Nevermind the Ice and Snow
By Tone Matrix on February 10, 2024 11:44 pm
This week’s inspiration comes from the honorable JWH’s week 5 track, “Let’s keep going”.
I enjoyed the song so much that it became an ear worm and inspired me to learn the chords so I could happily noodle along.
Something about those guitar bends and the heartfelt lyrics made me feel like I was listening to one of my fav singer/songwriters like Elliott Smith.
Welp after learning the chords I couldn’t help but start to put something together. Not so much a cover but I guess a reaction or interpretation of how the song made me feel.
After getting Josh’s approval I was off to the inspired races (is that a thing i dunno).
But then Ableton said “OH NO you caint!”
Quickly we avert our eyes to the technical drama of the week.
Ever since upgrading my MacOS and Ableton’s version to 11 I have been experiencing weird crashes and erratic mouse movement. The crashes I thankfully figured out after scouring the logs (that makes me sound much more intelligent than I really am). But the meese movement was really starting to affect the workflow of everything. Basically I’d go to click in the middle of a clip and it instead would interpret that movement as me clicking and throwing the mouse off the table across the room. So at times if I wasn’t 100% wide eyed paying attention to my clicks it could be very destructive and just toss a chunk of audio/midi to the right of the track. At one point I noticed “hey why is the piano part not playing?” “Oh there it is, 5mins down the time line!”
Most of the sounds are all internal for me. Which is sometimes convenient and sometimes nawt. This time it twas not!
The Roland RD700GX which is always where my one Piano sound comes from has to be recorded manually from the midi track.
Well this time my OCDness got the better of me when I would try to record the piano it wasn’t showing the correct volume on the meter. But when I played it back, the meter was much louder and just totally off from what I “thought” it should be.
I def could have used a timeout or break because I think I had something like one setting on a compressor turned on and didn’t even realize it was on. But noooo I spent a good chunk of about 4 hours obsessively trying to get it to record at that exact volume. It’s usually the last step before mixing so I was so set on getting it recorded so I could slap my hands together and say “i finished early yay me!”
But no there were many angry words said at the p00ter. (sorry p00ter)
I ended up just recording it as is and of course once I calmed down and put the mix together the next day, it laid in just right volume wise for the finalizing process. Go figure… I def need to trust my ears more than these “precise” numbers and such.
I get so hung up on trying to do things exactly right (in my mind) that it can sometimes be a bit exhausting and frustrating. Just like reading this description *stickless rimshot*
But in the process of channeling all that frustration I managed to accidentally add another section to the track.
I had so much nervous slightly perturbed energy building up inside me as I waited for my p00ter to reboot I was silently pummeling the Roland with ostinatos and arps. Which when it came back up turned into a whole new section yay!
So this week’s moral of the story.. STFU Eric.. no seriously I keed I keed. But each week has sorta felt like a lesson for me personally. Whether it be feeling comfortable with the loudness of a track or learning to just keep going and trust my ears. The end at least has resulted in a small triumphant_win sorta feeling.
Back to the original track by JWH. I wish I played guitar, sang and could song-write like dat. Tanks for the inspiration fraind!
and tanks wbeez for reading & listening!
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Share Alike (BY-SA)
