House On a Hill Studio, is what I officially coined, as the name for my music production location. Honestly the space is my living room rather than an elaborate decked out recording studio, with isolation booths, a control room to hold modern sophisticated systems for capture, to record and play-back audio signals. This studio being in my living room, is the computer (running the Ubuntu Studio operating system) from which I write these words, having an external audio sound-card, several microphones and the wires to connect the parts together. I spend most of my waking hours sitting on the office chair, looking at this desktop computer screen, doing what I do every day of my life at present. Only some of the time spent here is dedicated to music production. I was sitting in this chair while listening to a geology podcast this morning as I drank the morning’s coffee, looking through these windows at the snow that gracefully adorns winter’s white, now covering this part of the planet today. It is quite cold out there at -17° C, at the moment, yet comfortably pleasant, I sit in this chair. But I digress from the topic, House On a Hill Studio, originated as the name of a song I wrote many years ago.
Back in 2018 I began recording the song, "House On a Hill", but like so many, it fell from focus as one too many grains of sand on a beach, having yet to reach a completion as a song for others to hear. Several days ago, it found its way back into my mind, then into a rejuvenating space, where its former recording status became a new beginning as a project. At one time I played this song frequently, and I knew it well, yet that was many years yonder, as I look back at time. Even so, it was written in this room where I am now giving it its due focus. When I recorded it in 2018, it was purely conjured up from memory, which after working on what was then this recording for many hours, in trying to record its vocal track well, while singing with the lyrics sheet opened, I realized I had missed one verse completely. The brain can show up as flawed, the memory back then had err. Discovery of this situation led to having to start the process completely anew.
Thus yesterday I devoted most of my working at music with a new recording, one that contains all the lyrics. Doing these recordings fully alone, my limits are well recognized as to the instruments I am capable of playing well enough to record them. At present with the finger still an issue, guitar is really the only thing I am able to play with competence. I use computer work-a-rounds for the remainder, most of that being in some form of MIDI.
I am quite sure that those whom have a well trained ear can near always recognize recordings that implement MIDI, as most of mine have, yet in order to break from this use, requires one of two possibilities. The first being myself learning to play all the instruments I intend for the music I write and compose, or two, finding associates that will fill in for the spaces where I lack personal ability. I really don’t see the latter happening for reasons I need not explain here. The point being that I know MIDI is somewhat inferior, lacking flex, humanity itself, and fully frowned upon by "the music industry," & "musician unions"; etc., for their justified reasons, yet those are conditions outside my own personal realm. I have all these songs that I wish to share with the world, and in that, MIDI’s use can help me achieve the goal.
So I was able to import the midi bass track from the previous incomplete composition, as a basis to begin the new recording. I then used the written lyrics as a separate template to work from. It was the lyric sheet itself that had brought the flaw to my attention, because I had discovered that forgotten verse in an attempt to mark positions in the edit view (of Ardour Audio Workstation) recording to correspond workstation positions with positions in the vocal lines. This is very helpful in finding track progress for playback, while editing recordings. The structure of the music is quite recognizable in doing this, where as looking at the written poetic verse is seen for its story, rather than its structure, at least to myself. Having discovered the structure in the process, I decided to use it strictly in the process of recreating the MIDI bass track. I noted that there were four verses with a strict form, a middle section that I can’t call a chorus or a refrain, but it has a unique structure repeated once, followed by a variation in that structure of the other four verses. Using the structure as a basis made the process of creating an accurate depiction of the lyrical phrasing to make the MIDI bass track, seem both accurate and quickly completed. With this in mind, I went on to the drum track (using Hydrogen), where again, after writing out each individual drum kit section, equal to the lyrical patterns, this too came together quite quickly as compared to my struggles of the past. I suppose one could say I am continuing to learn new tricks. I should add that I know I have many more lessons to learn along this path. I then listened to the two, at least rough tracks simultaneously noting them as complementary before moving on to phase next, the vocal and guitar tracks.
First of all I had to actually play and sing the song to the MIDI tracks in order to verify that my thought of charting was actually true. The next issue is based in my inability to use or read written sheet music, although for me, it is not an issue, it is a life long way of doing things. My process is to make a rough track for each part simultaneously, allowing the bleed through. That is why I called it rough. I then recorded that rough track, putting the vocal and the guitar on a single track This then can eliminate mental lapses while recording final tracks, of which I seem to have many at times in recording. The vocal lyric and or the guitar assisted by the position markers of edit view in the computer window, all help to allow knowing where in the song I am while recording. Generally this is not needed, yet there are moments in the process, while having to keep a mental picture of so many parameters of the process in every moment, when this is quite an assistance. That is my process in the least. Yes it would be much better to have someone to assist with the entire process, I believe that would be termed, a recording engineer or producer, yet I do it all alone right here sitting before this computer screen.
With some luck I may soon have a complete recording of House On a Hill to work with in the mixing process. But that is in what I hope shall be the near future. Time and experience shall tell what actually happens. I’ll happily continue in the process, where sometimes it all aligns throughout the process. Then there are the other times, such as yesterday, discovering a brain fart overlooked for 3 years, then changing the course taken. It is a fun and unique adventure that I seem to love. House On a Hill, the song and the studio, over time, it is, and will be, me hopes (wink).
