Day 8: Chicago, pt. 2
Welcome
Yesterday we had a day off which we spent in Chicago.
I had a nice sleep-in until eleven and then kick-started my day with a Negroni.
We went out to lunch with Chris Palmer from our booking agency, Paradigm, and then Tristan and I walked across town to look at Wrigley Field.
We saw a cool mural.
If there's one thing I know about Jonathan Pearce it's that he loves microphones, so he was understandably thrilled that we got to stay at FTWT, the house for touring bands run by Shure Microphones. The house was packed with instruments and recording equipment and also the most comfortable mattresses and pillows we've slept on in a long time. Thanks Shure for letting us stay in your magical house 🎙️🎤🏠
My faucet of the day is the 'Twist, twist, and twist', a design that deceives you by having the appearance of a standard lift and turn faucet but actually has a very different and arguably far more satisfying mechanism. It loses points for being slightly difficult to turn on but redeems itself with an excellent shower to bath switch.
We went out for dinner with our friends Evan and Claire and had some amazing deep-dish pizza.
After dinner Liz and I went to Avis to pick up our new van, whose name is Hercules. Hercules is a 2018 Chevy Express with a Vortec™ 6.0L V8 delivering 341 horsepower and 505Nm of torque at 4200rpm. Sadly the van lacks any sort of Bluetooth implementation, and a glovebox, but it does have a Wi-Fi hotspot, though unfortunately it doesn't work. But it does have sprayers built into the wiper blades which is a great feature.
Hercules
📷 Tristan Deck
Jonathan made an excellent recording of a train yesterday evening. Here is a passage he wrote to explain his process.
A branch of the Chicago overground railway ran above the back porch of our accommodation, and the regular thundering of the trains was a constant. At about 11pm I decided I would make the most of a very noisy situation and make a field recording. I used a pair of Line Audio OM1 microphones spaced approximately 30cm apart, with a baffle between them to approximate a 'Jecklin Disk', made from cardboard and covered with my jacket. This is a recording method intended to create a realistic stereo image when listened to on headphones. I hope you enjoy these powerful trains as much as I do.
Beth of the day goes to Jonathan for getting a social security number, for making a really good recording of a train, and for sacrificing dinner so he could stay home and work on mixing Anthony Tonnon's album.
Congratulations Jonathan, your pursuit of audio recording is finally starting to pay dividends.