Another weekend gone by - no serious progress

Well, between changing priorities w.r.t. home tasks to be done, intestinal virus that was bloody awful, and too many things needing to be done in the next 8 days - I didnt get to a lot of what I wanted to do. But they do say "Happy wife, happy life..." so in that regard life is still peachy.

Still left to be done:

1. Let JohnH on the Spacemuffins / 2box Drumit kit to get a feel for them prior to any recording.
2. Get new minusDrums mixes to JohnH with a synchronized click track - to start these would be simple mp3s with lyric sheet/tempo track mappings, especially important for songs such as "Lady in a Cage" and "Temple of Lost Souls"
3. Finish the soundproofing of my vocal/instrumental recording booth
4. Use the excess foam panels to build lightweight suspended baffles - to go in between the furnace and my workstation desk
5. Start thinking about similar baffling for the area above the Spacemuffins - the cymbals will be recorded as normal cymbals, so doing some sound treatment above and maybe using the acrylic shielding or more suspended baffling around to shield any outside noise and also less noise going out.

Of course I'm still playing around with the Muse Receptor. Talked some more with their support guy - this was an updated Receptor 2 (a Receptor C that was upgraded) and w.r.t. the SSD, even though I can plug it into my laptop and in Disk Manager see that a disk exists with various partitions, it's in it's proprietary formatting I cant do any repair work on it - at least not in Windows. I would still need to have another drive with the primary OS on it to ghost image to a new SSD - so Muse will do this for me and only charge me $100 for the effort. I'm going to make sure it's preloaded with all the software the original had - Komplete 7 is an expensive package and I'm not going to want to buy it when it's already licensed for this system.

Thoughts on my amp / cabinet arrangement - right now I have my amps sitting stored in an alcove in front of the Sienna and under some shelving. This isn't optimal for anyone as they stand at risk of damage and also not very convenient to where I'd need to use them. So I'll be moving them into another area shortly - likely in the alcove under the new "workbench" between the two Ikea cabinets to the right of my workstation. The isocab is on the shelf just above so it makes for an easy wiring arrangement as well as convenient for both playing live and reamping guitar tracks. Once I can get rid of that shitty Flocaci rug that's on top of everything on the bench, then the studio rack can go up and I can arrange everything much more logically.

Finally - last week I took my Gibson Les Paul Goldtop and my acoustic Garrison to Darren Ross of Ross Precision Guitars for a top to bottom setup (the LP) and some minor repair work of a cracked top with setup (Garrison). Once those are done, I have the Howard Roberts Fusion III to be done, as well as maybe a quick bridge intonation on the Black Strat. From a guitar maintenance perspective that should take care of those preparations for recording.

I know from a music appreciation perspective this blog is kinda dull - no new music or discussion of the process of writing yet. But getting the whole environment set up is extremely important to being able to capture the moment - saving the time it would take to get things set up to pull out the idea from your head. Oftentimes in the other manner, you rush like hell to get something set up only to have forgotten the gem of the idea, or lose the feel of the hook in the riff or melodic line you have in your head. Or even just get disheartened by the effort that you just abandon it altogether...

Having stuff set up and ready to go in every regard is so important now - I'll spend the time making sure that the space is just right so that I can walk in and bang out stuff as it happens. I also want the space to allow jamming with everyone as well - the Bothell media room initially had that layout with the drums and everything set up facing the middle, but the group fell apart shortly after we moved and financial difficulties had me selling drums and a few of the keyboards to make ends meet. This time around I want to make the studio and technical aspects of the thing the least of everyone's concerns. Which is why I'm spending the time and money investing in the microphones, keyboards and drums right now. Guitars are covered w.r.t. instruments and amps - that was all worked out on the last CD and shortly after. Replacing the drums and keyboards to make live recording feasible was the priority.

Next on the wish list though - excavating the crawlspace and building a real studio area in there. Excavation and construction would give a potential 10' x 45' more useable area - 10' x 8' would be reserved for fruit cellar/cold room, and another 10' x 8' for general storage, but the remaining 10' x 29' would easily facilitate a 10'x10' control room and a 10'x19' studio floor/media room.That would be my dream studio at that point.