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Working on my moon (song)

So, last night I was up for a good long time starting to track stuff for my as yet not formally titled song about the moon for the Masters of Song Fu Challenge. Firstly, not having a title makes saving files a little tricky. Secondly, my gear sucks large. Third, my voice sucks larger.

I’m really into the tune I’ve put together for this. Like mist of my best ideas, it came at me quickly. It was all I could do to work out the harmony on my guitar and jot the words down in a marathon three hour session. Now all I have to do is invest another 150 hours or so in the studio to do it justice.

I took a full day to let the ideas germinate before heading into the studio, but had I started tracking a day earlier I would’ve realized that all my gear sucks that much sooner. You see, I was planning to use my M-Audio Keystation 49i Keyboard-based Music Production System, which promises to allow me to record instruments and vocals through its audio inputs. The thing is that it does so with an annoying audible hum, so its proving to be a problem. I did one pass using an acoustic guitar that had to be EQ’d so drastically it pretty much sucked the life out of it.

So I went digging through the cold storage for some of my old gear and dug out a Behringer Eurorack UB802 Ultra Low-Noise Design 8-Input 2-Bus Mixer with Premium Mic Preamplifiers which I had shelved last summer after it melted down on me in the middle of one session (the sound was horrific, but alas, the tape was not rolling). Well, it took some coaxing, but I finally got some decent sound out of it; a little tinny, but usable. Thing is, to get to that point I had to disconnect the power supply a few times, twiddle the knobs like crazy and literally pick the unit up and give it a good hard shake to make it stop sounding like the epicentre of a sandstorm.

I tracked another acoustic guitar take this way, but listening back to it shows that I primarily recorded the sound on the fan on the old laptop I have in my studio, which I prefer to use because it has the proper slot for my Echo Indigo I/O Soundcard.

Great. So now I’ve got to pick up a new preamp that’ll take both 1/4″ and XLR, hopefully tube-based, and I’ll have to plug it into my primary laptop’s combination microphone/line USB or 1394 input and hope for the best.

So there you go. I’m a full two days into the week long challenge, I’ve written a tune that I’m really happy with (as well as a bonus tune that just popped out yesterday afternoon!), but I still haven’t got anything decent down to tape yet. Oh yeah, I think I’m losing my voice as well. Giddy-up!