I corrected a few of the midi problems from my last session’s technical battle with the recording of “Saving Our Lives” and then I added the organ & piano for the bridge/ending.

Then it was time to go all analog on it. I strapped on my acoustic guitar – just loving the warmth of the sound – even with the uneven playing. I switched to bass guitar and noodled a part which I deemed pleasant. I did one take of vocals which while christening it as the demo version inspired me to append “Wild ‘n’ Wooly” to the track’s title. Available for your auditory perusal below.

While discussing politics with a friend, I came up with the inspiration for my next track – working title: “Drawing the Line.” I will attempt to explore and wring out many of the possible meanings/connotations – in-the-sand, artistically/physically/manually drawing, etc.

-SavEd 4 Later

Looking to get Saving Our Lives to demo version, I figured I’d take sketch 3 & extend the drums, then add the organ & piano for the bridge/ending, record some guitar & bass, then re-sing.

One of the issues I have with my recording software is that I can’t seem to “jump” to a point in the song when midi is involved. If I go to the window where the non-midi is, and start it in the middle of a song, I just get the non-midi, in the case of this most recent endeavor, vocals only. I think I need to “make” some time to learn the DAW, Ableton Live, more thoroughly through tutorials & the like. This is a challenge because it’s not in my nature – I’m definitely more of a hands-on, get-’em-dirty type of learner.

I was able to extend the drum part fairly easily – a pretty basic copy & paste. Trying to weed out errant piano notes was a bit more challenging, but I manage to delete the “blips” (the blue items in the picture below – which, in total, is the midi, grand piano part in the Ableton Live interface).

On attempting to implement my next planned step (bridge/ending piano), I discovered that the delay (between pressing a keyboard key & hearing the note) was back. Aaarrgggghhhh!!! I saved (an important step), closed the program and rebooted. Still there. As I was getting ready to change plans and move to recording guitar, bass & vocals, I had an idea ( a rare good one).  I opened a new, fresh song file (a “set” as it is called in Ableton Live). Yay! No delay. However, that would kind of trash my plans of using sketch 3 as the base for the demo. Unless… (& thanks for those that are still hanging in there with this rambling post)… I could copy/paste or export/import the midi files from sketch 3 into a new, fresh set!

I initially found my non-midi audio, saved as .wav files in sub-folder (‘Samples\Recorded’) within the Ableton Live project. (“Filed” that info. away for future use.) Next I saw “Export Midi Clip” as an option in the File drop-down menu. I was able to export the piano, organ and drum clips. Let me see if I can import them into a new set. Upon opening the new set, I verified that there was still no delay. I did not, readily, find a way to import the clip. Searching… Using ixquick.com, I searched for “Ableton live import midi clip.” Many YouTube items came up, but, for the most part, I tend to shy-away from video tutorials. I like a quick, text-with-pics fix (found the info. I needed on the Ableton site – Exporting and handling Audio and MIDI Clips). No import, but access to Clip folder through User Library in the Ableton Live interface. When I first attempted to play one of the clips I got a basic old-school midi sound. I quickly realized that I needed to define the “instrument” that the midi information would “play.” I set up a midi track for Grand Piano and dragged my saved Grand Piano clip to it. Success! Repeated for organ & drums (for some reason I didn’t get extended drums to add bridge/ending -oh well) and I now have a base for my demo. I’m wondering if the delay happens when I add non-midi tracks. Next session I will attempt to complete the midi portion before recording the other tracks and see how it goes.

Midi Only: Piano, organ and drums below. (After listening to the midi-only, I’m not sure any of my fixes are there – I thought I saved!).

-Edi