New song on the Music page.  I like the song, but it didn’t turn out quite like I’d hoped.  I’ve worked on it for the past couple months, and now I’m tired and out of ideas.  The magic of production yet eludes me.  I think the main problem is that I wanted to do more with it, but it’s not that kind of song.  Maybe the next one will lend itself more to the style I was shooting for.

I added “Pearl” to the music page.  I’m really happy with the way it turned out, although I’ve listened to it so many times over the course of working on it that I’m pretty much sick of it by now.

I discovered a new frustration with Garage Band: it’s ridiculous that you can’t trim the fluff off the front of a song.  When you’re recording, you usually don’t want to start playing at the very instant you hit record.  Most of the time you need to have a count-in measure before all the instruments come in.  In Garage Band, the best you can do is mute that section; there’s no way to just delete it.  That’s a basic function that shouldn’t be missing.  I wound up downloading Audacity just to cut the first two seconds from Pearl and Tinsel.

The problem then became a very slight loss of quality from the original AACs and mp3s exported from Garage Band.  Of course, the songs are pretty lo-fi already (and I like them that way), but the versions exported from Audacity introduced the teensiest little warble to the guitars — and it drove me CRAZY.  So I ended up scrapping the Audacity-edited versions and going back to the originals.  There’s a little cruft at the beginnings, but I would rather deal with that than a slight loss of quality to the overall sound.

So that’s the way I spent most of my brain cycles yesterday: rejoicing over finally cutting off the first two seconds, trying to figure out if the quality actually did change, freaking out when I decided it actually did, trying to figure out why, then going back to the originals and making sure they were still alright.  Not a bad day at all.

Photo: John Vanderslice. Used without permission.

I have a big man-crush on John Vanderslice.  He’s great.  Like, really great.  Oh man, I’m gushing.

Anyway, I’ve always wanted to blatantly rip off his style.  It’s true.  I have no problem with that.  But I’ve never been able to do it.  Until now.

Not really.  I just finished a song that sounds like the music I’ve wanted to make for a long time, but couldn’t.  It doesn’t sound much like John Vanderslice.  It actually sounds exactly the way I was feeling when I wrote it, which is a majestically artful and tender thing to say.  I’ll give that a minute to soak in.

Okay, enough of the BS.  I finished recording a song that I think is pretty cool and sounds the way I wanted it to sound.  It’s different than what I’ve done before, so it might be total crap for all I know.  Garage Band doesn’t include high-quality software instruments, and I’m not a great composer.  That said, I’m happy with how it turned out.  I’m also happy just to have finished it, because I almost gave up about a dozen times.  It was a lot of work, especially compared to the last song, and I did it all without really knowing if the end result was going to be garbage or not.  It felt good to work through my limitations, though.

Anyway, I’m in the final phase of the process, where you listen to the song millions of times on all kinds of different speakers and stereos, trying to make sure everything sounds just right before it Goes Public.  I’ll post the song in the next day or two after I feel reasonably sure it’s ready.  In the meantime, just be thankful that I pared this post down from 600 words to 300.

Anyway, the music page isn’t pretty, but it gets the job done.  Hopefully I’ll be adding more music to it soon.  Look for it under “More” on the right. Update:  Look for it under “Look Around,” still on the right.

That went relatively well, I guess.  I finished my first song, and it turned out about as I’d hoped it would.  If I can ever figure out how to create a “Music” page that hosts songs, I’ll do it.  That’s my current challenge.  It’s something to do with FTP clients, passwords long forgotten, and an audio player plugin.  I am a little worried that I’ll end up destroying my blog as it is, but it’s a risk probably worth taking.

I don’t have a lot of patience for this crap.  It’s the reason I took two weeks to finish a very simple song.  I hate playing the same thing over and over, and I REALLY hate having to dig through forums and help files to figure out how to make things work in Garageband.  Don’t let anyone tell you that recording in your home is fun.  It ain’t.

Speaking of Garageband, my biggest frustration was its method for punch-ins.  Put simply, it doesn’t work.  That means it’s very difficult to go back and fix little mistakes.  That means take after take until everything is just right — or, as in my case, take after take until you finally give up and say it’s good enough like it is.

I was further harassed by my apparent inability to sing in tune.  Believe me, this is not something I already knew about.  Now, I’m a very arrogant principled man.  Music should be organic and honest.  But it also needs to be, you know, good.  For philosophical reasons, I absolutely refuse to use pitch correction.  I have to question, though, if it’s really any more honest to sing the same part about a dozen times, trying to get it perfect. A quandary.  In the end, a lack of patience overrode all arguments.  I kept the best of about four attempts.  I’ll never use pitch correction, but I do have to accept some less-than-perfect vocal performances.

I realize that I’m painting a pretty bleak picture here — so why do it at all?  Despite the many hassles, recording is rewarding.  That rhymed, man.  At the end of the day you have something that you can (sometimes) be proud of, and, hopefully, have culled the most embarrassing mistakes from.  If it’s a particularly good song, or if you’re particularly delusional, you can cultivate a false sense of self-importance, which is nice.

I finished my easiest song, and I’ll probably record a few more.  For now, though, my test is to create that “Music” page I mentioned.  If I can’t figure that out, my next philosophical dilemma will be whether or not to start a PureVolume or *shudder* Myspace page to host my songs.

Pray for me.

My studio is very high tech.  I’ll attach some pictures so everyone can drool.  My gear consists of a couple of guitars, a 14-channel mixer plugged straight into my laptop via 1/8″ plug (no digital audio interface for me, baby!), an SM57 covered with a dress sock to reduce popping, a stack of books to place the mic on, and the requisite tangle of cables.  My headphones are busted so I just use external speakers for monitors and turn them down low enough so the SM57 doesn’t pick them up but I can still barely hear them when playing or singing.  I sit on the couch in front of the computer so I can make sure I get adequate volume without clipping and hit the space bar when I’m done with a take.  It would make a great documentary.

The only problem with this post is that my usually-tidy living room is a mess.