GREGORIBREK DAY 02
Thursday, January 1st, 2026 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio18F out there on this first day of 2026. Unfortunate, as I have to make a beer run, but i'll survive.
I just got done paying all the bills for January.
Always a good feeling, on the first of the month, to know everybody's paid.
I've now been in this studio apartment for exactly 1.5 years, for what that's worth.
DEC 23 ~ APR 24: Initial piano rolling of the 10 original songs is completed. Weekends only. 352 hours.
MAY 24 ~ SEP 24: No work on album due to evacuation crisis. 5 months.
OCT 24 ~ NOV 24: Piano rolled three additional songs for the album. Weekends only. 144 hours.
DEC 24 ~ JAN 25: First global pass of all 13 songs to humanize, standardize and tighten. Weekends only. 144 hours.
FEB 25 ~ MAY 25: Wild goose chase to try and get into an 07 unit for purposes of recording vocals. Red herring project to develop a custom preamp for a rotary phone carbon mike. End of school year OT eats into weekends. No progress on album at all. 4 months.
JUN 25 ~ SEP 25: Record main and backing vocals for all 13 songs at Elgym Studios. 2 hours every Saturday. Comping vocals 10 hours each weekend. 204 hours.
OCT 2025: 9 day vacation to get started on mixing: 90 hours.
NOV 2025: 7 days per week @ 3 hours per worknight, with weekends and holidays. 188 hours.
DEC 2025: Same protocol as above. 204 hours.
TOTAL EST HOURS SPENT ON ALBUM SINCE INCEPTION: 1,326.
1,326 DIVIDED BY 40 = 33.15 work week equivalent.
So... far less than one year, if I had been working on the album 40 hours per week! That's actually not bad for one guy! It also suggests that by the time the album is finished... it'll have been around one full year, if it had been my full time job.
So, now I don't feel so bad!
Okay!.. time to make that beer run, and then I'll get going on Miss Fortune!
Okay... the beer run was my little adventure for the day, exchanging, "happy new year"s with people on the elevators and at the liquor store.
Back home I spent a couple hours working the music in FL, replacing hat pedals with hat taps in the verse parts, and tweaking the EQ of the different instruments.
Cut out some orchestral bloat in the interlude, to let the piano solo breathe.
And listening through, I realize there are two parts where I had long intended to put in reversed sound effects.
These are the two short, bridges, I guess you'd call them, where I sing, "Misfortune's gonna find me soon. Misfortune's gonna find me sooooon." With dark, menacing tuba, in the first, and cello in the second... before the song grinds to a halt for half a measure.
In the next measure it climbs back up into the verse... that low tuba, and that low cello slowly slide upward along with the bass and guitar, as the drums find their footing again.
And in those spots I always wanted reversed sound effects, like the song is being rewound to start over with what it was saying before the dark prophecy.
So I created a clone of my FPC sample pad, and in that clone, I reversed all the sounds.
Then I created a pattern, similar to what we had at the intro, but with reversed sounds.
And it turned out perfect!
Backward can kick, backward umbrella, backward crow, etc.
So that perfected the music for Miss Fortune, for this pass, and I exported it as a WAV, exporting the sampled sounds as a separate stem again.
It's all been pasted into the AUP3 vocal file, and a new notepad text file's been created for the vocal mixing.
Next step is to manually compress those vocals and then condition them!
It's only now 10PM, so I've got five or six hours, which should be plenty of time!
Talk to you later.
It's done!
The vocals for Miss Fortune were conditioned!
A general doubling of 45ms, with the lag at -9db, and the same reverb as for Spell, with a pre-delay of 45ms, worked very nicely.
In more dramatic moments, some soft clipping, or even double soft clipping, and some hard clip on the screamiest "woahs".
Those distorted parts were brought down a decibel or two, depending on how much clipping had been added... to keep them a bit louder than the norm, but not too crazy.
A few volume adjustments to the backward sound effects, and the thunder... and the final result was beautiful!
It was exported to test FLAC, and that test FLAC was added to side 2 of the Ruff Record, and then that too was exported to FLAC.
Then everything was backed up.
So, side 2 of the Ruff Record is done!.. and tomorrow will be about a final pass to Archeology, which did not have proper vocal conditioning, back when it was last worked on, at Thanksgevbrek.
That will complete Side 1 of the Ruff Record, and after that, all we'll need is the tape flip and tape end foley sequences to produce a FULL, unbroken Ruff Record!
And there are still three days left to get that work done!
Tonight, however, was still a major milestone!
The transition from the fading music box at the end of, Spell, and the distant police sirens... to the fading in of the intro sample sequence for Miss Fortune is lovely, and does very much evolk the feeling of a movie having ended, and the title sequence beginning to roll.
I did cry, upon the final reveiw of the finished Miss Fortune.
Written in early 1995, it predates and kinda presages Magic Monday, and Our Cold feet, which are the other two on the album that feature a looping chord progression with no true bridge or chorus... only brief musical change points.
In all three, the real changes take place with the more free-flowing lyrics and melodies that alternate in intensity from one round of the chord loop to the next.
And in the modern productions of these songs, orchestral coloring adds to this... turning a samey loop into an exploration of the melodic and emotional potential within it's chords.
Like Monday, and Cold Feet, I long considered Miss Fortune to be an unfinished song, needing a brige and proper chorus.
However, I did produce a crude version of Miss Fortune in 1995, as it was, with just bass and vocals, and did create a rhythmic track of random sound effects to be the bed over which it was played.
So, it was nice to revive that aspect of it in the modern day.
Miss Fortune was also the subject of a dream I had, in the year 2000, where John Lennon sat down with me for a chat and said he really liked it and felt I should produce it properly.
This was three years before I thought I'd ever get back into music.
Miss Fortune was always about the vibe of the chord loop, and the way the melody played with it... but the lyrics were a bit of faux poetic nonsense.
In the original scratch lyrics, I used the antiquated word, "ne'er," a contraction of, "never," pronouncing it like, "nare" to create such rhymes as, "nare as the talk i could bare as I walk under the tall trees."
I punched up the lyrics in spring of 2003, finally giving them a consistent internal logic, and changed, "ne'er" to, "never," but otherwise maintaining the, "air" rhyme scheme.
late at night, alone in bed she talks to spirits in her head, for information on, and the location of, a long forgotten love.
and she says, never as the touch that could fare to be such and the other.
my little star, you've gone to far.
an early frost took him away, in the first light of the morning. but he could take dark skies of gloom, and make a lovely afternoon.
and she says, never as the smile i could wear like a style in a fall breeze.
my little star, you gone to far.
misfortune's gonna find me soon! misfortune's gonna fine me soon!
another world. another time. another face. another mind.
i've got a good one, to off the roof run, and bring the long awaited end!
and she says, never as the talk i could bare as i walk under the tall trees.
my little star, you've gone to far!
[music intensifies and builds to ending]
NEVER as the sight, of the thunder and the lighting of the understanding.
my little STAR, YOU'VE GONE TO FAAR!
miss fortune's gonna find me soon! Whoa! miss fortune's gonna find me soon! Woah-whoah!
Miss fortune's gonna fine me...
[song should end here, but pauses and eases into interlude with piano solo, against verse music, and 'misfortune' bridge]
NEVER as the sight, of the thunder and the lighting of the understanding.
my little STAR, YOU'VE GONE TO FAAR!
miss fortune's gonna find me soon! Whoa! miss fortune's gonna find me soon! Woah-whoah!
Miss fortune's gonna fine me...
Soon!
[final note. end song. end album.]
What's it about? There's a temptation to assume the guy died, but it's really about a guy the girl met early in her life (first light of the morning) who made a huge impression on her, before vanishing.
She remote views him from time to time, to get the latest.
He knows she's doing that, and to him thats... going too far. Turn your gaze away, for misfortune's gonna find me soon!
But of course, listener's interpretation trumps the creator's.
Okay!.. great second day of Gregoribrek!
I'm gonna spend the coule hours I have left just listening to side 2.
Bills are paid, and tomorrow's only Friday, so we'll dive right into Archeology, the song, once again!
Talk to you then!
°¦}
