STILL In Awe of CuBase

Don't get me wrong, working with Robert Trujillo was a real joy. Not just a joy, but a thrill. It was our first time evar in the studio, and Robert was easy going and a lot of fun. I personally think he was overwhelmed a bit by all of the personalities in the room, but he played it cool, and ultimately got the job done. As an engineer for hire, and not really a full fledged producer at that time, it would have been inappropriate for him to try to wrangle us, and manage us as a genuine producer should have. So that's all fine and good.

But what we have of course discovered over the years is that we desperately needed such a wrangler. Even if it was one of our own, we needed a final and authoritative voice to make the tough calls, bring down the thunder, and turn the mutha out when necessary. I think if we had that during the creation of our first album, things would have gone a lot faster, and possibly a lot smoother. Then again, it was all a learning experience, and it has served to help make the Black and Blue project that much sweeter of a ride.

What Robert brought to the table was technical expertise, and a bunch of equipment that we weren't willing to buy, set up, or learn how to operate. So it's not like our 18 bucks an hour didn't get us a lot. But personality frustrations aside, my clearest (and not necessarily fondest) memories of working in the studio revlove around trying to patch up songs. At the time, the band was not exactly the most musically competent group of performers in the Orange County scene that we ultimately found ourselves dominating. (and by "Scene", I mean the collection of bands that would play Ed Zybuls back yard every summer). Being not-exactly-tight made recording a good "keeper" take problematic. Compounded by the fact that we were abso-hell bent on getting "perfect" takes in the can before moving on. Yes, the innocence of youth! So there we were, doing take after take of a song in order to get a perfect take. Layer on top of that Bill's lunatic like insistence that we get a BUNCH of instruments perfect on said take, and that added to the difficulty by at least three orders of magnitude. I'm probaby ranting at this point, but I think Billy will be able to appreciate this from a historical perspective. My take on recording was that ALL we needed to get was a good take of the drums. EVERYTHING else could easily be added in or re-done in post. But there were many a time when we would keep going back to the start so that bill could get his guitar perfect (along with his knobs and settings, natch) ALONG with the drums. Oy! Makes my head spin!

So we'd spend hours and hours hammering out the same song again and again, never quite meeting SOMEONE'S expectations or dreams of what the "perfect" take would sound like. (I gotta say, TO THIS DAY, I'm still dumbfounded by Bill's insistence on getting multiple instrument perfect takes in one recording. just when I think he's broken of the habit, I see him doing it from time to time :) )

Though the above sounds excruciating, what was MORE excruciating was the infernal "insert edits". That's when an overdub track is flawless, save for ONE or TWO missed notes in the middle of the song. Or maybe a chord was strummed half wrong, or a string didn't resonate right, or something like that. So there you were with a near perfect overdub, and faced with two daunting propositions: re-do the take and hope you get it PERFECT the next time, or go in for the oh-so-problematic "insert edits". Redoing the take was always problematic, especially if it was at the end of the day. You know, you're tired, frustrated, and you just want to go to the burger joint and chow down on those yummy fries with ranch dressing. Or in some cases, maybe you just want to bail out and take a shower.

nice.

The insert edits are what always killed me. There were a few distinct and unique problems to deal with which each edit. First of all, you had to explain to Robert what you wanted to fix. With him not being as intimately familiar with the songs as the band members, it was often difficult to convey this. You know, you cannot say "go to refrain three", or "go to the line about the dirt, second part". He doesn't know what the hell you're talking about. And even when you do isolate it to the proper thirty seconds of the song, the error was often so subtle that only the finely trained ear of the performer could hear the flub. This left Robert groping in the dark. So let's say we FINALLY identify the place we want the insert to go. Now the fun really begins. Not only does the artist need to play with the same energy and force as the original performance, but they of course need to play the part correctly. Then it's up to robert to "punch in" and "punch out" the recording to make sure you don't record over anything you don't want to. I forget how it worked technically, but I've got to assume we used a new and separate track for the insert, but for some reason, I don't think we did. This meant that we were recording over the master. So if we got it wrong, we just expanded the wound that needed to be sewn shut.

Yah, that was definitely one of the more difficult parts of recording the album. Just the sheer technical work involved in nailing a master track, and then managing all the overdubs and insert edits.

Which brings me to the point of today's posting. Despite all of the limitations of Roberts original studio, we still did some good stuff. But in retrospect, we were TOTALLY crippled artistically. At least by today's standards.

Case in point: Armageddon is Here.

I wrote about this song a while back, and how I was looking for a missing verse, etc. Bill and I hammered out a VERY solid recording of a master track a few weeks ago, and even worked in a lead guitar and a shuffle. It sounded good. It needed new lead vocals, and maybe a couple of other minor tweaks and tracks, but overall, it was solid.

Then I had a chance to sit down and listen to a mix down. Though technically and performance-wise it was very solid, I felt that the song was dragging. It HEAVILY over-used the refrain, and seemed to just drone on and on. nothing against the performance, it was simply the way the song was written and arranged. Here's how it went as originally recorded:

Intro
Refrain

Verse
Refrain

Verse
Refrain

Solo
refrain

verse
Refrain

(key switch)
Refrain
Refrain


BORING!!!!!!

And this is where I start to gush about the magic of CuBase. I have to say, it's simply amazing what you can do with this tool. STUNNING, I say. I sat down with it, and in about two hours, had completely re-organized the song, tightened it up, and made it flow MUCH more smoothly. It now goes something like this:

Intro

Verse
Refrain

Verse
Refrain

Guitar Solo

Verse
Refrain

Verse
Refrain

(Key Switch)
Refrain


As you can see, I chopped out a refrain from the beginning, and one from the key switch at the end. Also one right after the guitar solo. I added in a new verse/refrain pair also.

This would have simply been IMPOSSIBLE to do in Roberts studio. IMPOSSIBLE. Well, not without starting again from scratch and simply re-recording the whole darn thing. But with the magic of Compyoodies and CuBase, I did the whole thing while sitting in my home office, in front of my computer. Granted, I still need to write lyrics for the fourth verse and record them, but that's a simple overdub. Oh, also super cool is the fact that I can just drop the project file and wav files onto a flash drive and drive them up to Bills place when it's time to record. I don't have to carry a box full of ADAT tapes or anything. I can fit the whole song in my pocket. AMAZING.

What amazes me most about the whole CuBase workflow is how easy it is to just do wholesale slaughter and re-arrangement of a song. It's like moving paragraphs in a word document. you just select the stuff you want to move, cut it, then paste it in its new destination. I suppose there's also a comment to be made about the playing ability of Black and Blue, as the tempo of the song remains very consistent all the way through. If the song sped up as you went along, it wouldn't be very clean to take a verse at the beginning, copy it and paste it at the end of the song if the second half of the song was twice as fast as the first. It just wouldn't work. But frankly, Bill and I have forged a pretty mean team in Black and Blue, and each new recording surprises me with the lessons we've learned in the past, and the risks we are willing to take in the present.

So to the writers, developers, testers, and architects of CuBase, I salute you. You have created an amazing piece of software that unleashes a lot of creativity, and allows for unprecedented flexibility and control in making music.

100th post to the blog!

I'll let this video do the talkin', cuz I couldn't possibly say enough:

Aquaman Got Nuttin' on Munson

Totally unrelated to rock and roll, but I have an interesting detail of my exciting life to share. So as many of you may know, I am currently training for a Triathlon. yay. One of the events is swimming. To date, I've been practicing in the Jr. Olympic pool at my apartment complex. (No relation to "Carl's Jr", by the way) over the past month, I've significantly reduced my half mile time due to practice, and the deployment of a wetsuit designed specifically for triahtlon competitors. I went from just under 20 minutes, down to 13:30. So I was feeling pretty good.

But now that the event is getting closer, I'm notching up my training. This started with me joining a local Triathlon club, which is pretty hard core for me. My first event was to attend an ocean swim down at Corona Del Mar. So I suited up, and hit the ocean. My wetsuit has tasted the lakes of Canada, and the pools of Orange County, but never the mighty Pacific. Until now! And while I've spent plenty of time frolicking in the ocean, I've never actually set out to swim a certain distance freestlye. So today was my first outing!

Long story short, I TOTALLY smoked the half mile course. My time was 11:21 seconds. What's wild is that I wasn't really even going for speed. I just kept thinking "slow and steady" in my head. The hardest part was keeping an eye on the bouys. In the pool, youv'e got a bright blue line on the bottom to keep you on track. In the ocean, you've got to look up every third or fourth breath to make sure your'e headed in the right direction, and not into oncoming swimmers. or the feet of ones you're swimming alongside. So it's very challenging. Oh, and did I mention that you've also got waves and mouthfulls of salt water to deal with? Oh, and the water is really cold? Oh, and my instinctual fear of aquatic predators?? So there was a lot going against me, but I still managed to turn in my best time ever. So I'm pretty stoked.

VERY excited that the big day is rapidly approaching. Only three weeks left to train. I'm 100% confident that I will finish the race, barring major mechanical failure in my bike, or body. So that's cool. I figure as long as I don't finish dead last, I'll be happy. Heck, even if I DO finish dead last, I'll still be pretty proud. Cuz you know, how many people can you count off that have finished a triathlon, dead last or not???

Rockville Proof of Concept Video

While "Stickmen: the movie" may still be a few summers away, don't let that make you think for one second that the creative team behind it are resting on their laurels*. Nossir! Well, actually, we typically DO rest, even if we have no laurels upon which to rest.

But this time, this is not the case. Not really. As part of an ongoing, multi-year effort to bring the Stickmen video library to dvd, BD, or even just a less degradable format than Hi8 tapes, I'm learning how to use Adobe Premier. Techmology has FINALLY caught up with my imagination, and my new PC now has the processing power to do all the stuff I want it to. So I captured a bunch of video, and put together this little movie, just to see if I yet had the editing skills to assemble a ditty.




For a POC, I think it turned out really good. The performances sync up pretty well to the music, and there's lots of action. I think the drawback is that if I wanted to change the clips around, it would be very labor intenstive. So my workflow is not yet complete, I need to figure out a couple more tricks, but I'm well on my way.

While this may not be as spectacular as the now-lost "Gravity" video featuring Don playing couch cushions, it's higher resolution.


* thank goodness I now know what "laurels" means. I always thought it meant like a part of your anatomy, like your butt. You know, you rest on it. Your butt. But I guess in this context, it refers to awards. So you know, I'm saying we're not going to just sit around and celebrate that which we've already accomplished. I'm moving forward. Which makes sense. Unless I spelled it wrong.

Viddy oh!

For those readers that are simply not satisfied with the written word, and crave more than just characters on a web page, I present to you this brief video. An interview with the powerhouse stars behind Black and Blue, the musical project sure to sweep the nation. And by nation, I mean Billy's family, and the few friends I have that like listening to our music.