Thoughts, Raves & Outright Beatings

I had a hair tonight to write about my experiences recording my songs (when I can) on my Pocket PC. I powered up the Griff software in said PDA, pulled up a tune from last year, added some further movements to it, and tried to add snippets of my voice to it.

Either I’m too impatient, or the sections in the songs are structured (by the software) so that I can’t pop in wave files when and especially where I feel like it. (”So why not just record a whole wave file of you singing, Helen?” Because Griff can’t take ‘em. Big, humungous wave files = errors from hell. Small ones are ok, but they have to fit the length of the section you pop ‘em in.). After a while, I gave up and decided that, sure, it can be done, and it’ll happen one day. But not tonight.

I’m really disappointed in the Griff Programmers. From all appearances on their website, they have abandoned further development of this software. Which is really sad, because it’s a really cool piece of work, and I’m sure they would have done a hell of a lot more with it, given time. Like Audio recording. And Multi Tracking! Yeah! that’s it!

As it stands, with technically no multi tracking software available for Pocket PCs, I’ve given up on ever doing a full song mix on my PDA. Of course, I still have one of these:

But I get a little annoyed with having to transfer tunes from proprietary formats to wave files, just so I can subject long suffering friends and unlucky passersby to my wailing.

So, I’m looking into getting one of these:

They’re supposed to be unleashed sometime in November. It’ll be really sweet. Throw one of these things in my purse, pop some programmable beats into my PDA via Griff, write some lyrics about the love of rutabegas or something, do an headphone out into the line in of this thing, sing along, and voila! Instant viral MP3 hit! Something I can stealth upload either from my PDA at some coffeeshop, or even at the office! *smirk*.

As it stands, tonight, I wanted to get some mixing practice done, so I powered up my PC, started up the latest version of NTrack (yes, NTrack - I know I downed it in the past. Turns out, it was my fault for having an XP double boot set up so optimized that it didn’t even have SP2; Flavio now programs the software so that it has to use Microsoft .net, and surely consider all the bells and whistles that it entails. So, really, all that junk I’ve read over the years about totally optimizing your PC for audio recordings is frankly no longer necessary. The thing runs like a dream, even with Microsoft Office running in the background), did some crooning (with a few punch-ins *wink wink*), added a tremendous amounts of effects (looks like I’ll have to say goodbye to my Blockfish VST compressor, as that makes NTrack crash every time I use it), did some mixdowns, and, well, gulp, here’s the revisited result:

I might, MIGHT, put this song in a songwriting contest. I’m happy with the backing. Vocals and lyrics could use some work, but well, I’m my own worst critic.

Update: Entered song in contest.  It did NOT make the top 10 choices.  On top of that, there’s evidence of ballot stuffing.  Ergo, I’m not wasting my time compling with their rules.  So, here it is again for your, uh,  “enjoyment”.

Thoughts welcome…

T-Tags: Music MP3 Odeo
D-Tags: Music MP3 Odeo