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Got almost nothing done on the canoe--a little sanding on the inside (so the varnish will have some scratches to cling to, when the time comes) and cut out a few circles of cherry with the hole saw to make through holes, but it's not very good quality cherry and kept splitting, so I gave up before I was really finished.
But I did think up a couple of ringtones yesterday and record them, first in the house while I was working out the parts, and then this morning, in the padded room at Carson Newman for the first time.
The padded room is better than anything I have at home, but as a recording studio it leaves something to be desired. I made a foam plug (hard foam glued to squishy foam) for the ventilation hole, which gives straight out onto the tiled hall, and that helps, and learning they could turn off the blower helped even more, because a vent grille in the ceiling right outside that hole was rattling in the airflow, and the foam plug didn't actually fully screen out the sound. However when someone has a quiet conversation at the other end of the hall, I can hear it in the padded room, vent plugged, door shut, and all. I don't notice it on the recorded tracks, so maybe it's not being picked up, or maybe it's so far below the level of the recording that it's basically not noticeable, but it's a bit disconcerting.
I also discovered that the Zoom metronome, which I had been using to align various parts that all needed to start at once, was getting on the recordings. It seems unlikely to me that there would be cross-contamination within the unit itself, which means probably the culprit is my earbuds--probably the clicks are leaking out and getting picked up by the mic. I was actually fairly far along when I discovered this, and I threw out everything I had done to that point and started over. I also tried doing a scratch track with the metronome on, then doing a real track to the scratch track, without the metronome--and I *still* got the clicks (though fainter.) It was like even the ghost clicks were loud enough to get picked up by the mic. I have got a set of earbuds that are meant to seal out noise, rather than to let you hear around them (I mostly favor the hear around them type, because being unable to hear the world around me makes me feel very strange.). Maybe those will work better. I can set the metronome to be a bit quieter too.
Also, I discovered that I have to put Pearl outside when I'm recording vocals--certain notes make her ring in response, and the mic was picking that up, and furthermore her flimsy cardboard-and-vinyl case doesn't seem to muffle that effect properly. Fortunately I'm recording in one of three editing bays with a common hall, and the door to the hall is locked, so even when she's outside the booth she's still under lock and key.
There doesn't appear to be any demand for the space this summer (the entire floor was basically deserted most of the time) so I have signed up for Wednesday and Friday mornings next week. I kind of figured I might get something accomplished this morning, or I might just be messing about, learning by trial and error. However I did try recording both vocals and octave mandolin and it appeared to work well. I don't know enough about what tracks should sound like to be sure, but they sound okay to me.
I am now trying to learn enough about Audacity to do a decent job putting them together, and then enough about Bandcamp to set up a Bandcamp page and upload the ringtones. When they are available, I will let people know--Bandcamp lets you listen to things without buying, so I'd be interested to know if other people find them amusing or whether they're just evidence of my weird sense of humor. I thought they were pretty funny yesterday, but after singing them over and over this morning I'm no longer as sure as I was.
But I did think up a couple of ringtones yesterday and record them, first in the house while I was working out the parts, and then this morning, in the padded room at Carson Newman for the first time.
The padded room is better than anything I have at home, but as a recording studio it leaves something to be desired. I made a foam plug (hard foam glued to squishy foam) for the ventilation hole, which gives straight out onto the tiled hall, and that helps, and learning they could turn off the blower helped even more, because a vent grille in the ceiling right outside that hole was rattling in the airflow, and the foam plug didn't actually fully screen out the sound. However when someone has a quiet conversation at the other end of the hall, I can hear it in the padded room, vent plugged, door shut, and all. I don't notice it on the recorded tracks, so maybe it's not being picked up, or maybe it's so far below the level of the recording that it's basically not noticeable, but it's a bit disconcerting.
I also discovered that the Zoom metronome, which I had been using to align various parts that all needed to start at once, was getting on the recordings. It seems unlikely to me that there would be cross-contamination within the unit itself, which means probably the culprit is my earbuds--probably the clicks are leaking out and getting picked up by the mic. I was actually fairly far along when I discovered this, and I threw out everything I had done to that point and started over. I also tried doing a scratch track with the metronome on, then doing a real track to the scratch track, without the metronome--and I *still* got the clicks (though fainter.) It was like even the ghost clicks were loud enough to get picked up by the mic. I have got a set of earbuds that are meant to seal out noise, rather than to let you hear around them (I mostly favor the hear around them type, because being unable to hear the world around me makes me feel very strange.). Maybe those will work better. I can set the metronome to be a bit quieter too.
Also, I discovered that I have to put Pearl outside when I'm recording vocals--certain notes make her ring in response, and the mic was picking that up, and furthermore her flimsy cardboard-and-vinyl case doesn't seem to muffle that effect properly. Fortunately I'm recording in one of three editing bays with a common hall, and the door to the hall is locked, so even when she's outside the booth she's still under lock and key.
There doesn't appear to be any demand for the space this summer (the entire floor was basically deserted most of the time) so I have signed up for Wednesday and Friday mornings next week. I kind of figured I might get something accomplished this morning, or I might just be messing about, learning by trial and error. However I did try recording both vocals and octave mandolin and it appeared to work well. I don't know enough about what tracks should sound like to be sure, but they sound okay to me.
I am now trying to learn enough about Audacity to do a decent job putting them together, and then enough about Bandcamp to set up a Bandcamp page and upload the ringtones. When they are available, I will let people know--Bandcamp lets you listen to things without buying, so I'd be interested to know if other people find them amusing or whether they're just evidence of my weird sense of humor. I thought they were pretty funny yesterday, but after singing them over and over this morning I'm no longer as sure as I was.
