Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone:

BayCon 2015

Got to BayCon for the first time in many years.  New Hotel (which they have had for several years).

Very spread out function space.  Never did actually find everything.  Lots of good guests though.  Sunday night concerts were outstanding.  Got to see Callie Hills for the first time in several years as well.

10 days before the convention I was offered the 8PM Saturday night concert slot.  Kristoph Klover ran sound.  Had absolutely no problems with my Rainsong. Didn't even need the DI box.

A little piece of the concert.

SoundCloud Rocket_Song

Rocketsong was taken, so I grabbed Rocket_Song.  heh.

https://soundcloud.com/rocket_song

For Jennifer - A Song

So the other night I ended up writing a dopy love song for my wife.

Huh?  How the heck did that happen?

Still need to work out the chords:

For Jennifer

Lyrics Mark E. Horning 10/19/2014

Music: Mark E. Horning...

Come my friend, and let me take your hand,

And walk together cross the burning sand.

Watch the stars come out above us like a giant milky flag unfurled

Someone to share the joy and wonder in your life

And to hold you close against the woe and strife

And we're standing both together you and me against the whole damn world.

    'Casue I love you more - than ever before

    And each new day just a little bit more

    Best friends forever no matter what the world may have in store.

So take my hand and tell me 'bout your day

I know that there's obstacles along the way

But together we can meet them, and together savor victory.

Cause a burden's lessened every time it's shared

And a joy is multiplied or even squared.

You're the best partner I could have in all of time and history

    And I love you more now - than ever before

    And each new day just a little bit more

    You're my best friend forever no matter what the world might have in store.

And I know sometimes you feel alone and lost

But nothing cheap is ever worth the cost,

And I know it takes an effort and sometimes we have to work real hard

And sometimes life simply gets in the way

But working together we'll rise above the fray

And I trust you and I love you and I hold you in such high regard.

    Yes I love you more now - than ever before

    And each new day just that much more

    You're my best friend forever no matter what the world might have in store.

Walking along, enjoying the view

Everything's easier when I'm with you

Together forever just the way that it was meant to be.

And oh so very grateful that you chose to live a life with me.

So come my friend and let me take your hand...

Soundcloud - Take 1

Just signed up for a soundcloud account.  Let's see how (and if) this works shall we?

From the concert at this year's ConChord.  Jennifer singing Lightyears up the Line.  The song is from Ken Macleod's Engines of Light series.  Several years ago I asked Ken if I could write music for it, which he graciously granted.

So I wrote some music.  Then Jennifer fixed it by rewriting the chord progression for the even verses.  Here is the end result.

I'm using the Taylor GA3-12 run through a Fishman and DI box to the mixing board.  This is not the mix from the board, it's audio stripped from our camcorder.

Lead Vocals: Jennifer Horning
12-string guitar: Mark Horning
Lyrics: Ken Macleod
Music: Mark and Jennifer Horning

Youtube update

The Rocketsong channel on you-tube has many more songs now.  Most by me, but a few by Leslie Fish as well.

Check it out here:

ROCKETSONG

CopperCon Concert

Finally got a couple songs up on the you-tube with Jennifer's help.

First up - The Knowledge Seekers.

My attempt at writing a neo-pagan song for my neo-pagan friends.  They appear to like it.

Second up - Discount Indulgences (dot com).

Inspired by my friend Chris Ambler who actually registered the domain name discountindulgence.com (singular) in order to sell indulgences over the web.  This one gets a lot of requests.  Seriously, a lot.

CopperCon 2014

CopperCon 2014 is in the books.

 Better than last year. Of course not going to a con at all would have been better than last year. See Review HERE. The highlight of last year was my wife publicly castigating the Con Chair, and then having others applaud.

No,  I am NOT kidding.

2014 - Leslie Fish was the music guest. Les did great and we stayed up filking until 2 am Friday night and 3 am on Saturday.

Dr. David Williams was the Science guest. Had some great presentations on exo-planets, and another on asteroids. If you need a science guest for your convention I can recommend him, as he is a great speaker and well prepared.  I've known David for years, his day job is being an extra-terrestrial geologist at ASU.

The author guests were folks I've never heard of (probably because they were mostly Fantasy writers) but I did see Michael Stackpole in the hallway.

 Did a panel on Excessive computerization which went off topic (don't they all) but was pretty interesting. Did another panel on "The ethics of war and technology) which I really enjoyed doing. The two panelists were myself and Colette Black Vernon, a very nice young lady who is a local spec. fic author. 

Concert went OK. Tried getting some recordings but had the typical issue of inconsiderate jerks forgetting to put their cell phones on vibrate instead of nuclear alert klaxon. Anything useful we can put up on my you-tube CHANNEL.

 Also got video of Leslie's Concert. Honor ran the camera, so I was able to play door-guardian and prevent the door from slamming shut as people went in and out.  Desparately needed some oil or WD-40 though, as the door had a horrible squeak.  We shall see over the next few days if we got anything useful.