From Magna Carta:
A Message From Steve Morse about the new album
In the studio, I've got most of the parts done, and now I'm finally sitting back and listening, replacing some things, like most of the original guide tracks, or roughs. In the past, I've always kept one or two solos from these type of tracks, mainly for my own amusement, but also to impart a relaxed, free flowing feel when it's there. One of the big decisions is whether to have the trio songs sound like a live arrangement, or put in some backup overdubs. So, I think that some will be with layers of sounds, and some will sound like the basic trio.
I've been trying to work on a couple of acoustic things that will be on the album. Two were recorded some time ago. The challenge is to make the recordings sound good, but not too good.....that is, I want to keep the same relaxed feel and sound, but clean up the sound a bit, since I recorded them one night long ago without adjusting the microphone very well. So, do I redo them with a good sound, or leave the feel that I like with the squeaks, noises, and slightly muffled tone? Well, neither. I will try to leave the original tracks, since I always like leaving spontaneous things on records. But, I will try to change the compression and e.q. to give a more pleasant sound.
So, last night about 4 a.m., I figured a way around a subtle latency problem I was having with some compression. I am using the fastest computer that I could buy, so I find it to be software related, but I finally made a three step process to get foolproof original timing......after some experimentation.
I continue to try to salvage data from a damaged hard drive, and it's corrupted backup, (drive 2 was good, but it copied the bad stuff from the damaged drive 1.....) and have run every diagnostic program I could get, until I realized a basic computer law.....Sometimes it's better to pick your battles. So, I have been redoing some of the guitar stuff that got lost, since I would have to import the files that exist one at a time from the recovered parts of the disk, match tones, and then I would never know exactly where the original timing was. It's all easy enough to get it close, but it just seems more interesting to redo it than spend any more time in front of the monitor without guitar in hand.
The good news was that I had all the drums and many guitars on a 3rd hard disk, and have reconstructed the album on my new 4th and 5th hard drives......as well as finally learned not to just copy 20 gigs of stuff to another drive without checking the last save for errors.....
Sounds really musical, doesn't it? Actually, for someone working alone most of the time, this isn't a bad way to go, but for a band playing live in the studio there's a strong reminiscing for a 10 pound reel of tape. Bottom line is that the album is sounding good, and I'm still looking at making my deadline.
A Message From Steve Morse about the new album
In the studio, I've got most of the parts done, and now I'm finally sitting back and listening, replacing some things, like most of the original guide tracks, or roughs. In the past, I've always kept one or two solos from these type of tracks, mainly for my own amusement, but also to impart a relaxed, free flowing feel when it's there. One of the big decisions is whether to have the trio songs sound like a live arrangement, or put in some backup overdubs. So, I think that some will be with layers of sounds, and some will sound like the basic trio.
I've been trying to work on a couple of acoustic things that will be on the album. Two were recorded some time ago. The challenge is to make the recordings sound good, but not too good.....that is, I want to keep the same relaxed feel and sound, but clean up the sound a bit, since I recorded them one night long ago without adjusting the microphone very well. So, do I redo them with a good sound, or leave the feel that I like with the squeaks, noises, and slightly muffled tone? Well, neither. I will try to leave the original tracks, since I always like leaving spontaneous things on records. But, I will try to change the compression and e.q. to give a more pleasant sound.
So, last night about 4 a.m., I figured a way around a subtle latency problem I was having with some compression. I am using the fastest computer that I could buy, so I find it to be software related, but I finally made a three step process to get foolproof original timing......after some experimentation.
I continue to try to salvage data from a damaged hard drive, and it's corrupted backup, (drive 2 was good, but it copied the bad stuff from the damaged drive 1.....) and have run every diagnostic program I could get, until I realized a basic computer law.....Sometimes it's better to pick your battles. So, I have been redoing some of the guitar stuff that got lost, since I would have to import the files that exist one at a time from the recovered parts of the disk, match tones, and then I would never know exactly where the original timing was. It's all easy enough to get it close, but it just seems more interesting to redo it than spend any more time in front of the monitor without guitar in hand.
The good news was that I had all the drums and many guitars on a 3rd hard disk, and have reconstructed the album on my new 4th and 5th hard drives......as well as finally learned not to just copy 20 gigs of stuff to another drive without checking the last save for errors.....
Sounds really musical, doesn't it? Actually, for someone working alone most of the time, this isn't a bad way to go, but for a band playing live in the studio there's a strong reminiscing for a 10 pound reel of tape. Bottom line is that the album is sounding good, and I'm still looking at making my deadline.
Steve Morse is da bomb!
