LESSONS LEARNED AND FORGOTTEN

I released Eddie K #03 yesterday, and consigned it to the Great Silence.  
So, on to bigger things.  Actually, let me take a quick look back at it, 
in order to spot flaws to avoid next time.  Let's see...

1.)  I took too damn long getting it out.  After I released episode #02, 
I did an episode of my Hacker Public Radio series "Theater Of The 
Imagination", and an episode of my audiocast "Palaver".  I still want to 
do both those things again, this time around, but I need to ramp up the 
process.  It was, I think, three months, almost, between "Eddie K" 
episodes, and that was too long.  This time, my next script isn't even 
finished yet, so I'm starting off behind my time.

2.)  I made a couple minor, but annoying, mistakes as I was working: 
there's an elevator music track in this episode, that I should have 
changed from stereo to mono, and probably should have made more 
tinny-sounding.  I mean, I don't think it's overly-distracting, but it 
bothers ME, so I should have done something about it.  Also, the 
elevator sounds are a bit too low.  I think the idea comes across, but 
I'm dissatisfied, now that it's all done.  Sure, I could go back and fix 
these things right now, but I DON'T want to go down that path: you know, 
never quite being finished?  Besides, the show went out on the feed 
already, so people have this less-than-ideal version in their 
possessions already.

3.)  I had hardware issues, wherein I was clipping all the time when 
speaking.  Clipping is, essentially, being so loud in a recording that 
your voice (or music) distorts.  Clipping is a Bad Thing.  Turns out, my 
recording hardware has a built-in compressor/limiter that would prevent 
this, but which I didn't know about.  I've tested it out now (too late 
for this last ep), and it works well.  Time to finally read the manual, 
you think?  Also, another hardware problem needs fixing: I do not own a 
decent set of headphones.  I've been getting by with cheap earbuds, and 
it's gotten to the point where I have no accurate idea how the show 
sounds at all.  There's a new purchase in the wind...

4.)  I took too many nights off, which not only fed into number 1.) up 
there, but also put me into a lethargic frame of mind.  I mean, if you 
don't work for a while, it can be hard to stay motivated.  At least, I 
find it so.  The swing of things can be hard enough on a good day, 
without taking a lot of time off from the swinging itself.  Getting back 
into a productive frame of mind was/is hard.  Both "Palaver" and HPR 
were done weeks ago.  And I'm struggling with this current "Eddie" 
script.  I've now taken that break (well, sort of -- I wasn't thinking 
of it that way), so let's hope it all ramps up.

5.)  I was able to assemble "Eddie K" episode #03 in the FOSS 
application Ardour, and I'm pretty happy about that.  Ardour has many 
abilities, but for me, it's greatest strengths right now are it's smooth 
handling of multi-track projects (I had over thirty tracks going on this 
latest episode), and it's superior crash-recovery over something like 
Audacity.  This is not to say I don't like Audacity -- I do, and I'm 
pretty comfortable with it at this stage (at least, for what I need to 
do with it), and I edited all the individual tracks in it first, 
one-by-one, before bringing them into Ardour.  This seemed to keep 
things chugging along well enough that I'm likely to make this my SOP -- 
until my Ardour chops come along, anyway.  It took considerably less 
time to do assemble all the pieces than I expected -- mostly because I'd 
prepared all the sound effects in advance, including their proper 
lengths.  It was then a simple matter of slapping these different sounds 
into place in Ardour and adjusting levels.  But, as the elevator sounds 
from number 2.) above illustrates, I still have a ways to go before I 
can get these levels right.  I KNOW it's just a matter of practice, but 
I'm not a musician, so the only things of my own that I have to practice 
on are my audio projects.  So, considering my rate of production, 
mastery of Ardour will take a lot of time.

Conclusions?  I learned about the hardware issues, and that's a good 
thing.  I got more experience with Ardour, and THAT'S a good thing.  I'm 
beginning to hammer out a procedure, which, while being far from 
optimum, is considerably better than the frenetic mess of a workflow 
that my previous episodes became.  See, I KNEW this would be a matter of 
experience, and it is.  In the future, I'm hoping to avoid the problems 
I've illustrated here, or any similar ones, and leave myself open for 
the next mistakes/missteps.  I mean, if that's the only way for me to 
learn, and to progress, I better do my best to prevent repeats.

August 16, 2011
(c) 2011 lostnbronx
CC BY-SA 3.0
lostnbronxATgmailDOTcom