Record an album

The DVD could be done except for lingering technical issues. Making your own “Hollywood-style” production isn’t as easy as iDVD promises it is.

The other album is stalled while the band member whose job it is to get it into the online stores ponders, fusses and invents complications endlessly.

That’s it. We have enough video footage. I showed Skot what I’ve edited so far and he’s happy it. We only have a few more changes to make.

We shot green screen footage for our video, a first for both of us. It’s not that hard to do and the end result looks great.

The image for the album is done and it looks great. Now we have to deal with the business and legal end of things.

And another album that I recorded with another band a long time ago is finally done, so long ago that the band has already broken up.

The DVD album has picked up momentum. We shot more video yesterday and I’m cutting it together as we go.

Meanwhile the other album is at a standstill. I delivered the music to the two other band members who haven’t done anything with it. Now I’m in the position of being the one to push them into action. I don’t know which is worse – having to do everything myself or having to rely on collaborators.

I got the disc back from Mike and he said that the tracks sounded good. I’m happy to hear that considering that I did the mixes myself in my apartment. I’m too tired to listen to the tracks now.

I wanna call this one done except that I forgot that the album will need at least a cover image, even if that cover is virtual. The band’s bass player, and graphic designer, said that he’d take care of it

Earlier today Skot and I got together to make props for our video. We only need a few more minutes of footage to get that done. That album needs to be mastered too. I think I’ll use a different guy this time because even though I like Mike he’s to hard to get a hold of.

I thought that I’d hear back from the mastering engineer today, but I didn’t. Skot came over and we worked on the video for the other album, adjusting the brightness and contrast of the older footage.

I brought one of my projects to Monster Island for mastering. Mike, the guy who runs the place, asked all the right questions and has all of the right gear. It’s cheaper if the session is unattended and since the music is straightforward enough that I’m going to trust him to do it right. For the other, avant garde project I think that I’ll need to be there.

I got the first video we did into Final Cut. Last night I started to shorten it and add in the new footage.

Meanwhile, I’m getting rate quotes for mastering studios to get that other album done.

Charlie at the Apple store had answers for all my questions and they weren’t always what I wanted to hear. Final Cut Express won’t rip DVDs, not even ones that you create yourself. I’ll have to buy another piece of software to do that. And it doesn’t have the old movie filter that you get on lowly iMovie. This makes me appreciate how well ProTools is designed.