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03/13/2006 Entry: "Studio and stuff"

So today work was scattered showers, but interesting.

First stop: Plauen, to do some voice work at the Studio Musik & Reklame...

The gig, which I got from the Kästner bunch, was described as a "casting" where I was to read some text aloud in the studio.

As it turned out, some German company had developed some laser technology to monitor whether the chimney stacks at factories were clean or something like that. They were branching out, needed to make a presentation film for their new office in Texas thus needing American speakers.

I arrived in Plauen, which is at the bitter other end of the city, on the hip of the valley not far from Napoleon's pitched battle. Plauen is a cute little area, full of storybook-looking buildings. From the busstop I tramped up the hill through the deep newly fallen snow as my stomach growled at the enticing wafts of Turkish restaurant located on both corners of the road and came to a Ford dealership, which shared the property with an old small manufacture that housed the studio. Through the house door and up the steps to another door where all woodwork was painted glossy purple, I refrained from ringing the bell as the sound of a very familiar sounding bark indicated that my presence was known.

The proprietor, glasses and goofy and a tall-toothy grin, late forties, let me in and on the way up to another purple-railed landing offered to go per Du. His companion Dana (rhymes with hannah) was a gigantic schnauzer with long fluffy hair and obviously had a thing for musicians. She snagged yarn from my sweater with her knitting needle claws from her pingpong racket paws a dozen times in the half-hour I was there.

I read my text two or three times into a really sweet condenser mic, which thanks to the proximity effect made me sound all bassey like a saw through wood, and then we rapped for a while about studio stuff. He said that this was their third studio, that they started off doing mostly metal in the 90's then later Schlager (I cringed) and now it's mostly Jazz and "clean-sounding" stuff. He played me a project with a girl from Pirna who almost sounded like Nora Jones. It was really pretty despite the fact that during the intro, my vocal track accidentally started rattling off the advantages of laser features and stuff.

Then my colleage David Lynch showed up. He was also hired to do some reading. I thought that I recognized him on the bus, but he got off one stop later. Perfect timing, really.

Later, I met with a former neighbor, Dr. Jörn, to proofread his paper which is to be submitted to the Journal of Statistical Physics. It's all about a computer simulation on the behaviour of myxo bacteria and how they like to cuddle up.

Unfortunately I haven't the foggiest idea what the paper is talking about, but they made it all happen recently on a skyscraper in Rotterdam.

Oops, gotta go. It sounds like someone is throwing up in the stairwell.