Getting a Head Start on Spring Cleaning
Jan. 5th, 2009 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyykiWhen you're all but iced in, and there's stuff hanging over your head, what else can you do but clean thosee things up?
Imagine you have a comprehensive address book with all of your friends and neighbors in it on the computer. Now, imagine that the city decides to rename the streets and renumber all of the houses, and the phone company decides to reorganize all of the phone numbers, while the local ISPs take the opportunity to standardize email addresses and get on the bandwagon? This is the equivalent of what I have to do in my studio. Changes late in 2007 resulted in fairly substantial changes in my keyboard rig when it got installed in the studio here. So today I took some time to tackle one directory to get everything standardized and up to date.
I started this project this morning around ten. I finished about 8:15pm. I did take a few breaks, because the studio has the most exposed walls to the outside of the house, (it used to be a garage before it was finished out) and so it was a bit cold in there. But it did take me a while. I didn't skip anything -- if it was under that particular directory, I converted it, even if it was an old file I didn't expect to use again, as you never know what will need accessing.
I did skip one directory -- the record directory. This is because I'm going to wipe that directory out and re-do it, since it's just copies of tunes in the order they'll show up on the records, and editing those would be redundant. So other than that, the entire Evidence directory tree under the bands folder is done. I still have four others there, so it'll take me some time to get them all done, but at least for now things are current in that particular directory.
A lot of stuff wound up in there from the Popular directory, too, so that one won't be too much to tackle. But the Flute subdirectory under Jazz and the Gypsy directory under Bands will come first, along with the Eldar directory under the Art section -- those directories contain music I'll have on albums this year if all goes according to plan, so they need immediate attention.
Last time I went through the directory tree and created OLD_COPY directories, moved all the songs into them, and moved them out one by one. So, of course, even though this last process happened over fifteen years ago, I still haven't finished converting all of those. This time I'm going to just tackle them in a more organized manner and do entire directories, leaving nothing behind, and hopefully I'll have all of them done by summer.
I don't predict any more changes like this. I have three empty MIDI ports now, so anything added will go there, which means no more need to just reconfigure things. The configuration of all of this is very logical, so there's no real reason to reconfigure things in that respect either. So hopefully this is the last time I'll have to do the big reconfigure project ever again.
While I'm doing this, I'm also getting things more standardized. I create guide vocal lines for songs, using a piano sound that cuts through the mix so the vocalist can hear it, to make learning songs much easier, and I've decided on a sound that I use for this pretty much consistently, so every time I run into a guide piano line, I'm changing it to that sound. Other standards are also falling into place, so I'm also updating things to those standards at the same time. The end result is cleaner track setups, and an easier time keeping things in order.
I also did a little cleaning in the studio, and a bit of rearrangement. I'm going to pick up a rolling chair for the keyboard rig sometime soon so I don't have to sit on the hard metal folding chair I'm using right now anymore, and this will make maneuvering around easier. I also moved the makeshift table that holds my laptop closer to the keyboards so I'm not twisting at an odd angle when doing things like checking lyrics and such. (The laptop really speeds this process up dramatically, so it's well worth it to have it in there) I also have my patch list on it in Excel, which saves vast amounts of time in finding sounds. Think of this -- every module has between 100 and 128 sounds per bank, and several of them have multiple banks. With one column per bank, I have sixteen columns not including the number indexes that tell me which patch number I'm currently dealing with. Keeping all of that in one's head would be nigh impossible.
The studio, according to people who can see, looks nice, and for the first time since the house in North Dallas, I have clear walkways and enough room to really work and move around in there. It alone would make this a nice place to live without all the other perks in the house.
I have 9 songs to finish before the 20th when school starts up again. That is slightly less than one song a day, which I can definitely do if I keep at it. Some tunes, like the big band tune Afterburner, will take more time, but some of the other songs might take less. And among this, I also have to get the tunes for my first album, the Aritime album called Soundcheck, ready for release by February first, including album art. We'll see how that goes.
Imagine you have a comprehensive address book with all of your friends and neighbors in it on the computer. Now, imagine that the city decides to rename the streets and renumber all of the houses, and the phone company decides to reorganize all of the phone numbers, while the local ISPs take the opportunity to standardize email addresses and get on the bandwagon? This is the equivalent of what I have to do in my studio. Changes late in 2007 resulted in fairly substantial changes in my keyboard rig when it got installed in the studio here. So today I took some time to tackle one directory to get everything standardized and up to date.
I started this project this morning around ten. I finished about 8:15pm. I did take a few breaks, because the studio has the most exposed walls to the outside of the house, (it used to be a garage before it was finished out) and so it was a bit cold in there. But it did take me a while. I didn't skip anything -- if it was under that particular directory, I converted it, even if it was an old file I didn't expect to use again, as you never know what will need accessing.
I did skip one directory -- the record directory. This is because I'm going to wipe that directory out and re-do it, since it's just copies of tunes in the order they'll show up on the records, and editing those would be redundant. So other than that, the entire Evidence directory tree under the bands folder is done. I still have four others there, so it'll take me some time to get them all done, but at least for now things are current in that particular directory.
A lot of stuff wound up in there from the Popular directory, too, so that one won't be too much to tackle. But the Flute subdirectory under Jazz and the Gypsy directory under Bands will come first, along with the Eldar directory under the Art section -- those directories contain music I'll have on albums this year if all goes according to plan, so they need immediate attention.
Last time I went through the directory tree and created OLD_COPY directories, moved all the songs into them, and moved them out one by one. So, of course, even though this last process happened over fifteen years ago, I still haven't finished converting all of those. This time I'm going to just tackle them in a more organized manner and do entire directories, leaving nothing behind, and hopefully I'll have all of them done by summer.
I don't predict any more changes like this. I have three empty MIDI ports now, so anything added will go there, which means no more need to just reconfigure things. The configuration of all of this is very logical, so there's no real reason to reconfigure things in that respect either. So hopefully this is the last time I'll have to do the big reconfigure project ever again.
While I'm doing this, I'm also getting things more standardized. I create guide vocal lines for songs, using a piano sound that cuts through the mix so the vocalist can hear it, to make learning songs much easier, and I've decided on a sound that I use for this pretty much consistently, so every time I run into a guide piano line, I'm changing it to that sound. Other standards are also falling into place, so I'm also updating things to those standards at the same time. The end result is cleaner track setups, and an easier time keeping things in order.
I also did a little cleaning in the studio, and a bit of rearrangement. I'm going to pick up a rolling chair for the keyboard rig sometime soon so I don't have to sit on the hard metal folding chair I'm using right now anymore, and this will make maneuvering around easier. I also moved the makeshift table that holds my laptop closer to the keyboards so I'm not twisting at an odd angle when doing things like checking lyrics and such. (The laptop really speeds this process up dramatically, so it's well worth it to have it in there) I also have my patch list on it in Excel, which saves vast amounts of time in finding sounds. Think of this -- every module has between 100 and 128 sounds per bank, and several of them have multiple banks. With one column per bank, I have sixteen columns not including the number indexes that tell me which patch number I'm currently dealing with. Keeping all of that in one's head would be nigh impossible.
The studio, according to people who can see, looks nice, and for the first time since the house in North Dallas, I have clear walkways and enough room to really work and move around in there. It alone would make this a nice place to live without all the other perks in the house.
I have 9 songs to finish before the 20th when school starts up again. That is slightly less than one song a day, which I can definitely do if I keep at it. Some tunes, like the big band tune Afterburner, will take more time, but some of the other songs might take less. And among this, I also have to get the tunes for my first album, the Aritime album called Soundcheck, ready for release by February first, including album art. We'll see how that goes.
