I don’t have studio monitors.  They’d cost about $300 or $400 just for basic ones, and I’ve already dumped enough money into this thing (also need a better midi–I bought the cheapest one, and it sounds like it.)  But if something like this is to be kept from happening again, studio monitors must be obtained.

I do all the recording and mixing through headphones, knowing that headphones don’t give an accurate representation of what the song will sound like under normal circumstances.  But by now I’ve kind of figured out how to compensate ahead of time.  I know, for instance, that the vocal will always be clearer and louder in the headphones, so when it sounds right in the headphones it will still be murky and distant through regular speakers.  When the song is done, or what counts as done in this project, I burn it to a CD, take the CD to my other computer, the one with external speakers, and see what it sounds like.  If it’s a little off (it’s usually still a vocal problem) I tweak the mix again, hoping that cures the problem.  Sometimes I’ve done that three or four times.  Yes, I do exercise some quality control standards here.

This time, though, the problems were too rife to fix.  First off, the song isn’t really played well to start with.  I did it yesterday (Sunday) afternoon/evening in the dining room, which is why it’s an electric guitar song and not acoustic (it’s just easier to record an electric than an acoustic, and I can do it all very discretely while the kids are watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  I did the vocal when Janet took the kids to the park.)  The first guitar is quite good.  The bass is pretty good.  The vocal is passable, but we’ve been through all that.  The second guitar is partly okay with occasional showers of awfulness.  The “drums”–i.e., the kick drum and the crash cymbal I manually and foolishly added–pretty much ruin whatever fragile equilibrium I might have otherwise achieved.  The panning is ridiculous, mainly because I have no idea what the rule of thumb is on panning drums and bass (anything really, but especially drums and bass.  Are they supposed to occupy the same pan position?  If so, what position are they supposed to occupy?)

So, anyway, sorry about this one. 

What makes it such a hard pill to swallow is that up until I heard the final mix on the external speakers about a half hour ago I was planning to write about how my standards have risen over the course of this project, both songwise and production-wise.  I don’t know how I came to that conclusion, because I just now listened to a few random songs I’ve recorded over the past 38 weeks, emphasizing the ones I thought I disliked the most, and find that the ones I remember as sounding awful sound better than what I’ve been doing since I got the Mac twelve weeks ago.  “Grandpa, Don’t Eat the Gravy” sounds much better than this one, for instance.  “My Facebook Page” sounds great compared to the songs since Week 26.  I’m talking about production standards here, not necessarily the musicianship or the quality of the songs. 

[update:  Weird.  I just listened to this song again, and while it's no great shakes, it's not as bad as it sounded yesterday when I wrote this.  That's another strange phenomenon I have intended to mention--how sometimes the songs sound great three times in a row and then on the very next listen they sound atrocious, even if you haven't changed a thing.  It probably has something to do with doing all these recordings in a total vacuum.  Except for a couple of songs, nobody but me hears any of these songs or these recordings before they get posted here.  You'd have probably guessed that if you didn't know it.]

Someday before the project is finished I’m going to force myself to listen to all the songs in the order they were presented.  I’ll probably start drinking again by the time I get to “Hey, Everybody, I Bought a Banjo,” but I want to see what the overall arc sounds like.  I cringe at the thought of it, but it’s a necessary part of this whole thing, I think.  I am looking forward to hearing some of the songs, though, and hope I’m not disappointed.  I remember really liking “In Our Neighborhood,” but that might have more to do with the video than the song.  Most of the songs are inextricably linked to the videos for me.  That’s fine.  The songs exist mainly in the context of this blog, so if the video is part of it, the video is part of it.

I don’t mean to get into a review or rating of the songs right now.  At some point I’m going to address whether I really think these songs are any good, and although I already have an answer formed that has nothing to do with the relative worthiness of any of the individual songs, I’ll get into all of that at the same time.

I will say, though, that I’ve found that I’m writing songs to complement earlier songs.  That’s not entirely conscious, but now and then I recognize the relationship between something I’m working on and something I’ve already done, and I don’t resist emphasizing the relationship.  This song, for instance, goes with “Something’s Gone Wrong in Houston,” I think, the other slow minor(ish)-blues vamp from back in Week 18.  “I Remember Everything” (which I thought sounded great two weeks ago and which is one I determined today sounds awful but which is still one of my favorites of the ones I’ve written) sort of goes with “No Proof” (which I have not listened to again–neither has anybody else, judging by the view counts on Youtube–but which I know is a terrible recording.)  And so on. 

Fascinating stuff, eh? 

Fourteen more weeks to go.  Next week is three quarters through.  I’ve just about had it with this nutcracker nonsense.

Video.  I have more video, just not time to make anything out of it.  This week you get a photo of my gorgeous, beloved first cousin Sandy and her husband (also beloved if not gorgeous) Don, from (I’m guessing) around 1983.  Sandy is the youngest of my Aunt Twilia’s four kids, Bob, Dennis, Touza and Sandy, all of whom grew up and live in Fresno, California.  I met them in person for the first time nearly two years ago when I, well, just decided it was time to meet them.  It’s a long, fascinating, multi-generational family story, how all that came about, but this isn’t the time or place for it, as Sandy and I resolved that we were going to write a book about it together.  And if we don’t, that’s fine too.