well i’ve done a host of small things this week – a new part here or there in a bunch of songs, a first vocal try for a song – stuff like that. i rerecorded the acoustic on you are never really gone again last week, then redid it again today because i did the strum pattern wrong. dumb! also i keep forgetting to bring the bass back from church to redo it on give glory – that song is the least developed and has no guitars yet – and it won’t until i remember the friggin bass. today’s biggest achievement was redoing bring it back like i talked about – featuring some strings and a picked pattern instead – and its coming out really well so far i think. in fact i got it from 0 to about 80% done today, which isn’t bad at all for a day’s work. the redo is being done entirely in garageband – no pro tools yet. i took at stab at you are never really gone‘s vocals too in garageband and tried to export it to see how the levels stacked up against pro tools – not really any better – which, in perfect segue, brings me to my next topic.

my lack of recording knowledge is proving to be one of the hardest things in this whole process for me to deal with. i’ve got basic knowledge of how it all works, but i still have so many questions and no distinct answers. sometimes, like today, the questions pile up so much that it drives me crazy and almost freezes me to where i can’t do anything. i’ve got half my stuff in one program, half in another, and no capability to turn out what i want without help – very frustrating when you’re working independently. i just wish i could carry it from start to finish myself and get something that was good – not perfect – but good to be sure. it’s times like these when i wish i could just focus on the music and had someone pro around to handle all the technical stuff…there is so much to know and i just don’t know it.

so that’s been the biggest challenge. i’m about to write an email with some questions to a buddy of mine so hopefully that will help put my mind at ease about some of it. i’m trying to just focus on the songs themselves and not worry as much about the tech side, but it’s difficult.