DMV Day

Ever have one of those days that is as frustrating as spending 2 hours in line at the DMV only to find out that you don't have the right papers and you have to come back and wait in line again another day?

Yesterday was that day for me. I actually DID have the DMV experience, followed by a return home to find that the dog had made a mess of the house (again). Feeling defeated, I decided to scrap my other homework and do some recording. I had been wanting to get rid of the scratch electric guitars on several tracks, but hadn't had time to set up the mics for the acoustic.

So, I did the setup, changed my guitar strings, downloaded an update to ProTools so that it would actually start playing from the MIDDLE of the song instead of only the beginning, and then got to work.

By the time I started, I only had about 4 hours left of good recording time, so I started with Tired Lonely Fools. For some reason, I was really happy with the first several takes, but when I went back to edit them together, I couldn't find a take I liked for the beginning of the song (which is probably just going to be guitar and voice). I proceeded to spend the next hour trying to perform those first 15 seconds well, and I finally SUCCEEDED! Somehow, even after my frustrating morning, I knew that it would be worth pushing through and coming up with a take I was happy with.

After a bit of editing, I moved on to the acoustic guitar on a new song (tentatively called Friends and Fools, but I think that's 3 songs on this album that talk about fools, so clearly I need a different name) and Is This My Life. Props to Nancy Eddy who has been playing guitar on that far more often than I do. I had forgotten how hard it is on your forearm and shoulder! I had to do it in 2 separate takes, going about 1 verse per take, then going back a bit and starting the second take so that they overlapped a bit, but so that I got breaks for my arm in between takes. I believe that's what the French call time-to-get-off-of-your-butt-and-work-out-Mara.

SO, by the end of my 4 hours, I had comped together all 3 of those guitar tracks AND was feeling far less frustrated than when I was at the DMV earlier in the day. For your listening pleasure today, here's something from the middle of Tired Lonely Fools. Sorry most of the sample is a fade-up. I was in a hurry. The fun of this section of the song is that it's going to have LOTS going on - this is just the skeleton. I'm excited to add bass, lots of backing vocals, and probably some other silly instruments to this section. But here's the foundation:
Tired Lonely Fools Sample
**note: It takes a couple of seconds for the sound to start bc the fade up was long for some reason (some reason is that I accidentally made the fade too long).

Feeling energized and hoping to have more recording time tonight. Maybe it's time to add bass to a few of these.