make a demo

I just filed the last track. And I have, what…nine hours to go. Result!

Things to remember about recording:
1. Eat. It really helps if you remember to eat. You get less ratty that way.
2. A music stand is a very good idea if some of your songs are new and you’re not even sure of the words yet.
3. Check the guitar FX before you start.
4. Accept that it’s going to be boring doing the same thing over and over and over and over….I assume this is why bands do things like pouring beer on the console (although I don’t believe that one myself, most producers would kill you with their bare hands for that) or setting fire to each other’s pants (I DO believe this…I’ve seen the photos). I guess it’s all just part of the job.

And boy, does it feel good when it’s finished…

It almost certainly had to do with the guitar effects on the 4-track, which are many, varied and fascinating, but also make it very easy to record with entirely the wrong sound.

I have re-recorded my two most horribly hissy songs, and I think they sound much better. With the two that were OK anyway, and the a capella one, that leaves five that I may just manage to re-do before my time’s up. Watch this space…

...when my ‘1 day left’ is up? I assume this site runs on PST, but does it run out at midnight on the 28th? Which would give me till Thursday morning here, which is fine by me.

See, I have tonight, and I’ve taken tomorrow off work. Oh, I know. It’s outrageous. I told a colleague I had ‘stuff to do’ which is perfectly true, but how come it’s OK to take a day off to catch up on the housework (which also badly needs doing, but we won’t go there), but not to do something creative? At least, I didn’t feel it would be OK to admit to it.

(Perhaps when I have room, I should make one of my goals ‘Live in a world where it’s OK to openly take time off work to do creative stuff’. Although my real goal would be closer to living in a world where creative stuff is accepted as BEING work and any other form of occupation is a pointless, frivolous and socially suspect pastime. ;) In the meantime, feel free to steal that one, anybody.)

What’s bugging me right now is that now that I’ve fiddled around with them a bit, two of my songs still have MUCH better guitar on them than the rest. Not so much my technique, but the whole sound quality. And frustratingly, I don’t know why. I really don’t fancy re-recording eight songs at this late stage.

I’ll check it out after I’ve eaten.

They’re all recorded! (Searches for little jumping-up-and-down smiley…oh, there isn’t one. No worries.)

So we get to the mixing. And discover that we’re using obsolete software. And that we didn’t have the complete version anyway.

Fortunately, I married a genius. (I recommend this.) And after some fiddling around, he managed to compress without using a compressor, don’t ask me how, and my first song actually came out the end of it all sounding…well, almost half OK, dare I say.

I might even get this DONE ON TIME. Holy crap!

- this is if they don’t need re-recording, which the last one might. I was having one of those “can’t see the wood for the trees” moments with it on Friday night – not sure whether or not I’d screwed up the timing – so need another ear.

Enter my husband, who starts chiming in to ask if I need new recording equipment. Hello? Bad time!!!

I am using a Zoom PS-02 4-track. It’s adequate for its purpose, the only slight problem being that the soundcards are frippin’ expensive and I only have one 64mb card at the moment, so have to keep transferring songs over. Not, in itself, a huge barrier. However, hubby very nearly whacked $300 or so worth of Boss – I forget which model – on an already painfully squeaking credit card yesterday, on the spur of the moment, right there in the shop. Thankfully, I talked him out of it. (I suspect it’s because he cannot resist things with actual sliders on them, what with him being Gadget Boy and all. And fancying himself as Butch Vig, but we won’t go into the facial hair department…)

OK, so I took a weekend off, but things are going well. I know what my last song is, so just that to handle and then I’m getting down to the mixing.

THREE of which did not exist before this week.

There are some ups and downs with timing, and sound cards holding less than I think they should, but this is going a lot better than I thought.

Why was I so scared of getting off my butt and getting on with this? (No, don’t answer that one…)

I have four songs recorded, but this is the clincher.

Tonight I wasn’t sure which song I was going to record next. Had a few existing songs earmarked to put down, but didn’t really feel like doing any of them.

So I started fiddling round on my guitar. And found a chord sequence I hadn’t used before that I rather liked. And started humming a little something that seemed to go with it nicely. And got some words in my head…

I now have a complete new song on the 4-track. Time taken, from scratch: about an hour and a half.

I’ve written them in a couple of days before, but never THAT quickly.

How do I feel right now? Wow. Ohhhh, wow. Quite apart from drugs screwing you up and all that, right now I can’t honestly see why rock and roll has ever found them necessary at all. ;)

...eight to go!

(Still have to mix them, but…PROGRESS!)

:D

I checked out the songs I’d previously recorded (ages ago!) last night.

They’re crappy. Well, not the songs. I still think the songs themselves are not bad. But the sound quality is crappy because I didn’t mix them down properly or attend to the levels or anything, and my voice sounds weedy in all but one of them. In that one, it doesn’t sound bad, and I think I know what I’m doing wrong (to explain it would take way too long and have to possibly involve diagrams of the larynx, which you don’t want, but anyway…) The guitar is actually OK, which is some small relief.

But anyway, re-recording is in order. Whoop-de-do. Watch this space.

...It has been helpfully suggested that I try doing the RPM Challenge during February. I’ve taken a look on the site, and it looks a cool thing to do.

BUT…I am not going to sign up for it. It’s not that I’m a wuss or anything (well, I AM, but that’s not important right now). It’s a simple question of logistics: if I have to get my CD to Portsmouth NH by March 1st, I have a strong suspicion it’s not going to make it on time, as I am in the UK and have had enough wonderful experiences with EBay to know that stuff posted here often takes Much Longer Than You Think to get to the US.

What I AM going to do is the next best thing: I am going to do like the nice man says and record my ten songs in February. Even if I don’t actually submit them on the site.

Now, I already have, and I totted them up just now, maybe five songs which are good and ready to record, and I know that’s cheating, but it still means I have five songs left to either write from scratch or cobble together from the bits and pieces of riffs and things I have on various tapes.

Ten songs is actually overkill as at the particular open mics I’m looking at, I’m unlikely to get to do more than three or so. But hey, it’s worth doing just to see what I have. And if they’re anywhere near decent, I may just dare to put them on Myspace.

So please feel free to nag me here.