Monitors, production and... (sigh)

I continue to be snowed under with work. This would be a good thing if I made any money out of it, but as I've explained before, I'm so busy trying to be good at my job that I've no time to be a good business man. If I was a good business man, I wouldn't give a hoot about clean code, quality design or accessibility.

Still, the 50th Anniversary Edition is still priority A, after priority AAA - Family, and Priority AA - Work.

Anyway, tonight I stumbled across a track I started recording recently as a backing track for future podcasts. It started with a riff which just popped into my head before going to bed weeks ago, and which I decided to treat like a Garageband production. I wrote in the riff and the bass part, and then started picking out samples and loops from Apple's extensive collection to build a quick n' dirty backing track. I even used something called 'emotional piano'.

Can I just point out, before going any further, that Ruth decided to re-decorate the bathroom last week.

This meant emptying the contents of the bathroom into the nearest available doorway, in this case, the studio.

Now as you know, because you've read everything I've ever written, I have a pair of bargain basement (sorry - affordable) Alesis M1 active monitors plugged into this computer. Jacked up, they sound great. But you can't jack up monitors at two o'clock in the morning when you can't shut the studio door because there are boxes of toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, soap, bath salts, toilet roll, bleach, sunblock, aftersun, and etc. in the way.

Hey, but that's no problem, because I'll just use the little external computer multimedia speakers instead.

Ouch.

Instead of the rich, dark, funky track I remembered recording, out squeaks a thin, pallid half-finished bleuch of a thing. The subtly engineered reverb has disappeared, the massive kick on the Rn'B drum loop just pops inconsequentially and the bass would be better renamed the buzzy middle thing.

I really need third party feedback at this stage. Early comments on the mixes I was producing went along the lines of "where's the bass?" As a result, I mounted the Alesis monitors on Mopads and re-positioned them to avoid false representation of the bass end of the mix. I'm beginning to wonder whether it was worth the effort.

Judge for yourself, but let me know what you think. Here's the track:

By the way, the bathroom looks great!