Finishing The Album: Step 27 - On The Road Polishing.

Filled with renewed enthusiasm after this weekends listening party, I raced home at lunch to not only try to figure out my exporting problems, but also to tackle the opening drum hits on "On The Road".

The way I have the songs laid out, OTR opens the album. I think it's a great opener because it's not only a strong song, but also because it really sets the themes up for the entire album. I also really like the fact that right out of the gate, it hits you with that rapid fire, machine-gun like drum intro. It tells the listener "this album ain't for jokes". It puts them on notice that this shit just got real.

Sorry, I'm channeling an album reviewer for "LA Weekly" right now. Please excuse the last paragraph.

BUT, with all joking aside, I still think OTR is a great album opener, for a number of reasons, the main one being that it's a great song. And sets the tone. ok, so that's two reasons.

But the thing that bothers me about it is that those opening snare strikes that I'm so proud of are a little unevenly spaced. It's very subtle, but it's there. It is uneven. I figured that if that is going to be the first thing an audience hears when they listen to this ablum, it had better be dead on.

I got home and had less than an hour to fix the drums. Luckily, it took about two minutes. I know I go on and on about how great CuBase is, but man... it just never disappoints. To make a long story short, I just took four of the hits from later in the intro and grafted them over the two spots where there was some problems. It's seamless, and it sounds great. Spot on.

I spent the next 45 minutes dorking around trying to figure out why the export functionality was so problematic. I still have not figured it out, but the work around seems to be closing the file, closing CuBase, then opening them both back up and exporting before doing ANYTHING else.

So that's one problem fixed. Just need to burn through the other action items in my todo list, and then I will be ready to generate another CD to send to Bill. I am hoping I can get it all wrapped up tonight.