Farlan's Songs

[john]

Halò a Arifah

Tha mi à Glaschu. Tha mi fhathast a’ fuireach ann an Glaschu. Tha Gàidhlig agaibh!

[arifah]

Hello Donna,

Did you know that Orkney originally belonged to Norway and was given as a dowry by an old Norwegian King to an old Scottish King when their children got married. People on Orkney are as likely to be called Erland, Magnus or Inga as they are Hamish, Donald or Morag. If you or your friends ever do manage to make the trip you won't be disappointed, it's a magnificent place, wild and untamed. It was Farlans favourite place, it matched something within him, something that wouldn't be tamed . We had a house just 100 yards from the shore, and were treated on a daily basis to some of the islands fabulous birds, hen harriers, curlews, fulmars and owls with thier evil hungry eyes upon our kittens. (They never got any). Sometimes they seemed to have their eyes on us too. They swooped on us one day as we were coming down the path towards home, and I remember Farlans covering his head with his coat and sprinting for the door saying "quick we gotta get in outa the owls!" I thought that would have been a good line for a song, it never was, but Orkney was a great source of inspiration to Farlan - the landscape and the people.

Arifah

[arifah]

Halo a Iain,

Ciamar a tha sibh? Tha mi toilichte coinneachadh ribh.

We are still at the beginning stages of learning Gaelic when a lot of what you learn has no real practical application unless you want a slightly surreal conversation. But we did find some fun things to do with it - a Gaelic animation by my son Sebastian. I

don't think it'll win the Oscar, but it made us laugh. You can see it here.

How is Glaschu these days? I was brought up in the Glasgow Cross area of the city. I know that area has changed a lot, but I get conflicting reports of whether it's gone upmarket or downhill!

Beannachd leibh

Arifah

[Prometheus]

Can you offer any insight or help with this problem?

Arifah

Generally, people who are inexperienced in the use of compressors tend to over compress signals... This will have the effect of squishing them and making them sound thin using shortest attack longest release compression, or it will make them pump using open attack and short release compression...

The way to avoid this is to try to track down a compressor like the "waves" compressor or a behringer composer pro outboard that shows you a visual indicator so you can see how much signal attenuation is occuring... Apart from that, you're doing the right thing, reading articles and practice practice practice...

[Donna]

Prometheus, that reply was helpful to me (even still un-compressed as I am) - what's shaking?

Arifah, thanks for all that! Hey, do you have a link re: Orkney's history of once having been part of Norway? Just curious.

[john]

Hey Arifah

haven't seen you on for a while, you ok?

Cheers

John