We recorded our jam again this week since last week’s didn’t take advantage of the our multi-client Jamulus setup to separate our vocal and instrument tracks. I think it sounds better, although, one might be hard pressed to tell the difference unless they are doing the mixing.

Speaking of mixing, I think I need some guidance. This week, I bumped up the bass per request (hopefully not too much), but I’m at a loss on what to do with the vocals. I’m going to ship one of the songs off to a friend with a degree in audio engineering and a ton of experience. After he finishes laughing at my attempts to mix this, perhaps he can give some direction.

Unfortunately, there is more noise in this week’s recording. I think it’s coming from network delays. I’d like to verify that this is the case to understand if there is anything we can do to minimize it.

Here’s a taste of the session. I only flubbed a couple times.

Links

• Clinton Hill – Brooklyn
  As always, The Neighborhoods delivers some local history along with some images from today.
• Housing deal between Mayor Adams, Council places parking mandates on outer-borough development
• MTA plans to raise NYC’s congestion pricing toll to $15 in 2031
  I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t think congestion pricing is going to make it to the end of January, let alone 2031.
• Offline Advocate
  Happy to know I’m not the only one that has a large collection of MP3s that are listened to regularly.
• AI-Powered Robot Leads Uprising, Talks A Dozen Showroom Bots Into ‘Quitting Their Jobs’ In ‘Terrifying’ Security Footage via Slashdot
  Agitator bot! Sounds a bit like Marvin from Hitchhikers Guide.

We recorded the Friday jam this week, very exciting. In comparing a couple of the songs from the last recording, I did notice some improvement. Not bad for a bunch of guys that don’t practice enough. Here’s a select track from that session.

In spite of our effort to separate the instrument and vocal tracks by running multiple Jamulus clients, we ended up with vocals on one of the guitar tracks. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice until working on the mix. It was just a setting in Jamulus we’d missed. Lesson learned: Take a minute at the beginning of the session to ensure you’re recording what you think you are.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the recording. There are a spots with garbling and noise from somewhere in the network, which is to be expected. There isn’t much audio engineering here aside the volume levels and some panning. There is some compression and reverb added the vocals. And, I tried to highlight the guitar solos. Early reviews are that there wasn’t enough bass in the mix. I didn’t want it to sound like the bass guy mixed it, perhaps I overcompensated.

Links

• NYC’s congestion pricing tolls to launch Jan. 5: What you need to know
  What are the chances this gets rolled back come January 20th?
• How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) (video)
  As usual, Not Just Bikes hits the nail on the head here. In my opinion, autonomous vehicles shouldn’t be allowed on city streets at all. Cities need fewer cars, period. It doesn’t matter whether they have drivers or not.
• Why Arguing With Your Kids Is Completely Missing the Point
  This was written by the chef/owner of a great restaurant in our neighborhood. Despite the challenges, he manages to create a welcoming place to eat and drink in this city–it sounds like he’s a pretty good dad too.
• It’s just emotion (or how to have difficult conversations)
• Hold it lightly