Thursday 29 March 2012

Studio Diary Three - The Arduous Task

Sorry it's been a while. I'll level with you, I've been out enjoying the sunshine. I hope you have too :)

Today I finished tracking for my re-release album. All that's left is a spot of guest vocals on one track and the microphones can go back in the box! Though I won't speak too soon. The only reason I hadn't finished sooner is because I had to go back and correct a juvenile mistake.

Without boring you with software related details, I set up 4 microphones to record my guitar, made 4 tracks for them on the computer, then told all of those tracks to record the signal from THE SAME MICROPHONE! So I ended up with 4 identical tracks of guitar sound that wasn't a true or even remotely palatable depiction of my guitar on it's own. I had to go back in and re-record the guitar parts for the two songs I did this on (yes, I made the same mistake twice!) and record the vocals on said tracks today before I could move on to the next stage of the process.

Then another technical hitch happened. My computer's disk drive refused to have any CDs anywhere near it. I mean literally. It was like trying to spoon-feed a full child. I even tried the 'here comes the aeroplane' trick. It wasn't having any of it! It's rejection meant I couldn't listen to any reference tracks easily, and also incurred a painstaking CD ripping and file transferring afternoon.

But after all that, these are the albums I have chosen to go through at first before I start the mixing process, just to get my ears used to the style of music I'm dealing with and maybe to pinch a few techniques from and tip a few hats to more established artists who do what I do. This won't be the last of them, but for now, see if you can name them all from their CD labels. Then let me know who you think is missing!

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll hopefully be able to get down to mixing in the next few days, and update you accordingly.

See you soon.

Sam.

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