I'm so disheartened. (venting)

Off-Topic
#21

yeah, like I said, who knows our deepest motivations, but I just see myself as someone that SHOULD have an album together. That lines up more with how I see myself

It reminds me of lifting weights. everyone in the gym wants to lift more. We all know Monday is national bench press day. Folks like to brag about what they lift. Fine, I have no issue with that. But thats a “gym lift.” It aint official lol.

So instead of bragging in the gym I decided to compete in actual powerlifting meets. Just the simple act of actually competing in an official meet put me into a whole different category IMO. It deffo put things into a whole different light. All of a sudden all the guys in your gym who you thought were so strong, they start to look less strong lol.

Going to a different town and competing on someone else’s timeframe, on equipment you’ve never used before…with 3 judges watching you etc. Thats a lot different than bragging to your buddies about some lift you made one night while no one else was around

Same with chess. Lots of people play online. a much smaller % have the guts to go to a local starbux or whatever to play against a real human sitting across the board. of that small % an even much smaller % will join the USCF and go play in official tourneys.

I got heavy into chess a few years back and of course I went and played in tourneys and did quite well actually. You dont know competition until you sit across from someone and you try to mutually destroy each other with just your minds lol.

So it just naturally follows that I would want to have an “official” album released. Whether or not 5 people buy it isnt really the question. Having an album actually released simply puts one in a different category IMO.

Besides which, I dont have, nor will i ever have kids to leave behind. So I gotta leave SOMETHING behind as a contribution lol

It just pisses me off that in addition to all of the musical stuff that i also have to be some sort of amateur software programmer/troubleshooter trying to figure out why other peoples stuff doesnt work

2 Likes
#22

I came very close to pulling the trigger on a babyface pro maybe 18 months ago when I first started having these win10 issues. I couldnt quite talk myself into it. I may have to after all before all is said and done

#23

I’m finding this discussion very interesting, thanks all! Appreciate the perspective @rlrhett brings from working in the industry and wanting to set reasonable expectations about the economics of this kind of endeavor, but I also totally understand wanting to make an album just…because it’s a major creative accomplishment and feels awesome to complete a big project and bring it out into the world! I have no intention of ever making $ from music but I’d love to make an album someday too (it’d be a hip-hop album, not guitar, but that’s another convo haha).

I do think albums are still very relevant as basically the de facto largest standard unit of creative musical output. Of course there’s more variety overall in how music is both created and consumed these days, but I don’t see much indication albums are going extinct; tons of people still buy digital albums on Bandcamp, listen to them on Spotify, etc. and I’d say even today the biggest creative achievements in music tend to be albums (Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Kamasi Washington, Robyn, James Blake, Run the Jewels — so many of my favorite artists, across many genres, first and foremost make great albums; while I do listen to singles / playlists most of my listening is albums). Similar to how, you know, blog posts and tweets are major forms of writing now, but many (most?) folks serious about the craft still want to write books. Even knowing full well they may never write a bestseller (and that may or may not even be the goal). Probably comparable examples for just about any creative pursuit.

A couple things I think would make for very interesting continued discussions (as separate topics; I don’t want to derail this one too much):

One, talking about various ways of making money with independent music, whether as a career, or (I think more likely for more people) as a serious side project. Direct sales (physical or digital) and live gigging are big ones but there are plenty of others worth talking about, from merch to sponsorships to patronage. Many ways of balancing day job / side hustle, with various tradeoffs in terms of time, cost, potential financial upside, possibilities for building an audience and more, and the “right” approach I think depends a lot what your goals are.

Two, as a great specific example, I’d be interested in a show and tell post from @Drew at some point about the process self-producing / releasing an album, and selling / promoting it as well. I think any profit on an independent project like this is an amazing accomplishment and it’d be cool to hear more!

Three, bringing back to @JonJon’s OP, but maybe a slightly broader discussion, could be fun to share different approaches to independent production…not only reliable gear but specific workflows, creative constraints, avenues for distribution, or other tips / approaches that might be helpful for navigating this process.

1 Like
#24

yeah, we need tons of those discussions. for instance a great one would be “I have an album recorded…now what?”

I have friends in that category who have recorded albums and threw them on CD BABY or whatever…along with a billion other peeps. The one friend im thinking of does tons of live shows so he can sell his CDs there I suppose

Me, Im just trying to have an album done so I can put it next to Halen and Zep etc

I dont have too many delusions of getting rich or even recouping expenses. I just want the petty bragging rights and whatever good feeling comes from personal accomplishments

1 Like
#25

If you’re not careful, if we have our way with you, it WILL be a guitar album when everything’s said and done! :smile:

So, as I start working on my next one, I’m planning on blogging my way through the whole process on my site (which I never update, so part of this will be an excuse to do that). I’ll definitely share the highlights of that here.

As far as the process of recording and releasing an album, though, you learn from every experience you have, and while there were a bunch of lessons I learned working on mine was that while I know rather a lot about writing, performing, recording, and mixing music, I don’t know the first thing about actually promoting a release. :smile: I can - and would be happy to - provide as much insight as I can on the actual production process, but for me at the end of the day my “promotion” strategy was just to put a couple tracks out on YouTube (I have a channel with a decent subscriber base where I mostly share pickup A/B comparisons), and then post about it on the forums I’m active on or moderate, where the long-running joke had been it was going to be a race to see what came out first, Drew’s album or Chinese Democracy. I actually lost that one, lol.

2 Likes
#26

My setup is pretty similar to yours, @JonJon. Similar computer specs, same interface and also using Reaper. Only difference is that I’m doing guitars direct with my Line 6 Helix and my demos have never sounded better. However, for vocals and acoustic guitar and so forth the 2i4 is definitely not pulling its weight. Those interfaces (and the newer Win-10 approved counterparts) are a dime a dozen. Drop yours like a bad habit for a quick $100 or whatever and let it be someone else’s problem.

I’m looking at an RME Babyface now. There’s a used one in my price range on Craigslist. Every single person I’ve talked to (and the forum searches I’ve done) has nothing but great things to say about them. There’s also Universal Audio, they seem to make some of the best pro-sumer level gadgets on the market right now. Even if you don’t want to go that fancy, I guarantee that you could drop a couple hundred on one of those newer Native Instruments Komplete units and you’ll be set until the next bullshit Windows upgrade.

I’m wrestling with the idea of dropping the extra cash on a higher-end USB interface vs. upgrading my motherboard and going into Thunderbolt territory. The amount of money I’d spend on the best USB-3 interface vs. a more entry-level thunderbolt setup isn’t terribly different. Just thinking out loud here since I’ve got interfaces on my mind–you probably don’t want to worry about this.

2 Likes
#27

dude, im all about throwing many at problems in a futile attempt to compensate for my various failures

but it can be a double downer when u do throw more money and stuff STILL doesnt work. In a sense, thats where I am now lol

1 Like
#28

It’s a pain in the ass to be sure but honestly this is one of the easier problems to solve. You could get something usable delivered to your door from Amazon like, tomorrow and be setup for a weekend of tracking after your Saturday coffee. And you’ll get a bit of that moolah back when you resell your obsolete stuff. You’re in a better position than most from the sounds of things!

1 Like
#29

Unless you’re recording a LOT of tracks at a time, USB3 ought to be fine. Both are capable of running at equivalently (and extremely) low latencies, and as far as your computer is concerned there’s no difference between audio sent over USB and audio sent over Thunderbolt. As I understand - and disclaimer, this is NOT my area of expertise - where you start to see a difference is with higher track counts, as Thunderbolt has a higher bandwidth than USB and eventually you’ll hit a point where the sheer number of channels of audio being sent back (and remember, from your hardware interface’s perspective, a project with 120 tracks is going to be broadcast back as a two track stereo mix, though obviously the project will strain your CPU a lot more) and forth starts to strain the unit.

In practice, for most of us that’s going to be a non-issue; you’ll probably run out of mics and preamps before you’ll run out of bandwidth on USB in a home studio environment. If you want to spend money on a new interface, I’d focus first on AD/DA conversion quality (RME is excellent here), and then as a secondary factor, mic preamp quality. I say secondary because anything with excellent conversion is probably going to come with rather good, very transparent preamps anyway, and because if you really want to throw money at the problem then you’re going to eventually go down the outboard pre rabbithole anyway (I’m just trying to get to the point where I have enough channels of really sweet pres that when I next need to upgrade, I can just get a dedicated conversion unit without built in preamps and rely on a fleet of rack pres I already know well and will continue to use for decades, rather than getting a new batch of integrated pres every time I buy a new unit).

#30

To be clear, I am not opposed to art for art’s sake. Heck, I’m here right? And it doesn’t have to make sense. I know a guy who hand makes chopsticks. That is not a joke. He really does. They are about 18 inches long and made from beautiful woods. And I could go on an hour long rant on how we feel this cultural pressure to make EVERYTHING we do into a business. Otherwise we feel invalidated in expending our energies on it. Absurd.

I was reacting more to the opening statement that the OP was thinking of “quitting”, by which I took to mean quitting music. Again, I bring a certain perspective where I have seen artist sink their savings (and their parents’, girlfriends’, etc.) into making an album and then feeling crushed when it doesn’t make their careers. I was addressing that.

If you are wanting to make an album because it is a record of your accomplishments as a musician, or because you think it is a particular art form you want to express yourself in then those are certainly reasons enough. To that I can only say:

OSX + Reaper + Hydrogen + Scarlett

And BTW you can probably get OSX to run on that new Acer.

3 Likes
#31

…and for what its worth I think your advice is 100% on point here. I had the luxury of not caring if I broke even or not on my album because I have my own home studio so I could record it cheaply and on my own time, and because I have a day job that pays me well enough that chasing the dream of “making it” as a musician vs just having music as a really rewarding hobby just doesn’t make sense. If it was a matter of dumping my life’s savings into a studio to make an album and rolling the dice on getting it picked up by a label, well, I’d recommend just going and booking a whole bunch of shows until someone else is willing to pay to put me into a studio. :smiley:

This whole concept of a “side hustle” I keep hearing about is, IMO, just further proof something is fundamentally broken in American society today - the fact that we take it for granted everyone needs to have some sort of second job in their free time, rather than pursuing a hobby for the pleasure it brings, is frankly a little scary.

1 Like
#32

“thinking of” quitting and “feeling like” quitting are 2 different things

for whatever reason, being a “musician” is part of my self identity. So I doubt id “quit” being a musician. But if I felt id never even be able to leave a document of my playing because I dont have the time or heart or patience to overcome tech issues…that would significantly take away quite a bit of my motivation

side note. I may have found a workaround even thoughts its effing STUPID that id need to in the first place.

go into services and disable windows audio. The focusrite and reaper still works fine and the delayed feed thru is gone.

So it seems to be some weird windows audio issue. Could still be a driver issue.

of course, how silly would I feel if I get a different interface and its still the same issue?? lol

on this win7 lappy those 2 services are still running and things work fine…

#33

my mother wont allow me to use Apple products

1 Like
#34

Interesting, thanks for this. I as under the impression that the faster transfer speed compared to USB was huge but for my needs maybe it’s going overboard. The gear-nerd forumers rave about RME stuff constantly so maybe I’ll stick with that. Certainly seems to be better-regarded than the Focusrite Clarett and similar.

#35

A little out of date (how is an article from 2016 now “a little out of date”?!?) but this is a pretty decent overview, and my memory was basically correct:

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/usb-firewire-thunderbolt-which-best-audio

USB3.0 is plenty of bandwidth for most home studio applications. The Focusrite Clarett stuff is supposed to be good… But I’d probably stick with RME in your shoes, and invest that money instead into mics/preamps/better monitors/room treatment, etc.

#36

I fully empathize with you because (years ago) I struggled with the same issues. The good news is that in 2019 you don’t have to deal with these roadblocks. I’ll share with you what has worked for me and many others:

  1. Mac with at least i7 and at least 16gb ram.
  2. Logic Pro X
  3. Universal Audio Apollo Quad w/Thunderbolt

Latency is not an issue in this setup. Track/plugin count has not been an issue. System freezes and/or driver problems are never an issue. I monitor real-time with no latency through the Apollo and the Apollo provides dsp for its plugins and I print the sound as I hear it, for the most part. I utilize a D-Box and several other rack units such as mic pres, compressors and effects units but the heart of the system is the Mac, Apollo and Logic. I could get by with these three things alone if I had to do so.

You will also need external ssd’s for your sample drives and preferably a 7200 rpm external hard drive for recording. Of major importance to me is the use of templates in Logic and Apollo’s console. This way you just turn your gear on and can get to work fast without needing to set everything up before you lose inspiration.

Also when you do find that everything is running smoothly remember that you do not need to update your operating system to the latest and greatest immediately upon release. The somewhat irritating phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” does apply here.

Yes these items are not cheap but they should not be totally out of reach either if you can manage to get in the habit of saving money when and where you can.

By the way, the money I give to Troy and his team every month provide me with tools and information that I consider to be priceless.

I hope that you find something helpful in my sharing of the fundamental details of my setup. You’ve come too far to let driver issues and bad tech obliterate the would-be fruits of your musical journey.

Best wishes!

2 Likes
#37

By the way, did uninstalling AVG fix your driver issue?

#38

it doesnt seem to have done anything one way or the other

so far, disabling windows audio is the only thing that is at least a workaround

#39

for the record I feel much better now. I was able to turn off windows audio and actually jam for 30 minutes with no issues.

I took a 5 minute track that was basically just 2 drum parts back and forth and I did 6 passes So thats basically 12 rhythm parts jammed on that can be possibilities for song riffs

Ive been doing tons of scales and lead paying but virtually no rhythm playing. it showed lol

2 Likes
#40

Nice - glad venting helped, and glad SOMETHING is working to let you record!

2 Likes