Checking in
posted on 09 May 2007 under category News
Yes, I’m still alive.
No, Bellum is not done. But it’s damn close.
And so’s something else… To complete the migration to my new PC I have to finish mixing down all of the audio projects I recorded on the old one. After much work, that’s only Bellum right now, and that’s close to done. Or so I thought.
As I was compiling notes for the upcoming Breath of the Dragon newsletter (Sorry April didn’t work out, but we have lots of stuff for the May issue…) I went through my UHR news updates and realized that I had stopped talking about a project I planned quite a while ago - the Death Beast demo collection. I wanted to compile all the work that Dementor, Axe and I did on that first demo plus the few tracks that Ramrod/Juggernaut did for us, plus I had found a couple that I did some test vocalizations on (terrible, really, but there they are….). Well, I seemed to remember that I did get some final vocal mixes of Juggernaut, but only one would work synchronization-wise. So, I went digging, and found it: HCTW_ryan_vox.cwb - yes, Ramrod doing vocals on the nearly-final version of “Here Comes the War”. I totally forgot about this track. It was just buried among some other ‘random’ tracks and scratch tapes.
So, I gave it a listen. It seems to be an earlier drum take, but it has the final guitar and bass tracks, and Ramrod’s excellent vocals. It EVEN has an alternate ending - a different sample bit that’s funnier (which is probably why we didn’t use it - it was just too ‘happy’ or upbeat for what’s supposed to be a menacing album).
And the final upshot is that converting the archive .cwb file to a mixed-down wave file was child’s play. Another project put to bed. I’m so happy.
(You always hear big-time musicians talk about tracks unearthed from ‘The Vaults’, and the word connotation and the reverence with which it’s always uttered when they talk about ‘unearthing’ tracks from ‘The Vault’ - you can actually hear the capital letters - always make it sound like some big, grand, deliberate thing. “We’ve recorded fifteen songs, but only ten are going on the album. Two we’ll save for B-sides. The other three will go into…(dramatic pause)… ***THE*VAULT***” [dramatic musical stab].
In reality, I’m sure it’s just like this story here - mis-named or mis-labeled stuff that gets shunted off to some ‘sort_this_later’ folder on your desktop to be forgotten until you decide ‘hey, I need more disk space, but I really better check this folder before I just trash the whole thing…’.
It’s not as dramatic, but I find reality a bit more charming. Who knows what other presents I’ve left myself on this old thing. I’ve got about 100 GB of shit on this beast I still have to sort…)