Limbo Ponderings

My left ear continues to be bloked and has also begun to swell up quite considerably whilst itching like a mother. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might well be infected (shock!). Fortunately, I'm seeing th nurse for the syringing tomorrow, so it should get sorted.

Meanwhile, I have discovered how much of my life rotates around my hearing and I'm so bored I'm crawling out of my skin. There's only so many DVDs I can watch.

However, I was thinking today about something so I thought I'd share it:

I once read a Tori Amos interview which said that she fell in love with her husband when he came in to engineer the recording of Boys For Pele, which is a record all about her breakup with her former boyfriend (Eric Rosse) whom she was with for seven years. Assuming this is true (there seem to be a lot of Tori inconsistencies in interviews), I find the concept of Marcus (the engineer) falling in love with this woman whilst spending every day wading through her passion for someone else quite bizarre. But I love the image.

The Challenge: Officially on hold

So, I havent really updated properly since Tuesday. I have a very good reason. I haven't been working. Because I've gone deaf.

Now, this really really freaks me out, but I'm fairly certain it's temporary. I've been undergoing treatments leading up to an ear canal irrigation procedure on Monday 18th, and last Monday my requirements changed from warmed olive oil to ear drops. They seem to be causing some residual blockages in both ears, which make hearing things in depth (and in crowded atmospheres) difficult. However, today, I got a really itchy left ear and accidentally managed to push the newly soft wax deeper into my ear and am now totally deaf in my left ear. I'm kicking myself, and not realy enjoying the experience.

However, it means I can't trust my hearing for mixing or setting up mics, so I'm taking a fairly obligatory break. :( Hopefully the procedure on Monday will fix everything completely. I'm terrified of being stuck like this.

The Challenge: Day Nine

As I've finished for the day, I thought I'd update on the actual challenge day, rather than tomorrow. I have spent 5 hours trying to get a good piano take, fairly unsuccessfully due to a number of stupid things I have done, the worst of which was probably neglecting to eat at the right time. The others include recording 12 minutes of nothing because I forgot to switch from playback to record on the desk and, I've just realised, mic'ing the hammers and wondering why I get an annoying clicking noise during the quiet moments.

I'm still pretty pissed about what happened on Sunday, but I'm fighting the urge to just give up and am currently listening to the track (which I really should start referring to by its name at some point). I have decided that the instrumental mix is a bit weak, but it was my first attempt at any mix ever, so I'm not holding it against me. I actually suspected this on Saturday, but couldnt face spending another 10 hours remixing it. I think that's what I foretell for my future tomorrow.

So much for not being time consuming.

The candles I bought which I only burn when working on this track are about 5/6 gone, which constitutes, according to the packaging, just under 40 hours. I'm betting they'll be gone before I finish mixing this.

The Challenge: Day Eight

I wake up still fairly upset over the mistreatment of both myself and my work from the previous day, as well as totally knackered due to very late night, as previously mentioned. My irrational emotional side cannot face working on, or even listening to, the track I'd been working on, so I resolve to do something else entirely. I used my time to hunt down some more mix stands with which to record piano more effectively (I hoped) and do some much needed piano practice. Not, I might hasten to add, because I needed to /practice/ but because playing the piano is the only way for me to get through any kind of emotinoal trouble, especially the kind caused by previously mentioned persons.

Monday is my film night, so I go out and relax with some truely atrocious independent short films and, fortunately, some good ones.

The Challenge: Day Seven

I had some other demands on my time yesterday, but I attempted to work the compression unit until it sounded the way I wanted to. Didn't quite get there, but it's a work in progress.

My boyfriend came over last night, and I played the STILL unfinished track 9after a week of listening to it, I just want it done) to him. In hindsight, I should have just spent the day here finishing it. Long story short, he doesn't like it. He feels that it's flat, although he does think the arrangement's good. His is the one good opinion I am always (totally and consistently unsuccessfully) hoping for. And every time it doesn't come, I am left feeling that the track that i was so proud o ten minutes before is total rubbish. This time, I was also left feeling untalented and what I am doing feels totally pointless.

As a Day Seven Special Preview, as of 12:37 this afternoon, I am still crying intermittently and feel completely decimated. I don't want to work on this today, and the fact that I was up until 3am trying to explain how I feel every time he does this to him and am therefore totally exhausted isn't helping. I am, however, determined that this isn't going to stop me doing what I genuinely enjoy doing. It'll just take me a while to get back into it with any kind of enjoyment.

I am currently ignoring the implications for my relatinoship of the above statement.

So I have a new Challenge, to start as of the end of this one (which is Sunday December 17th). I am not going to play him everything, but I am going to work every day. I am not going to play him anything until I have written, recorded and mixed at least 4 new songs and recorded and mixed two that I have written but not yet recorded. At that point, or the point at which I feel able to face this kind of total emotional wreckage again, I will play them all to him in one half hour. However, I will play them all to other people first, as the comments from my other friends is really helping to keep me afloat.

I would like to think that by the point I play them to him, he'll be impressed, that maybe I'll be good enough for him then. However, I'd also like to think that by that point I'll have worked my way out of this horrific victim position and would no longer need his approval either way.

The Challenge: Day Six

So, I began yesterday with a heavy head, believing that I needed to basically rewrite the whole track, and had o idea where to start. After a couple of hours of wrestling in it and changing almost every vocal part in it, I decided that as it was almost an entirely different song, i should at least finish mixing the first version of the song just so I had it as a reference.

I opened the second, partially mixed, file (the first file contains all the original instrumentation separately, the second file contains the original instrumentation mixed together as one track, layered with instrumentation I then added to it and, most importantly, all the takes of the various vocal parts I'd been trying the day before to replace the original chorus).

On hitting play without checking what it was actually set to play (I usually have a variety of tracks playing and the rest muted, to see what's missing and what's necessary. Oddly, it played a combination of two new chorus parts I'd been trying, but not the original. They really worked together, and the whole track sort of fell into place. Awesometastic on a stick. It required about 5 new pieces of instrumentation, and a variety of new vocal parts in the background, and it's going to be a bitch to mix together well today, but man am I happy it's all settled. No more recording to do (except, possibly, one new overdub to replace a vocal in which I have just ignored the key signature), just mixing.

The track was unveiled last night to two friends, both of whom approved, which was a relief. Playing new songs to people has always been nerve wracking for me (though never from stage).

On a less useful note, I think I ran over the cable from my DT100s with my chair yesterday and now the right side intermittently cuts out and crackles. SIGH.

The Challenge: Day Six

much much to say, but 2 am. sleep now. update in morning.

The Challenge: Day Five

Yesterday, as I'm sure you gathered from the preview, was more than a little frustrating. Having mixed the instruments together until it sounded really good, I got to work on the vocals. I had some guide takes in place already, but wanted to get some good final takes to replace them. It was my inability to get takes that had any life in them which made me realise that the parts were wrong. More specifically, the chorus (which was, at that point, the only origina part of the track left from the beginning of the writing process) just didn't work. The melody was a little dull, but more importantly I had no connection to the lyrics.

I found something that (I think, though all confidence in the track has now disappeared entirely) works much better, but obviously needs a double chorus rather than a single, and makes one of the parts fit badly, so i need an interlude or an entirely new middle eight. Essentially this all means starting again. Joy. Got a few tracks of new instrumentation laid down last night before giving up exhausted and crawling into bed.

The Challenge: Day Five - Special Preview

Fuck.

The Challenge: Day Four

Actually got an early start as I wanted to start mixing the track. Very quickly discovered that my desk is wired incorrectly. Joy. No smart arse coments about how I didn't notice that earlier, please. Knowing that i had about 8 hours of mixing to do that day, and a desk to rewire with no idea whether the problem lay with the cables or the strips themselves, I went to a movie.

However, I did come back and work, like a good girl. After a good five or so hours of mixing the instrumental parts, I realised that it was seriously missing parts (which was better than halfway through when I was convinced that the whole thing was utter bollocks because EQing instruments out of context is no fun). However, I managed to sort that out VERY successfully and then realise dhow exhausted I was and went to bed. Today I have five tasks to be going on with, and then the track should *fingers crossed* be finished, and I might even leave the house for a significant period of time on Saturday to celebrate.

The Challenge: Day Three

I woke up with the strong urge to work, but had totally forgotten that I'd promised to meet someone in town for coffee. I found myself instead of in my cosy lil studio stuck trying to find eardrops in a labyrinthine Boots, about fifty times the size of any normal high street pharmacy, surrounded by the bane of the earth (hoardes of christmas shoppers) and, due to the totally illogical layout of the shop, confronted with the Relics Of Bintishness. By which I mean the stand of torture weapons which women sometimes use (though how is often beyond me) to make themselves look pretty. I gave up forming designs on such pursuits when I read a particularly harsh Bliss article about how, by not stripping away your cuticules (surely they're designed to be there?), you were doomed to be unattractive, unpopular and unhygienic. Add to that a virtual cacophonic medly of "festive tunes" and I was ready to kill.

On finally arriving home again (having quite unfairly bitten the head off the person I was meeting for coffee), I settled down to work, and the first 5 hours pretty much flew by. I got a lot done - one track is pretty much finished, though I'm going to fiddle with it a bit more today and obviously it still needs mixing. Before beginning this challenge, I cleaned the house and set up the studio the way I really wanted it to be. Now, as well as being strewn with glasses, bits of paper, cables and more instruments than is healthy, there are white fairy lights and altar candles on every flat surface with space (which, granted, isn't that many). Once it gets dark and I light up the place, I feel totally and home, and grateful to be in this space, which is something I havent had before here, or even generally after dark. I am looking forward to the winter and the dark nights sitting here. Results are the aim, but the environment is a bonus and an encouragement.

The Challenge: Day Two

I didnt get a lot of sleep Monday night (due to some nightmares which left me twitching nervously in the dark, followed by a ridiculously early parcel delivery), so it took a while to get going yesterday. However, once I did, I got a lot of work done. I got stuck on what I was working on yesterday again, so I switched to taking apart I track I abandoned a while ago. It's now working quite well. Needs more instrumentation. Job for today.

The Challenge: Day One

I have set myself a musical two week challenge. I will be updating with my progress the daily with news from the previous working day.

Day One:

Continued to battle problem track from the beginning of October (as yet unnamed). Have made some progress, I believe, though unrecorded as yet. Very satisfying. Have also started on ideas for rhythm track of The Sickness, which will be based on guitar noise rather than synthesised percussion. Classical piano work complete, though yet to be recorded.