Well that was a quick day

Today was a recording day for me---guitars, specifically---and one that I had been sort of putting off. Well, maybe not so much "putting off", but I intentionally held this particular song I was going to record until such time as I had no other songs I could record. It's not because the song itself is particularly hard, in fact it's one of the simpler ones rhythm guitar-wise. But I held off because this is the song out of all the demos that has the guitar solo I like the most. In fact, it's one of my favorite solos I've ever written, period. And I hadn't played it probably since the first time I recorded it. Basically I held off on this one until the end because I thought it was going to take me a long time to:

1) Relearn the solo
and
2) Record a take of the solo that I actually liked

Well, that ended up not being the case. I more or less relearned the solo in about 20 minutes (although I did change one lick.) And when I sat down to record the song, currently titled "Untitled 2", it took me about two hours to do everything. Two hours. For two rhythm guitar tracks, one solo track, one solo harmony track, and one track that's basically just a rhythm harmony line under the solo. I may or may not use that last track, but the idea crossed my mind to just play a harmony line to the chord changes and sort of bury it in the mix as a little "easter egg" type beefing up.

As for the solo, let me put it this way. Typically for these demos, I can maybe go through anywhere from 10 to 30 to whatever takes to get a solo I like. This one took about 5.

I have plans later this evening starting at about 5pm. I had anticipated that I would be recording all day up until then. So, even after I finished in apparently record time, I did a little mixing work on the song. Just through a little bit of EQ and reverb on the rhythm tracks to sharpen them up a little. Now I need to figure out something to do for a couple hours.

Sir Mix A Lot More Than He Was Expecting

I did some mixing on C'Mon tonight, more than I was expecting. My plan for the evening was to sit down and dry some specific drum mixing that I read about in an article, called NY Style mixing. The short version is that it is supposed to beef up the drum sound by creating essentially a second drum track that gets super compressed. That second track is then mixed with the first to beef up the sound of the drums while at the same time keeping the original tone of the drums.

I didn't have much luck following the instructions in the article to create the separate drum track the way they described. I'm just not yet quite good enough at Nuendo to figure out what they were talking about and how to do it. But I tried a modified version of the instructions so that I could try it on the bass drum. It worked a little bit; the bass drum isn't much louder, but it does pop out a little more now.

I had planned to end my night's mixing there, but was feeling pretty good about continuing on, so I then played with the bass sound a little, and then the rhythm guitars a little, and then the lead guitars a little. When I finished, a couple hours later than I was expecting, I ended up not liking the lead tones, so I'm going back to scratch on those. But everything else was sounding pretty good. I was pretty happy with the results.

Block Update

In lieu of being able to get any actual writing done last night, I decided to go with a little stream of consciousness exercise. I created a document I'll be calling "Musings" and I will add to it, blog style, just whatever happens to be on my mind at the time.

This is not something I will be posting on this blog or anything. It's purpose is twofold:

1) So that if I feel like writing, and am having no luck working on whatever project, I will be at least be writing something. Just to keep up the mechanical aspects of actually sitting there and typing something, and

2) Perhaps someday I can mine that document for ideas to flesh out characters, situations, etc. in stories that I actually might be working on. Those thoughts of mine will perhaps one day become the thoughts of fictional characters.

So despite the blog entry from last night, I actually did end up getting something done. Good for that.

The Block

The worst part about partaking in any creative pursuit is the demon known as writer's block. For me, there's no worse feeling than sitting there, staring blankly at my guitar, or in my case tonight a Word document, and...nothing.

I've been scrolling through the few writing projects mentioned in the last post and trying to find some inspiration for any of them, and....nothing.

I opened up some other documents, hoping something would grab me. I opened up a blank Word document and thought about starting something new and fresh. And....nothing.

The worst part of writer's block is that it causes doubt, and lots of it. When I want to work on something creative, but those juices just aren't flowing, I start to wonder if they ever will again. Now, I know from years of experience that there is, for me, an ebb and flow to creative endeavors. I know, intellectually, that tonight may be slow but that tomorrow will likely be better. Or next week, next month, etc. At some point I know I will be able to sit in front of my computer and write something. But until then, I'll have to deal with that fear that maybe I have nothing more to say. That's the real kernel of doubt that writer's block instills in me.

That's the worst part.