This is not a song, but a little SO FAR tester in carrying on with a little experimenting. At the bottom of this short blog is an update to the home studio 40 seconds self written audio experiment on the Apple Mac M2 mini.

SO FAR? Well, that’s what I find myself saying in all this. Trying to make sense of this technology is what this 40 seconds burst is still about.

“SO FAR, it seems to be okay-ish”

I just keep this little burst of sounds around. Simply adding bits and pieces. I read and check out YouTube uploads of what to do when I need to learn something. Try this or that out.

The Akai keyboard has 8 square soft pads for tapping onto. Also a keyboard to add sounds too. I can’t play piano. The pads being ‘finger tapped’ result in being able to get a bit of self played percussion, singular drums, cymbals, etc. Finger tapping a basic base rhythm of drum and a ‘clapping’ beat on these little sensitive pads has allowed me to put both a simple C, F and A chord strumming sequence and a little single notes bass pattern on my Guild acoustic guitar. Layering over the rhythms. The mic is the Shure MV88 condenser for recording guitar and vocals to go over the percussion. Just found a deep piano sound and added single notes to give a bit of depth. As said, not an intentional song. Just sang what first came into my head. Both words and tune.

Nothing in this part of the process is mixed or tweaked. There are so many dials to consider getting balance for each layer section. So this is essentially raw. Echo on vocals, for example, has to be brought down. Ongoing learning curves still exist. I have no clue currently of ‘fine tuning’ and then moving on to mixing.

Speaking of singing. As stated, I can’t get the reverb balance down presently without messing everything up on vocals. So echo is a presence that isn’t welcome. There are dials on dials to tweak with purpose and intent. The vocal through this system has choices too. Natural, bright, condensed, dance, experimental, etc. Once chosen, they can be altered even more. And so, this is a basic hit to record and then just take the sound it as it is.

A decent condenser microphone specifically for only the vocals is something I would love to now consider getting. Give a bit of dampened down to warmth energy. The settings on all this SO FAR are extremely naive. There is no ‘mix’ on getting intentional balance to each sound recorded. Just an overall this sounds okay-ish.

And so this little journey continues.

LINK BELOW SHOULD PLAY THIS LITTLE 40 SECONDS ‘SO FAR’.

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