What's your biggest producing frustration?

[hammersmith]

Nov 11, 2009, 9:57pm, mojobone wrote:Nov 11, 2009, 6:54pm, hammersmith wrote:Musicians and singers. There are the ones who don't return calls and emails. Worse still are the ones who initially seem gung ho, but who never follow through. Of course the few who follow through and deliver the goods give me an amazing feeling of accomplishment, so I wade through acres of swampland for the brief joy of the occasional beach.Well, yeah, but I kinda thought that went without saying, heh. In these parts, we call that the Flake Factor. I guess I'm being unrealistic expecting musicians to be as reliable as the general population. Back to trying to find a singer for that listing that closes on Monday.

[qbot]

Oct 29, 2009, 5:49pm, lyle wrote:Production-wise, the things I can do now would have blown my mind two years ago...and yet I feel more self-critical than ever before. I see flaws everywhere!This is so true! Sometimes I feel like I take two steps forward (knowing way more) and one step back (being more sensitive to my flaws).

[BraveNote]

Latency with my pc. Very frustrating. I've almost given up on pc recording due to latency that cannot be overcome. The insideous thing about it is, it comes and goes and I can't determine what is responsible for it. I thought I did my homework well enough before I made the convesion from hardware to pc. IE, making sure the pc was capable and significant enough to overcome such obsticles. I have experienced them many times before with less sophisticated computers and software. My music is instrumental and I use a combination of audio samples modules from Roland and Yamaha as well as NI Kontakt 3.5, Halion 1 and Halion 3.

I have ASIO 4ALL and tried every known adjustment and combination there-of. I'm using a TASCAM US-144 as my audio card. My pc is HP 720GB HD quad core AMD Phenom 9500 processor and replaced the internal amplifier to a 750 watt. OS is Vista Home Premium x32.

I'm not getting the production momentum I used to with my 24 track all-in-one box. However, at this point I'm not sure I want to forfiet the editing power I have with the pc and software. And, I can hear the difference in the 32bit processing that Cubase has. I'm using Cubase 4 Esential for my seq. platform and all the plug-ins I get from both Cubase and NI.

From 14 to 24 tracks of combined audio and MIDI implementation the pc exibits scratching sounds, delays, drop-outs and some other very disturbing charactoristics as well as pop-up error messages to contact my software company for solutions to crashes.

Rebooting the Cubase programs often solves the problem of the above mentioned audio glitches and temporarily sets the defaults back where I can usually complete the recording and mixes. However, not without considerable delays and interuptions from latentcies and audio glitching, rebooting etc..etc...etc......

I've been advised lately that I will require a bigger pc with more memory. One such dedicated pc is highly recommended. RAIN ION. It's suggested that all the above issues can be solved by using this. I don't know. I thought I did my homework. The RAIN ION will cost three times what I paid for the HP at around 2K. And, I'm still not entirely convinced that by investing that much more on a new pc and platform my latency issues will completely dissapear.

And suggestion from the informed TAXI readers will be greatly welcome and appreciated.

[mojobone]

Let me guess; the person who suggested a better computer is in the computer sellin' business, yes?

There are lots of ways to streamline and optimize your OS, search OS tweaks for Vista on the Sound On Sound site. you're probably aware that virus scanners and music apps don't like to coexist in the same user profile, but probably the best thing to do after maxing out the RAM and upgrading the video card is to put your samples and audio on drives separate from the system drive. You can also adjust latency settings as you go along-you want it low for overdubbing, but you can raise it up for mixing to give your CPU a break. Since your problem presents intermittently, you should look into other apps eating CPU cycles and maybe check to see if your OS is using drive space as virtual memory. Also try defragging the drives, see if that helps.

[cardell]

the gnawing desire of perfection that, of course, there's "enough time for," which sometimes overpowers my sensitivity to just recording and displaying a great, human, performance.

Yes, I'm the same. I need to get better at balancing these two issues.

Stuart

[remmet]

Biggest frustration for me - when writing orchestra music - is the CONSTANT loading, unloading, and reloading of patches to get the palette of articulations needed for a piece. I hope someday to be able to afford a few extra computers so I can have more sounds available simultaneously.

Second biggest frustration: Musicians and singers who don't read music! It slows down recording sessions significantly. When I lived in LA it was rarely a problem, but most of the non-classical musicians and singers here in Portland never bothered to learn that part of the craft. Lots of wasted time as a result.

Richard

[mojobone]

Interesting that you feel that way. I think it's only a waste if you've written out parts ahead of time; once you're in in the studio it's much faster to sing a line or a rhythm to a player than it is to write it out for them. Maybe I've been working with non-readers too long, but I often get better parts than I would have written when the session cats contribute to the arrangements, heh. Of course that can be different from song to song; with some songs, too many cooks spoil the broth, so to speak.

[remmet]

Interesting that you feel that way. I think it's only a waste if you've written out parts ahead of time; once you're in in the studio it's much faster to sing a line or a rhythm to a player than it is to write it out for them. Maybe I've been working with non-readers too long, but I often get better parts than I would have written when the session cats contribute to the arrangements, heh. Of course that can be different from song to song; with some songs, too many cooks spoil the broth, so to speak.

I should clarify what I meant. When it's a SONG session, I let the musicians work it out. But I want the singer to sing the RIGHT NOTES of the melody! I often have to spend lots of time plunking it out for them - line by line - on the piano or guitar, and it's entirely hit or miss as to whether I'll get an accurate take where the notes are right and the words are pronounced clearly and the feeling is right. The process can be exhausting. And in all those cases, I've provided an mp3 beforehand, with the melody clearly played by an instrument as a temp guide, so they should have it down by the time we're ready to record.

If it's an instrumental piece and I've written a specific arrangement with specific melodies, I probably don't want a player to make up his own melody. There are times when that's appropriate, and other times when it's not.

I should just move back to LA where musicians can read, improvise, and get it right in a take or two.

R

[ernstinen]

I should just move back to LA where musicians can read, improvise, and get it right in a take or two.

Ya, you got that right! There's nothin' like good players!

BTW, my Midi is STILL down. I'm working at home doing edits on ProTools. My Midi guy at W. LA music flaked out on me, but DID call after he did. Next time I need to work there I'll ring him up and find out (finally) what the hell's wrong!

Ern

[feaker66]

I bet I am posting in the middle of a discussion?

My biggest frustration is turning out a song that might be half decent and then not having the ability to enhance it.

My songs don't ever go anywhere, but I would still like to tweak them to the fullest.

Someday:)

Paul