Howard's Morning Routine

Not A Lot To Show After Week Of Recording

I have been glued to the Audacity program and "in the studio" just about all week, not even coming out to blog.

The money that I made last weekend, lasted me until about 9 p.m., last night. It is Thursday, and almost time to go back downtown (I could go tonight, being broke and all; and giveen that I only made 3 bucks last Thursday, here in Scotlandville..
Last Sunday morning, I got an all day bus pass.

First stop, LSU campus, where Howard ran into me at the Circle K, as he was coming out of the door with his noontime hot dog, and I was heading in to get a quart of Milwaukee's Best Ice, to take with me to the recording spot on campus.

I told him that I was seriously thinking of putting my thumb out the next (Mon) day. I had about 30 bucks on me, and that is about the best that I can expect to amass, living as I do; where I do. 

One guy alone gave me 25 bucks Saturday night, as he sat by me and we took turns playing the guitar. That guy doesn't come along every night.

Howard bought me a snack, and we sat under an umbrella and ate.

I had decided to take the risk of setting up behind the little brick wall next to a door on the Baptist Student Center, and make a recording.

The campus was pretty much deserted, either because of Mother's Day, Sunday, or the semester ending soon.

I figured that they wouldn't have a whole slew of LSU Campus Police patrolling on such a day. I am pretty much out of sight, after I make it the100 yards or so, across forbidden territory and duck into the doorway.

The best thing to come out of that session was just a jam, based loosely around the chords of a John Waite song -John played Saturday night in a club on Third Street, and the song got stuck in my head, even though I didn't see his gig. 

Here is 45 seconds of it, the "intro," recorded behind the police's backs...

I called it "The Fighting Authority Song," 

but went on to ruin it, back in Scotlandsville, by adding too much to the mix and learned more valuable lessons about recording in the process.

I learned that when adding echo to a section, for example; you lengthen that section because the last few echoes echo past the end of the section; they don't overlap what comes next; this pushes the music after it back in time the length of the last echo, maybe 120 milliseconds; a minuscule amount but enough to take the groove out of the rhythm. This explains some of problems that I was having with stuff falling off the beat, even by milliseconds.

This jam above is basically how I sound on guitar when just making stuff up and can go on indefinitely doing so, unless I run out of stuff.

After the 45 second intro; it fell apart, after I performed many experiments upon it, like cutting out bits of guitar solo, doubling the pitch and then pasting it somewhere else. Backwards.

I was aiming to create another Seargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, there behind the boarded up builiding...

I was like the gardener who digs up the seed to look at it every day, to see if it is growing, then buries it back. You can stunt the growth of the plant, that way.

Howard's Morning Routine

The whole week, I worked about from 10 in the morning until 10 at night on the studio, each day.

I learned about equalizing the acoustic guitar and about using noise removal to reduce the sound of cars going by on Scenic Highway...still, I have concluded that the Scotlandville "Studio" is just too noisy most of the time to record there seriously.

Not Ready For Facebook

I wound up trashing most of what I did the whole past week, and just took the lessons learned, ready to move forward.
Martin W. from West Virginia gave me the advice to focus upon my "strengths," which he assessed as being "guitar playing, minus the harp and effects."
I admit that I'm not where I want to be on the harp (I want to have every note memorized and be fluent in bending, so that I can play precise melodies, not just stuff that fits in and sounds -at least when putting a lot of energy into it- good). Also, it takes a bit of fortitude to start playing as soon as the green light goes on in the studio, blocking out fears of having to re-do the part over and over, should mistakes be made.

That being said, this morning, I grabbed the guitar, scribbled down a few lyrics and knocked out "Howard's Morning Routine," which plays to my "strength" of being able to make up "half humorous" stuff on the fly.

It is a raw first-take and has its glitches, but, I feel that if I tried to get the recording perfect, I would spend the whole day eventually ruining it; probably because after 3 hours, the novelty of the little ditty would have worn off.

Hopefully, some of the techniques that I experimented with all week will rear their heads and these songs might actually be approaching becoming "listen-able." That is my first goal: listen-able recordings!