Modern Technology teaches Old Dog How to Play Dead

This post is a continuation of the previous hair-pulling extravaganza.

So there i was, at the end of a day that started out in quiet contemplation and peace and ended...well it hadn't ended yet.
This is what happened:

I was searching for a way to add the fruits of my labor--that is to say the tracks of the Chet Baker tunes I was working on to lay down to use to practice the various musical skills and sensibilities, to manifest the sounds and emotions i hear and feel when listening to and/or imagining Chet's music.

i needed to post audio to my blog.
so i set out to do just that. it turned out to be an exercise in computer technology.

if my knowledge and expertise about this sleek little white box on my lap was pudding, you'd be really pissed off if your momma gave you a bowl of it and called it dessert.

However.

I nonetheless plunged in head first. intrepid warrior that i am.

Embedding audio in a blog can go one of two ways apparently: you can stream it in or you can point the blog to another site that is hosting it. neither of these things i understand.

even if i did, it turns out that some of the sites that profess to get the job done, fall way short of delivering. this can be upsetting to the user with barely enough know-how to craft a query to use to find what they seek.

in fact, i have to say that this one thing, knowing what to ask, how and where to ask it (i guess that's three things) is a veritable trifecta in triumph. if it works. which it didn't.

So i looked on Blogger's site, Tumblr's site and Wordpress's site for answers to questions like:

'How to add audio to blogs' (seemed to me a pretty accurate statement for what i needed...turns out not)

'Add audio files' (another dud)

'Blogger audio post' (this one produced results in a nice array of rabbit holes that provided hours of amusement)

I tried many more of course but none knocked it out of the park.

Chasing down a search element is something like chasing your tail. Course i don't know for sure, not having one myself. And come to think of it, i can't really say that because of the fact that our dog used to chase his own tail; 'cept he would actually catch it. no one was more surprised then he was.

Unlike my puppy dog, i intended to catch my own tail. Trouble is, as i proceeded on my search i seem to be getting farther and farther from my original goal. this was a curious phenomenon. what was happening i think was that with each fruitless search, i'd widen the net more and more until the results would be just random bullshit.

My blind thoughts were leading my blind search. result? more blindness and less hours till dinner.

It wasn't all a vast wasteland of ignorant prodding about though. i stayed remarkably calm and tried to think of other ways to ask the question.

Some hits would offer a solution, and i'd follow it through, downloading what it said to download, type in what it said to type in, act like it said to act. only to find out at the end of it the sad truth:

It didn't work because:

it wasn't a program originally written for Mac OS
or
it was a program written for Macs but it just plain didn't fucking work
or
it works on Macs but not on the latest version of the OS
or
it works but you can only upload files in a certain oddball format
or
it works but only on Safari, not on Firefox. (this one was my personal favorite; it was the last and biggest time-invested failure of the day and of course it took place 6 hours into it)

That said, i'd have to say that aside from the platform problems and the browser sensitivity the thing that really toasted my tips was the log-in failures.

I can see how my ignorance would preclude any hopes for immediate success but when you find a site that hosts audio and the code works on your blog site and all the other ducks are in their proper rows, it should be game over: put the horses in the wagon, cuz it's all downhill from here.

but no.

I successfully posted an audio to the blog but when i went back to the host site to upload another, i couldn't log on. it didn't recognize me. even after asking for a different password (why the fuck do i need a password anyway, it's not like it's a banking site) i kept getting that irritating message:

PASSWORD DOES NOT MATCH OUR RECORDS; PLEASE TRY AGAIN


This message is second only to other, equally annoying ones. Messages like:

'File does not exist'
and
'No suitable plugins found to play this file'

I was still pretty calm.

I was introduced to the concept of CODE. Oh goodie.



First of all they don't call it 'code' for nothing. This stuff might as well be written in Cuniform characters. what is with all this mumbo jumbo <`~> vch/false/bullshit. I mean really. Like the sign says:

Speak American!

I love this code stuff though. once i got past the urge to kill, i found it sorta charming, the way if you just left off one of those curly cues, there wouldn't be a play button, or the file would all of a sudden be a photograph instead of an audio file for the interface would show up in size 50 font or the window would disappear altogether. Cool in a kind of sideways sadistic way.

Then i hooked up with a site called zShare. I don't remember how i got it. a random hit, a forum. who knows. i'm glad i did cuz it did the trick.

But i had to be resourceful to get the thing to do what i wanted it to do: post a specific audio file to a specific post. in other words i needed "I Remember You' a tune that Chet recorded and that i covered, to post alongside the written post about the recording "I Remember You.' Simple right?

I thought so.

But then again, i wasn't hip to all this computer language stuff. not that i am now mind you. i'm just celebrating the fact that i was able to design a protocol all by myself that got my audio files shoulder-to-shoulder with their post-partners. Hooray for me.

How did i do it?

In the next post you will find a step-by-step knuckleheaded procedure especially designed by and for all you backyard mechanics so you too can marry your posts with their betrothed.

'It Could Happen To You"

It Could Happen To You.mp3




Ok. this is cheating but it's my blog right?

I'm beginning this blog, on this particular tune after i worked on it a little yesterday. which in and of itself, isn't really cheating.

but i think i have to do the whole thing over.

why?

there had better be a good reason. you're talking to a guy who HATES...Hates to turn around to go back to the house to retrieve something he forgot.

Hates to retrace his steps looking for an article he 'put in a safe place.'

Hates to go back to anything once he puts it to bed.

that said, i think i have to redo this whole tune.

because it doesn't sound good. doesn't feel right. doesn't work.

i keep hearing the way Chet did it.

that lyrical, round-edges tempo

those leisurely pursued changes

that sweet sweet melodic movement

yeah my version (even the practice version mind you...for practice purposes only kind of a thing) doesn't have any of these things. in fact these elements represent pretty much a diametric opposition to the way Chet did the tune. Not good. Not good.

Ok, so let's dive back into it and see if i can fix it.

Later....that same day.....

Turns out i didn't try to fix it. instead i decided to go with what i had in terms of tempo, drum part, keys and bass. I didn't have a vox or a horn part down yet.

i decided this based on a spur-of-the-moment reaction: i know. it doesn't make much sense. don't worry. turns out, it doesn't have to.

I figured, given what i already had down, i had nothing to lose by going ahead and fleshing it out. i could always build out a brand new version of the same tune, one more aligned with Chet's version.

First order of business: figure out why Reaper wasn't showing up in the version that preceded the new one that they told me to download: the one whose major updated feature seemed to be to fuck everything up: Firefox, Itunes, Safari, Word. The friggin OS for chrissakes!

Finally, i got it and it worked. So i hit out to see what i could do with the tracks i had in the can. They sounded ok and appeared to be in sync with each other which meant i had done a decent job copying and pasting the parts i laid down yesterday.

So i set up the mic to roll on a vocal track. Got the lyric sheet in front of me and tapped 'record.' it felt really good to sing the tune. i noticed it was easier to stay in tune. this was good.

But still, i have trouble hearing the bed when i'm singing. there must be a technique involved when recording . i wouldn't know. but i guess i'm going to find out, most likely by trial and error, the last refuge of an idiot.

one thing i did differently: i recorded my voice through several verses, only bailing if i really fucked up bad, i.e., forgotten lyrics, bad intonation, bad timing or rhythm. this is not different from any other tune i had done thus far.

but instead of moving on to the trumpet part, i had a thought about the arrangement. this meant leaving a hole where a vocal solo or a trumpet line would go. this worked out surprisingly well, arrangement-wise, that is.

The trumpet part threw me for a loop. it always does. i need to remember why i am doing this in the first place. it's not ready-to-wear, more like second-hand sportswear.

so the trumpet part went down but not without some moments of a shitstorm. mostly about the piece of crap i'm playing, the difficult playing the good stuff while the tape is running etc.

All this will no doubt continue through the project, through the process.