I am continuing to press forward with the finishing of my CD. At this point, I have all the parts for all the songs recorded save for vocals and flute on a couple of the pieces.
Vocals are not a problem, I have been singing for forever it seems. The flute, on the other hand, is giving me a few more difficulties. I suppose that if I had really spent a decent amount of time on the instrument, that would help. I am still a punk musician in some sense: I want to see what I can do with my limited chops and still come up with something that works for me for the song. Its really not about being the best whatever player in the world, its what works for the song.
Fortunately I have some pretty decent tools to do this with. Sonar comes with a nice comping feature, which basically means I can just set an area of the song to loop, and I can do as many takes as I want, and each take will be on a separate track. Once I have done several, lets say several several takes, I finally have enough to piece together something that works.
But its not just the playing that is tough. I am finding that recording a flute, as opposed to say my trumpet or sax, is rough work. Unlike those nice and loud instruments, where your mouth is at some distance from where the sound comes out, the noise end of the flute is right where you are blowing. This makes it some difficult to try and find a position at the mic where you are still being clear with your tone and yet not getting that whooshy breath thing. Plus I am finding that it is more difficult to control the volume when switching octaves on the flute than on the other wind instruments. Once again, I am forced to cheat a bit and reduce some of the volume, post recording, on some notes. I really hate to do this, since one of my goals is to have the wind instruments are live as possible, but unless I spend the next several months just playing the flute (wow, just think if I could actually DO that!) I have to go with the chops I got. I need to finish this CD before, well, before I get too much older.
Technical difficulties aside, once again I am feeling very fortunate to have lived long enough where I can actually record myself and have it sound good in my own basement. What a far cry from reel to reel four tracks!