New Life Recon
Saturday, August 24th, 2024 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
90F and cloudy this afternoon.
Guess there's no point in exploring downtown if it's that hot!
I've figured out that if I'm sitting at the desk here and blasting the AC, I can pull down the blinds in front of it, and louver them upward to keep it from blowing directly on me.
That also keeps the glare down from the big bright sky out the window.
I can't record vocals with it blasting, however... but that's okay because last weekend I left off with the thunder work for, Never Rains, so I can do that until it cools down tonight.
I've got a thunder track together for, Never Rains.
I had nine thunderbolt clips to work with, so some repeat during the song, but I managed to mix and match them pretty good.
Now I need a clean rain track to put under them.
I'm gonna look in the Snoozefest archives and see if I can find one recorded out the north casement window upstairs, because those ones picked up the sound of the water in the gutter above the window like a babbling brook.
Need the watery sound to make the ear recognize the rain as rain, and not just white noise.
Gotta say it really sucks ass trying to do any sound engineering with a goddam window air conditioner on full blast!
Even with the headphones on, that drone and white noise just make it impossible to hear what's going on.
I did find a suitable rain track, and I've been working on tweaking the volume of the thunder bolts throughout the song... quieter during verses, but full volume at key points in the bridge, or the interlude.
And I think it's going okay, but I really can't hear the damn thing right with this AC blasting!
I did have it off for a while before sundown, but like a moron I went for a long walk to get smokes and do a TikTok out there, and I left it off while I was gone!
That resulted in me being overheated, and coming back to a hot flat!
So now I've had to run the damn thing full blast for an hour and counting just to get it decent in here, and I'm waiting on it to cool down outside as well... but it's still 80 out there at the moment.
Okay, I did manage to get the AC off and really hash out the thunder and rain tracks.
Less is more, and I realized there shouldn't be any thunder or rain until the first chorus, so that the ear has a chance to get used to the song itself, before the sound effects come in.
Also really had to throttle down the volume of both the thunder and rain so that they didn't step all over the music and vocals.
I let them both be louder through the interlude, but the way that orchestration works, the thunder is louder in the first half.
In the second half, the thunder quiets down, and the volume on the rain goes up.
Then when the interlude is over, both go back down to zero for the final verse... and then come back up for the final chorus.
The final mix for the night is listenable, but it's just a road map for what the finished version of this song needs to be.
Couldn't have mapped the sound effects without a vocal track, but the vocal track's pretty shit right now... and the thunder will have to be redone from scratch too... now that I know where the best bolts really need to go.
I opened the song with my best bolt, but that wound up getting erased completely when I decided to not introduce thunder at all until the first chorus.
So, it's like that.
The past four weekends I've been focused on recording because... that's all I have left to do with myself on a day off... as I bide my time, waiting to try and get the house back.
But over those four weekends, listening to those scratch vocals, I keep thinking I desperately need more practice to do them justice.
That thought immediately makes me think about the car, with it's noisy wheel that's been an issue for almost a year... and how that makes it impossible to sing in the car anymore.
I haven't had the car looked at for a year because, for many months the big priority was preparing for the family reunion... and not long after that, the priority became surviving the foreclosure crisis.
I was living off credit cards, and blowing a lot of it on defense lawyers.
But now that I'm here, and working on vocals finally... I've been loathe to spend any money on the car because I need it all for a down payment!
And of course, over the past week, my feelings about that have changed, as it's become clear that the flippers are not bringing the house up to code... which means no renting out of the upstairs to offset the mortgage payments.
So now I AM starting to look around me and think about this new life downtown as a long term thing.
And that means all kinds of priorities have to be rearranged!
Between living downtown, working at a high school, and having music be my ONLY pastime on a free day... I need to get a new wardrobe, fix my teeth, get a better car!
Here's why... because I'm all alone in an urban/high-school world where appearances matter!
If I'm gonna be frequenting local shops, or taking in shows... I need more than baggy work clothes with paint all over them to fit in!
Same at the school, which has resources I can take advatnage of... if I can fit in.
For example, I just discovered they actually have soundproof practice booths in the band wing where I could, in theory, go in on a day off and practice singing without anybody hearing me at all.
But i'd need the blessing of the younger band & theater people who are in charge of that wing... and they'd have a hard time believing a gross guy with shitty teeth and baggy clothes full of paint is a serious enough musician to get that blessing.
Same goes if I'm out on the town and want to talk about my music... or if I want to promote it online... I need normal teeth and half-decent clothing!
The better car?.. is mainly to insure I can reliably hold the job and get around.
But I do also need it for voice practice on the way to and from work.
This all may sound shallow, but I assure you... I was PERFECTLY HAPPY being a snaggle-toothed hermit in dirty baggy clothes, driving a noisy shit van, and cleaning bathrooms at an elementary school!
And I WAS that happy, because I had a run-down house to fix up, a lawn to mow, a dog to walk, and two cats to keep us company... and it was a great life, and I did not give a SHIT about how I looked... and I could've done vocal practices as loudly as I wanted all night in that place without anybody hearing me... for what was just a seasonal side hobby!
I lost all of that, and now what I have is this other life.
And now I DO need to network with new people, and the people in this world all DO care quite a lot about how you dress and whether you're missing teeth!
And there IS this artistic/music scene both downtown and at the high school... but again, to make that first impression as, Hey! I'm also an artist, myself! I don't just need to look decent, but have decent vocals on that stupid album I'm working on!
So... from whatever angle you approach it... for me to fit into this life that I'm now stuck in... I need to be spending my time an money on clothes, dental work, and a good car... rather than on...
Notaries, lawyers, tree cutters, topsoil, grass seed, lawn equipment, plywood & paint, puppy pads, pet food, pipe heating wires, grab bars for Dad, Sundays at Grandma's Table, adult diapers, holiday home decor, and the million other things I have been blowing my money on the past 10 years... most of which is now gone forever, and a total loss!
And it's gonna take me a LOOONG time, to do this transition!
From the dental work, to the wardrobe, to getting the voice back to something like it used to be...
None of that's happening overnight!
And I do kinda hate that I have to even do this, at 55, because it's not like I'm getting a date out of it... much less a wife and kids.
It's way too late for that shit!
I'm only gonna be doing it to be accepted... as the eternally platonic & single old man I now am... by the younger and hipper people who now surround me, both at work and at home!
It's a dumb thing to have to do!
But if I don't... all I'll be is a fish out of water!
A shitty hermit without his hermitage, and his animals... totally out of context and pointless.
Just some sad recluse.
So that's my reconoitering of the new life, in the final week of August, as classes and the theater season begin to ramp up... and the flippers at Melody Manor are half-assing it out of my reach.
Still four months left of this ridiculous year.
What can I do with them?
°¦}
