Well, today didn't quite turn out to be as productive as I'd hoped for actual live recording. It took me longer than I'd planned last night to do a rough mix of "The World Is Flat," and after that I couldn't sleep, probably because yesterday I was going for a new coffee intake record. After several false starts on a good night's sleep I finally managed to drop and then woke up at 3:00 pm. After settling in, performing some NaSoAlMo-unrelated tasks (like, uh, eating and sending out resumes to potential employers) and getting my stuff organized, by the time I got to work it was pretty late in the day.

Today is the first day I've started to feel antsy about the schedule. There are several songs for which I haven't actually done anything yet except set up a project in Sonar and define some basic tracks and busses. I thought about really breaking down the number of tasks associated with each song with approximate hours for completion so I could get a better idea of whether or not I'm really behind, but in the end I didn't want to spend the time to do that analysis, and I was also scared that such analysis might reveal my slight trepidation to be not only correct but lacking in appropriate intensity. So instead I just started working.

One of the reasons I got a little bit worried is because the two songs I have knocked out are both on the easy side compared to others in the pipeline. The one I had planned to record today had I gotten up earlier is actually one of the easiest in the bunch, as it's just acoustic guitar and vocals, so honestly not having a chance to record it today doesn't make me feel like I lost a lot of time. I did occur to me though that I have not started on some of the songs which will probably require a lot more time to finish, so that's where I directed my attention.

I was having a little trouble with the activation energy required to work tonight, so I decided to do something relatively fun and sequence the little orchestral arrangement for "Cincinnati" using my guitar instead of my keyboard. (I have one of those Roland hexaphonic pickups installed in my Stratocaster and a Roland GI-10 guitar to MIDI converter thing.) I am significantly better at playing what I hear in my head on a guitar than I am at picking stuff out on a keyboard, but more importantly I just don't use that guitar to MIDI thing as much as I should considering what I shelled out for it back in the day. So, that's what I did tonight...

...Which means that, yes, one more song is in the can. I have now completed the song for Ohio as well. It was very nice to do an instrumental consisting completely of virtual instruments. Turned my apparently destined to be unproductive day into a much nicer thing.

Given that I got up so late I'm hardly flagging at the moment, so I am going to start day eight right now at midnight while I'm still "on."

what's on:
"Kate" (Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen)