Are we there yet?

No. Not quite, so shut up back there.
Sheesh, this CD is taking its sweet time. I figure by the time we are finished, the CD format itself will have passed and the idea that anyone might actually BUY music won't even be a joke anymore. No matter, we are slogging along and the end of the tunnel is well within sight.

So here is what has been happening since I last posted: we finished most of the tracking around June or July. Then I started the mixing process. That was going well and we had most of the rough mixes done around August. Then I started doing the fine tweaking according to feedback from the members as I fired off round after round of rough mixes and re-mixes.

All that went swimmingly until September. At that point the CD was basically done and most of the fine mixes were finished. That was also about the time that I started experiencing equipment failures. Up in the boonies where I live, electricity is pretty stable mostly, but during the summer we get some pretty wicked storms and it isn't unusual for the power to go out for awhile. All my stuff is surge protected and the computers are on UPS units so that this kind of thing doesn't pose too much of a problem. Usually. This summer however the storms were far more frequent and far more powerful.

I am not entirely sure how, but during the stormy season, I lost 4 drives (each at roughly 600 gigs), my TC Electronics' Finalizer (sob), and one old Panasonic dat machine. I also fried an ADAT (we used some for remote recording...the venerable format still sounds pretty good) when I sent a spike through the system (my work boots are the culprit as it turns out; every time I wear them I get shocks when I touch any equipment!).

We were still able to procede regardless mainly because I have a LOT of gear and I am a stickler for backing things up. All along my G5 kept reminding me of an update to 10.5.7. I never update during a project so I put it off until I was finished. So I updated, BUT as it turns out I wasn't finished. I decided to remix two songs. Unfortunately for me my computer began showing signs of age (or so I thought). It began to grind to a halt loading up programs until finally it shut down entirely. I tried to re-boot but unfortunately my computer was effectively dead.

All of October I tried various methods of resuscitating it, but finally I had to cave in and buy a new computer (an 8-core mac Pro...yeehaw!). I really couldn't afford to keep my studio inactive for so long. I was able to retrieve all my files and, as I stated earlier, I am adamant in backing files up (to a spare terrabyte drive that spends most of its time shut off and alone, and to a thousand dvds I archive to constantly) so I did a disk transfer via firewire (Target Disk Mode; a neat feature that) and pulled up the files for remixing.

That was when the problems started. I went from a PPC based to an Intel based mac and a lot of the Audio Unit plugs I used needed to be updated and in some cases (digital fish plugs, KLC-1, and elemental audio plugs for example) were impossible to get recent versions. For the last two weeks I have been updating, re-authorizing, e-mailing developers, installing and re-installing over 300 plug-ins. Sheesh.

In some cases I had to re-install the plug-ins on my old mac (which I got running again after a fresh install of 10.5). Use all the old codes (which I meticulously filed away thankfully; or at least had done up until around May 2009) and then DE-AUTHORIZE them from one computer and re-authorize them on the new. I am a fan of intellectual copyright (being a composer for TV I earn most of my money from the exercising of such copyrights) but the sheer amount of time it takes, as well as becoming conversant with the myriad schemes that exist, is a real time consumer.

Anyway. I JUST got back to the project tonight and did the remixes. The art work is done and the CD is ready to be mastered and printed. Finally.

Now all we have to do is wait for our official release date (sometime in January). So, until then I'll post some of the details of the process of this incredibly arduous journey. The point of this blog was to do that actually, but I have spent so much time mixing and maintaining that I haven't posted anything for months. Now I'll share.