August update

And not really much of one.

I've still yet to get together with the guys from online to record the drums (and maybe bass) for the next three tracks. We had to postpone a second time last weekend, but that was partly my fault. I didn't have some of the gear needed to do the recording. My bass player was supposed to bring for me to a gig the day before, but he forgot. And then two factors kicked in:

1) I felt too lazy to drive down to his place in JP to pick it up, and more importantly,
2) I bought a new piece of gear.

Earlier that week, said bass player had sent me a link to someone selling a 16 channel Mackie 1604 mixer. Up until this point, I had borrowed a mixer from my bass player to record the drums. He works at the Majestic Theater in Boston, and it was their spare mixer. Now, I did have some cash lying around, but truth be told, I probably shouldn't have been spending it on a mixer at this time. But there were a couple of factors at play here. I had been thinking that I wanted to start building up my recording gear a little bit, so that in the future I could attempt further projects without having to borrow gear from people. And secondly, the price was really good. It's a bit of an older model, but you're not often going to find a 16 channel Mackie for $250. This leads into the #2 above. I want to use my new mixer for the next round of recording, but I want to test it out first. One of the pieces of gear I still need to borrow from my bass player is an 8 I/O snake cable for connecting the mixer to my I/O. Had he brought it to the gig Saturday (a daytime gig), I could have tested it when I got home and been ready to go for Sunday. Since he forgot, I would have been going into the session blind, so to speak.

So we postponed. Hopefully we'll be getting together on the 24th, and hopefully the third time's a charm.

There has been a little bit of movement, however. I've gotten the first bass track from one of my online buddies, Joe. I sent him the first three tracks that have been recorded, and later that day he sent me back an idea for No Bargain. It sounded pretty awesome right off the bat. I replied back with one suggestion---yes, we're doing this entirely over email---asking if he could play the verse part less staccato. He did that, sent the track back, and I tossed it into the song and it sounds awesome! A couple days later, he sent me his idea for Woman, and once again it was pretty much spot on. I had one reccommendation, which was something arrangement-wise that I wanted anyway. He's going to toss it in there and get me the track back soon.
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The other thing, is that I did decide to start doing some initial mixing. Right now, No Bargain is the only tune that has enough tracks to do it, so I started with that. What follows is a tale of why recording is a love/hate process.

Actually, I kept a sort of running blog on the Looney Tunes board last night as this was happening, so I'm just going to reprint those posts, in lieu of retyping the whole thing:

Aug. 13th 2008, 09:38 PM

So I sit down to do some initial mixing on one of the demos I'm recording. Basically I just want to start mixing mostly the drums, and then maybe a little of the bass and guitar.

I turn on all the gear---my laptop, I/O, and speakers. Start the track and plug the headphones in to get a better listen to the panning I'm going to do and....

No sound from the headphones! Sound is coming through the speakers, so the track is OK. Headphones worked last night and I didn't touch or change anything. Plug the headphones themselves into something else, and they work fine. Check the Cue Mix software, just in case, and everything looks good there.

OH NO! My headphone jack on the I/O is fucked! Go to the website, search for help. Can't find anything under "headphone jack". Desperate, I decide to search for "restore factory defaults" and find out how to do it. Think it over, and decide it shouldn't hurt anything. Do it, and try the headphones again.

Phew! They work now.

Sit down to start the mixing. Solo out the drums. Messing around with some gate, some compression, a little EQ. Sounds OK, except for the clicking in my speakers. But what the hell, they're not the best speaker and I bought them used; you get what you pay for. Mix needs work, but I'm getting a feel for what I want to do. Bring everything back in. Damn, that clicking sucks. Let me listen in the headphones for a change. What, the clicking's there too? Crap! Start soloing out tracks to find the culprit, and it's on the kick track. OK, take the EQ and effects off, maybe that'll help.

OH NO! Nope, still clicking. It on the track from the recording. I might as well just quit now and give up, because this is going to bug the shit out of me everytime I listen to it. THere's no way in hell I'll be happy with these recordings now. Well, maybe let me take a look at the track and see if I can isolate the clicks on the waveform and remove them first.

Phew! I see the problem. They seem to be occuring when the bled in snare hits come in. I can just remove them. I'll spend the next half hour doing that.

I love recording.

The "half hour" mentioned there ended up being more like two hours after it was all said and done. Actually, this first post was written after I'd already started working on it, and was just taking a break from peering at waveforms on the computer, which causes headaches after a while. Also, I started the editing and after about 15 minutes decided it would have been better had I made a back-up copy of the track before proceeding. So I closed the file without saving so it would revert, and then started all over again after making said backup track.

Later:

August 13 2008, 10:56 PM

Ahhh, shit!

It's on the snare track, too.

Yet a little later:

August 13th 2008, 11:11 PM

Oh, thank god. No, it isn't.

I made a backup copy of the kick track before I went waveform chopping and just forgot to mute it.

Thank god for operator error.

Time to turn off the software and back slowly away from the computer.

Fil, who also posts on the board, asked the following question:

is it audible when the snare is hitting or just between hits......you could gate it.

To which, this morning, I replied:

August 14th 2008, 08:25 AM

Just when the snare is hitting, and just the snare that bled into the kick drum mic. And only on some of the snare hits, not all of them.

I tried the gate initially, but it didn't help. It sounded like a clipping click, but I know I wasn't clipping when I recorded the drums, so I don't know what was causing it. Also, I had it normalized to 0db, and tried to re-normalize lower, in case that was causing the clip, but the click remained at the same volume no matter how low I squashed the track.

Anyway, I took the time and removed all the snare hits from the kick track. It took a while, but it was worth it. And now I have the additional benefit of having a "cleaner" kick signal to manipulate as well. So that's good.

Like golfchance said, it sucks when it happens, but when you figure it out and are able to fix it, it feels good. And it's also the best way to learn more about using the program.

"golfchance" is another board user, in case you were wondering. But this does illustrate the love/hate relationship for me. I do liek recording, because I like the end result. But sometimes these "little" quirks can really throw you for a loop. But if you are able to correct them, that also makes you feel pretty good.

Anyway, that's it for now.