Oh man
Yeah. I have not been very productive lately. But I HAVE done a non-zero amount of work since the last time.
I tracked some pretty good guitar for The Ultimatum! Ultimately I wound up recording it in two passes, every other bar, because the string noise of my fingers sliding around was just TOO SQUEAKY. This was the simplest approach apart from buying coated strings or becoming a better guitarist. Or, you know, throwing the recording out and starting at a more manageable tempo. When I'm done, am I going to be upset that all these songs are like 10% too fast because I started recording them years ago?
But because of that, I finally dragged out the dulcimer today and got some good stuff recorded for Countdown, Ultimatum, Car Bomb. Plus some woodwinds & melodicas in Ultimatum, and some for Car Bomb too which I will probably wind up recording. Played it on clarinets, might be better on flute. Might be better if I suck it up and bow that part out, either on one of the broken violins my dad found on the street, or on like a guitar or something and don't tell anyone. Too high though, might be hard on a guitar. Wish I still had a mandolin. The part is too small to get someone else involved, already tried accordion and I didn't love that.
It's nice that I took like a week of not listening to some of this stuff because I realized what I didn't like. The robot effect in Countdown needs to be toned down a little bit. There is definitely a sweet spot that I haven't found yet. And I need to redo the accordion solo in Bagworm, even if that's just a matter of micing it differently.
Ripcord doesn't sound as good as it did last time I touched it. I think I should maybe redub some kick drum for it? Needs to be punchier overall, somehow. Actually I stopped writing for a while and turned down the banjo like all the way and it's better. Maybe I have to redo the banjo, AGAIN, or just suck it up and do it on a boring electric guitar. I would need to find the photo of how I set the pickup on the banjo, I really have no recollection. Maybe I can just chop and screw the existing track. Ugh.
Bowing or fluting in Car Bomb. Gotta pull a relevant timpani sample for Ultimatum, maybe redo a ukulele, go in to my space and do a lead vocal, possibly an electric guitar. More accordion maybe, but probably not. Oh, maybe autoharp instead.
Speaking of accordion, maybe that would work for the first instrumental in Compound Eye. I will eventually need to retake that whole vocal. Today it sounded better than I remember, but I'm sure I can get better still.
Not really. Sort of hiding from work but work is going to get crazy again soon. Was playing La Mulana instead of doing anything, but I got stuck and it seemed like the next step would take a lot of planning, so I played Pokemon instead. Music was fun for the couple hours I spent on it today though! Honestly I am ready for Daylight Savings Time, or wait, no, never mind, I'm thinking of the other Daylight Savings Time. Fuck. Can we just like, not do it this year? Because of all the [gestures broadly]?
I don't want to put work into a web page