Last night I started digging a bit further into my initial DAW, Ableton Live 9 Lite, and began the demo process for the oldest, and most fully-realized, track I plan to put on the album, “Christie.”

I’m the type of learner that likes to get in and work with something – typical guy not reading directions, right? So I plunged in and made an acoustic guitar track (forgetting one verse and not worrying about the playing too much). It starts and ends rather abruptly – I don’t yet know why the ringing guitar didn’t stretch out at the end.

I then halfheartedly sang some vocals (I’m really selling this, yes?) to test the mic with the interface and how things would balance. I believe I added a little reverb on the vocal track with one of the plug-ins. Here’s the result:

I need to decide how fussy I want to be with/about the demos. They are for me to use for the final recording (which will be a complete re-record), so I’m looking to get the ideas down as a sort of blueprint I suppose.

With Christie (just thought of the parody possibilities with respect to NJ’s governor), I’m fairly certain I’ll need to re-record to make room for the missing verse and make it a little cleaner. For one thing, there’s some extra noise on the guitar track – clicking of the pick against the guitar body?

Another need, of which I read a suggestion of along the way somewhere, is an extension cord for my headphones. It’s really tricky to fit the cord around things and if you forget and get up, there’s a not-so-gentle tugging reminder that you’re attached.

I feel like I’m making some progress.

-Ed’s in the Machine