Mastodawn

FAWM postmortem now that the website is about to shut down for the season:
I only wrote three songs, one of which was the sort of thing you'd put on a hidden track. The other two are among the best I've ever written, so there's that.
Throughout the event, I felt stymied by lack of recent guitar practice (arthritis had limited me to half an hour or less per day and I fell off in the final weeks before FAWM), the complexity of Reaper (I ended up doing most of the work in GarageBand again)…

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

… and most of all, the steep drop-off in my energy levels after contracting COVID in December. What energy I had went into my day job and that also meant I had less time to work on songs than in previous years. It was a perfect storm of bad health, bad playing ability and bad external conditions.
The more important, then, that I learn from this and develop skills to compensate.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

So I've been thinking about previous FAWMs and looking at my archives from those events. My most productive one was actually 2023, when I was also ill with something, but it mainly affected my vocal chords. I did several lyrics-only postings that year, but when I did record things, the process was pretty smooth and fun.

On the recordings, the guitar playing is also pretty bad, but I put up with that because at the time, I hadn't played much for a decade.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

I think I played pretty OK in 2024 and 2024 when I had put in a lot of practice, and also felt more comfortable with using GarageBand, even though recording still involved a lot of cutting and pasting of guitar parts to cover up mistakes. If anything, my new physical limitations this year helped me not to rely on copy-pasting so much, because I had a ticking pain clock that determined when the session had to be finished. So I kept things simple and did them in one take.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

(Again, I only finished three songs that way; let's not make this approach look more successful than it was). But back to 2023. The conditions in 2023 were weird. On the one hand, I had recently quit my job and had plenty of time. On the other, I was on an off-grid farm in Portugal with limited electricity and a small selection of tools and instruments to work with, some of which broke down at the very start of #FAWM .

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

The tools were selected for portability and included Pocket Operators, a Korg NTS-1, and a Tascam DP-006, as well as a short-scale travel bass and my old guitar (which was the thing that broke down; we ended up having to go to town for soldering materials to fix it - until then, I recorded guitar parts on the bass with a capo).
This week, I dug out the DP-006 again and want to be spending some time with it, recording the way we did in 1995 except without cassettes.
https://www.tascam.eu/en/dp-006

Tascam DP-006 | 6-Track Digital Pocketstudio

An ultra-compact, battery-powered and easy-to-use multi-track Pocketstudio optimally designed for on-the-spot recording and home recording.

TASCAM Europe

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

The link in the last post shows the DP-006 as a still-available product, which is impressive. It's more versatile sibling, the DP-008, which has more tracks and basic send effects for mixing and mastering, is discontinued, which is why it's surprisingly expensive on Marktplaats.
But it's literally what I called it: the 21st century version of a 4-track cassette recorder, made to record in almost exactly the same way as you'd use one of those.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

You get 4 tracks (2 mono, 2 stereo); if you want to add more parts, you make a bounce mix first and then continue (there's a workaround for preserving the tracks you bounced, but it'll fill up the SD card faster, and it ships with only 2 GB); there are no built-in effects so whatever you record is what you have to work with in your mix.
It's perfect if you have difficulty keeping things simple and if a full-featured DAW gives you choice paralysis.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

Well, it is if you have some experience working with 4-tracks, which I do.

My unit sustained minor screen damage in Portugal, but works fine otherwise.

Listening to the old recordings from 2023, I was way too cautious with the levels, so I'm gonna do some tests today. Then I'll put together a setup. Sadly, no bass guitar as playing that comes with a pain countdown of about 10 minutes now.

FAWM is over, but I'm finally getting the itch.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

My two big questions after a levels test with a drum machine will be
1. What to use to create basses if I can't play a bass guitar for long enough to record anything (I have several candidates, but will pick the smallest that works)?
2. Is there something wrong with my headphones? I got a pair of Sony MDR-7506s a few years ago and those are supposed to be classics but lately I've noticed that pretty much nothing sounds good through mine.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

Candidates for the ensemble:
On drums: considering, again, the Teenage Engineering PO12 because its small size and simplicity fit what I'm trying to do here. Limitations: plenty, but the one that matters is that it can't do time signatures other than 4/4.
On bass: I'd like to use the PO14, because it works well with the PO12, but it has the same time signature limitation and can only leave the C major key by using the FX button, which is a PITA in practice. Also, mine is malfunctioning.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

The malfunction could be due to faulty batteries. Both POs use triple-A batteries, not the worst battery in existence (quadruple-A batteries exist), but the worst you're likely to come across. I replaced the batteries with a freshly recharged set, which didn't help but the charger had spent some time in direct sunlight, so I looked for and found a second set, and am now letting the device run for the time it takes to post to see what happens.
Yep, it was the batteries.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

So I guess we'll see how long I can tolerate composing in 4/4 and in C.

Keyboards: might pull out another Pocket Operator, though when I'm using three or more, I'll have to consolidate the signal of two of them into one channel before it goes into the recorder, because there are only two inputs. I can do that, but I don't like to. Much prefer to use a splitter cable and keep the signals separate.
But if I did, I'd have synchronized devices at record time.

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Reinder Dijkhuis Does Art Mar 15

But I'm much more likely to use the MicroFreak, through effects, on one of the stereo tracks. It's quite a bit bigger but it's my favorite synth.

Whenever I get another set of working triple-A batteries, I should give the PO16 a try anyway. Run it through a mono delay like the Korg Monotron while the other POs are on the same input, and see if it can sound good that way.