This week has been filled with computer woes, putting the small sound system in the living room, registering and signing up for free classes on SongU, and listening to an audio program on music licensing as well as reading the accompanying e-book.
While we were recording the spoken word artist's album, the studio computer completely stalled out. We were in a panic because we were on a deadline with her project. It took 2 days of trying to coax it back to life before John finally diagnosed it with a failed hard drive. He took it down to the Apple store just to make sure, and it was confirmed by the specialist. So, he took his web design/office computer and set it up in the studio to be able to finish her project. We have learned a good lesson that hard drives FAIL 100% of the time, and that you should back up after EVERY session if possible. John backs up the studio computer frequently, but he had just transferred an entire mini disk of our song ideas over to Pro Tools. We think that we may have lost all of those song ideas and are sick about it. But at worst, we will have to pay a good chunk of change to get someone to recover the information from the failed disk.
Then, when he put the office computer back into the office, he realized that the ethernet port wasn't working. He is right in the middle of working on a web site for an artist friend, so we are frustrated to say the least. We made an appointment with the Apple specialist to take that computer down to the Apple Store, so that makes 2 trips in one week. In the meantime, John will have to load all of the website and design work onto my web design computer so that he is able to move forward with our friend's project.
Meanwhile, we realized at the Pineville Arts showcase that we played at last week, that performing on the small sound system sounds TOTALLY different than performing without amplification. It threw us off just a little bit because we have never practiced with that system. So, we decided that we would set it up permanently in the living room so that we can practice with it everyday. The living room is quite crowded now, but it is making a difference in the way we are performing our songs. The amplification shows up loose fingers hitting the pick guard, sloppy pick technique, and any strange vocal anomalies that we don't usually hear unless we are amplified. Setting up this system for daily practice is helping us clean up some of these little problems.
SongU is a pretty cool thing. I'm really enjoying reviewing the classes that I have signed up for. But, I don't think that we will join at this time because it has been a distraction from the re-writes we are supposed to be finishing right now. WE MUST STAY FOCUSED! However, I encourage any of our blog readers who are songwriters to check them out. It's a really cool concept, and we will most likely join in the fall.
The music licensing program is really interesting. I have been reading books about licensing this year, and I am excited about the possibilities that this can bring. We will get into this a lot more at the end of the year when our CD is finished when we will have more time to devote to it.
Well, that's it for this week. We will be doing computer stuff this week, and a bunch of household things that need to get done so that we can focus on the recording.
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