busybee fluffy rambles

Wow, lots of stuff happened today (meaning Friday).

Woke up today in considerable pain, but I did some of my physical therapy stretches and some of the stretches that Castiel showed me on Wednesday and that helped somewhat. I also spent 10 minutes on my vibration plate which helped as well.

Mowed the lawn.

Went down to the studio and started working on the album version of Valley Highway, because it feels like as good a place to start as any (even though it’s going to be the last track) and decided to take the opportunity to define the overall sound for the album, which mostly meant cycling through a bunch of microphones until I found the right one for the vocals, and also cycling through a bunch of guitars until I decided that my favorite one (an Ovation Elite TX) is the one I’ll use. Because it’s my favorite one to play, so, why wouldn’t I use it on the album? Plus I think it has the nicest tone of my three acoustic 6-strings.

The downside to the Elite is that it doesn’t have a traditional soundhole, so I can’t use my preferred pickup (a Seymour Duncan Woody) on it, but the Ovation’s built-in pickup is pretty good, and I record it in conjunction with a mic anyway.

I also recorded a bunch of guitar and drum takes and got annoyed at a few things so for now I’m using Logic’s AI drummer. I hope to rerecord it with real drums though. I’m just having trouble keeping steady time; my drumming is fine for live sets but studio albums call for a bit more precision than I can muster right now. Also my cheap nylon brushes started to fall apart even though I’ve barely used them. Meh. So I ordered some proper metal ones which should arrive tomorrow. I also finally got around to ordering a better drum throne, too, because the one which came with my kit is driving me absolutely nuts.

Also, not all of the songs on the album will use drums.

For strings I’m using NI Cremona Quartet as usual, although for some parts I’ll probably rerecord the cello using my actual cello, and some of the songs need some cello articulations which Cremona Quartet doesn’t provide so for those I’ll definitely be playing the real thing. I might even try to record some of the violin and viola parts with physical instruments but as much as I enjoy playing them, I’m really not all that good, and I want this album to sound as good as possible.

Anyway after all that I went to another VR yoga class.

Also I’ve had too much caffeine today and am feeling hyper and rambly, so, here’s some rambling about my musical instruments.

but especially doctors

Just the current haps, yo.

I feel like I need to come up for air, after some protracted busy-ness (not to be confused with business, which I have none of at the moment).

I’m still alive, I guess.

Just a random check-in entry for folks to know what’s going on with me. Because that seems to be all that my blog is good for, all in all.

My week off from work felt great. But I’m still having difficulty actually focusing at work. I have a bunch of paths of exploration to examine but none of them feel, y'know, right right now.

Meanwhile, my house continues to be a bit more work than I expected. On the plus side, I’ve successfully murdered my lawn and vastly improved my garden and started up my nice meadow. On the minus side, my heating bill is through the roof (literally) and I’ve been getting bids for finally improving the house insulation. So far I’ve had three bids which went thusly:

Still on disability leave, and still in considerable pain. I’m trying not to work too hard on things, but it’s hard not to do things.

For example, I worked on a song with my friends Ken and Huan-Hua for this week’s Song Fight!; we entered the “We Did Everything We Could” fight under the band name Richard Donner Party. It was a fun song to make. Fortunately I didn’t have to even so much as look at a guitar. Most of my work was vocals, light keyboard work, and editing.