tigertoy

It is sad when the *second* worst thing that happened last night was Ruby getting skunked again.

I had plans to do a lot of recording this weekend. Now, whenever I need to do some recording, I usually wander down to the studio and discover that it is time to install a whole bunch of updates. It was pushing 9 PM, so I figured I could quickly run down to the studio, install the updates, and hit the ground running today.

I already knew that there was a Cubase point release that I should go ahead and install, so I did that. Then I noticed that there were three Intel updates waiting to be installed. Ok, I could take care of that too. No problem. A couple of reboots, but no problem.

The Intel update screen lists (among other things) my motherboard type and the current BIOS version. I looked at that and said to myself, "That BIOS is pretty old. I wonder if there is a newer one that I should install." This was my first mistake.

On the ASUS website, there was a brand-new BIOS for my motherboard, less than a month old. Looked good, so I figured I'd install it. This requires putting it on a memory stick, booting into the BIOS, and then loading it from there. I've done this sort of operation before, so I didn't have too much trouble with it. There was also a newer version of the Intel ME utility, so I installed that too. All good.

Having installed a new version of Cubase, I figured I'd fire it up so that it could inspect all of the plugins, because that sometimes can slow things down on the first restart. Still no problem.

Well, there was no problem until Cubase told me that I needed to pick an ASIO driver. It should just default to the Universal Audio Thunderbolt driver. Except I picked that and Cubase said "What Thunderbolt device?"

Oh, that is bad. Let me start up the UA application and see if it sees the Apollo unit. It does not. And the Thunderbolt cable is plugged in. Ack!

I start searching the Internet. Apparently, this is a problem with older versions of the ASUS Thunderbolt add-in card when the BIOS for this type of motherboard (and its various relations) gets updated. I check the Device Manager and it tells me that there is a problem with the Thunderbolt port. Yes, I had figured that out. Removing the device and putting it back does not help.

Maybe there is a newer driver or firmware for the Thunderbolt card. There's no new driver, but there is new firmware. I set up to flash the card with the new firmware and discover that it won't take it.

Apparently, there are *two* slightly different versions of this card. I have the older one, which will not take this update. There does not appear to be an update for the older card.

Maybe I can get a newer version of the Thunderbolt card. Micro Center does not carry this card. Amazon does. They can get it to me around July 1st, which is not compatible with recording this weekend. Or next weekend.

Ok. How can I get up and running? I *do* have a laptop with Cubase installed *and* a Thunderbolt port, but that is the same port that it uses for charging. About now, I realize that I could probably bodge things together with a Thunderbolt dock, but it was approaching midnight last night and I was running out of brain cells.

The latest generation of PC motherboards has a number of boards that support Thunderbolt directly on the back panel ports. My new office PC is one of those. I am not going to move my freshly-configured office PC to the basement for this. Really not.

I could *buy* a new motherboard. Which will require buying a new processor and new RAM. And a new heatsink. That is going to be annoyingly expensive and a whole lot of work, but is an available backup plan.

Let's try reverting to an older version of the motherboard BIOS. What version had I started with? Eventually, I realized that I still had it on the computer in installable format, so I copied it to the memory stick, rebooted, and installed the older BIOS. So far, so good. Let's boot up the computer.

The computer does not boot up. It beeps eight times. My phone tells me that this is a sign of a problem with the CMOS memory on the computer.

I am old. I know what to do about this. I shut off the power to the computer, pull the plug, and pull the CMOS battery. If I wait until morning, the computer will forget all of the BIOS settings and I should be able to get back into the machine. (Later, I check the manual and find the location of the two pins that I need to short to clear the CMOS. They are inconveniently buried behind the Thunderbolt card. I try fishing at them in the morning with a screwdriver, because why not? I'm not sure if I ever got to them...)

It is now nearing midnight and time to head up to bed.

At some point during this fiasco, Julie comes downstairs to tell me that Ruby has encountered a skunk, so if I smell something when I go upstairs, don't panic. It is apparently less bad than some of the previous skunkings. Gretchen has rubbed the dog down with some odor killer called "Pooph" and the report is that it has improved the situation. Gretchen, meanwhile, has gone off to the bedroom, having had enough of all of this for the night.

When I get upstairs, things are not *too* stinky, so I turn off the kitchen exhaust fan and head upstairs to join Gretchen. It is a *long* time before I can manage to get to sleep (which includes watching another episode of "Leverage" so that we can both wind down).

This morning, I get up, get cleaned up, and head down to the basement. I fish around for the clear CMOS pins, decide that I am not going to remove the Thunderbolt card to try to get at them right now, and put the battery back in. Then I fire up the computer.

Happily, after a mild round of complaints, it boots into the BIOS. I turn the Thunderbolt support back on and reboot. Windows fires up, I start the UA application and it informs me that there is no Apollo unit attached.

Then I plug the Thunderbolt cable back in. And now I have a connection! And there is much rejoicing.

And then I fire up Cubase and it tells me that there is no device connected. So I fire up the UA Console app, see the message "Connecting to Apollo", and now Cubase can see the device and lets me select the Thunderbolt ASIO driver. I open up a song, hit play, and there is sound from the speakers.

My mood is *greatly* improved.

So, kids, this is why you just shouldn't mess with a system that is working. Just ask old Uncle Bill.

In other news, the house still smells mildly of skunk downstairs and we are trying to air it out. Ruby does not seem to be very skunky, for which I am thankful.

At least I didn't have to run out and buy peroxide last night.

I am off on Thursday for the Juneteenth holiday and will be taking a vacation day on Friday, because four-day weekends are few and far between. I intend to use this time to try to catch up on many things that I need to be doing in the studio.

This does not mean that I am not *sorely* tempted to head down to watch what is now a scheduled straight doubleheader between the Cardinals and the White Sox tomorrow afternoon, tonight's game having been rained out. Two Cardinals games *and* the usually better food on the Southside...

I have things to do. :)

Gretchen's knees were giving her heck today, so I went out to lunch by myself. City Barbecue had dropped a coupon for a free dessert in my account, which convinced me that going there was a fine choice. I had a lovely brisket sandwich that I think had come directly out of the smoker. I had the peach cobbler packed to go and took it home to Gretchen, where we split it, which is a *much* better choice than trying to eat it by myself. :) I also picked up food from Culver's on the way home, which meant that no one had to go out and feed the kids.

I had now arrived at the stage where it was pretty much time to do some recording for the "Crosstime Bus" album or just kick myself in the head. I'm not flexible enough to kick myself in the head, so my choices were limited.

I picked up one of the Universal Audio Sphere modeling mics a while back and have used it on a few things, but I have never used it to mic an acoustic guitar and I wanted to give that a try and see what the results were like. Cleverly, I read the instruction manual before going downstairs. The target song for today was "Love at First Sight", where I had used pitch shifting to move the original vocal and guitar scratch tracks to capo 2 while leaving the drums intact. The scratch tracks had to go, starting with the guitar. I retrieved the lyric sheet from my office, along with my iPad, which I pretty much only use as a Cubase remote. Realizing this, I took the charger along with me. If I'm using the tablet in the basement, it can live in the basement. I also grabbed the guitar and took it to the basement with me. Cool! All set.

Ha! I fire up Cubase and the iPad remote software and verify that they are talking to each other. Ok, let's go to the Apollo unit and turn on the phantom power for the mic. And I need to configure a stereo input to grab channels 1 and 2 so I can route them to the mic modeler and get a stereo guitar track out. Input configured, all good.

I ducked into the recording booth and realized that *nothing* was configured correctly. A dead USB microphone had been wished onto the top of the rolling cart where the iPad was supposed to go. It left. I moved the guitar stand to the opposite side of the room, because I was planning to sit while recording, which meant I needed to pull the cart closer into the space the stand had occupied. And then there was adjusting the microphone. One of these days, I will find a mic boom that doesn't slowly sag under the weight of any microphone of size. And for this application, the mic needs to be turned 90 degrees from the normal position, because I'm using it to capture a stereo image.

While I'm in there, I put on the recording headphones and verify that I can hear playback, having remembered to turn on the headphone amp while passing through the engineering side of the booth. The headphone cord has developed an annoying short, but wiggling the cord gets everything working.

I fire up Cubase and the iPad remote software and verify that they are talking to each other. Ok, let's go to the Apollo unit and turn on the phantom power for the mic. And I need to configure a stereo input to grab channels 1 and 2 so I can route them to the mic modeler and get a stereo guitar track out. Input configured, all good.

Except that there is no signal on the input or the target stereo track. I expect some noise. I twiddle the knobs on the Apollo and nothing happens. Let's go in and play the guitar at it, because maybe I just need some reasonable volume. Nope, no signal. And I realize that the Sphere mic lights up when it is powered. This mic is dark. Grumble.

All of this is more difficult, because I need to be in two places at one time. I have not yet mastered bilocation. I want a noticeable sound source in the recording booth so I can track the signal in the engineering booth.

I have a phone. I pull it out of my pocket, set it to play "Mamma Mia" on a loop, and leave it on my chair. Back to the engineering booth I go. There is still no signal.

Ok, let me pull up the UA Console application that is used for routing things. Unlike the Apollo unit, the Console app believes there is no phantom power to the mic. Power up channel 1, power up channel 2, and -- surprise! -- the mic lights up and I have signal. Make sure the signal is routed from the input to the track and I should be in business. Time to go record!

Back to the recording booth. Close the doors, adjust the position of the sagging mic, check the tuning on the guitar, put on the headphones, press record.

There is no sound in the headphones.

What the heck? There was sound here a minute ago. I check to make sure that the short in the cord is not the culprit and convince myself that it isn't. Stop everything and go back to the engineering booth.

I have a very old silverface Apollo Firewire unit that has a Thunderbolt card installed. Somehow, the mapping that the latest version of the Console software has supplied is shifted by two positions, so that almost all of the hardware is entering in the wrong location. Hardware location Line 1 and Line 2 are mapped correctly, but Line 1 is then mapped again to Line 3, Line 2 to Line 4, and so on. I'm getting sound, because Line 1 and Line 2 have correct mappings, but the software Monitor channels that feed the headphones are not getting any signal.

I remap *all* of the channels on the Console. I *save* the mappings as a preset. I hope this works. In the meantime, I found another set of headphones in the engineering booth, plugged them into the headphone amp, and once I had mapped the Monitor channels correctly in the Console and *then* made sure that everything was mapped correctly in Cubase, I had sound in the headphones again.

Rah.

Unplug the headphones in the engineering booth. Go back to the recording booth, close the doors, fix the sagging mic, check the tuning on the guitar, put on the headphones, and let's hit record. There is sound!

I blow the count in, but there's sound.

After a little while, I have multiple copies of the guitar track, at least one of which is pretty satisfactory, along with two backup tracks to use to fix any glitches.

It would be a good idea to replace the pitch-shifted vocal, which sounds terrible, because it was a scratch vocal and the pitch shifting has done nothing to improve the sound quality. Back to the engineering booth I go to create another stereo track, but I'll use a *different* modeling program here so that I end up with a mono signal that I can plug a number of different types of mic into and see what they sound like. Piece of cake.

Back to the recording booth. Close the doors and now I need to raise the mic so that I can sing standing up and also turn the mic 90 degrees so that it's in the correct orientation *and* convince the whole assemblage not to fall over. This last just requires some minor boom adjustment. Then I put the pop screen back up and now I'm ready to try recording a vocal track.

About a verse in, I realize that I have left the lyric sheet nowhere near where I can read it. Do not underestimate my ability to farble my own lyrics under pressure.

Let's move the music stand so that I can read the lyrics. That's better. I do several takes to give myself choices, but the last one is, I think, pretty good so I can go play with it now. Mucking around with tracks and plugins follows.

I will listen to this more critically at a later date, but it's progress.

A learning experience. That's what we call it.

I packed everything up and went upstairs where I grilled some steaks for Father's Day dinner while Gretchen prepared baked potatoes and sweet corn. Dinner included the kids and was remarkably silly.

And that's a good way to end the day. :)

I have a ludicrous number of things that I need to get done this weekend. Many of them are laundry.

But I also plan to do some recording, so I have hunted down the iPad which I use as a remote control in the studio and have now plugged it in to charge. It was sitting turned off at 82% charge, which is not terrible, but could be better. :)

Sometimes you get an idea for a song and it just doesn't work out the way you planned.

In this case, I was contemplating the fellow who was trying to use modern AI technology to create an on-line replica of his parents simply because he wanted to talk to them so badly. I had a verse. I didn't like it. At all, the longer I considered it.

Yesterday morning while lying in bed at oh-dark-thirty or thereabouts, I got the chorus. And a couple of verses. And random bits to build the rest of the song out of.

Today, I have the whole song. It is not *anything* like the song that I set out to write.

Overall, I think that's a good thing.

I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

The weather has twisted into something resembling early summer and I have decided it is time to embrace it.

One of the fellows that I used to coach softball with came by to pick up the items we had to donate to the league. We had fun catching up. His team has a big game coming up on Wednesday. One of the other coaches that I worked with has talked about going to catch a game, so I texted her and if plans hold together, we'll both be at Wednesday's game to see how things are going. It's been a while. There are definitely days when I miss coaching softball, but I have to admit that I enjoy the additional sleep. :)

K starts her summer job (her *first* job!) tomorrow. Today, we went out to lunch and then I took her over to Walmart to pick up additional summer camp appropriate work clothes. She also used the gift card that she'd gotten for graduation to grab some more games for the Switch, which seems like a fine idea. (We gave her a pair of additional controllers so that four person games are now possible.)

While both cars were out of the garage temporarily, I took advantage of the access to do a bit of minor rearranging so that things fit better. My side of the garage now seems fine. Gretchen's side may need another tweak or two. We'll see. (The branch chipper that we acquired in the interim is taking up a bit of space that I'd rather it not, but the options for where to put it are limited.)

Yesterday, we had grilled hamburgers and sweet corn for dinner. Today, Gretchen made some grilled onions for me which I added to some pan-fried Polish sausage. Gretchen had boiled stadium brats. Dinner was simple and tasty.

And I spent some time down in the studio hunting for an ADAT tape for a project that a friend is working on. The ADAT tape has not turned up and I have run out of places to look, so I've sent off an email apologizing. I have a *lot* of ADAT tapes in my basement, but apparently not *this* one.

*sigh*

Recording is resuming shortly. *Very* shortly.