The Consequences of "To Do It Right..."

We bought a fixer upper house in December and expected to finish the remodel and move in by late January. And then the deadline was the end of February. And it is now nearing the end of April. And we are still not finished with the remodel nor are we moved in. (Photo of our house as we began the remodel-Aunt Chris (who spent a day of her Christmas Vacation helping us demolish walls) and I)

As I was thinking about how the last couple months have transpired, I finally pinned down--to the sentence--the idea that got us here. Here being, living at my parents' house with paint and spackle decorating my hands. The sentence begins with, "To do it right...." and it ends differently every time.

We planned from the beginning to paint our house and tear up the flooring. The house had been just entering foreclosure and the previous owners hadn't wanted to move. So the whole house smelled like an animal restroom. And we hoped it was animal waste. Thus, we knew we'd be sealing the walls and floor.

The upstairs bedrooms and the downstairs living room were both configured weirdly. Upstairs was a whole floor of five bedrooms, the size of walk in closets, all in a line, with entrance and exits doors into each other. Very strange. (Photo-In Technicolor, you can see some of the doors two of the doors on one of the upstairs rooms)

And downstairs the living room had a bump out wall into the master bedroom that wasn't big enough or useful for anything. Just existing. So....To do it right, we decided to move a couple walls. We'd turn upstairs into two large bedrooms and a storage room, and we push a wall into the living room and make the extra space into a master walk in closet. I was excited for this. I've never had a walk in closet and I admire them. (See the photo? We're tearing down the funky wall and getting ready to build a new straight wall for the closet (my husband Theron is scraping up three layers of glued on carpet and pad))

Downstairs the master bedroom had two full master bathrooms. The first opened a door into the second, which also had a door off the hallway. And just kitty corner from the second master bathroom was a half bath, that only opened from the other side--across from the front door. Um, the first front door. The second front door opened into the living room. Obviously, the previous owners loved doors. Since one of the front doors had been kicked in by the police, I can only interpret all these doors as being bolt holes. Emergency exits for people worried about being caught with nowhere to run. Their house reveals their psyche.

To Do It Right....we decided to make the half bath into a full bath, and change the second master bathroom (I laugh every time I write that) into a nursery/guest room. The small remodel to make it livable had changed into a gutting of large portions of the house.

And that is why, on April 25th, 2007, I sit at my parents' computer and ponder how I ended up living with my parents and sister for two months (so far), with five children and a husband, and most of our stuff piled up in the great room of our unfinished house.

To Do It Right... plus While We're At It, has got me here. Good thing the house is worth it to me!

Anyone else ever had remodeling woes?
~Valerie Harmon

Putting on a Musical--Sheet Music Aids

I am directing a musical production with about 150 youths, ages 12-18. It is exhilarating and back-breaking and I mostly love it.

Since I have very little directing experience, my learning curve looks more like a straight line pointing up. Today I'm going to share with you what I have learned about music and software.

With nine songs for my young actors to learn in a few short months, with most of them inexperienced musically, and with most of the songs shortened versions of the original or with significant word changes to fit our theme, I knew I had to do two things: create sheet music that looked exactly as the actors were supposed to sing and make a Music Practice CD.

Because of time constraints, I shortened seven of the songs. And I changed words around, had a friend write several verses for another, and turned an song in Nigerian into a song with English words. I had made these changes in pencil on the actual music, but I knew I couldn't give that to my actors. It was too confusing to read my writing while trying to learn new music. I had to find a way to create actual sheet music for my versions. And it had to be FREE. Thanks to a friend's recommendation, I found Finale Music Software. I started with Finale Notepad, a free, no strings attached sheet music software that is uses about half intuition and half sweat to figure out. But it worked beautifully! I learned to input note by note and add lyrics and it looks so professional when I print it out. AND, Finale has a cool feature--I can hear how the song will sound by clicking on Play. It sounds exactly how the notes look (no human interpretation) but it was what I needed.

Finale Notepad did have two limitations that stymied me for a bit. Notepad wouldn't let me change key signatures within a song. Notepad also cannot make an audio file of the sheet music. I needed both those features, and I finally found them on Finale Songwriter (which could read Notepad, I didn't have to re-enter the music, whew).

I could only use Finale Songwriter for 30 days and be able to print and save for free, but Songwriter can change key signatures and make a great MIDI sounding audio file--and it was exactly what I needed. I made audio files of the accompaniment, and was even able to split out parts (with a bit of sweat) so my actors could hear their particular section as they practice.

During my search for helpful software, I came across Sibelius music software. My Regional Music Director swears it is better than Finale, but I didn't like it. Mainly because it wouldn't allow me to try it out for 30 days with printing and saving abilities. All I could do was look at it. Very Disappointing.

A software that I spent a lot of time mad at was Voyetra Record Producer AudioSurgeon. They let me try their product freely, for 30 days, able to save, but it wasn't very intuitive. It did help me take percussion from a recording and add it to my Nigerian song. But it was very limited. I'm sure there's a better mixing/cut and paste software out there, but I don't know it. Anyone know a good mixing/splicing software?

I had a friend who used Cakewalk (not free software) to record her voice to the songs (such a nice friend!!), and April 18th my actors received their Music Practice CD.

Putting the sheet music and practice cd together was tough work, but I was beyond glad to find Finale and use it for my production.

~Valerie Harmon

Putting on a Musical-The Value of Google!

I am currently directing a short church youth production with around 150 youth ages 12-14. I've learned a lot, something I want to put into a separate blog, but today I want to sing the praises of two Google products: GoogleGroups and Google Video.

My actors have 6 songs to memorize in just 10 practices, spread over a couple months. Many of them don't have musical experience, and they need to hear the music and get it into their heads. I put together a Practice Cd, but knowing that some of them will lose it, I wanted to upload the songs somewhere online. I tried to upload it onto this blog--but Blogspot no longer uploads MP3s. A bit discouraged, I discovered the ease and flexibility of GoogleGroups (disclaimer: I am in no way connected to the Google company and don't make a dime off this "Ode").

GoogleGroups makes it possible to combine a website-type homepage, a discussion area, a file upload area (up to 100 mb)and a collaborative document area. For Free. You can imagine my enthusiasm. If you want to check out what I've done on our Youth Production Googlegroup, goto: Youth Production GoogleGroup

Because so many of my actors don't know what a musical production is like, I knew I needed to put together a visual picture for them. I combined video footage from a Newport Beach Youth Celebration with our songs to make a music video of sorts. Having put the hours in to make it (I like the movie making software Pinnacle Studio, but a couple times it deleted parts of my work or froze, so it took many hours, yuck!) I wanted the actors to have it, but I didn't want to burn individual dvds. I wanted to post it online somewhere and link it to my Google Group.

I first tried YouTube, but they only allow an upload of 100mb or less. And no matter how I changed the format, I couldn't get it below 100mb and still have it look good. Then I discovered Google Video. They have an "above 100mb" option. Free. It worked and now my GoogleGroup links to the "music video" I made AND some YouTube video footage of a Youth Celebration in Sacramento that I found while figuring this all out. AND I linked to a video of the 2006 Portland Dance Festival--who are lending us our costumes.

So my GoogleGroup has turned into a great place for information on our youth production. And the teaser lines of "costume sneak peek" might just bring them to the site. I don't expect it to be my only information outlet, but I consider it another way to help our communication.

I'm so excited about these technologies that I just had to share.

Anyone else tried them?

~Valerie