Little things matter

I got the masters last week. I was somewhat startled that, when I listened through my headphones at home, in one of the tracks the guitars seemed to be gone, and most of the tracks sounded a bit "one-dimensional". Of course, when I listened through the speakers, everything was OK. Which was weird, because usually headphones don't change the sound that much. After much swearing and even calling the guys at the studio to try to figure out what had happened to the master, I finally figured it out. A couple of weeks ago, I had put a Y-splitter into the headphone jack of the I/O box to hook up a pair of earbuds, so I could choose to hear the mixes in that kind of headphone, as well. Unfortunately, in my haste to do this, I grabbed a stereo->stereo+mono splitter rather than a stereo->stereo+stereo splitter. As such, my main phones had been fed by the right channel in both ears, leading to several "gremlins" while listening in the phones that were not evident while I listened on the speakers or earbuds. It goes to show that making sure that things are hooked up right are important.

So, we're back on track with the masters. Everything sounds fine. Are there things I would go back and change? Sure. But that's the way things go. You take your best shot and you put it out there. I also got the initial artwork from Maren over the weekend. It looks great! I had a couple of minor changes, and I had trimmed a couple of the song's lead-ins so I needed to change the timing, but I should be gone to duplication by Tuesday. Almost done...

The band played Friday night at a little wine bar in Sellwood. Burdigala is a great little place that usually has acoustic acts. I was initially concerned about fitting in the space provided. The performance area (I won't call it a stage, as there was no separation from the audience) was small and half the space was taken up by a baby grand that the piano player who usually plays on Friday and Saturday uses. The good news is that the grand was in tune, so we had our keyboard player use it rather than her electric piano (and the grand did sound great). The space was small enough and the volumes were low enough that we didn't need to amp it. Our drummer brough his electric kit and I brought a 1x12 amp to play bass through. It didn't have a great bottom, but I was able to get a great disto tone through it. We actually got a larger crowd than we normally get at Sellwood, the band played well, and (I must ultimately admit) I had a really good time - much better than how I thought it would turn out when I first saw the place (of course, my delight was put to a strenuous test Saturday morning when I had to get up in time to get the dog to the vet by 8:20).

AMA is coming together. I am cautiously optimistic for the future. Dave (our drummer) sent me a song yesterday that blew me away. I love the melody and the words are great. It sounds modern, it's upbeat, and I can't say enough good about it. Of course, this reminds me I need to get back to writing. I have about four partial songs that I've gotten to various stages of mis-repair, but none finished. I have one other one complete that I need to record.

Also on Saturday I got a new LCD monitor for the DAW computer. It replaces an old 17" CRT monitor, so I now have a 22" 16:9 monitor and a 17" 4:3 monitor on the system. I played about with Sonar in the new setup and the track view is so much bigger with the new monitor, it's not even funny. It's really nice. Plus, it was only $170 - to me that's amazing.

I'm also playing about with Renoise again. It seems to be really good for doing drum and bass/electronica sorts of things. However, that sort of thing isn't quite right for the band (either of them). So I'm going to try seeing how well it does with standard drum samples to build a straightforward rock sort of track. The editing interface is much better than trying to use my MIDI keyboard or manually editing piano roll views. Anyhow, I'm having a ball with the program. And maybe I will come up with some electronica stuff.

I need to start looking for the members of Adrian. Of course, it would be easier if I understood what my roll would be - singer, singer/guitarist, or singer/bass. Oddly enough, I'm becoming quite enamored with playing bass. However, what I'd really like to do is to sing some songs while not doing anything else and switch off between guitar and bass for other songs. So maybe I need to find a guitarist and guitarist/bassist (or two of the latter). Plus a drummer and keyboard player. Anyhow, I'd like to get Adrian together by EOY and start performing in 1Q10.

So, yet again, I'm busy. The good news is that I have nothing I have to do other than getting my guitar equipment shipped to Illinois this week.