Feeling Faint

Something awful happened tonight when I assumed my usual spot on the couch with the laptop, shoveling leftover turkey, stuffing, and apple pie into my mouth (yes, I'm still reliving Thanksgiving at every meal, and loving it). I pulled up "Brighter Than Sunshine" and began listening to the tracks, and realized that the keyboard track was way, way too quiet. There must have been some sort of wiring issue between the keyboard and the recorder.

I did everything I could think of to fix the problem. I opened up the GarageBand "help" file. I went back to the original .wav file of the track. I made duplicate tracks and played them on top of each other. I experimented with buttons labeled "compressor" and "equalizer." I adjusted volume curves.

Nothing helped; it was still too faint. I tried to rationalize to myself that a song with "brighter" and "sunshine" in the title was just as easy to discard as ones with "happy" in the title, but the thought of tossing aside another song after the band had already done so much work on it was dismaying.

I tried to shrug it off by moving on to "I Just Called To Say I Love You," and horror of horrors, it has the SAME PROBLEM. There are two keyboard tracks: one, recorded on the 15th, is fine; the other, recorded on the 19th, is unusable. Oh it was terrible. Here we are, a mere five days from December, and suddenly two of The Aluminum Album's songs are in jeopardy.

Mic thought he was all done with the album last week. I have, via email, thrown myself at his feet and begged him to re-record those tracks on The Device, which is something of a logistical pain, especially on a tight schedule. If he will do it, I then have to get another violin track and vocal track, even though there was no problem with those tracks, because otherwise the timing won't match up. It pains me. Does Stevie Wonder have to deal with this sort of setback? Does Aqualung? I think not.