It has been a depressing and non-musical experience sorting out this problem drive/software/whatever it was, and there has been a knock-on effect into the Mix Suite as well- everyone has felt my pain and we have all been slowed up a bit (partly because I have not been able to pay proper attention to Jeff's work) - I was so tied up with reinstalling my machine that I let one of Jeff's mixes go off on the "wrong" track (there are always some mixes that need more steering than others) and we had to reconstruct it, which all takes time. Coming along nicely though now.
However all that is behind us now, and Jeff and I both got stuck into new mixes today - we will be slightly behind schedule at the end of this week but we still have time to achieve our target.
I heard from Vince that he has not been receiving the mixes - that's why he's not made any comments! He thought maybe he had been sacked :-)
Friday, December 15, 2006
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Drive Saga continued
So I lost the bet with myself that the faulty drive had somehow recovered - it worked for a short while his morning and I exported a big song for Jeff quite happily, then problems set in - so back to the other drive, and more reinstalls and faffing about. Extremely irritating, and I still don't know the cause. Anyway I managed to get back to music in the second half of the day, and completed my mix from Monday. I am now quite a bit behind schedule. Everyone very tired today so we had an early finish (before 23:00!). The mixes coming out of Jeff's Mix Suite are sounding very good though - I am particularly pleased with this last one we did. Great Bass! Well done Jeff.
Responses to Mixes
Just heard from Paul that Andy has heard all the mixes at home and was "blown away" - that means he likes them!
Haven't heard a word from Vince :-)
Daniel referred to the mixes yesterday as "the rough mixes"!!
So that's a mixed bag of responses from the team. Off to the studio now.
Haven't heard a word from Vince :-)
Daniel referred to the mixes yesterday as "the rough mixes"!!
So that's a mixed bag of responses from the team. Off to the studio now.
Around the Houses
So I picked up a hard drive at Micro Anvika after my Pilates Class & arrived at Mute to find a worried looking James. Logic would not start up - it was freezing at a certain plugin and the hard drive was clanking badly. I disconnected all peripherals (except the Logic Dongle and my iLok) but the problem persisted. The Mac was starting up erratically and clanking at Startup too. We had a brief meeting with Jeff and all agreed that something had to be done. The problem was definitely getting getting worse and more frequent.....no one had a better idea than reinstalling software, and if we were gonna reinstall we figured it was better to go to a new drive, in case the old drive was at fault. So, not really knowing what was going on, I reluctantly embarked upon a reinstall. Long Job.
In teh meantime Jeff was beavering away in the Mix Suite - implementing my tweaks from yesterday's mix and building up a great vibe on today's mix. I popped in and out to advise, steer and occasionally confuse.
Early in the evening I spoke to Sie Medway-Smith who is coming in to help with a bit of programming on one of the tracks (a potential single) that Daniel has a special vision of. He will be setting up in the edit suite - so we will be a real hive of Erasure activity for a while. One of my aims of the day was to bounce out all the parts for that room so the guys could build on what we have done so far and so they can experiment freely. So, well after midnight, and as as soon as I felt I had enough plugins installed I attempted to load that Logic song. Still Absynth 3 would not reinstall (complaining that it had already been deactivated on that machine ID - NOT!!) and I could not reinstall FM7 for some reason, so I put the "faulty" drive back in the machine to have one final attempt at bouncing out this song for tomorrow.
Of course everything runs as smooth as silk now - on the OLD drive (the one that had all the problems) No clanking, no freezing. I comfortably exported all 67 tracks and we all headed for home. Bemused, but job done.
I am betting the faulty drive will work fine for the rest of the production now. :-) As soon as I have the new drive all perfectly installed I shall be making a Disk Image, or a clone or something so that I can put it back together much quicker next time if I need to.
Goodnight.
In teh meantime Jeff was beavering away in the Mix Suite - implementing my tweaks from yesterday's mix and building up a great vibe on today's mix. I popped in and out to advise, steer and occasionally confuse.
Early in the evening I spoke to Sie Medway-Smith who is coming in to help with a bit of programming on one of the tracks (a potential single) that Daniel has a special vision of. He will be setting up in the edit suite - so we will be a real hive of Erasure activity for a while. One of my aims of the day was to bounce out all the parts for that room so the guys could build on what we have done so far and so they can experiment freely. So, well after midnight, and as as soon as I felt I had enough plugins installed I attempted to load that Logic song. Still Absynth 3 would not reinstall (complaining that it had already been deactivated on that machine ID - NOT!!) and I could not reinstall FM7 for some reason, so I put the "faulty" drive back in the machine to have one final attempt at bouncing out this song for tomorrow.
Of course everything runs as smooth as silk now - on the OLD drive (the one that had all the problems) No clanking, no freezing. I comfortably exported all 67 tracks and we all headed for home. Bemused, but job done.
I am betting the faulty drive will work fine for the rest of the production now. :-) As soon as I have the new drive all perfectly installed I shall be making a Disk Image, or a clone or something so that I can put it back together much quicker next time if I need to.
Goodnight.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Monday - Mission accomplished
I started the day by writing a yesterday's Blog entry - I woke up very early, my mind racing. Too much paperwork on Sunday maybe? Then it was off to Fulham for my Alexander Lesson. Jeff was in Cardiff at the weekend for his birthday, and he arrived back after lunch, looking a bit the worse for wear, but holding it together (ie pretending he felt fine!) :-) We mixed 2 tracks today - and I was very pleased with both of them. Of course I will check them in the morning and probably make a couple of adjustments, but it was a very good Monday, and agreat start to the week.
I am having a weird problem with my system drive. Every so often the drive starts clanking and Logic freezes up. At first I thought it was a Logic Preference issue, but the problem re-occours even after creating new preferences. Disk Utility reports the SMART status as verified, and I rebuilt the Catalog with Disk Warrior. Now I am running the project Manager again to recreate that database. Perhaps the drive is going faulty? Anyway tomorow I will pick up another internal drive - perhaps I will have to reinstall - that will be a tedious interruption, just as we are getting on a creative mixing roll. I guess these things happen......
Daniel has lent us his rice cooker, and I bought a Saucepan and a small electric hob, so we make brown rice or pasta in the evening - we are also eating lots of garlic to stay healthy, but it does stink the place out sometimes. No real complaints yet.
Tomorrow Pilates and 2 more songs to be mixed.
I am having a weird problem with my system drive. Every so often the drive starts clanking and Logic freezes up. At first I thought it was a Logic Preference issue, but the problem re-occours even after creating new preferences. Disk Utility reports the SMART status as verified, and I rebuilt the Catalog with Disk Warrior. Now I am running the project Manager again to recreate that database. Perhaps the drive is going faulty? Anyway tomorow I will pick up another internal drive - perhaps I will have to reinstall - that will be a tedious interruption, just as we are getting on a creative mixing roll. I guess these things happen......
Daniel has lent us his rice cooker, and I bought a Saucepan and a small electric hob, so we make brown rice or pasta in the evening - we are also eating lots of garlic to stay healthy, but it does stink the place out sometimes. No real complaints yet.
Tomorrow Pilates and 2 more songs to be mixed.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Busy busy busy
I am sorry that the frequency of my posts has decreased so much - it is a very busy time towards end of the album, getting all the loose ends tied up and crafting the mixes. I will try to summarize the last week now.
I started the week by greeting my colleague and friend, engineer Jeff Knowler, who is joining the team to help me with the mixes. Jeff and I have already worked on the Battle album, a Clinic album and a Moi Caprice album this year, so Jeff is pretty tuned in to my vibe. We have set up a mix suite in he room next to mine, with tie lines throught to my room so we can check the mixes on all the monitor systems we have available (and I can eavesdrop!)
We have NS10s in both rooms of course and Genelec 1029s. I have Dynaudio BM15s in my room and Jeff is experimenting with PMC ALM1s in the Mix Suite. We both use Sennheiser HD600 cans - I have installed my Grace Design m902 in Jeff's room, and in my room I am using my Benchmark DAC-1 so we can definitely hear what we are doing :-) Jeff is using a large Pro Tools HD rig. I am not a PT expert, but I can interface very nicely with it when I use the Mackie Controller. I am using my expanded Logic Audio Rig with TC Powercore, Waves APA, UAD-1 and Focusrite Liquid Mix. I also have an SSL Duende but I am finding it impossible to get that working in addition to my other DSP cards (none of which I want to give up).
Of course it is not about the equipment - it is about the ears and the sensibilities of the people involved, about getting the right balances between the musical parts and the vocals, and serving the songs as best we can. I take my responsibilities seriously.
It is great to have 2 rooms working, and to have another set of ears across the mixes. Basically I set Jeff up with the parts for a song (all synths are bounced out in the Logic system using the "Export all tracks as Audio" command which makes files for Pro Tools and Audio Files for Logic, freeing up the DSP of my Logic system for mixing) and a rough mix then he gets things going - I go in occasionally and make adjustments. I leave him to get on with things and work on another mix in my room. At the end of the day I take the mixes from both rooms home and check them on my home system the next morning, then I make more adjustments accordingly. When I am happy we get James to load the mixes up to EMI's secure server so that Vince and Andy and Michael and Paul and Daniel can access them and make comments and criticisms. We have done 4 mixes so far, and look forward to doing another 10 this week.
Daniel is in the building too, and comes in to offer his opinions whenever he has a moment. He has known the band longer than any of us, and is simultaneously their biggest fan and our harshest critic, so that keeps us on our toes :-)
At the start of the week I still had quite a few vocals and backing vocals to finish with Andy, but by the end of the week (Friday) all vocals for the album were finished. A significant milestone reached, I gave Andy a big hug and Jeff, James and I celebrated later in the evening with a small beer.
I started the week by greeting my colleague and friend, engineer Jeff Knowler, who is joining the team to help me with the mixes. Jeff and I have already worked on the Battle album, a Clinic album and a Moi Caprice album this year, so Jeff is pretty tuned in to my vibe. We have set up a mix suite in he room next to mine, with tie lines throught to my room so we can check the mixes on all the monitor systems we have available (and I can eavesdrop!)
We have NS10s in both rooms of course and Genelec 1029s. I have Dynaudio BM15s in my room and Jeff is experimenting with PMC ALM1s in the Mix Suite. We both use Sennheiser HD600 cans - I have installed my Grace Design m902 in Jeff's room, and in my room I am using my Benchmark DAC-1 so we can definitely hear what we are doing :-) Jeff is using a large Pro Tools HD rig. I am not a PT expert, but I can interface very nicely with it when I use the Mackie Controller. I am using my expanded Logic Audio Rig with TC Powercore, Waves APA, UAD-1 and Focusrite Liquid Mix. I also have an SSL Duende but I am finding it impossible to get that working in addition to my other DSP cards (none of which I want to give up).
Of course it is not about the equipment - it is about the ears and the sensibilities of the people involved, about getting the right balances between the musical parts and the vocals, and serving the songs as best we can. I take my responsibilities seriously.
It is great to have 2 rooms working, and to have another set of ears across the mixes. Basically I set Jeff up with the parts for a song (all synths are bounced out in the Logic system using the "Export all tracks as Audio" command which makes files for Pro Tools and Audio Files for Logic, freeing up the DSP of my Logic system for mixing) and a rough mix then he gets things going - I go in occasionally and make adjustments. I leave him to get on with things and work on another mix in my room. At the end of the day I take the mixes from both rooms home and check them on my home system the next morning, then I make more adjustments accordingly. When I am happy we get James to load the mixes up to EMI's secure server so that Vince and Andy and Michael and Paul and Daniel can access them and make comments and criticisms. We have done 4 mixes so far, and look forward to doing another 10 this week.
Daniel is in the building too, and comes in to offer his opinions whenever he has a moment. He has known the band longer than any of us, and is simultaneously their biggest fan and our harshest critic, so that keeps us on our toes :-)
At the start of the week I still had quite a few vocals and backing vocals to finish with Andy, but by the end of the week (Friday) all vocals for the album were finished. A significant milestone reached, I gave Andy a big hug and Jeff, James and I celebrated later in the evening with a small beer.
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