more motivation to read?

Eh, we’ll see.  I may start a subscription and see what happens.  I could only hope to get the level of people like Al Mohler (several books PER WEEK - on top of an extremely busy schedule), Tim Challies (posts book reviews very frequently - every few days or so) and other prolific readers of the world.  For now, we’ll shoot for one per month.  If that doesn’t happen, I can always cancel and go back to looking at all the books on my shelf that I’ve yet to read.

Just to give you an idea of the type of musicians presenting Behold the Lamb of God, I wanted to post a clip from our rehearsal last night. A few minutes into the rehearsal, an impromptu jam broke out. I’m always a fan of improvisation, so I had to “roll tape” on this, and I’m very glad I did. Enjoy!

Everyone knows I like to record pretty much any performance of any group in which I play. Sometimes, this means I’m sitting in front of the computer working on the recording. By the end of working on the recording, I might be tired of it and not listen to it much. But, I always think, “I’ll be glad I recorded this years from now when I can go back and listen to it again.” Turns out, that’s pretty true. Several times, I’ve pulled out recordings of bands I played with in college and enjoyed listening again (even if my recordings were pretty awful back then).

These days, I’m pretty particular about recordings, so it means I multi-track everything and spend an hour or two mixing & mastering. In my quest to have more free time in my life, I’ve been trying to think of how I can avoid all this time mixing recordings. So, I’m challenging myself.

The new plan is to record everything through a mixer and get a good stereo recording on the spot. It’s interesting because I’m also playing at the same time. But, after a couple of weeks of doing this, my recordings are starting to turn out fairly well.  It’s basically just a process of training my ears to learn what a good recording is going to sound like through my in ear monitors.  I don’t think they’ll ever be perfect recordings, but if I can leave the performance with a solid recording and not have to do much else to it, I’ll be happy.

This isn’t anything new.  Lots of bands that allow fans to tape their concerts, or bands that sell live recordings on their websites have someone that does this for them.  They will mix the concert on the spot and get very good recordings.  The Dave Matthews Band & Phish used to do this.  Umphrey’s McGee does this now.  Before the days of multi-track recordings, it was the only way to capture a live recording.  The only spin that I put on this idea is that I’m actually one of the musicians as well!  I guess I’ve always enjoyed multitasking.

The BTLOG group continues to prepare for our presentations on December 21st and 22nd. We have a couple of places where you can read up on the project, get tickets, and even watch some videos of some of the songs. If you want to come and don’t have tickets yet, please go to the link below and get tickets. They are going fast!

> BTLOG (Frankfort) “official site”
> BTLOG Event Page
> BTLOG Tickets

Stay tuned for audio clips of the group’s rehearsal from this week. I will try to have these posted by this weekend.