Digital is so much easier.

[tfabris]

So we're in Jeff Bohnhoff's legendary Mystic Fig studios this weekend, with cadhla, harmonyheifer and it_aint_easy, recording tracks for the Bohnhoff's next parody album. Jeff and Maya, you see, alternate between doing serious albums and parody albums, and we're on the parody side of the clock this year. Jeff's already going to Hell for parodying Stairway and Smoke on the Water, so now he's just digging himself deeper with a Bohemian Rhapsody parody.

It's funny how things always come full circle. The original recording contained 180 separate overdubs for its operatic bridge, causing technical problems because of the excessive number of bounce-downs required. A bounce is when you take several finished tracks from a recording and permanently combine them into a single track, so that you free up more tracks on the tape machine for recording more parts. This is a perfectly valid way to work, but it means you can never go back and edit just one of the bounced parts; you've got to be absolutely sure those tracks are perfect before you start the bounce. Queen worked on a very-modern-for-its-time 24-track system, and the most modern tape-based recording systems can do 48, 96, or more tracks before you need to start bouncing.

You'd think that computer recording technology would solve this, and it does... kinda. Modern recording software allows virtually unlimited tracks, but it introduces problems of its own. We're only about half done with the tracking on this thing, and Jeff's top-of-the-line computer is already breaking under the stress, occasionally running out of memory and crashing when we add another track. I've never actually seen a computer-based recording project so large that it actually needed bounce-downs, but I'm wondering if Jeff's actually going to need to resort to that ancient technique just to keep the project file running.

Other than that, the session is going well, the song is hilarious, we're all having a huge amount of fun, and it's an absolute kick to hear the results played back; it sounds amazing.

VixyAndTony.com
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Comments

[nimuejohn.livejournal.com]

Wish I could be there, to see the steam seeping out of Jeff's control board...

[hms42]

Good luck breaking the computer. :) This sounds like you are having fun.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

At least with digital it should be pretty easy to do bounce-downs in a separate project, thus speeding up the main tracking while still allowing you to go back and edit it later.

[jenk]

I read this to skydancer. Much laughter.

Oh, and why does reading a reference to Stairway mean I automatically have Railway to Hogwarts stuck in my head...? I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the original. :P

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Because that's just what Jeff does, he ruins classic rock for everyone. No song is safe. :-)

[tereshkova2001.livejournal.com]

I MISS YOU!!!111!eleventy-one!!1

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

We hit that point with Phoenix's Into The Fire. 'Black Powder' has 24 tracks, and we were getting glitches and dropouts to the extend we were recording percussion overdubs with almost all bar the essential tracks disabled. Admittedly, this was 1999-ish era Mac tech on Cubase...

...but I did notice vaurien having very similar issues on similar vintage tech last weekend adding a full drum kit to talis_kimberley's new album.

Me? Logic Pro on a 2.4GHz 4GB Core Duo. I might have to work a bit harder these days :D

[djbp.livejournal.com]

would have to work harder indeed since if needed these days some work can be off loaded if another intel mac with the same version of Logic is added to the network.

[tfabris.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, according to Jeff, that feature would not have helped with yesterday's issue.

[mysticfig.livejournal.com]

My setup is pretty much the same - a Mac Pro (4 core) with 8 GB RAM. The song is currently running about 200 tracks, and I have more vocal overdubs to go. It actually handles the session just fine - it plays it back without a hitch, but after working for a while, the VM footprint grows up to the 32 bit memory address space limit, and I have to quit and relaunch. Quite honestly, with the crazy recording schedule over the weekend, that was my only time for a break :-).

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

200!!

*faints*

I'd love to see a full screenshot :D

[mysticfig.livejournal.com]

A screen shot wouldn't do it justice :-). I have the various groups of vocals packed into folders, so that I don't have to sort through 200 plus tracks in the main Arrange window. I programmed screen set commands to jump directly into the various folder as needed.

Stairway

[coat-of-brown.livejournal.com]

obviously, Jeff isn't the only one going to hell:
http://www.michaelspiro.net/Discography.htm
click on the "listen" link and select "Stairway to Gilligan" (and yes, it's exactly what you think it is- why ycan I picture Toy Boat doing it this way too?)

Re: Stairway

[mysticfig.livejournal.com]

That's funny. When Maya and I attended our first filk circles at Baycon 1995, we had nothing but non-filkish original songs, so in desperation, we whipped up a version of "Gilligan's Island" sung to the tune of "Stairway to Heaven". Once we started writing real parodies, we dropped it from our repertoire as quickly as we could :-).

[s00j.livejournal.com]

I had to bounce down sections of Firebird and Shangri-La at the time... Now I don't feel so bad. :) Good job getting us all excited to hear this when the time comes! and yay for having fun in the studio, and I'm not surprised, considering the components of this particular group.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

180 - *buh* And you're trying to recreate it for a parody? Oh, that's love. That's serious, serious WUV.

For the beer in the trivia contest, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. claims his father's work for the Chipmunks (on only 4 tracks) is acknowledged as the first of its kind (and got some kind of technical award, but I can't corroborate it). So when you bounce, thank a chipmunk.

[sheistheweather]

That's really interesting! :D