Vocabulary

With two weeks under the belt and 50 remaining to achieve the goals of the Redline Project, a brief overview of my recently expanded vocabulary is in order.

Automation:

What I thought it was:
Setting the old percolator to boil the coffee beans at 7:30 AM.

What it is:
A mixing process that remembers the sliding motion of the faders and repeats the movements on playback. (I used an automation function to make a fade-out at the end of today's scratch recording.)

Latency:

What I thought it was:
The uncanny ability my wife has to be four minutes tardy to just about anything.

What it is:
A measure of time delay experienced in a system. (Strike a note on the keyboard and you hear it a split second later than you had hoped.)

Delay:

What I thought it was:
The symptomatic phenomenon a husband experiences when his wife suffers from chronic latency

What it is:
An effect that adds measured echo to a sound or set of sounds. (A little delay went a long way to spruce up the keyboard and mouse tracks in scratch recording #1)

DAW:

What I thought it was:
An expression of frustration, nicely accompanied by the pounding of fists on a desk or other nearby solid object.

What it is:
Stands for Digital Audio Workstation. (It's a fancy name for music software.)

USB Keyboard Purchased at a Local Pawn Shop:

What I thought it was:
A piece of equipment that is identical in every way to a unit with the same model number acquired elsewhere.

What it is:
A worthless hunk of doo that causes headaches and emotional trauma and accomplishes nothing of its intended purpose. (I am grateful that this particular Pawn Mart, sleazy as it may be, agreed to accept a return within 24 hours.)

USB Keyboard Purchased at Guitar Center:

What I thought it was:
A piece of equipment that is twice as expensive as it should be that can also be acquired at a local pawn shop for a fraction of the cost.

What it is:
A piece of equipment that more or less works right out of the box.

Plug and Play

What I thought it was:
A concept describing the process of a user stringing a wire between a computer and a peripheral device and instantly having the ability to commence using said device.

What it is:
A marketing scheme that lures innocent consumers into a purchase resulting in three hours worth of reading mice type in a flimsy user manual and listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons pipe through one's cell phone earbud as a soothing voice expresses thankfulness over and again for 'your patience as all operators are currently assisting other customers.'

There you have it: two weeks of lessons learned. Below is another scratch recording - the first result of my adventures in Logic Express. I composed and recorded the song in the course of three hours, and I have to admit I was a little impressed. But the balloon quickly popped when it took another four to figure out how to export an audio file with decent sound levels. Blast.

The significance of this recording is not found in the meaning of the words or the complexity of the music. All of its components were kept simple and lighthearted in order to focus on the true goal of this particular effort: the creation of my first recorded song structure.

And yes, much of what you hear was inputted on an M-Audio KeyRig 49 acquired at Guitar Center around 7:45 PM last night.