What Did You...12-07-03

[cyrusjulian]

My third day straight mixing my band's first full length album (lack of showers and sleep). Probably gonna have to skip out on work a few more days to get it finished. Everytime I've needed a break between songs or feeling worn out, I've had to come here to the TapeOp board to remind myself I'm not the only one who's crazy.

(crazy in a good way)

Cyrus

[Professor]

Let's see - I ran to the 'Shack because a power drop out caused a wall wart to die on the Gefen monitor/USB extender in the studio, and I didn't know until I arrived for the session. Then spent one hour tracking a five movement piece for solo clarinet that included two movements where the player plays into a grand piano with the pedal held down for resonance. Then spent another 5 hours recording an opera for 8 voices and piano reduction that was tracked in little 4-8 bar chunks. Then ate some pizza and watched Back to the Future III, at the studio, naturally. Then spent a couple hours rearranging cables in the patchbay, connecting up the cabling for the Grace preamp, building another short snake for the Tascam surround monitor controller and finally getting that thing running. Then listened to a bit of surround music, messed around with the setup in the monitor controller, etc. And now I'm in my office visiting TapeOp!?!? I think I better go home.

-Jeremy

[Recording Engineer]

I JUST finished a 14-hour rap tracking sesion in my studio... Luckily, I've got the next 2 days for recovery...

[Bear]

I tracked an ass-load of vocals until my voice was too hoarse to keep going. Then I came in a finished editing my most recent short story. Now I'm gonna eat a ton of oreos and pass out.

[inverseroom]

I did some work on a project I just started--an effort to record 100 songs of between 5 and 90 seconds in length. I added acoustic guitar to a tune called "The Golf Courses of North Dakota" and vocals, hysterically flanged through a DeltaLab Super Time Line, to a song called "The Mutterer." I also tried to learn how to use the insert effects on my standalone recorder, which are weirdly inconvenient to use, and more or less figured it out. Also I swore for fifteen minutes when I discovered that the Behringer Denoiser I bought new had already been open and in fact DID NOT WORK AT ALL. On balance not a bad day.

[supafuzz]

I drove through the blizzard on friday in a u-haul van to some godforsaken spot in bklyn to pick up a huge heavy crate..drove it back uptown and almost didn't make it up the hill to my apt..got the super to help me haul it upstairs

Unpacked my new/old Soundtracs Topaz 32/8 and set it up...

spent the weekeend wiring it up and went to the shack for some cheap ass speakers for a second refrence $19.95 each [they sound pretty good..they're not the metal ones though..Shack is one of the lamest places on earth..I saw a pair i really wanted for 29.99 each and finally got someone's attention long enough to get me a pair ..when they get it back to the checkout they tell me it's $39.99 each! the sign was for an old sale that ended a month ago!!! aggggrrrhhhhh....

Once I got over the Miami Vice color scheme..I found a great board with tons of flexability that sounds really good!!!

I feel almost partially semi-professional now..

My first project is mixes of my new cd without vocals and other stuff..
just drums /bass and maybe a couple of little things...

This is so I can go out to promote the cd in smaller places by myself...with just a guitar cd player or boombox and small p/a...

A perfect weekend for snowbound nyc

harley

www.harleyfine.com

[XXGABEXX]

Mrs. XXGABEXX and I spent the morning out at breakfast, then did some quick shopping and headed home to further destroy the kitchen. We removed all the doors and drawer fronts and then proceeded to sand the cabinets for a few hours. Then I played guitar for the rest of the night in between the Simpsons and Arrested Development.

But I did suddenly come up with a vocal melody for a song I wrote literally 11 years ago! I couldn't believe it. It totally boggled my brain.

-GABE

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i was down at a family get together in maryland and was supposed to fly back to boston at noon. and was then gonna run home, edit some stuff for a few hours, then record my singer for a few, then set up drums and mics to get ready to record all day today. i was stoked.

ha.

since there was no flying into boston, my brother and i ended up taking amtrak overnight. got home a half hour ago. haven't slept for 26 hours. mildly hallucinating. not about to record anything. bummer. good night.

[CDSager]

i recorded a chamber orchestra in a big concert hall. it was a long concert and i was lonely up in the booth. i think it may be haunted.

then i made click tracks and did some editing/mixing on an interlude. interludes are SOOOO in right now.

then i ran an over dub session that went until 6 or so in the morning. lots of guitar and synth overdubs. and even another(!) theremin track.

then i did some editing. lining up synth bass notes to change EXACTLY with the kik. fun.

then i went to a class and took a test, and now i am in a computer lab surrounded by people who actually slept last night.

soon i will go to another class, then do more editing.

then i might sleep.



rock and roll

[joeysimms]

worked on mixing some stuff my band recorded. It sounded good till i listened to a reference cd... Now i'm just feeling crabby.

Same here, but not crabby, it's (now) obvious what I need to work on to get the mix where it ought to be. I'm thoroughly convinced that when you mix stuff you recorded a large percentage of the parts on, it takes 2 mix sessions to get it there..

[llmonty]

took apart my recently given to me teac 1/4" for its first cleaning in years. Looks like the drive belt needs replacing too.

[stapes]

I recorded a new song for the band The Octopus Project on saturday and sunday. Cool electronic/rock hybrid that defies all explanation. They're absolutely amazing live, so I'm trying to capture as much of that as possible for this record. Not really for this song, though. It's kind of a Mars Volta/dub sorta song with lotsa guitars and multiple drum ovedubs. We tracked some drums to the 1" 8 track, and then dumped that into the tools to make a loop. Much easier getting drum sounds when you can whack some tape first. Well, once we got the loop going, we tracked the bass, guitar, and keys live. Got the perfect take of that, and then started to do some drum overdubs. Ended up doing FOUR drum overdubs for certain parts of the song. I love doing drum overdubs, but it takes a lot of concentration. Ended up doing a basic four mic set up for the main drum part, and then bunch of one or two mic mucho compressed type sounds. I got one of the coolest crunchy snare tracks with the stapes running pretty hot into a hamptone tube pre into an 1176 that I just made with all four buttons in. Then we did a bunch of keyboards like farfisa into a big muff, and rhodes into filter factory. Then guitars, mostly Les Paul into a custom made fuzz box into echoplex into a fender twin, but we also had a lot of luck with a danelectro into fuzz/echoplex into a 1957 vibrolux. The song is pretty huge now, and is going to be really fun to mix.

Erik Wofford

[black ark]

I cooked dinner for some good friends and had some quality down time! Roasted chicken, sweet potatoes, salad, apple pie...

ya, sunday's a good one for cooking... i made "rockin' lentil soup" for the girl and headed off to check out a band i'm going to record in a couple of weeks.

just hung out with them and recorded the practice on a little cassette deck.

sounds good this morning. it's gonna be fun!

-paul m.

[Kilroy]

I just set up my drums and drum mics so when I get outaa this place (Highscool) today i can go record some stuff.

[aurelialuz]

laundry.

alex