Complete and utter writers block I think is what you could call it. The rough recording of that track I've been working on Dene is killing me. I've made some small changes to the basic rythym that is posted, added a slight bridge to it as well. Now I'm totally stuck with what else I want from it. I know I want more, and I can hear it in my head. However I cannot manage to get it out there in the recordings (see this is why I tell everyone, record record, record! so you can come back later and listen to it when you're not playing it!).
I suppose though that I'll get it right shortly, but damn this is the part I hate the most. For those that have asked where it came from, I cannot say where at this time since I'm still trying to figure it out.
Lately things have been in a bit of a rough patch for me, far more things then I care to get into at the moment. However we'll say it this way, there have been mornings of late that it's been very hard to get myself out of bed in the morning to face the.
Yet starting yesterday, it's been slightly better. I can honestly say that it's gotten better for me personally each of the last two days. Nothing is as hard as it seems, not matter what I'm finding and there is always some level of hope. Just a matter of which way it leans. Now with all that said, I've come to realize that the issues I an bothered with are still there. They are not just going away, but they can be managed with a fair amount of work on my part. Well and some good planning, mixed in with some patience. Not that I am known for patience mind you, but I can exercise it from time to time and when it's a must.
What I think that I'm saying here mostly though is that over the last few weeks one of the few things I've enjoyed still has been listening to music. Playing others music, and sometimes working on my own. I've received some positive feed back about an mp3 I posted and today I actually put it to sheet music somewhat. Which is something that in the past has been rare for me to want to do, little alone actually do. So for those of you reading this and having made it to this point I say this .. regardless of what is coming your way, no matter how harsh it is there are ways of forgetting about it for just a moment. There are things you can do to merely enjoy a moment in time. For those of us here, seemingly it's music. Either playing or just listening it's a release that is needed.
Personally I encourage everyone that is a member of this site to keep listening and posting more and more music. I've found some great ideas in listening to the simple riffs or just chord progressions that are 30 seconds long or so. Inspiring at the least. In fact I'll point you to one of them right now, click here and listen to Trazodone. That's one that of the "little songs" that can take you places. Things like that are some of the better things in life.
Yes yes I shamelessly plugged someone on my friends list I know, but that piece has so many little things that show that everyone with heart and desire can make good or great music.
Just a small update to my previous blog about the home studio. Today was a starting point of sorts. I cleaned out the area where it is all going to be.Very tiring, though it is all clean and waiting now. It's amazing though how much shit you manage to save over time. How much junk that becomes meaningless when you haven't seen it for awhile. However fear not my green friends. Not all will land in the dump. A huge amount of it (literally by weight, size, and quanity) are going to places where other people can use them/want them. So it's pretty cool actually.
Next up to start on the framing for the walls, though that might be a few weekends away.
It's trash day, and all I can say is that I feel sorry for that guy! Since I had to rip out all the carpet in the basement and cut it into sections, it is now out at the curb. Along with anything else that was ruined in the great sump pump failure of 2009. I feel even worse because either everyone around here is spring cleaning, or ummm others had that same problem. Not that any of this has anything to do with music, guitars, or anything. Well other then the basement is were the raised floor studio is going to go.
I've done almost all of my recording with Audacity, as I've noted before. Though I don't post much of it here, as you can tell. I've found that while Audacity is good, it's not so great for fine controls. I have to record everything myself currently, so there are long lags at times between the recording start and the song start. Same is true for song end, and the end of recording. That's all well and good, however I'm not going to post all of that extra noise here. That's just silly, none of you want to listen to me putting down the guitar/bass! :-p
Which brings me to the point. JACK is a great audio server in the OSS area of software, well supported and actively developed. Ardour is very high end compared to most applications out there. Neither is simple in anyway, you really have to know what you're doing to get them to play nice together. As is always the case with more and more complex software. I've learned more and more how to get JACK running, and figuring out how it's configured. Sadly though I'm still missing something. Either I can record with it, but not play it back until I make changes to the default settings. Or I can hear it, but not record. Fun fun fun.
What I think needs to happen here is that either I'm going to have to spend a huge amount of time figuring out how to tweak the USB cabling from the amp (LightSnake people .. get one!) or just break down and purchase a PC sans sound card so that the default setup for audio will not be there. Leaving me to configure it from the ground up. However, I know some of you have probably done this before, so if you have pass on your tips. Based on what I'm reading about JACK there is almost no difference between the Windows ports, Mac ports, and Linux ports. All on the user level and way configurations are done should be the same. The underlying elements differ because of the way audio is done in each operating system.
Welp it's been fun, now I think I'm going to go lay down then call some hospitals. Or perhaps I'll just go and try and get JACK/Ardour to work some more. Which ever is less painful.
Ok so I had to update this ... merely because well it annoys me. 10PM CST and there is 1.5 inches of fresh snow on the ground. Spring has finally been sprung right?
Has yet again kept me inside on the weekend, however that's not such a bad thing. Caught up on lots of news and on goings in the world around me, plus kept me thinking more and more about the whole studio thing that I mentioned last time.
After thinking about it further and further, it is a go. Provided I don't go broke between now and summer it's a go as planned. Since it's in the basement I should have little to worry about in the line of heat, though that is not a certain. If so I have the perfect solution for that as well. I've actually done this for a few clients of mine with very small "server closets" when space is cramped. Portable AC units. In the case of clients that have a closest that they want to keep the servers in, they keep that small enclosed space _extremely_ cold if so desired. So it should work to keep a well insulated room cool.
So I've decided to make the move finally. I think that it's time to actually build a home studio. A friend of mine has actually built 3 of them in the area, so I have some level of experience to draw on here. However this is still in the planning stages.
Here's what I'm planning on doing, and feel free to comment/message with ideas of ideas of your own.
12'x15' room to be constructed in the basement.
Each wall will have R11 insulation, and be 8" thick (done via 2 2'x4' frames mounted together).
Two
of the walls will face the rest of the basement, these will have 1/2"
drywall on the outside of them. Two walls will face concrete foundation
walls, these will have no dry wall on the outside.
All
internal walls will have 5/8" drywall on them, with an additional 1/2"
sheet on them glued to them with a special mastic for absorbing sound.
Because no wall will need to bare load, I'm planning on a very slight 4 degree angle facing in to help kill echo.
Flooring
will be on a raised frame filled with R11 insulation, 3/4" flooring
grade plywood covering the framing, and a hard surface of some kind
over top of the plywood
No
set control room, as all recording will be done via a dedicated PC, so
I'm planning a wide desk to put all of the equipment on.
Power will be provided by a dedicate 20 amp circuit for the room.
Has anyone else done this? Is this over kill for a home studio? What pitfalls have you run into? Did the neighbors notice the sound at all? What about the rest of the people in the house at 3am?
I have recently gotten myself a SoundTech Lightsnake. Not a bad little device, nothing more then a sound card on a cable really. Follows the USB Audio standard and works easily on Mac, Windows, and Linux .. the last one being my OS of choice for years now.
So over the last few weeks I've been recording a bit more and more. Mainly with Audacity (for Windows, Mac, and Linux), and while Audacity is not the best thing out there in the Open Source world, or closed source for that matter it does the job I need at the moment. Mostly because I do not want to spend the time learning to work with JACK at this point in time. I've added a few quick recordings I've made, mostly rough sounding but just to get going again. What I've learned thus far.
1) Lightsnake is not bad, but mostly wants to behave in a MONO fashion. 2) Audacity will work for anyone at the beginner stage, and intermediate stage. Probably not for anything very serious but that remains to be seen for certain. 3) Everyone should get something like a Lightsnake. Fact is, when you listen back to what you're recording you hear more of what you did right and wrong. Even how that effect you've been using actually sounds! 4) Far better then the days of putting a mic on the upper edge of my amp speaker. Direct sound into recording from the amp makes for less "background" noise. 5) Drop the damned $40 on one if you don't have one and get to it. You'll play better in the long run for it.
Anyway though, anyone that has one by all means message/comment/whatever and let's hear what you think of it and how you've used it. Bass, guitar, keyboard, singing/screaming, etc!
Forgot to mention (and I'm to lazy to just edit the last posting) that I completely dig how last.fm can be plugged into almost all of the good media players for your desktop/laptop. I believe that there is some support for it via the iPhone as well. So there ya go.
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decamel's blogs, last updated : April 18, 2009
