Three Small Speakers

[ateolf]

Yesterday I mainly indulged in my project of recording the latest Tristan Perich album I'd gotten (a thing he does being releasing albums on circuits that are in cd cases but it's literally a circuit that's playing, no traditional media). The other two I'd had were easier as they had headphone jacks and you could plug it in to record it. This one, being titled Composition for Three Small Speakers, is very much as described and the only way to listen to it on those three small speakers, so to record it I had to mic it up. My first thought was to record separate passes with the same mic for each speaker. So I did that. had a nice recording environment set up in here with a baffler dragged in and everything. So the piece itself isn't very long, around twenty minutes or so, but like all the others it ends in an infinite loop (where the others were a sustained note droning, this one ends with a little beep every one or two seconds or so). And I'm a big completest nerd so I have to replicate the infinite loop as accurately as possible when it's burned on the cd so I have to fill up all [just under] eighty minutes so I have to record that little beep going for over an hour each time. Okay, so that recording's going on throughout the day fine. Then later I come in to mix the tracks together and...they just will not line up. Even if I stretch them, it's inconsistent and lining up one part will throw it off in another, etc. It just won't come together at all. I'm not sure if it's slight inconsistencies in the circuit itself when it runs. Or not sure if it's the recorder. I was using phantom power for the mic while running on batteries, could that make some weird power inconsistencies where it doesn't run exactly the same each time? I really have no idea but it was fucking frustrating. Well, I figured I should just suck it up and use the internal mics on the recorder. Instead of getting three channels for each speaker, it'd be the two mics in the gaps between the speakers. Well, I did that and it recorded just fine. Actually sounded quite good. So that was much simpler and worked better. I guess that's just how shit goes. Well, so I got it edited and burned onto a disc and all that. So anyway, long boring story about recording music I already have!