Saturday, January 26, 2019

Thank heaven for system restore

Yesterday ended with me writing "I posted a question on the program's support forum". Due to the day's frustration, I was pessimistic about the chances of receiving a useful reply. Someone did post an answer, most of which was about updating drivers and similar. But the first sentence was the key: restore the system from a system restore point.

I was pleased to discover that my computer creates a system restore point every morning, so I could restore everything to how it was yesterday at 6am. After rebooting, I started the multi-track program, and yes! There was now audible output through the computer's sound card.

For about ten minutes, I tried recording vocals with the microphone connected directly to the computer's sound card but this was not good. So I then connected the external sound card to a USB port, connected the headphones and microphones ... and was able to make very clear recordings.

I sang the song through once, which seemed to be sufficient. Just at the end of the first verse, my telephone beeped which caused me to record a 'drop in' on the final line. Whilst editing the sound file, I saw that the beep occurred just after my singing, so I was able to silence this without needing the drop in. I then spent an hour or so tuning the lead vocal as well as separating strategic parts so that I could create harmonies.

I'm now listening to the finished song and everything seems to be fine. I'll master a version and listen to that for the next few days.

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