Wow, a whole day without
26 Jul 2001Wow, a whole day without making an update. And so it begins!
Well, we ran into some really annoying problems in the land of recording.
It turns out recording each drum mic track individually one at a time from the 8-track to the computer won’t work.
This is because of the variable nature of the 8-track’s motor, and the fact that it doesn’t play at a consistent speed (just by virtue of being a mechanical device). So if you record one track, go back, and record another – they don’t match up. SMPTE or MIDI time-coding would fix this, of course, but that 8-track doesn’t seem to support that stuff.
So, we are forced to just take a mix of the drums (through my bitchin mackie mixer) and record the mix as a whole as one track. This sucks, because we can’t compress and EQ the overheads separate from the kick and snare, but oh well. I did it in the mixer, and it still sounds great. We’ll just have to re-record if we want to make changes.
Problem #2 occurred when my bass was distorting going into my soundcard for some reason. I have no idea why. It’s like it’s overdriving the input itself or something.
I really REALLY want one of those 8-in 2-out soundcards. I realized I don’t need 8 outputs.. I don’t need SPDIF in/out, I don’t REALLY even need MIDI. There’s one basically like that for $199, which is dirt cheap, but I am paranoid buying a soundcard for so cheap. There’s gotta be something wrong with it.
The last thing I need is to sit trying to figure out where a buzz or hum or static is coming from only to find out it’s the actual soundcard I bought.
Anyways, that all said and done, the tracks are really sounding good. Steve laid down piano tracks on Suzanne and along with my bass, it already sounds REALLY full and dynamic, and we don’t even have guitar and vocals yet. Should be fun.