The house is frigid and there is no hot water in the boiler. Nothing is broken, but I had to flip the switches to get some semblance of quiet in the basement gone makeshift studio. I stopped by my buddy Peter's house this morning to pick up an Audio Technica AT4033a that has been sitting in his closet for a few years. Making sounds into the stealth-black diaphragm, my voice snaking through the tangle of wires into my headphones, brings an instant, gratifying sense that the Redline Project may actually find its way off of the ground someday.
Even with the boiler room shut down on this record-cold Atlanta morning, I am suddenly cognizant of a complex cacophony of creaks, shakes, and rattles that emanate from the foundation of my 1971 split-level. Excitment with a twist of determination was the cocktail of the hour, and after a morning's worth of clicking around GarageBand, I am pleased to announce that my very first scratch recording, with its many imperfections, is ready to be heard.
My purpose of producing scratch recordings is like jotting reflections of life into a journal. What you are able to hear below is in no way intended to be a part of the final product. It is what will be the first of many explorations, delving into the world of audio recording with little regard for polish or excellence. I am trying to find my voice, groping around the possibilities for anything even remotely coherent.
A blog is a voice, placed online through a series of keystrokes and mouse-clicks. I could not thing of a better way to kick off my explorations than to use only the sounds of my mouse, keyboard, and voice to build this first scratch track.
So with much humility and nervousness, I welcome you to listen to Redline 001.
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Well, it's obvious that you're a percussionist! It will be interesting to see (sorry, hear) how this project develops.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Is "redline" a generic term for this kind of project? When I was trying to find your blog I came across a high school girl's one-year musical quest at theredlineproject.blogspot.
Thanks for the note, and good question. Redline is a generic recording term. In a project, the audio levels can be seen on a dynamic graph, often a series of LED lights. It is good if the recording illuminates the green lights and fine if the signal goes into the yellow ones, but if the red ones are lit, the sound is overloading the system and distorting. Redlining has also become a general term used to express an emotional experience greater than one knows how to handle.
ReplyDeleteThere are many bands, recording studios, music projects, and sound-related ventures that use the term in their nomenclature. And yes, a search of the term will also land you in the domain of public transit systems as red line is a common indicator for rapid transit systems.