This is our yard. We have only two push mowers to mow the lawn. Haha crazy isn’t it? Only once this year did we pay our great neighbor to mow for us. He made it look beautiful so we took this picture. I got a lot of exercise this summer mowing the lawn. Blaise, Calena, and even my dad (when he came up to visit) helped me out with it. Luckily our grass is not very thick and doesn’t grow very fast so it doesn’t overwhelm us. That yard is a place of much joy for our family. Whether it is soccer, football, running, or ice hockey (in the winter), I am so grateful we have our field. Beautiful days feel heavenly. The bugs remind you that you aren’t there yet.
This is our garden. This is the boys and I working hard to get it ready for planting. The girls also helped but I guess we didn’t take any pictures of them so we get all the credit.
We found a nice woman who was in the process of moving who gave these 4×4 posts for free. We hauled a bunch of mulch and made walkable rows.
Between working on music, mowing the lawn, and our outdoor adventures I didn’t spend much time in the garden after it was all set up. Calena and the kids took care of it.
This summer I worked a lot on learning how to mix and master my own music. Before the age of the internet, one had to study in school to become a sound engineer. Much of the equipment was analog (physical) and not digital. Sound engineers made (and the best still do) a lot of money. They take the raw recordings such as vocals, guitars, percussion, keyboards, etc… and put on effects to make the song beautiful and polished. They have to have a trained ear to balance all of the sound.
This summer I began the intimidating task of becoming a sound engineer. In many ways, it was similar to tilling a garden. My music has to be mixed and mastered. After working with different sound engineers, I decided to try to learn it myself. There is a benefit to mixing your own music. You save money and you have control over the sound. The challenge is that it is learning a new system beyond just songwriting and recording. Like the garden, I ended up not being able to spend as much time recording as I got bogged down mixing the final songs for my album. But I did grow in experience and hopefully some skill.
Last year, I spent a long time producing my video and new song, Conquer. Since it had basically just vocals and guitar, I ended up attempting to mix and master the song myself. The result was ok. The guitar part became complicated because I not only played the guitar but also hit it percussively. This presented some challenges in the mixing process.
This summer, as I grew more confident in my sound engineer work, I realized I wasn’t happy with the first version of Conquer that I released on YouTube. I ended up remixing and remastering the song. The main issue with the first version was that my voice was way too harsh, especially the ‘s’ sounds. I fixed that issue and also completely reworked the effects on both the guitar and vocals.
In the song, there are actually two guitar tracks. On it’s own, the percussive sounds of me hitting the guitar were way too loud in relation to the guitar strumming. So I ended up recording another set of guitar strums exactly in time with the original guitar track to help balance the sound. I hope you enjoy the new version.
The time away from work was awesome this summer. Everyone in our family had an amazing time. In June, we made a family journey to Nebraska to visit first Calena’s mom and then her dad. We had a great time and Calena finally was over her morning sickness from the pregnancy so the road trip went very smoothly.
The Omaha Zoo was a great highlight for the kids. We had a wonderful time. We managed to see just about every exhibit that they have to offer. We were tired by the end of the day.
We were also able to enjoy a lot of time just hanging out. We are grateful to have very fun, generous, and loving grandparents for our children.
Back in Wisconsin we enjoyed our time outside, especially swimming. I was able to cook a few times on our “Rocket Stove”, which is a portable emergency cooker that uses wood. It is fun for the kids (with supervision) to tend to it to keep the fire going.
In July, my sister Julia came with her four girls (her husband stayed home to work) to visit Wisconsin. Part of her trip she came up north to visit us. We had fun swimming and hanging out with some beautiful weather.
