Tag Recording

Progress

robertjames1971

All of the non-MIDI tracking for the re-do’s is done. All that’s left to do is clean up some bass and drum things and mix.

For October’s album-or-whatever in a month, I have five songs underway and they all have rhythm guitars. I’m not really going for normal songs, more like little exercises. They are all about two minutes long and for the most part have a little twist to them. One has two guitars playing the same thing but off by one beat. A couple have one guitar playing in 4/4 and another in 7/8. It’s all just goofy fun. They might all end up instrumental, I don’t know.

Tunes

robertjames1971

Four out of nine songs on the current re-recording list are now complete. I think this is the first one of these things that doesn’t live up to the original (which was from the 2012 RPM Challenge and sounds like a dog turd). I lost something here and I’m not sure what.

The drums at the very beginning… if you speed up the tempo, is it “I Feel Fine”? I think it is but I’m too embarrassed at my possible theft to go and listen to find out for sure.

Twice the Car Music

robertjames1971

It’s a good thing I never got a job as a recording engineer. I suck.

I had two songs left to sing for the second round of re-dos. The two songs are probably the shoutiest little bastards I’ve ever done and like a moron I saved them both for last.

As I’m getting to the last shouty bit on the first song I started to notice a weird little overtone type thing in my headphones. At first I thought it was a stray noise picked up by the mic, but it wasn’t. I thought maybe something weird was happening in my throat. I could hear it through the mic but I couldn’t hear it without the mic. I had my output levels up really high, and I was listening through an ancient pair of Apple ear buds (pre-lightning cable). I chalked it up to a little output noise and carried on.

The second song has a lot more shouting than the first, and the noise was getting worse and worse. By the time I was wrapping up the second song I couldn’t stand it anymore and I started ripping things apart looking for the cause.

What was it? It was LITERALLY the first thing I should have checked. I was peaking the input level on the audio interface. SON OF A !!!!!!!

I deleted everything on song #2 and did it all again. I deleted the shouty parts of song #1 and did them again. Then I deleted all of the non-shouty parts of song #1 and did those again too so that everything would be at a consistent level.

I suck at my job. Period.

New, New Music

robertjames1971

Last night I said the pics I took of my guitar were better than the guitar playing. Today they are about even, maybe.

I worked on four songs. Three of them are new. I wasn’t going to do an album in a month this month as I was going to dedicate the whole time to The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project. Instead I started messing with some lame little proggie ideas. I’m thinking I could sneak in five of them by Halloween and call it a half an album in a month. Something like that.

Why Didn’t That Work

robertjames1971

Why didn’t the audio file I added to the post last night work? The one from the night before worked, but not the one from last night. Why?

I tried re-adding it a couple of times, but nothing. I tried adding it to a new post, nothing. I tried adding it and the song from the night before to another new post and the older song worked. Weird. I don’t know what I did.

I just re-uploaded it to the site. Does it work now?

Wah Wah Pedals are Fun to Step On

robertjames1971

Just in case you were wondering if I owned a wah wah pedal or not. Once again, I’m not sure about the mix here. What I need to do is line up all of these suckers in a play list and then drive somewhere that’s 2-3 hours away. Listening to mixes in the car is pretty much the source of truth for the entire recording industry. I’m actually a little bit serious here.

https://hearthis.at/roberjames1971/overreaction/

Quarantine Tunes Volume 2 is Happening

robertjames1971

The first song from Quarantine Tunes Volume 2 is done! Hooray, babie!

Back in 2016 I wrote a bunch of songs for the RPM Challenge that questioned the mental abilities of flat Earthers. Someone listening commented that I was being closed minded. Really. This song was my subtle response.

I’m not sure I have the mix just right. There are four tracks of rhythm guitar and I was worried I’d get carried away and overpower everything else. I wonder if I over compensated by backing them off too much. I’ll listen back in a couple of days and decide.

One down, eight to go.

“Happy” Seven Months

robertjames1971

It’s October 13th. Happy (I mean that sarcastically) Seventh Covid-Quarantine Monthiversary.

This fucking sucks.

Last night one of the guys in the band floated the idea of having a mask-wearing, spread out all over the room band practice. Another guy immediately said yes. The third guy commented but didn’t say yes or no. Then I was the asshole. I’m really tired of being the asshole. Like… really tired of it.

I was going to mix one of the songs last night. I replaced all the bass and drum parts and made sure everything lined up correctly. There was one spot toward the end of the song where the vocals sounded weird. I had two tracks singing the same thing. I’m not sure why I did that, but I did it for the first three songs I recorded. In this particular instance there was a drop out that cut a whole word out of one of the takes. How did I miss that?

I listened to just the vocal tracks, one at a time, and there were little drop outs all over the place. What the hell? I was mostly able to comp together one full track out of the two that I had, but there was one line where both tracks had a drop out. Fortunately it was in a chorus so I was able to fly in that line from another part of the song.

It really pissed me off though. How did I miss that when I was in the car? I knew I was having signal loss issues that day but I thought I was catching them as they happened. I’m so mad at myself. I did the same thing with the two other songs I recorded that day and they both had a drop out or two, but they weren’t nearly as bad. I comped together a full take pretty easily. I then did the same for the four songs I recorded yesterday, when I wasn’t doubling tracks, and everything was fine. I don’t have to redo anything, but it still pissed me off like crazy.

I also had my first bad news on the exercise front, though it wasn’t unexpected. When I started this I said I was going to do the intermittent fasting and 30 minutes of exercise each day and see what happens. I explicitly said I was not going to screw with what I ate, just when I ate it. I have been weighing myself every Tuesday morning and I was losing weight. Today was the first weigh in where I was up. Only a pound and a half, but I was not happy. Not even a little bit. I told myself that weight loss wasn’t my primary goal, but now that I’m up a pound and a half I think I have to face the reality that maybe it actually is my primary goal. Crap. I thought I was more evolved than that (that’s a joke, I didn’t really think that).

The good news is, last time I cut the grass I would do about 10 minutes of mowing and then have to sit for half an hour to recover. After a month’s worth of multiple little “work outs” each day, when I cut the grass this weekend it was more like 20-30 minutes of mowing with little 5-10 minute breaks to recover. That was my original goal for all of this shit. I consider that a small success in an otherwise garbage universe.

Kiss my ass, Covid-19.