The Path Of Music Does Not Run Smooth

I hope people realise just how much effort Michael and Lynne put in to getting the rehearsal CDs out, however delayed. Michael came round today for some help in compiling the music for the altos. After about three tracks I was supremely bored. I shudder to imagine what it is like for all four sections and eight voices!

Here is a quick run-down. Michael plays the music on his keyboard and records it onto a casette deck. For those of you who don't know what a cassette is, I direct you to the Wikipedia entry. Someone, usually Lynne, but on this occasion me, then runs a program on the computer to convert the track into a digital format. This then gets cut up, compressed and then tagged as separate mp3 files.

I am quite content to receive the files in this format as I usually transfer the rehearsal tracks to my phone's mp3 player so I can hear them on the way to work. But the majority of us receive the files as CDs, which means burning them as audio files onto a CD and making multiple copies, at least 16 for each section. The real irony is that once the mp3 is burned as a CD track the tagging data is completely stripped, and on top of that I am sure many people rerip their rehearsal CDs back into mp3s anyway. I know I do.

After just an afternoon of this, I kept thinking that there has got to be some better way of doing this. Thankfully, Michael's new laptop which I got to play with today should help, in the future, with reducing at least a few steps, and once he has Sibelius, things will be even quicker.

So, do appreciate your CDs, they really are labours of love.