Grilled Cheese
Sunday, June 29th, 2025 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
93F and partly cloudy today, going down to 70F tonight.
Just got back from getting gas, beer & smokes, and groceries.
This past week was mid 90sF the whole way through. So, a bit nasty, but I did get some vacation days approved for down the road.
This coming week's a 4-day week, with 4th of July falling on a Friday.
But I put in for THU JUL 31 & FRI AUG 01 to get a 4-day weekend mid-summer.
Labor day falls on September 1st, so that's a 3-day weekend at the end of August.
And then I put in for, THU SEP 11 & FRI SEP 12, when Colleen & Celina will be in town.
All the vacation time resets on October 1st, so... I'm thinking of taking a whole week in October!
I got lucky yesterday, with it only being 90F... four degrees cooler than last week.
When I got into Studio C, however, no AC had been running.
But it wasn't a problem, I just ran it as I set up my stuff and left it run for the first two takes, which are always garbage.
After that, I was a little hot & sweaty, but I found that it didn't bother me.
I ran into a bit of trouble with, Live It Fast, because it was a bit too low?
I think that I must've lowered the key of the song a couple steps, way back in December of 2023, when I was still practicing singing in the car.
I recall thinking that the bridge part was uncomfortably high.
So, it's a testament to the weekly vocal sessions that today I felt it was too low, in the verse parts, and perfectly comfortable in the bridge.
But it also felt too slow!
For a song called, Live It Fast... it's kinda slow!
So, unfortunately, I think I'm gonna have to speed it up a bit, and raise the key a bit, which means today's vocals will have been pointless.
But this is something I couldn't have known until I did actually go to sing it through, several times in a row.
In the end, I don't think it'll matter, because it is looking like I will be re-recording several of the others.
I've got four more songs to go; Clue Phone, Other Friends, Spell I'm Under, and Miss Fortune... and I feel like by the time I'm done, my voice will be so much better that I'll have to re-record nearly all of them.
But it's fine.
Archeology, is clearly a marathon, not a sprint!
I was finally able to make my first grilled cheese & tomato soup yesterday!
The switched extension cord arrived on Tuesday, and I secured it just under the countertop, above the fridge, with two hooks.
It worked out nicely!
I put the air fryer on the stand by the rocker, turned off the fridge, and made my food!
After it was done, I turned the fridge back on. And after I ate, I put the air fryer back on top of the range.
Awkward? Yes!.. but still a victory.
9:11PM
All clean and shiny with the laundry in the dryer downstairs.
After reviewing the unprocessed vocals I've done these past several weeks, and thinking about things tonight, I've come up with a strategy for re-records and backing vocals this fall.
Lead vocals for the final song, will be recorded by early August.
After that, I'll need to take time to process all the first-round vocals into single tracks with the best bits cut & pasted together.
After that, I'll have a version of all 13 songs with one full vocal line that's otherwise still dry an untouched... in other words, still just my raw voice into the microphone with no EQ or anything.
At that point, it'll make sense to go back into session for each song to record both backing vocals, and second takes of the main vocals!
Because by then, the second takes of the mains will probably be easier to nail, and thus I'll only need to do two or three, instead of 8.
And the backing vocals aren't super involved, so I should be able to get several useable takes of them down in the same session.
And then it's just a matter of doing the process again, cutting & pasting the best of the first-round main vocals with the second-round mains... and cutting & pasting the harmony vocals.
Some songs don't have any backing vocals.
Some songs will likely have perfectly useable main vocals.
So with some planning, I may be able to nail two such songs in one session... mains for a song with no backing, and backing for a song with good mains.
So, with luck, this means that I'll still be done with vocals by the start of October!
It just depends on how long it takes me to process the first round vocals, before going back into session.
Reavis is the only song I fully processed, back in early spring, with a partial processing of, Never Rains, weeks later (and weeks ago, now).
And for those two executions, I was taking notes in a text file, of exactly which take was used for which lyrics in the song.
But that really slowed down the process and made it pure drudgery!
So, from here on out, I'm not gonna be taking those notes, because they're not really necessary!
This means that processing the first-round vocals should go a lot faster than I originally thought.
Actually, I originally thought I'd be processing every Saturday session on Sunday, but I haven't been doing that... because the idea of taking the notes was so off-putting.
Tonight, I'm so behind, there was no point in diving back in.
But as July unfolds, maybe I will dive back in on Sundays... with a final push, perhaps, on that 4-day weekend as July turns to August.
This would mean second-round vocals would begin in August and go through September, with the final processing of raw vocals happening in early October, over that week off I plan to take.
At that point, there'd be final tweaks to the musical structure, to help punctuate the real-life vocals, and then it'd be full steam ahead on mixing.
As I've speculated before, I may need to use Studio C in the fall, just to play the whole album in loudspeakers and take notes.
Those notes would be compared to plays over a bluetooth cube at home, plays in the car, and plays in headphones.
And it'll just be a slow process of tweaking things at home, in the headphones, according to the notes... then re-airing everything and taking new notes... until it's sounding equally good on all platforms.
After that will be mastering.
And if I do the mixing well enough, then the mastering shouldn't be much more than a bit of compressive sheen.
9:56PM
Okay, the laundry's upstairs and put away.
Tomorrow's another work week... but a shorter one.
Below, yet another examination of the larger processes I've been involved with since June of 2023... for insomniacs only.
Back on the 14th, I wrote a bit about the infrastructure involved with trying to record a simple album.
Yesterday's session, recording, Live it Fast, got me thinking about it again.
Back in June of 23, it seemed like all I'd need is a refurbished computer, a copy of FL Studio, a midi-keyboard controller, a cheep interface box, and a USB condenser mike.
After one test song, I realized I needed to update the packaging of the older four albums on SoundCloud, if I was gonna release a fifth one.
Many didn't have splash graphics, or if they did, they were shitty.
The album covers were too low-res for the modern internet.
And there were no song lyrics included.
That turned into a huge side-quest, using the NightCafe AI to generate my song graphics, which cost a bit of money.
I started the YouTube Channel with some lyric videos, and slideshow videos.
I put, Coffeehouse Boyfriend on BandCamp, as a test, and uploaded, Winter Long via Distro Kid, as another test.
That was all in the name of internet infrastructure... bringing the old stuff up to date, and testing the waters for promotion of the new album.
But all the landscaping and home improvement projects I was doing in preparation for the big family reunion that October meant I had no time to record anyway, and I was able to do all this other stuff at night, or on the weekends.
The final house project, the storm windows, flowed naturally into flipping the NW bedroom for studio use, because I had to work on that window sash anyway, so why not patch, paint, install a new outlet, and decorate the room?
The answer to that question was, "Because you're going to lose the house!" but I had no reason to think that, at the time.
I did manage to fully orchestrate all 10 songs over the winter though!
And because I was still working the janitor gig at Cloud, I was able to play the latest mixes as I worked, alone in the building each night... taking mental notes on what needed to be tweaked.
It's weird now to think back to those winter nights there, when I'd be thinking, Five songs, all with bass, drums, and guitars!.. this weekend I'll do the guitars for, NYC Gargoyles!
I really was making some good progress back then, and would've gone straight into the vocal recording stage in spring of 24, if it weren't for the disaster!
I would've caught that, Live It Fast was too low and too slow, and changed it a long time ago.
As things were, I just got used to listening to the music-only version of it for so long that I stopped thinking about the lyrics.
Moving up to maintenance at PVHS, while simultaneously moving into the tower, where the walls are not soundproof, as I had mistakenly believed, destroyed that workflow, and shook things up quite a bit!
One thing it did was force me to get all my old tapes out of dense, ten-ton tasket they'd been crammed into for 18 years... stacked in disorganized layers, making it impossible to find anything.
Organizing all those tapes into two underbed storage drawers turned out to be a critical move, from an infrastructure perspective, because it resulted in a stack of unlabeled tapes that needed to be reviewed, along with several labeled ones that had gotten me curious... which lead to the discovery of enough old music to fill two more albums after adding three to, Archeology.
So I spent the fall and winter back at the piano roll, creating; Reavis,Our Cold Feet, and, Spell I'm Under, and then getting the existing ten songs up to the same production level.
This spring has been about working out the new vocal workflow and infrastructure.
The original plan of just getting into a bigger apartment was a non starter.
The way forward was weekly vocal sessions at Elgym, which required a refurb laptop & cooling pad, and a new interface box (The MOTU).
And the new workflow was to do all vocals in Audacity, on that new machine.
And Somewhere along the way I got the Sure SM58 as the vocal mike, realizing that the cheep USB condenser mike wasn't gonna cut it.
Now, in this current summer phase, where Saturdays in Studio C are an established routine, I'm in the process of getting my voice back, and re-learning the sweet spots of the SM58!
The Sure SM58 is a dynamic, cardioid mike that has been around since 1966, unchanged!
Originally created as a vocal recording mike, it became extremely popular as a stage performance mike, which is how I used it for my entire band career, starting with Publik Nuisance, in the late 1980s, through the whole 1990s in the band with Brian.
And the SM58's the mike I used to record the older four albums, in the early 2000s.
The term, "cardioid," refers to the heart-shaped (cardio) field of sensitivity in front of the mike's head, where it picks up the best sound.
Cardioids reject sound coming in from the sides and the rear, which is great for supressing background noise... which is why I can leave the AC running in Studio C for the first couple takes, because if one of those takes were accidentally pure gold, I could probably still use it, because the AC noise would be minimal, and easy to squelch with Audacity's noise reduction.
But with cardioids, the flavor of the sound is different, at different locations within that heart-shaped field.
Further away, and off to the side, it's not as bassy, and you can sing louder without any distortion.
Closer up, it will be more bassy, but it'll pick up all the details of a more quietly sung verse... even the breathiness of a nearly whispered verse.
And for the optimal results, you gotta put that mike up under your nose for, Ns, and other vocalizations that aren't really coming from your mouth.
All this used to be instinctual to me, but it's taken a while to rouse those old instincts from their hybernation.
Singing into an SM58 is a bit like making out!.. you've gotta know when to move in close, and where, and when to back off.
So, it's a good thing I haven't been able to bring my mike stand, because it's just an encumberance.
The SM58 is not a mike you hang in front of you, in a soundproof booth!
It's a durable workhorse, with a built-in pop filter that's meant to be in your hand, and occasionally in your face.
It's also a good thing I resolved the latency issue, because real-time monitoring is key to using the mike properly.
So this is another reason why many of the songs will need to be re-recorded, because not only was my voice still rusty last spring, but I wasn't up to speed yet with working the microphone.
Still all theses sessions haven't been money wasted.
Like weekly trips to the gym, they've been necessary to get my voice and mike-working muscle memory back!.. the critical physical element to an otherwise fully digital project!
Still, this is all part of establishing the infrastructure and the workflow!
Archeology may be a marathon, but once it's done, I'll be able to sprint through Anthropology, and, Paleontology, because the whole system will be up and running!
From the organized & digitized source material, to the equipment, to my physical body, to the online infrastructure!
The calamity with the house, and it's aftermath cost me about seven months... and if you add in the delays while landscaping a yard I no longer own, for the sake of a one-night party, it's about nine months!
That means, without that bullshit, It still would've taken me 15 months to get where I am right now.
So, having begun in June of 2023, that'd be September of 2024.
And right now, there are still months to go, so... it was always gonna take me two years to get this first modern album out the door!
The real time drag is just working a full time job!
That's why this kind of thing is normally only done by young people who still live at home!
And it's why even they, are so determined to make a living out of it!
And I'm just lucky I'm not married, and have no kids!
Because if I did... forget it!
But, all that said, the two-plus years it'll have taken me to get, Archeology out the door will have been a huge investment that allows me to crank out two or more follow-ups waaaaay faster!
And that's when I'll look like a super-being!
"How the hell's this guy doing all this while working a full time job?"
And it'll be thanks to refurb machines, freeware, a vast backlog of source material, a life time of experience, and two-plus years of infrastructure and workflow development!
Not that it won't all be panned by the critics, though!
Hahah!
But fuck them!
°¦}
