First Scratch Recording

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.

Small Steps - Forwards and Backwards

Allow me to pontificate about message boards. When the opportunity to acquire an Alesis firewire mixer came along, I did as any good e-peon would do: I typed the model number into Google and mashed the button. Over 10,000 hits appeared, mostly to sites like IgnoramusExpert.com or ConceitedBasementTechs.net. Everything I could find seemed to say that the particular unit up for consideration is to computer recording what an icy Coca Cola is to a steamy August day. The perfect compliment, the balm for that which ails.

And the guy selling it lives less than four miles from my house. Score. I flopped ten crisp twenties on his kitchen counter and carried the digital bundle of joy back to the car.

I have been an acoustic instrumentalist for 25 years. Hit a drum, it makes a sound. This is the level of musical technology with which I have comfort. I also understand computing with a Mac. You buy a new mouse, you plug it in, it works. You want to add a drive, just slide it into place. Done. So you could imagine my wide-eyed, wiggly-tailed enthusiasm about running a simple wire between the mixer and computer and being instantly ready to lay down some tracks.

You may have figured out by now that the exciting prospect of the Redline Project has drizzled me with a delicious naivety. Late last night the first fingernail scratched the chalkboard.

The matte-gray beast skipped and popped, and the recording level was barely registering, and there was an awful, persistent hissing. One hundred knobs stared me in the face like a cyclops gone terribly wrong, all taunting, "Turn me, twist me, just try it."

I looked to my old friends the message boards for a little comfort, a little guidance. Much to my dismay, the whole two-faced lot of them had turned on me. Scores of skeptics had logged their frustrations with the same unit now sitting in my basement, most with a laundry list of grievances and very few with helpful suggestions. Furthermore, everyone uses a confounding array of technical, insider vocabulary. Latency... what the heck is latency?

I am thankful for my good friend Peter who comes over for coffee and good conversation each Thursday morning before work. He is something of a whiz with musical gear, and he had a look at my tangle of wires. Though we are not out of the woods yet, he had a few tips and ideas that give me some semblance of hope that my purchase will not prove to be a grand waste.

Due credit goes to Peter once again for lending me a condenser microphone. Any analog sounds that wind up on the final project will only be there because of this generous loan, and it will keep a good chunk of the budget unspent.

A friend that I have known since middle school contacted me with the following uplifting story. I am sharing it to encourage all of us to continually look for opportunities to express the creativity that dwells in all of us. She writes:

I am on the brink of a musical rebirth. I'm not sure if you remember that I sang in the choruses all through middle and high school. From there I was in a few ensembles and a cappella groups in college and loved every minute of it. After I graduated though, focus turned to career and family, and music took a backseat.

Now here I am, six years later, and a few months ago I got a chance invite to sing in an upstart band. It was one of those "in the right place at the right time" situations that had to be divine intervention, like a nudge from the universe to jump back in and rediscover that part of myself that I've been missing for so long.