Short Sunday
Sunday, July 23rd, 2023 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioYesterday (Saturday) was a big day!.. kinda too big!.. because I didn't go to bed until 6AM this morning! Not good, when I have an early appointment on Wednesday at the Naperville DMV, but... it is what it is.
I actually got up at 11AM yesterday, but the day got off to a weird start when I was outside with Yvette and she discovered three dead baby rabbits in the yard by the side porch!
I'm 98% certain that it was prowly who killed them, though he was not around when we found them... meaning he likely did it just for sport!
And then Yvette... savage Siberian hound that she is... picked one up in her mouth, took it out front in the shade of the hackberry, and summarily set about to eating it!
I know from experience, you cannot separate Yvette from, found food, so I got the other two dead bunnies into a trash bag with a grabber and threw them in the bin before she or any other carnivore, could come back for more.
I then left Yvette to her business and picked up where I'd left off on Friday night, weeding the brick walk.
--<>--
After Yvette was done (she ate the whole thing, fur and all!) we came inside, and... rather than going back out to finish the walk, I retired to the studio for a bit to cool off and see if I couldn't record some vocals today.
I did get Audacity to play my voice in the headphones, but there was a half a second delay, which made it impossible to sing along with the music.
So I ended up just pushing the headphones off my right ear, and listening in the left ear, and I was able to stay on pitch and do a better job than I'd done a few weeks ago.
After an hour, I had all the vocals, and spent another hour conditioning them... finding that a bit of compressor really helped bring them out over the music.
I was also messing with ways to add delay and reverb to different sections.
--<>--
Sheila called, around 3PM, just as I was ready to do the final mix, so I shut down Audactity and went back out to weed the walks while on the phone with her.
Then while I was out there, I saw that the mailbox I'd ordered was on the front stoop... a day earlier than expected.
--<>--
After finishing the walks, and saying goodbye to Sheila, I installed the new mailbox and made a short TikTok about it.
And just as I was finishing that up, it began to sprinkle!
There hadn't been any rain in the forecast, but we in fact had quite a long, fairly heavy rain!.. which meant that playing around with polymeric sand was off the table, as was mowing the lawn.
--<>--
This is the front stoop, after the new box was installed. I also removed a bunch of stickers Dad had put on the windows of the storm door... boasting of supporting the police, among other fascist ensigns.
So now the front stoop is fully de-nazified, and we're just waiting for the new address plate.
Closeup of the mailbox... which fit exactly in the space!
The main brick walk, all cleared of knot weed.
The branch walk also cleared of knot weed.
------------{=0=}------------
With that stuff done, and a rainstorm going on outside, I ran a few errands, and then settled back into the studio to finish mixing the latest version of, Closer to You.
Just as I got it done, and uploaded to SoundCloud, Colleen called.
And she and I talked until almost 2AM!
By then I was pretty drunk!.. but I also had to listen to my newest mix on SoundCloud!.. so I sat there drinking, and blasting it in headphones on repeat for... WAY TOO LONG!
By the time I finally tore myself away from the studio computer, birds were chirping and the sun was coming up!
I made some food, and watched YouTube while eating it in the back room, then finally got to bed at 6AM!
Definitely much better than the last version, but I don't think this is the final version yet. I think the cellos need to change it up a bit in the final two rounds of the refrain at the end.
------------{=0=}------------
Today I wasn't up until 4PM!
I did get out there and mow the back yard, but other than that, all I've done is work up a new graphic for the song, and a new splash graphic for the main SoundCloud page.
Closer to You was at 199 plays before I put it on repeat for hours last night, so... now I know it's not counting my own plays, but... it also hasn't gotten any new ones since I changed it, and put it in my spotlight section.
--<>--
That means it's time to upload new content, so... time to start work on a second song.
I'll revisit, Closer to You again, after I've gotten a few more songs together, and developed whatever techniques those projects will teach me.
For now, I have the basics down, and I have a way to add vocals and sound effects.
While I decide which song will be the next to do, I'm gonna look into sprucing up the old music SoundCloud account.
------------{=0=}------------
In other news, the repeater did go down after being up with no issues for four days, but I think the problem was that the main WIFI went down, and needed a reboot.
I did that, and got the repeater back online, and everything seems fine now. All three cameras are working fine.
------------{=0=}------------
12:45AM
Hard to go to bed early after waking up at 4:00PM!.. I need more beer in me than I've drunk so far, to evade insomnia.
I've been looking over my old music SoundCloud account tonight.
Now that I'm recording a new album, the other four need to come back up to the top, on my playlist page.
But the only way to do that is to delete the old playlists, and recreate them, so that they appear as the most recent four.
But if I'm gonna do that, I should address the fact that a lot of the graphics associated with those albums... the cover art and the song art... needs to be updated, or in some cases, just created at all!
On all four of those albums, some songs never got artwork. And the graphics I did create for other songs, or for cover art, is either too low resolution by modern standards, or... just did not age well.
Lots of stolen images from the web, and too many half naked girls floating around in that stuff... in addition to weird drawings that never really fit.
So... tonight I'm trying to come up with a plan to repackage these old albums.
I'll have to create some of the new artwork completely from scratch, using techniques I've developed over the years... as was done last fall with the calendar deck project.
But I also want to dig out old physical artwork, and photos, from my boxes down in the basement... to rescan them, and rework them.
And I also have to dig out old digital shit, from the archives that exist on the drive I'm using upstairs for the all-in-one machine.
It's gonna take a little doing!
But, it's clear that the back room here will be the base of operations, because this has become kind of my main computer, and it has the scanner.
So... boxes will come up from the basement... and things will be scanned.
And the drive from upstairs will come down here, and stuff will be copied over.
And everything's gonna go into a folder on this desktop.
In some cases, I'm gonna need to get out around town and take photos of different locations... and those too will end up in the folder.
And then, I'll just go album by album.
--<>--
Coffeehouse Boyfriend is the oldest, so it has to be done first, then Wig City, Lost Cause, and Alb-O-Matic.
I'll also finally add the song lyrics to each track... which is something I always meant to do, but never got around to.
In fact, I should probably bust out the original tapes and CDs of that material, to see if I can get better versions... or alternate versions... or just to check for forgotten ideas that didn't make the cut back in the day.
--<>--
As I repackage each album... perhaps with re-uploaded tracks, or extra tracks, I'll put them in the spotlight and try to do a little promotion for each one... maybe bump the plays up a bit.
And then when album number five is done, it'll appear as the newest playist, in it's context with the previous four.
--<>--
And 2024 will be the 20th anniversarry of the original website I created to showcase those... at the time, three albums; Coffeehouse Boyfriend, Wig City, and Lost Cause.
Alb-O-Matic was added in 2008 to that website... which went on to host all four for another 13 years... though the site did get wonky, because I wasn't updating the code to stay current with modern browsers.
While that site was still marginally useable, I started the SoundCloud... in 2015.
Holy God!.. has it been that long?
Well at any rate, yeah... 2024 will be the 20th anniversarry of the internet debut of the first three albums.
--<>--
It IS nice, to finally be adding something new to that old cannon.
Being a musician was a huge part of my identity for two decades.
I DO think it was necessary to walk away from it for... a good fourteen years... to become a more fully rounded person.
But in this new chapter of my life... post Mom & Dad... I'm glad there's room for a little more of the musical stuff.
--<>--
It's good to move on from things, in life, and force yourself to evolve.
But it's also good to return to your roots, occasionally, and revisit old passions... as long as they're not destructive.
I did stay up too late last night, listening to a new song on repeat, drunk, oblivious to the passage of time... like I used to do. And that's not the best!
I will have to be careful about that going forward, but... it is still summer, right?
--<>--
This is all part of the journey I've been on since Dad broke his hip last December.
This is still my first year... truly on my own in the world... with no parents... trying to hold on to the old house, and reinvent my life at the same time.
And music popped back up out of all that, here in the summer.
So... yeah. Gotta repackage those old albums on top of every other project on my table.
--<>--
Okay... I'm ready now to eat and go to bed.
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
I actually got up at 11AM yesterday, but the day got off to a weird start when I was outside with Yvette and she discovered three dead baby rabbits in the yard by the side porch!
I'm 98% certain that it was prowly who killed them, though he was not around when we found them... meaning he likely did it just for sport!
And then Yvette... savage Siberian hound that she is... picked one up in her mouth, took it out front in the shade of the hackberry, and summarily set about to eating it!
I know from experience, you cannot separate Yvette from, found food, so I got the other two dead bunnies into a trash bag with a grabber and threw them in the bin before she or any other carnivore, could come back for more.
I then left Yvette to her business and picked up where I'd left off on Friday night, weeding the brick walk.
After Yvette was done (she ate the whole thing, fur and all!) we came inside, and... rather than going back out to finish the walk, I retired to the studio for a bit to cool off and see if I couldn't record some vocals today.
I did get Audacity to play my voice in the headphones, but there was a half a second delay, which made it impossible to sing along with the music.
So I ended up just pushing the headphones off my right ear, and listening in the left ear, and I was able to stay on pitch and do a better job than I'd done a few weeks ago.
After an hour, I had all the vocals, and spent another hour conditioning them... finding that a bit of compressor really helped bring them out over the music.
I was also messing with ways to add delay and reverb to different sections.
Sheila called, around 3PM, just as I was ready to do the final mix, so I shut down Audactity and went back out to weed the walks while on the phone with her.
Then while I was out there, I saw that the mailbox I'd ordered was on the front stoop... a day earlier than expected.
After finishing the walks, and saying goodbye to Sheila, I installed the new mailbox and made a short TikTok about it.
And just as I was finishing that up, it began to sprinkle!
There hadn't been any rain in the forecast, but we in fact had quite a long, fairly heavy rain!.. which meant that playing around with polymeric sand was off the table, as was mowing the lawn.
This is the front stoop, after the new box was installed. I also removed a bunch of stickers Dad had put on the windows of the storm door... boasting of supporting the police, among other fascist ensigns.
So now the front stoop is fully de-nazified, and we're just waiting for the new address plate.
Closeup of the mailbox... which fit exactly in the space!
The main brick walk, all cleared of knot weed.
The branch walk also cleared of knot weed.
With that stuff done, and a rainstorm going on outside, I ran a few errands, and then settled back into the studio to finish mixing the latest version of, Closer to You.
Just as I got it done, and uploaded to SoundCloud, Colleen called.
And she and I talked until almost 2AM!
By then I was pretty drunk!.. but I also had to listen to my newest mix on SoundCloud!.. so I sat there drinking, and blasting it in headphones on repeat for... WAY TOO LONG!
By the time I finally tore myself away from the studio computer, birds were chirping and the sun was coming up!
I made some food, and watched YouTube while eating it in the back room, then finally got to bed at 6AM!
Definitely much better than the last version, but I don't think this is the final version yet. I think the cellos need to change it up a bit in the final two rounds of the refrain at the end.
Today I wasn't up until 4PM!
I did get out there and mow the back yard, but other than that, all I've done is work up a new graphic for the song, and a new splash graphic for the main SoundCloud page.
Closer to You was at 199 plays before I put it on repeat for hours last night, so... now I know it's not counting my own plays, but... it also hasn't gotten any new ones since I changed it, and put it in my spotlight section.
That means it's time to upload new content, so... time to start work on a second song.
I'll revisit, Closer to You again, after I've gotten a few more songs together, and developed whatever techniques those projects will teach me.
For now, I have the basics down, and I have a way to add vocals and sound effects.
While I decide which song will be the next to do, I'm gonna look into sprucing up the old music SoundCloud account.
In other news, the repeater did go down after being up with no issues for four days, but I think the problem was that the main WIFI went down, and needed a reboot.
I did that, and got the repeater back online, and everything seems fine now. All three cameras are working fine.
Hard to go to bed early after waking up at 4:00PM!.. I need more beer in me than I've drunk so far, to evade insomnia.
I've been looking over my old music SoundCloud account tonight.
Now that I'm recording a new album, the other four need to come back up to the top, on my playlist page.
But the only way to do that is to delete the old playlists, and recreate them, so that they appear as the most recent four.
But if I'm gonna do that, I should address the fact that a lot of the graphics associated with those albums... the cover art and the song art... needs to be updated, or in some cases, just created at all!
On all four of those albums, some songs never got artwork. And the graphics I did create for other songs, or for cover art, is either too low resolution by modern standards, or... just did not age well.
Lots of stolen images from the web, and too many half naked girls floating around in that stuff... in addition to weird drawings that never really fit.
So... tonight I'm trying to come up with a plan to repackage these old albums.
I'll have to create some of the new artwork completely from scratch, using techniques I've developed over the years... as was done last fall with the calendar deck project.
But I also want to dig out old physical artwork, and photos, from my boxes down in the basement... to rescan them, and rework them.
And I also have to dig out old digital shit, from the archives that exist on the drive I'm using upstairs for the all-in-one machine.
It's gonna take a little doing!
But, it's clear that the back room here will be the base of operations, because this has become kind of my main computer, and it has the scanner.
So... boxes will come up from the basement... and things will be scanned.
And the drive from upstairs will come down here, and stuff will be copied over.
And everything's gonna go into a folder on this desktop.
In some cases, I'm gonna need to get out around town and take photos of different locations... and those too will end up in the folder.
And then, I'll just go album by album.
Coffeehouse Boyfriend is the oldest, so it has to be done first, then Wig City, Lost Cause, and Alb-O-Matic.
I'll also finally add the song lyrics to each track... which is something I always meant to do, but never got around to.
In fact, I should probably bust out the original tapes and CDs of that material, to see if I can get better versions... or alternate versions... or just to check for forgotten ideas that didn't make the cut back in the day.
As I repackage each album... perhaps with re-uploaded tracks, or extra tracks, I'll put them in the spotlight and try to do a little promotion for each one... maybe bump the plays up a bit.
And then when album number five is done, it'll appear as the newest playist, in it's context with the previous four.
And 2024 will be the 20th anniversarry of the original website I created to showcase those... at the time, three albums; Coffeehouse Boyfriend, Wig City, and Lost Cause.
Alb-O-Matic was added in 2008 to that website... which went on to host all four for another 13 years... though the site did get wonky, because I wasn't updating the code to stay current with modern browsers.
While that site was still marginally useable, I started the SoundCloud... in 2015.
Holy God!.. has it been that long?
Well at any rate, yeah... 2024 will be the 20th anniversarry of the internet debut of the first three albums.
It IS nice, to finally be adding something new to that old cannon.
Being a musician was a huge part of my identity for two decades.
I DO think it was necessary to walk away from it for... a good fourteen years... to become a more fully rounded person.
But in this new chapter of my life... post Mom & Dad... I'm glad there's room for a little more of the musical stuff.
It's good to move on from things, in life, and force yourself to evolve.
But it's also good to return to your roots, occasionally, and revisit old passions... as long as they're not destructive.
I did stay up too late last night, listening to a new song on repeat, drunk, oblivious to the passage of time... like I used to do. And that's not the best!
I will have to be careful about that going forward, but... it is still summer, right?
This is all part of the journey I've been on since Dad broke his hip last December.
This is still my first year... truly on my own in the world... with no parents... trying to hold on to the old house, and reinvent my life at the same time.
And music popped back up out of all that, here in the summer.
So... yeah. Gotta repackage those old albums on top of every other project on my table.
Okay... I'm ready now to eat and go to bed.
°¦}
