End of the Summer Grind
Monday, September 1st, 2025 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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74F and sunny this afternoon, going down to 54F tonight.
Well, here we are, finally to September first!
I slept in until 3PM today, and then, with my coffee, sat down at the desk and paid all the September bills.
After that, I went out to get gas, smokes & beer, and the groceries from Aldi.
After returning to the parking garage, I made my way back to the tower on foot, with a heavy backpack, a full shopping bag, and a dolly with the beer strapped to it.
Today I needed both toilet paper and paper towels, so that really maxes out my carrying capacity, but I managed it, and now everything's put away.
Last thing I did before starting this entry was to take the 20 I'd gotten in cash from the register, and stuck it into my secret stash can.
The Tascam 202MK VII is simply a dual cassette deck, like the ones that were so commonly available in the 1990s... built to be part of a component stereo set up, with RCA inputs and outputs on the back, and a 1/4" mike jack on the front.
Two tape drives... you get the idea.
What makes it so special is that it's one of the ONLY such decks still in modern production, that you can buy new.
And by, "such decks," I mean, ones that are built to last!
You can find new cassette decks on Amazon, but they're garbage.
You can find old cassette decks on Ebay, but they need work.
However, the Tascam 202MK VII, costs some $600.00!.. which is pretty steep, considering the last two refurb computers I bought were $200.00 a piece!
So I have resolved to put away twenty dollars a week, cash, into the stash can, until I have the 600.00 for the Tascam.
I seeded the can with 60.00 a couple weeks ago, and last week put in another 20, to that was 80.00 for August. And if I can keep up the rate of 80.00 per month, I'll have the money by the middle of April 2026.
I have wanted a deck like this since about 2018, to properly digitize all my tapes, but I've just never been able to justify blowing 600.00 on such a thing.
I do have a little walkman style USB cassette player, but it introduces a ton of motor hum into the digitized recording. Also they don't play at a reliable speed!
I actually have two of them and the one with less motor noise also plays all the tapes too fast.
So the Tascam will finally allow me to properly digitize my entire tape archive, going through the MOTU M2 interface, so it's gonna be high quality, and low noise.
So... that's a long term plan that'll be quietly running in the background between now and next April.
So, on Friday night of the 29th, I took all the comped vocal files that I have so far, and ported them over to the laptop via thumb drive.
Then I listened through all the songs and took notes on what needed to be patched... small problem passages in one song and the other... and saved that to the laptop as well.
Saturday's session was pretty low key. It was a cool 73F, and cloudy outside. And for once I wasn't sweating inside Studio C.
I recorded patch vocals for; Magic Monday,Tuesday Siren,and Live it Fast.
After all the August re-sings, this was a very relaxed session, and a nice way to end the summer phase of things.
Leaving Studio C, I went directly to my van in the parking garage and drove up to Thrift & Dollar on Lake Street, in search of some kind of small stand with a drawer or two.
Since moving into 1106, last year, I've been using a small folding table next to the rocker (near the kitchennette) as my little altar, with candles and whatnot.
But it occured to me that if I could find a piece of furniture around that same size, but with a drawer or two, I could have a little more storage space.
Using a tape measure, I'd determined the minimum and maximum dimensions I was looking for... no smaller than A by B by C, no larger than X by Y by Z.
And I had that tape measure in the back pack with the recording gear, so I brought it into the thrift store with me.
After searching the whole store, I finally found one unit that fit the bill... a smaller chest of three drawers, all equal size... of a charming victorian design, and in good condition.
It's measurements were the exact MAX measurements I'd written down!
They wanted 68.00, however, and I wasn't thrilled about that, but... similar items in the shop were going for over a hundred, and anything comperable from Amazon would still be around 60.00, so I just bit the bullet and put it on a credit card.
A guy brought it around to my car in front, and helped me load it into the van.
Back at the tower I was lucky enough to find space in the loading zone, and I used my dolly to get it up into the unit.
Then I parked the car, and walked back with the backpack.
The new chest does fit exactly in the space. Fits right between the rocker and the kitchenette.
However, it is taller than the folding table... being almost the same height as the kitchen counter. So this makes it feel a little imposing visually.
But those three drawers are pretty huge, and that makes this thing worth it.
As an altar, it's got a bit more real estate, and it's higher up, which is good too.
So... a final revision to this little studio apartment, after reclaiming the burners, and doing a few other tweaks to the place this year.
After getting the chest in place, and putting a few things into it's drawers, I started in comping, Other Friends, until Dylan called me around 9PM. Tim then joined in on the conversation about 10PM.
I slept in until 2PM on Sunday, and then, right after sitting down with my coffee, picked up with the comping of, Other Friends.
I had the whole thing comped by around 7PM, and then on a playthrough, felt like the drums were not right.
I opened up the music file in FL Studio and changed it so that the high hat hits every 8th note, instead of every quarter note... to give the song more of a sense of speed.
I also updated the snare, as I hadn't done so on this song yet, and then added a tambourine in the chorus part to complement the ride cymbals.
Back in Audacity, I pasted in the new version, and listened through it again to assess the vocals.
They sounded great!.. but in certain parts I was late.
So I surgically moved the audio clips in the spots where I was late, to get them in time with the music.
It sounded better on the next playthrough, but now I had more issues with the drums... that they should stop at certain parts, and break differently in a few places.
And it went on like this for a couple more hours!.. tweaking the music (I beefed up the guitar distortion and split out the strings & winds to be stereo) then tweaking the vocals a bit more.
Finally by 11PM or so, I exported a FLAC version I was happy with, and then I sat there playing it over and over in headphones for another hour or two, along with some of the other more recent comps, like, Clue PHone
I spent so much time tweaking, Other Friends tonight, not just because I had the time for once, but because this song has tended to always get the least attention, over the past two years of this album project.
Written in March of 1989, it's the oldest song on the album... the only one from the Publik Nuisance era!.. albeit the very end of the Publik Nuisance era.
It's a high energy pop punk song that doesn't even make it to three minutes, but feels longer, because so much happens.
I doubted for a long time that I'd be able to sing it properly, after all these years, but was delighted last night to hear that I'd really pulled it off!
This is a song that exists on a few band practice recordings from early 1989... that are so noisy and canny that you can barely make out what's going on.
But it was one that I tried to re-record in the Fostex 4-track days, before I had any kind of drum machine, so that version was pretty lame.
So, it was kinda magical last night, to finally hear this thing the way it was meant to sound!
As of last night, in my mind, it graduated from, I'm not super sure this will make the final cut, to, Oh, this is definitely going on the album!
As I said, the bills are paid, the car's gassed up, and I've got all my supplies for the week.
But for the first time in over three months, I did not book a session at Elgym for next Saturday!
After an initial session on SAT APR 12, and a second failed session (technical issues) on SAT MAY 17... regular sessions in Studio C finally got underway on SAT MAY 31, with the first go at, Never Rains.
I then did four sessions in June; 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th.
Four session in July; 4th, 12th, 19th, and 26th.
And five sessions in August; 1st, 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th.
So, I stuck to the grind for fourteen weeks in a row, recording every song, re-singing a few in the final weeks, and patching a few in the final session.
Finally, here in September, I'm taking a break the next couple weeks to catch up on comping everything.
SAT SEP 20 will begin the fall phase, focused on the backup vocals!
All signs point to the final session of the fall phase being SAT OCT 25th... which will likely be like yesterday's session... just for last minute patchs.
So I should probably schedule PTO for the week of MON OCT 27 thru FRI OCT 31, and that'll make for a big 9-day Halloween vacation to finish all vocal comping, and get a start on mixing.
Then I'll avail myself of the paid breaks in November and December, to keep that momentum going into the new year.
2026 will be about actually releasing, Archeology.
It will also be about getting that Tascam 202MK VII in the spring.
And it'll be about getting a start on Anthropology, which will be the big project of 2027.
So, this is exciting!
After coming into 2025 knowing only that this year would be all about, Archeology,, here I am on Labor Day, after a long summer grind with the vocals at Elgym, finally able to see some light at the end of the tunnel!
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