Still sick today - gotten worse in the last couple of days. Susan has been running a fever for a week now. It’s been very nasty, although Patient Zero (the woman on the tour group who gave us this cold) was hospitalized for pneumonia, so I suppose it could be worse.

I stayed at home today. Staving off boredom, I realised it’s been a while since I posted any music. So I tried out a new toy: a Fishman C-100 cello pickup. It’s the little copper thing wedged on the side of the bridge in the picture, plus the metal cylinder stuck to the tailpiece. I purchased it in anticipation of live performances with the Punk Rock Orchestra. That hasn’t happened yet, for various reasons I won’t get into here, so it’s been sitting idle until today.

I tried out my latest cello arrangement: Paranoid, by Black Sabbath, using the pickup plugged into a M-Audio MobilePre USB preamp (also a mostly unused toy), connected to my Powerbook, running GarageBand. Yep, it’s still the same clunky version of GarageBand that I tried last time, but GarageBand managed to behave reasonably today.

Result: Paranoid arranged for three cellos (MP3 file, 2.8 MB). The cello tracks have simulated amps (”English Channel” seemed appropriate). I cheated outrageously with the intonation and timing (GarageBand’s “make it sound nice” features), and the drum track was knocked out in about five minutes, but I think it’s listenable.