Hey, whatdaya know, I'm blogging! Like I promised! Miracles never cease... this overlaps a bit with the Lemon Lady Life blog, which many posts will, as music is an integral part of every day and visa versa. I think? Did that make sense? Oh well.
I haven't checked the news today but now listening to CNN and it seems Liz Taylor has died? Wow, it hit me harder than I thought. The end of an era, I suppose. I grew up with National Velvet (which fueled my inborn love of horses further) and remember when she was a star brighter than any that shined in Hollywood. It's too bad that the current generation only remembers her as a drug addled celeb. She was far from that in the 'old days', as we can see on the Turner Classic Movies channel and others, when we watch some of her great, old movies. These days, in spite of her problems, she has done more for AIDS than almost any other (and certainly one of the first non-gay activists to do so), and brought the issue 'out' to Hollywood and the rest of us. Her life was filled with tragedy and illness but she carried on when many others would not have.
Didn't mean to write about that but I just heard...
Oh my, challenging day engineering. Ears and head not into it but somehow I made good progress, for the little I got to save. First, one of my cats, Sasha, stepped on a function key and ruined my entire user interface in Sonar Producer, the engineering software I was using at the time. Luckily I had just saved the file and so I just closed and opened it without saving and got my interface back. I worked for quite a while, had turned auto-save off due to what I was doing, and Sonar crashed. Usually when it crashes, it is a conflict with my outboard mixer/sound card and Sonar (and I highly suspect Vista), so Sonar stills works enough to at least save my project before I close it, but this time I got a horrid, loud noise and had to jump out. Couldn't even stop the audio engine, it had stopped responding. Ouch on the ears! So I had a 1 step forward, 5 steps back time today. But since I did make progress, it's all good. Learn from me, kiddies, don't play tricks with saving your project.
Got some good email feedback from Dave (the artist, David Forrest Small) after I sent him my first decent mix. We've been having a good dialogue in email about engineering and production, not just of this song but in general. He is learning to engineer and has done a great job (for a musician haha <- JUST JOKING, I know lots of great musicians who are great engineers). I am a good engineer who is not a great musician. I'm not playing music at the moment, just too busy, but I need to get back into it, I really love it and it is my dream to be a decent, anyway, musician. I already play guitar better than piano, but I'm a lot more disciplined than I was as a kid forced to take piano lessons. I think all I got out of that was learning to read music, which has served me well as an engineer and I've had to follow string charts to know when to punch in, etc.
Not to change the subject, but... I am so used to working in the studio, with one or more people giving feedback, which is sometimes a good thing, sometimes not, but working long distance is weird, even though I've been doing it for 5 years or so now. Gives me a chance to hone my producer chops and Dave encourages me to, he doesn't tell me what to do unless it is very integral to the song, he turns me loose until I need some feedback and I also defer to him as he is the 'client'. Things go slower, since he is not here with me, and it's a very different way of working. I think, all in all, it's better. I used to have so many 'producers' (guys with the money, the party goods, the connections, the friends, but no professional experience) over my shoulder; making a mess and puddles of drama, so I'll take this any day. One of the people I enjoyed working with in the studio was Dave and his band and manager and sadly, they are all scattered to the four winds. I'd rather only the bothersome ones were, of course!
Time to get on Second Life and take care of some business, have some fun and relaxation, then collapse for the day. I really need to take care of the web pages but nope, too much wasted time today and I have a busy day tomorrow, running around. Time to rest and get up early (well, early for me).
See ya soon! She said hopefully...
S.
I haven't checked the news today but now listening to CNN and it seems Liz Taylor has died? Wow, it hit me harder than I thought. The end of an era, I suppose. I grew up with National Velvet (which fueled my inborn love of horses further) and remember when she was a star brighter than any that shined in Hollywood. It's too bad that the current generation only remembers her as a drug addled celeb. She was far from that in the 'old days', as we can see on the Turner Classic Movies channel and others, when we watch some of her great, old movies. These days, in spite of her problems, she has done more for AIDS than almost any other (and certainly one of the first non-gay activists to do so), and brought the issue 'out' to Hollywood and the rest of us. Her life was filled with tragedy and illness but she carried on when many others would not have.
Didn't mean to write about that but I just heard...
Oh my, challenging day engineering. Ears and head not into it but somehow I made good progress, for the little I got to save. First, one of my cats, Sasha, stepped on a function key and ruined my entire user interface in Sonar Producer, the engineering software I was using at the time. Luckily I had just saved the file and so I just closed and opened it without saving and got my interface back. I worked for quite a while, had turned auto-save off due to what I was doing, and Sonar crashed. Usually when it crashes, it is a conflict with my outboard mixer/sound card and Sonar (and I highly suspect Vista), so Sonar stills works enough to at least save my project before I close it, but this time I got a horrid, loud noise and had to jump out. Couldn't even stop the audio engine, it had stopped responding. Ouch on the ears! So I had a 1 step forward, 5 steps back time today. But since I did make progress, it's all good. Learn from me, kiddies, don't play tricks with saving your project.
Got some good email feedback from Dave (the artist, David Forrest Small) after I sent him my first decent mix. We've been having a good dialogue in email about engineering and production, not just of this song but in general. He is learning to engineer and has done a great job (for a musician haha <- JUST JOKING, I know lots of great musicians who are great engineers). I am a good engineer who is not a great musician. I'm not playing music at the moment, just too busy, but I need to get back into it, I really love it and it is my dream to be a decent, anyway, musician. I already play guitar better than piano, but I'm a lot more disciplined than I was as a kid forced to take piano lessons. I think all I got out of that was learning to read music, which has served me well as an engineer and I've had to follow string charts to know when to punch in, etc.
Not to change the subject, but... I am so used to working in the studio, with one or more people giving feedback, which is sometimes a good thing, sometimes not, but working long distance is weird, even though I've been doing it for 5 years or so now. Gives me a chance to hone my producer chops and Dave encourages me to, he doesn't tell me what to do unless it is very integral to the song, he turns me loose until I need some feedback and I also defer to him as he is the 'client'. Things go slower, since he is not here with me, and it's a very different way of working. I think, all in all, it's better. I used to have so many 'producers' (guys with the money, the party goods, the connections, the friends, but no professional experience) over my shoulder; making a mess and puddles of drama, so I'll take this any day. One of the people I enjoyed working with in the studio was Dave and his band and manager and sadly, they are all scattered to the four winds. I'd rather only the bothersome ones were, of course!
Time to get on Second Life and take care of some business, have some fun and relaxation, then collapse for the day. I really need to take care of the web pages but nope, too much wasted time today and I have a busy day tomorrow, running around. Time to rest and get up early (well, early for me).
See ya soon! She said hopefully...
S.
