School of Rock and audio recording
I drove down to Chick Fil A to get some breakfast, craving a chicken mini, you know. Did I go to either of the 2 nearest ones? No, of course not. My husband only approved this excursion and added his order because I was going to drive to the next town to the "better" Chick Fil A, the one near our old house. So it gave me a lot of time to mull things over as I listened to several tracks I'd been trying to learn.
Remember that old Jack Black movie, School of Rock? I loved that movie when it came out and by god, can I relate to it now. I'm a Jack Black fan. He is fun. OMG is that who/what I want to become? I want a band. But unlike Jack Black's character, I don't think I actually want to perform in front of adoring crowds. I just want people to jam with because I enjoy it. I was thinking back to this one afternoon where I'd looked up the chords to Hall of Fame and in the last few minutes of class, I asked the fourth graders if anyone knew how to rap. Someone said yes but this was not true. So we tried in our half sung, half spoken way to do a sing-along. It was not very successful. I still have a vision for that song in my head that I'd love to hear but I don't think it works as a number for a solo singer with a guitar. Hmmm... I have to think about that.
Did anyone notice changes to Apple Music on the latest update on the OS? It seems they have changed the default settings to the playback and it's been switching tracks midway through the song and sometimes comes into the new song in the most god-awful places. It switched me to The Corrs with 32 seconds left in the song. What???? There wasn't even singing. It was like the tail end instrumental that fades out in, you know... 32 seconds. I have to fix that. I thought I did so the other day, but I think all I did was prevent it from doing crossfades between the songs. I hate them trying to play AI DJ. This is not cool. I'm actually a little offended.
Wanna know what things offend me? One is when people scoff at "old" technology. We Gen-Xers have the privilege of belonging to that generation that witnessed unprecedented advances in technology. While we are probably as adept as our kids on the use of smart devices, we also lived through the rotary phone, the phone booth and experienced the landline that sat in a central place in the home as teenagers. I highly doubt that my spending the entire day with my friend at school and then going home to spend another 3 hours in our kitchen to be on the phone with her at night was a unique experience. Mom, listening in the background and then later commenting about how I told stories of past events in the present tense or that I use the word "like" too much. Like that was weird. <roll eyes> I love you, mom. Sorry, I still do all that.
I did a lot of recording in my earlier career. I started professionally at age 18. I've seen how the technology changed and I have some sense of the part that each thing played in developing the next thing. I worked in a studio, did a live daily show, and I literally would hang out at production houses in my free time. This was great for getting the occasional job but also showed casters that I was easy to book. I can be there in a snap! Oh wait, I'm already there. As you can imagine, I've seen and worked with my share of equipment, lived through the transition from playing records to CDs, all the things in between, until all that was left was a hard drive, the audio vault, that had everything in it. I've seen and used all manner of microphones, headphones, mixers and computers. In continuity work, I dealt with various DAWs but this was all years and years ago. Even after I'd gotten married, I was still doing a little bit of voice work here and there and I invested in a new laptop and a recording bundle. It was becoming common practice to have talents record stuff at home or in a remote studio and just email files over. Now, with the pandemic just a few years behind us, there is even more new technology out and it took a minute to wrap my head around the myriad of options that have surfaced in the last few years. I tried to test my old setup on a newer computer but the interface I have may be obsolete. With enough know-how, I could probably find something compatible and still use it but I think at least one channel was truly dead. I don't know if I have the patience. I was really getting frustrated that I could not get the project up and running. My husband even spent time trying to reconfigure the laptop for me, get ProTools on there, a driver for the Mbox. Ah, my husband. 20 years of craziness. The guy isn't even in this field, not even close, but he wants to help. He gets producer credits and not just for funding the gear.
I reached out to a young sales engineer from an online store to see if he had any suggestions. The initial advice to plug in the equipment and just try to play a YouTube video on it was actually useful. I could hear the sound! But when I recorded, it was filled with ticks and crackling, like the sound was being transmitted from light years away. Oooooh maybe it is. So, I set up a call with him and told him what I wanted to produce, what I think I needed to do that and I asked him for a quote. I asked for 2 quotes. One with specific stuff I was asking for and another with things he recommended. He insisted on a number and I gave him one but you know, there isn't a real budget here. I just want value for money and to only get what I immediately need. Even better if it was something that allowed me to use some of the old stuff I still had. Yeah well, he did not understand that. He did not understand the kind of customer I was, what my immediate needs were and he was very good at constantly reminding me that I was old, that my equipment was antiquated and so this did not result in a sale.
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