I did forget to mention in my last post or so that another contributing factor to the delay in completing the new Christmas song, "You Know It's Christmas Time," was that my recording studio, the BR1600, was no functioning properly.
While recording this song I allowed my free space to get to zero because I kept recording parts over and over and not erasing them and not optimizing the song. Optimizing is a feature that permanently erases everything you recorded over. The erase function only temporarily removes stuff you don't want anymore but it's all still there and all you have to do is use the "undo" button to bring it all back. Optimizing is the only thing that frees up space permanently. So when I got to 0 recording time I was forced to erase and optimize. That freed up a lot of space but it was too late by then. The BR1600 was not working smoothly after that point anymore. It would just stop recording while I was singing my lines or even playing some of the final instrument parts. There was a point I really thought the song was not going to be completed and in terms of making a final mix and then mastering it, I had to go through unconventional means to do so.
The good news is that it appears the hiccups are only on that song. I have not tried recording any brand new songs, though. But what I did have to do was play the final mix and record it into my computer, burn that onto a CD, import it into the BR1600 as a new song and then play it back through the mastering mode as I recorded it once again into my computer (which by the way is also on its last legs). This is the only way I was able to get the song mixed and mastered. Doing that normally would not work. The recorder would always stop recording at the very same point in the song. I was turning blue in the face.
I even started looking around to buy a new one of these. Surely, I thought, I've had this one for over 10 years and they must have made amazing upgrades and improvements to it. To my surprise, I found out they don't even make these things anymore. The only major company still making these non-computer based systems is Tascam which is the brand of the very first 4-track tape machine I ever had. This was really bad news for me. I have never used software and computers for making music. I still don't want to. I like having a standalone unit for music-making.
As I was looking at a 24-track Tascam recorder some of the reviews did not read so well. I recall multiple similar complaints about clicking noises that made it onto recorded songs. I don't want that!
So I'm really in trouble now. I'm hoping that the problem lies just with that song. After erasing and optimizing I relieved about 24 hours of recording time! From 0 to 24 hours. But I should have been doing this all along the way, after every new song.
The error message I get is "drive busy!" I looked all around the web for info on this and I found that Boss has 2 methods to temporarily fix this. One is to transfer all the songs in the BR1600 to CDs and then initialize the hard disk. That would take an inordinate amount of CDs to do. And initializing the disk erases everything that was on it.
The other method is to connect the BR1600 to a computer via USB and transfer everything that way. Again, you'd have to initialize the hard disk which erases everything. But it's all on the computer now so that's OK, right? Not really since my computer has been crashing scores of times since last summer.
I don't know what to do right now. I'm going to keep using the BR1600 for as long as it allows me to continuously record. Once it stops I will have to try one of the methods above. And those methods are not a cure by any means. Boss says you will have to repeat this process every several months. Why did they have to stop making this thing? This is similar to the iPod. I kept expecting that the iPod was going to perpetually increase in disk size as the last one I purchased was a 160GB and soon enough it was filled to the brim. But after the 160 there was no more. Then they came out with the iPod touch but only in smaller versions. Same thing with the Boss recording studio. I had the 16 track (which is technically not 16 tracks but actually 12) thinking someday I'd get me a 24 track. Perish the thought.
Even though I cannot get me a brand new Boss 24 track studio (which in reality would probably be only an 18 track), I can get a bigger iPod than my current 160GB. Although it's 256GB it is also still an iPod touch which I don't mind anymore. Actually I feel more comfortable now with the 'touch' technology so I'd prefer a touch iPod vs. the old wheel version.
OK. So this post was about my technological struggles of recording. I still plan to write about some of the goals for this year.
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