Sidingsound

Thursday round-up

Just to reassure you all, dear readers, that I am still alive here (!), and to reward you for your patience, a couple of quick updates:

• Managed to squeeze in a bit of vocal recording for the CD project track "When The Sun Goes Off To Sleep" last night; however, I wasn't pleased with either my performance or the sound quality of the recording (of which more in the next point), so I'm going to give it another go in the next couple of days. After all, if I'm actually going to do anything with these tracks in the end, I'd rather they were the best performances I can manage—one great piece of advice I picked up from a more experienced recording musician I know.
• I have got to figure out the effects section of my 2488mkII, and quickly. At the very least, I need to know how to get the noise suppressor working, to cut out the hiss and extraneous noise when I use the mike and external compressor, as there's no way I can leave such distractions on record if I'm going for a 'proper' CD recording (as opposed to demos which only friends/family will hear). It's just a shame that compared to my previous multitrack (a Boss BR-8, which admittedly was designed to be utterly idiot-proof), I find the 2488mkII's effects facilities rather impenetrable, but I'm going to have to get the hang of them pretty rapidly if I want to make progress with the CD project.
• The drum lessons have hit their first snag: I'm having trouble getting my arms and legs to act truly independently. Granted, I have the rudiments down fairly well already, and I think I could, at a pinch, knock out a straight 4/4 pattern. However, my teacher has set me a particular exercise (alternating right/left single-stroke rolls on beats 1-4, with bass drum on beat 1 and hi-hat pedal on 3), and suddenly I turn into one of those clockwork robot toys that kids used to get for Christmas in the 1960s, except without the precision. I'm trying to practice this in the evenings (and I'm increasingly realising I'm just not used to practicing at musical things, so it's not easy), but overall I suspect I'm going to have to work quite hard at this before I get it right. And I'm starting another OU course module next week...
• Drum-related note (sorry): I'm quietly hoping to have amassed sufficient moolah by Christmas, to be able to add a Roland HD1 electronic kit to the Sidingsound studio for Christmas. Fitting it into the room may require some shuffling-around of the current furniture (even though it's probably the most compact electronic kit out there that you'd want to own), but at least I have a bit of time to figure that out.
• And just to round all this off, I'm thinking of posting a quick 'tour' of the studio soon, though at about 10'x6', a single article should be enough...

Labels: drums, music, recording, studio

posted by Tim @ 18:02