spacebug

Feel very good about last night. Low Orbit had another productive rehearsal! (That makes 2 in a row, folks. Next stop, world domination!) It was especially good for me, 'cause I sat in the captain's chair with Live the whole time, and am now feeling to the point that I can get work done in it on my own and know what's up. Just a few little things, but sometimes having another pair of eyes and a bit of advice about where the right buttons're at makes a huge, huge difference. So, that program is starting to gel in my brain and I'm building some confidence with it. Yay! I also realized where one of my mental blocks was- I'm really really used to dealing with destructive editing. I tend to like it a lot for it's WSIWYG quality. But Live is nondestructive, and does things differently based on that. The interface is different, but it makes quite a bit of sense. And, as S4 notes, it's pretty. So, now I'm feeling like I can work on our stuff with a little more autonomy, and make better use of the time

r4c and I spend together in rehearsal. Which should make the goal of getting a full-length out that much more attainable.
We also tweaked the patches I'd tried creating this weekend as substitute Prophet, and they work pretty well.

I've been trying to remember to write myself homework assignments after band practice, so I remember what I should work on. It's really quite helpful. I've been realizing that it's (generally) much much easier for me to stay focused when I have a task at hand- something that I've been learning from working at my job, too, since a lot of our job is helping people make and attain artistic goals. Basically- the smaller and more articulated your goal is, the more likely you are to achieve it. This is true for completely non-art related stuff, too. It's way easier to get your head around a specific task- "Wash the dishes" than something more obtuse like "Clean the house." So, it's much much easier to focus and do something like "record the bassline" than it is to "Make an album", or the ever distant "Become a rock star!" And if you're still feeling overwhelmed, you can keep making the steps smaller.

This weekend, it was "record a bassline". And then I realized that "record a bassline" had a lot of steps involved before I could get to it. Like, "make a bass patch that doesn't suck." Which I realized involved other steps that included pretty obtuse things like "Learn to program the Ion" and "Remember how to record clips in this new big piece of software". The task tree quickly had more branches than I knew what to do with. I tried to keep breaking it down, stay vigilant and hung out with my manuals, but got kind of overwhelmed.

So, anyway. My homework this weekend, now that I do remember how to record and manipulate clips in that new big piece of software (thanks

r4c!), and I actually did make a bass patch that doesn't suck, is to get new cableage so that I can record into my 'puter IN STEREO! (ooh), and also to rid myself of that really attractive intermittent crackly noise- and then record some melodic tracks. With a pad that I made that doesn't quite suck. See? Shit's getting done. Woo.

And I also want to spend some time playing the "recreate that patch" game. Which is a game I really enjoy... if Squidge (the Ion has been christened Squidge) is going to be my gigging bitch, he's gonna have to learn to emulate Sigfried. (For those that don't know, the Prophet's name is Sigfried.) So I wanna start finding/creating patches that are reasonable facsimiles of the old stuff- which will be productive and it should help me really learn the architecture of the new beastie really well. And hey- another example of my finding it much easier to learn stuff if I have a definite useful project/goal that I'm trying to accomplish.

And Squidge will even stay in tune. That'll be extra exciting.