"Vitameatavegamin" original by Ted

[Ted]

... I think cuthbert was clever to pick up on the Lucille Ball end of it. I just heard bald headed clown and the babies came and thought "Thats Britney Spears!!"

There's an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy dresses up like a clown to sneak onto Ricky's show.  I just added "bald headed" to make it relevant to Britney.  I guess it worked.

We don't hear enough music from you Ted...

Thanks!  As you'll see in my next post, it's because I don't make enough music.  This song was produced in spurts over one-and-a-half years.

Are you Sure you aint "The" Ted Johnson of Youtube fame....?

I'm pretty sure I'm not.  You'll have to send me a link of this other Ted Johnson's video, or post it here.

Wow a Lucy reference, nice!  My sister and gramma are still obsessed!

Sadly, when I watch I Love Lucy, I now see only obsessive attention-seeking behavior.  If I knew someone like that in real life, I'd think she were mentally ill.  It dampens my enjoyment of the show (just a little).

What a great pop tune, and I mean that in the best way (where "pop" is not a dirty word...in a land where even "prog" was once not ridiculed).  Man, the bass is cooking at 2:45 or so.  I almost wish it were louder, but the mix is too good as it is.

I'm fine with "pop," as a musical form.  It's the word I use to describe most of my songwriting, and many of my songwriting heroes.

As for the bass, my favorite run is at the end of the guitar solo.  (As long as we're talking about attention-seeking behavior here.)

[danarm101]

The talent just keeps coming........nice, original song, i agree with the other guys about the comparison to the who.......its refreshing to hear putting pen to paper and telling a story. Has anyone ever compared your voice to the lead singer of a band called Mercury Rev...check a song called the Dark is Rising and see what i mean, maybe its just me. Liked the song, top stuff, very original and beautifully executed.

Dan

[Ted]

Has anyone ever compared your voice to the lead singer of a band called Mercury Rev...check a song called the Dark is Rising and see what i mean, maybe its just me.

Thanks.  Nope.  Never heard of Mercury Rev.  Listening to Dark is Rising on YouTube right now.  I'll take the comparison.

People usually compare my voice to either Pleashuh Tup or Fin Gernails.  Apparently they're both very obscure.

[Ted]

This song survived many disasters, and I learned a lot while recording and mixing. I'm hoping it will be valuable to the community for me to recap here.

Disasters are in red.
Lessons Learned are in blue.

If you are not interested in the drama, just read the blue parts.

I finished writing this song in January 2008 and recorded a demo.

Terry came over and recorded his parts--but I wasn't too savvy about AUTo Punch, so I accidentally deleted some of Terry's work.

Test out the features you need to use if you won't be able to re-record the performance or undo a mistake.

The song languished while I sold a house, moved across the country, and got married.  I know: Where are my priorities?

I managed to repair and loop Terry's guitar part late last year, which was probably about three hours of work.  I got really good at copying and moving tracks.

In March this year, I was preparing to do some more work, and I fried my Micro BR--including the SD card. ¹

I not only lost my Micro BR, I lost all the work I'd done over months--since my last backup.  I replaced the Micro BR with a new one and restored what I had backed up.

Backup your data whenever you connect the Micro BR to your computer for any reason.²

Earlier this month, I re-did all the lost edits on Terry's guitar part, and recorded my own guitar and synth parts. I also recorded Anne's angelic vocals only to discover later that one of our cats meowed just as Anne's voice faded out, on the last note, on her best take.

Remove and isolate the cat when recording into a microphone.

Trimming that meow would have been 100 times easier on a DAW.

On several tracks, I experimented with the "Exciting Compressor" technique described by AndyR. And I also did some doubling on a few tracks.  Both of these techniques, of course, took up twice as many v-tracks as they otherwise would have.  I started to run out of v-tracks. Rather than erase tracks that had already been bounced, I bounced the tracks I had done to a "working stereo pair," I OPTimized the song, and then created a new copy. 

I'm so sensible.

I did about an hour of work on the new copy before I realized that on the "working stereo pair" (T34V1) the "left" v-track was out of sync from the "right" v-track by about two measures.  On the original copy of the song I discovered that the "working stereo pair" was also out of sync  as well. The culprit had to have been the optimizing process.  So I re-bounced those v-tracks, EXPorted them to a WAV file, and then IMPorted them to the new copy of the song. 

I'm so sensible.

On the advice of 64Guitars, I backed up the SD card, reformatted it, and restored the files.

Things got worse.  Every time I tried to work on the song, I got Card Read Errors, and Disk Busy problems.  The new copy of the song was unusable.  I had to do all of that work again. 

Never optimize.  Backup immediately when you get any error.  Resolve the problem before continuing any work on the song.

Don't assume your SD card is the cause of the error messages. The Micro BR apparently can't tell the difference between a corrupted song and a corrupted SD card.

I deleted the new copy of the song (losing an hour of work, plus the time I spent fiddling with the problems), and created yet another copy.

I was able to work on the Twangy Telecaster and the synth parts.  I bounced them together to a mono v-track (T1V3), and then made a copy of the v-track (to T2V3) offset by .005 seconds for a doubling effect.

Strangely, when I tried to listen to the new sterio pair (T12V3) along with the other stereo pair (T34V1), the "left" track (T3V1) began with what sounded like the fade-out of one of my guitar tracks, and then was silent until about the 5th measure before the music that is supposed to be there came in.  I went back several steps, and repeated my steps making sure that I didn't unintentionally copy something to T3V1.  The results were the same.

When copying or moving tracks, listen to them to confirm that the copy went as intended before continuing--especially Track 3 for some reason.

Not to worry, I still had the WAV file of T34V1.  I could just re-import it. 

I'm so sensible. 

The import process hung on the last bar for a long, long time.  I got impatient and clicked Exit.  The first 14 measures got imported, but then there was a noise that sounded like radio static on the remainder of the track.  So I re-imported the WAV file and went to bed, and let it run all night.  In the morning the display said Disk Full, and again the tracks had radio static after the 14th measure. 

"Disk Full" my ass. I had 200+ MB free, and the WAV file is only 35MB.

The Micro BR likes to have lots of free space to do hard things like a track import.

Well, at least I had the first 14 measures, which I could copy on top of the tracks that were missing data.  That actually worked.

I recorded my vocal part last, and bounced it to a new "working stereo pair."  Then I mixed and mastered.  After mastering, the Micro BR asked me if I wanted to EXPORT TO MP3/WAV?  I clicked YES, and WAV.  The resulting WAV file had only about half a second of sound on it: my voice saying, "...wa..." So I checked the stereo pair of v-tracks where I had mastered. Again: "...wa..."

I mastered again and when asked to EXPORT to MP3/WAV, I answered NO.  I checked the mastered v-tracks and the whole song was there.  So I exported these v-tracks to a WAV file, and all was well.

When the Micro BR is already acting temperamental, let it rest between difficult tasks.

I loaded the WAV on my computer and trimmed off the beginning and end silence, encoded an MP3, and uploaded it for this fine community.

Last night I started to write up this tale, and suddenly I got a Blue Screen Of Death on my computer. 

The ghost of Lucille Ball doesn't like being compared to Britney Spears.

[OsCKilO]

I thought I had trouble with card read errors.......

Damn.........

[cuthbert]

Wow - that was quite the odyssey. 

The very next thing I'm going to do after this is back up my MBR SD card, even if there isn't that much on it yet. Might even back up my computer hard drive, just for good measure.

The ghost of Lucille Ball doesn't like being compared to Britney Spears.

Ha ha! I would not at all be surprised by that!

[Bluesberry]

Damn thats epic, this deserves a term in the terminology thread you started Ted, hell it deserves a song on it own.  "The Ballad of ..."  What would be a good name, "The Ballad of Despair and Redemption with a microBR, a shotglass and a shotgun".  It would make a hell of a song.  I can't imagine going through all that.

[OsCKilO]

Damn thats epic, this deserves a term in the terminology thread you started Ted, hell it deserves a song on it own.  "The Ballad of ..."  What would be a good name, "The Ballad of Despair and Redemption with a microBR, a shotglass and a shotgun".  

It would make a hell of a song.

Do it BB!!!!!!

[Davo]

Ted thanks for the lessons.  There are several bugs on the MBR, I hope that Roland is familiar with them.

[Bluesberry]

Damn thats epic, this deserves a term in the terminology thread you started Ted, hell it deserves a song on it own.  "The Ballad of ..."  What would be a good name, "The Ballad of Despair and Redemption with a microBR, a shotglass and a shotgun".  

It would make a hell of a song.

Do it BB!!!!!!

OK T, you have talked me into it.  I am going to write "The Ballad of Despair and Redemption with a microBR, a shotglass and a shotgun".  Lets see what kind of fun I can get up to here, apologies in advance to Ted, I may use some of your true life disasters/lessons from this thread for inspiration and lyrical content.  I will change the names to protect the innocent  , lets get to work now!  Thanks for the encouragement T-man.