DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I’ve done 99% of the remaining tracking on the last two tunes on my list for this summer’s recording session. I have some percussion overdubs left, and a couple big drum fills in the outro of one song.

As with software engineering, the final 1% of the effort can take a disproportionate percentage of the time, especially in the case of the crazy double-bass drum-solo fills that are called for during the outro of some songs, or really any song at all. The problem is Pro-Tools. In the old days — and I remember the old days; the JAR record was tracked to two-inch tape, and all the music I recorded before that was to half-inch 8-track — we’d just listen back and call it done. Or, sometimes, not even listen back, depending on the budget.

Now, half-speed playback is a keypress away. A visual representation that shows (zoomed in to the sample level) exactly how far out of time every note is, is as easy to get as dragging the mouse.

This doesn’t mean I fix every mis-stroke. What’s a couple ten-thousandths of a second here and there? If it feels good, I call it music. But if there’s a timing mistake I can hear, and I know that for every future playback my entire being will listen, frozen in a state of semi-stress, for that slightly ahead- or behind-the-beat note to sound, as if maybe this time, despite having been burned to CD many years prior, it will magically be in time, then in I zoom in for digital surgery.

For better or worse, I’ve gotten very good at editing multi-track drum takes in Pro-Tools.

All musicians are familiar with the notion that they hear their own mistakes with remarkable fidelity, regardless of whether the general public notices anything. This is actually worse — not only do I hear the mistakes, but I know I could fix them.

Sometimes, deadlines are a good thing.