Banned practice
Practices are officially underway, and I've made the radical choice to turn everybody's mics up so, shock of shocks we can now hear Elizabeth on the frame drum.
I'm liking the way the new lineup "feels." It sure is different, though, but I think we'll adjust. Jill's coming up to speed, and she's so far been able to just nail those vocal harmonies and such right out of the gate (so much so that at one point, I was so stunned I entirely forgot what I was supposed to be singing). I've been throwing a lot at her - aside from all the normal stuff I've also been asking her to learn phonetic urdu and figure out how to ornament a ghazal that is just barely in her range. Tough stuff.
I'm also noticing a newfound assertiveness on the part of the band members and you know what? That is so freaking awesome.
Don't get me wrong, we've got a long uphill climb yet, but I'm feeling pretty good about all this.
In other musical news, I'm plotting another EP release (although for what, exactly, I don't know - I've got B-side material up the wazoo but leadoff tracks remain mysterious) and I'm starting to plot album 4. Each time now the album recording process ebgins a little later - half of AMDM was already written when Sublimation came out, and I had two tracks from Excursions written when AMDM hit the shelves - this time I haven't started yet. But I have plans. I've been upping the ante on every album so far, so I figure I might as well do so again. This will require some significant legwork, research, planning and management, though. And I'm going to need to become a LOT more familiar with a few pieces of software.
(I also need to finish a few studio upgrades...mmmm Logic Pro 8/Studio. And complete the building of my vocal isolation area...mmm good, solid MDF - I picked that because I'm better at working with it than drywall.)
I did, of course, think about doing some mixing in 5.1, because that would be sooo cooooool, but then I decided to price 5.1 monitoring systems. Yikes! The cheap ones are like $3k. Oh, sure, I could get a coupla cheap speakers and hook it up and go, but, seriously, if I were to do this, I would do this right. I think I'm past the point where I want to just go half-assed into music-tech arenas. Although my desire to eventually get to this point does narrow my choices for future audio interfaces and such - if I do multichannel, I'll need multiple outs.
fun fun fun!
I'm liking the way the new lineup "feels." It sure is different, though, but I think we'll adjust. Jill's coming up to speed, and she's so far been able to just nail those vocal harmonies and such right out of the gate (so much so that at one point, I was so stunned I entirely forgot what I was supposed to be singing). I've been throwing a lot at her - aside from all the normal stuff I've also been asking her to learn phonetic urdu and figure out how to ornament a ghazal that is just barely in her range. Tough stuff.
I'm also noticing a newfound assertiveness on the part of the band members and you know what? That is so freaking awesome.
Don't get me wrong, we've got a long uphill climb yet, but I'm feeling pretty good about all this.
In other musical news, I'm plotting another EP release (although for what, exactly, I don't know - I've got B-side material up the wazoo but leadoff tracks remain mysterious) and I'm starting to plot album 4. Each time now the album recording process ebgins a little later - half of AMDM was already written when Sublimation came out, and I had two tracks from Excursions written when AMDM hit the shelves - this time I haven't started yet. But I have plans. I've been upping the ante on every album so far, so I figure I might as well do so again. This will require some significant legwork, research, planning and management, though. And I'm going to need to become a LOT more familiar with a few pieces of software.
(I also need to finish a few studio upgrades...mmmm Logic Pro 8/Studio. And complete the building of my vocal isolation area...mmm good, solid MDF - I picked that because I'm better at working with it than drywall.)
I did, of course, think about doing some mixing in 5.1, because that would be sooo cooooool, but then I decided to price 5.1 monitoring systems. Yikes! The cheap ones are like $3k. Oh, sure, I could get a coupla cheap speakers and hook it up and go, but, seriously, if I were to do this, I would do this right. I think I'm past the point where I want to just go half-assed into music-tech arenas. Although my desire to eventually get to this point does narrow my choices for future audio interfaces and such - if I do multichannel, I'll need multiple outs.
fun fun fun!