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hey, this got long.
STUFF!
I never posted anything about the convention. Well, it went well, and save a bit of a freakout during setup for me on Friday caused by tech woes, it went really smoothly. Even with all the fire marshall stuff that made our room less pretty. It was really really nice that the board let us have some pipe and drape from the hotel to make things look nicer- it was an extra expense at the last minute and I really appreciated it, it went a long way towards making the room look the way we like it to. This is also a good time to mention that we had super, awesome, totally fantastic amounts of help from people. Especially![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
r0ckc4ndy and getyourgeekon, who stepped up and were a huge help since we were down 2 subheads due to a new baby and the peace corps, plus me and S4 ditching Saturday night to go see my old pal echoegami get hitched. yaaren did a super fantastic awesome job as well, and deserves special mention and my undying gratitude. So does alisgray, who covered multiple shifts behind the smoothie bar. All of our smoothie bartenders rocked the house as well. maatnofret, fayde, birdfigment... thanks to oliverx who stepped up as sound tech while I was at the wedding... and many others whose names I regrettably don't know or who I'm not remembering at this moment, everyone who performed with us... THANK YOU. I thought our new additions of space-craft and the saturday night cabaret were both big successes. I totally adored the SP4C3 C4D3T5, too, and in stuff not related to my department, had fun spending time with folks in from out of town and seeing almost two whole movies in Rex. I was kinda bummed that I was worn out and not really enjoy being around people on Saturday night, as usually the parties and the dj dance are some of my favorite things. Instead, S4 and I hid in Rex and went to bed early. I was stone cold sober the entire convention, which I think might be a first.
Anyway, we're already thinking of cool new stuff for the anniversary con, and this is really exciting to me rather than feeling like a big drain as it sometimes does directly afterwards, so that's a good sign.
I also played a set in the Space Lounge, which is the first time I've played a solo set while running the deal. Personally, I wasn't all that happy with my set, but people complimented me, so it must have been all right. :) It was fun to play a song withpied_piper70.
I decided to give another multichannel firewire interface a shot. I landed a MOTU 828 (original and not a mkII, sadly) for under $200, including shipping, which is pretty hot, and almost half what I paid for the Presonus. Worth it, 'cause, while the Presonus is a little higher quality, most of that quality went into its 8 mic preamps. It doesn't make sense for me to pay for 8 nice mic preamps when most of my setup is line. This is what happens when you impulse-buy. The only thing I wish about the 828 so far is that it had its own MIDI interface so I could ditch my little 2x2, but it's no biggie.
I'm going give a new setup a shot- going without a hardware mixer.
Since I use Ableton as a base anyway, this makes a lot of sense... I can have whatever kinds of routing I want and whatever kinds of effects I want. I'm no longer limited to two auxes (yay!) but only by my lappy's processor. Plus now I can record parts live to discrete tracks, which I'm hoping will make my composition and mixdown process go a lot faster. After some fiddling with drivers and figuring out some of the more complicated routing and monitoring options in Ableton, I had this setup working really nicely last night. I'm pretty excited about it. This also means that the size of my rig will decrease, which is nice. I love my ratchet-y mixer case, but it will be downsized to a traditional 4-space rack. I'll see how I like the setup, and if I do, I might consider getting something like this guy, because I really like the idea of having everything all together. I really like the look of the smaller 2 rack-space bag, but I'd need a bare minimum of 3 spaces, and if I have 4 I could put a power conditioner or keep my little Lexicon processor in there. So close!
It's also already really nice to have a more stable signal from the lappy- having a y-cable and 2 adaptors to connect my main sound machine to my mixer was flaky and crackly.
So, anyway, I'm a happy sound girl today.
S4 and I turned 5 this week. Hooray for us! We've come a long way, I think. Somewhat unexpectedly, we'll be going up for the last couple days of the 10kLakes festival and camping out, courtesy of our rockstar dj hookup. So, this means, sadly, that we'll miss the post mortem meeting and the volunteer party and Bio-Zombie and the SaraCura opening party and any number of other things. Please know we will be thinking of you all fondly.
I never posted anything about the convention. Well, it went well, and save a bit of a freakout during setup for me on Friday caused by tech woes, it went really smoothly. Even with all the fire marshall stuff that made our room less pretty. It was really really nice that the board let us have some pipe and drape from the hotel to make things look nicer- it was an extra expense at the last minute and I really appreciated it, it went a long way towards making the room look the way we like it to. This is also a good time to mention that we had super, awesome, totally fantastic amounts of help from people. Especially
r0ckc4ndy and getyourgeekon, who stepped up and were a huge help since we were down 2 subheads due to a new baby and the peace corps, plus me and S4 ditching Saturday night to go see my old pal echoegami get hitched. yaaren did a super fantastic awesome job as well, and deserves special mention and my undying gratitude. So does alisgray, who covered multiple shifts behind the smoothie bar. All of our smoothie bartenders rocked the house as well. maatnofret, fayde, birdfigment... thanks to oliverx who stepped up as sound tech while I was at the wedding... and many others whose names I regrettably don't know or who I'm not remembering at this moment, everyone who performed with us... THANK YOU. I thought our new additions of space-craft and the saturday night cabaret were both big successes. I totally adored the SP4C3 C4D3T5, too, and in stuff not related to my department, had fun spending time with folks in from out of town and seeing almost two whole movies in Rex. I was kinda bummed that I was worn out and not really enjoy being around people on Saturday night, as usually the parties and the dj dance are some of my favorite things. Instead, S4 and I hid in Rex and went to bed early. I was stone cold sober the entire convention, which I think might be a first. Anyway, we're already thinking of cool new stuff for the anniversary con, and this is really exciting to me rather than feeling like a big drain as it sometimes does directly afterwards, so that's a good sign.
I also played a set in the Space Lounge, which is the first time I've played a solo set while running the deal. Personally, I wasn't all that happy with my set, but people complimented me, so it must have been all right. :) It was fun to play a song with
pied_piper70.I decided to give another multichannel firewire interface a shot. I landed a MOTU 828 (original and not a mkII, sadly) for under $200, including shipping, which is pretty hot, and almost half what I paid for the Presonus. Worth it, 'cause, while the Presonus is a little higher quality, most of that quality went into its 8 mic preamps. It doesn't make sense for me to pay for 8 nice mic preamps when most of my setup is line. This is what happens when you impulse-buy. The only thing I wish about the 828 so far is that it had its own MIDI interface so I could ditch my little 2x2, but it's no biggie.
I'm going give a new setup a shot- going without a hardware mixer.
Since I use Ableton as a base anyway, this makes a lot of sense... I can have whatever kinds of routing I want and whatever kinds of effects I want. I'm no longer limited to two auxes (yay!) but only by my lappy's processor. Plus now I can record parts live to discrete tracks, which I'm hoping will make my composition and mixdown process go a lot faster. After some fiddling with drivers and figuring out some of the more complicated routing and monitoring options in Ableton, I had this setup working really nicely last night. I'm pretty excited about it. This also means that the size of my rig will decrease, which is nice. I love my ratchet-y mixer case, but it will be downsized to a traditional 4-space rack. I'll see how I like the setup, and if I do, I might consider getting something like this guy, because I really like the idea of having everything all together. I really like the look of the smaller 2 rack-space bag, but I'd need a bare minimum of 3 spaces, and if I have 4 I could put a power conditioner or keep my little Lexicon processor in there. So close!
It's also already really nice to have a more stable signal from the lappy- having a y-cable and 2 adaptors to connect my main sound machine to my mixer was flaky and crackly.
So, anyway, I'm a happy sound girl today.
S4 and I turned 5 this week. Hooray for us! We've come a long way, I think. Somewhat unexpectedly, we'll be going up for the last couple days of the 10kLakes festival and camping out, courtesy of our rockstar dj hookup. So, this means, sadly, that we'll miss the post mortem meeting and the volunteer party and Bio-Zombie and the SaraCura opening party and any number of other things. Please know we will be thinking of you all fondly.
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Since I'm counting on the last 10% taking 90% of the time, and I'll be needing to practice live set stuff instead of focusing on mixing, I won't make my goal of having this guy finished before Burning Man. So, I figure I'll be happy if I get it done by the end of the year.
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Mixing is awful annoying. I recommend three-hour chunks, followed by a day of off. Mixing shouldn't take longer than tracking did, but it sometimes does anyway.
One thing that's in the Katz book that I'll take a moment to emphasize is parallel compression. It is the shizzy. Dry on one track, a compressed version of same on another. Blend to taste. All the punch, all of the detail. Its been helping me out a lot.
Snare, kick and bass. If you can get those sorted, the rest usually falls together. Give beta discs out freely to interested parties (and not just musicians either!) and listen to the comments. Everyones' ears, taken together are far superior to just your own, excellent as they are.
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