OM weblog

Just got a big box from www.Musiciansfriend.com that includes some boom stands, a bunch of mic cables and another Presonus FP10 (Firepod) so that we've effectively doubled our inputs into the the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and can now record eight tracks of drums live, and still have another eight left over for bass, guitars, keys and vocals. This means that the band can knock out recordings live now, (should that become a chosen path and we become tight enough to capture some 'keepers'.) It also means I can set up inputs for all players/instruments and not have to do switching back and forth.

Got the new hardware all patched all in, but haven't fired it up and checked the inputs in Sonar 8. Will get to that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I'm convinced of two things regarding drums: I need a second snare mic on the bottom to ad some bright crispness on the attack (this eighth channel neatly fills up one FP10: 1: Kick (Audix D6); 2: Snare top (Audix D1); 3: Snare bottom (Audix D2); 4: Hi-hat (Shure SM57); 5: Rack tom 1(Audix D2); 6: Rack tom 2(Audix D2); 7: Floor tom(Audix D4); 8: Overhead (Rode NT1 - thank you Bob! We still need to do some tequila.))

That's ONE thing. The other is that I need to lose the rim-mounted mic clips and do it all with boom stands to lose the 'coupling' between mic and rim via the clip. This should really help clean things up even further. The clips will be great for live performance.

Once that's all switched out, will need to reset the drum channels template to compensate for the lack of coupling, to include the snare bottom mic and to check functionality of the second FP10.

What's more is we will start cutting drum tracks as soon as this Wednesday, the night Irene leaves town. Jeff will come over to start tracking Tears In The Rain and I want to have it all set up at that time. So I need another five 5/8" mic clips plus another four boom stands... within the next three days. And I really need a strategy for what else gets tracked. Maybe Never Ends, Careful, Don't Get It and some lite percussion on All You Need Is Love. Depends entirely on what Jeff feels like is happening.

So, no rest for the wicked... especially in 100 degree temperatures. Yes, it's peaked between 108 and 110 degrees here in Portland over the last week. Record breaking temps.

The good news is that we'll have some brand new mixes with Jeff's drums within the next two weeks or so, so be looking for them up here. I'm stoked to get this done. This will move us that much closer to the Finish Line. (Not to be confused with the Swedish Line.)

Speaking of the Finish Line, I just ordered a book on Amazon by Bob Katz, called Mastering Audio, Second Edition: The art and the science, touted as the book on mastering. This is good news, as we're really that close to finishing up our project, and I want to get the mastering done just right. Mastering is a potentially very complex art - the process that occurs after all mixing is complete and includes sequencing of the songs, timing of the spaces between the songs, normalization (making each song at similar levels) final EQ, compression and limiting of the product and getting it ready for production - artwork, credits and all! Wow, Never Ends may actually have an ending in sight, after all.

We've decided to drop Circles from this particular project, as not critical and too much work left to do (altough I really like the guitar and the lyrics). So we've still got Steven Trask's Midnight Radio to record, along with Heed The Call, and a remake of our own (TZ's) Miss You Babe.

Any ideas for final CD artwork? It really is time to get this stuff dialed in. You get the artistic concept right and you get accredited on the new, upcoming (multi-platinum fer sher) One Moment CD! You may even qualify to win a guest appearance with the band on MTV! (Does MTV even have anything to do with music anymore?)

One Moment: Never Ends. What does that CD look like? Let us know!

Peace - -=sf=-