Update

Here's the latest on the album. The albatross. The burden.

I've been throwing more into the money pit of a recording studio that I've put together. Let me explain why.

One of the major problems that I've experienced while recording the album is that the basement where my studio is located had occasionally taken on water after a rain or snowstorm. In an effort to protect my equipment, I would pack up all of my gear and move it to a dry area. That might not sound like such a big deal, until you realize how complicated all of the cables and connections are. Almost every item in my studio has at least four cables going into it: a left and right stereo pair, a MIDI cable, and a power cable. Add up all of the gear and multiply the number of cables and it starts to get pretty complicated. As a result, putting everything back together - and then troubleshooting problems in order to make sure that everything is hooked up correctly - has always been a chore. Which is another way of saying that it is a major pain in the ass. It seems like every time that I finally had everything up and running and felt that I was making some progress, I'd have to pull everything apart and shop-vac the basement. Then spend hours putting the whole thing together again. Needless to say, over time this process takes a toll on you, sucking the wind out of your sails and the enthusiasm out of your spirit. Before long, I found myself associating the process of recording music - something that I used to really enjoy - with soulless drudgery that was neither fun nor creatively satisfying. It started to feel as if every minute that I spent creating something had to be bought with several hours of tedium that was unrelated and even detrimental to the creative process.

In any case, we finally seem to have the flooding problem taken care of (knock on wood), and I started to realize that I still hadn't solved a big part of the problem. Because of the sheer volume of different items of equipment that will be featured on the album, I started to realize that every song was requiring its own unique set of connections - meaning that I essentially had to disconnect and reconnect all of the gear for each song. Further, I couldn't work on more than one song at a time without adding a lot of work to the schedule, and this is bad for a number of reasons. Sometimes you need to step away from a song for a while and work on something else in order to come back to the song with "fresh ears" and perhaps a clearer perspective on what needs to be worked on. Believe me, you can get stuck in production in a manner that isn't dissimilar to writer's block, and sometimes you need to just break away from one song and work on something else. But even more importantly, it makes it difficult to be spontaneous in the studio if you need to reinvent the wheel each time you want to press the "record" button. The process needs to be fun, and you need to be able to chase after moments of inspiration and see where they lead you without being chained to solving some logistical puzzle beforehand. It sounds crazy, but sometimes songs just seem to happen if you're really in tune with what you're doing. Disconnecting and reconnecting your studio continually contributes absolutely nothing to your ability to come up with an idea and run with it.

So essentially I'm working on a setup in which everything will be plugged in and accessible at all times, which sounds a lot simpler than it actually is. For one thing, it requires a lot of MIDI interfaces (I was working with three, but I needed five), power conditioners (these aren't the kind of power strips you find at Target, and I'm buying three of them this month), and I'm also going to have to hire an electrician to provide my studio with all the clean juice that I need in order to run all of the gear without picking up any power-related audio anomalies.

So I'm taking some time to address all of the logistics of my studio in order to make it more intuitive, user-friendly, and stress-free. With any luck, this upgrade will make a big difference in making the process more productive and rewarding.

If, however, I head down into the studio one day and find everything sitting in a puddle of water, I swear to God I'll have a freakin' aneurism.