DSCF8190For much of the day, I was glued to the laptop sorting through everything that had been done so far. I especially wanted to get the drums that Dave had recorded the other day all sorted, and ready for the timpani recording that is happening tomorrow.

But it did not start well. I discover that there are some files missing on Getting Out. It appears that some of the drum tracks were hidden after take 2 of the drum tracks. The upshot of this is that any hidden tracks do not go into record mode!! The upshot of that was that I did not have hi-hat, Tom 1 and Tom 2 tracks for around 4 four takes of drums!! The upshot of all that was that we need to record the drums for Getting Out again. This was not good news. Made me a rather unhappy chappy.

Move on to next phase…but first coffee.

Next song to work on was Change To Survive. Problem here also, as the Reason file did not seem to match up with the vocal track. The tempo of the Reason file was set at 120 bpm, which is the default tempo, so I was immediately wary of that. Vocal track was playing back considerably faster, though it took me a while to realise this fact. I spent some time going crazy thinking that I just wasn’t putting it in the right spot. Tried to call Jarrod to tell me what the tempo was…no answer.

Move on to the next phase…but first coffee.

Next song to work on was Someone Else For A Day. Now we were getting somewhere. All drum tracks present and accounted for, so I spent a while comping the various takes into the one coherent part. One of the things you have to be aware of are the fills that go into a different section of the song. Normally I would try to do an edit right on the first bar of the next section (verse, chorus etc), but often the drum fill in the section before prevented me from doing this. The toms would ring out to such an extent that if I tried to edit on bar, you would hear the toms cut off abruptly, or worse, the sound of another tom carrying through. So there were times when I had make the edit point Bar 1, beat 3, instead of right at the beginning of the bar.

After a while, I got it all together, but on Pro Tools 7, it always takes longer. I give myself another gentle reminder that I need a new laptop and Pro Tools 8 – it’s got far better comping capabilities.

From there, I decided to do some work on the Reason track for Someone Else For a Day. As part of the score that Cam had put together, he also provided a second Reason file with all the sounds. This file did not sound right, but was just an indication of how the score would roughly sound. So I imported all the MIDI files from the score into the main Reason song. That song that also contained all of Jarrrod’s initial work (piano, organ, brass, strings). I then set about the rather fun task of finding the right sound for all the different parts of the score. It all went very well, with the only so-so sound being that of the piccolo trumpet. Will need to find a better sound for that one. But strings, brass, trumpets all fitted really well, and then especially when I combined Cam’s score, with Jarrod’s original parts, and THEN added the real cello. WOWOWOWOW. Bloody huge.

Not sure how we’re going to fit the vocals and guitars and percussion into this.

But all in all, after a shaky start, the day ended well. Zapped off the files to all who wanted for comment and perusal.