I have not been actively making music for a while now… life got seriously in the way. Now that I am ‘dabbling’ again I am a bit freaked by how rusty I feel in my studio… small tricks that I have forgotten how to do… ‘duh’ moments on repeat.
It made me glad that I’m back and playing around again but hey, so many of the things I do had become automatic and then they weren’t… a bit unsettling!
I know that there are a bunch of us out there who can’t always get consistent time to work on projects, but I’m curious as to how easy it is for others to slot back in to their workflow after a break of a few months or more?
Yeah it can be frustrating, discouraging even but I like the idea of tearing it down and starting over, learning new things. If it was good before it should come back but maybe there’s a better way?
I have not had to use my cubase manual for years but now find there are some basic things I ‘just did’ that have slipped away into the fetid jungle of my forgettery…
fetid jungle of my forgettery…now that’s one I haven’t heard. I hear ya bud. I left my studio and headed south to winter and didn’t even play any guitars for a month and a half. Sad
I just tried to do some recording with my grandkids and the interface was not familiar to me so after a few hours, I just put it all back. bummer again
You are young yet. It gets much worse the memory thing. Stuff like control s then control w I forgot. Must have done that a thousand times. ha ha I also think that if you don’t have something exciting in your mind for a new tune, the enthusiasm falls off too.
There was a parallel I was going to draw, but I would get booted for it. Hang in there kiddo and start pumping them out again.
Something might be said about the old 4 track or 8 track recorders of yore, you don’t forget how to press, record, stop and rewind
I feel the same way, especially having to use software I haven’t used in a while, like recently I had to get versed in Pro Tools again. I’ve forgotten a lot of it
I’m surprised at just how much I can forget now days. It wasn’t long ago that I took my total recall for granted. And to think, the mind only erodes more from here to the end…Life’s a drag!
I’m totally in this boat as well. A million other things have consumed what little time I get to myself all year, haven’t done anything for at least six-plus months, and I am feeling the rust in a big way.
I’m now on furlough, with the US government once again unable to function, so maybe I’ll have some time, but it’s really not conducive to creativity, wondering whether the shutdown will last long enough to wreck things both in terms of the professional life but also in terms of home finances. If I have to miss two paychecks, that is a huge problem… Anyway, that’s not a good mindset for trying to come up with music…
I have an edge on a lot of people in recording because I was never very far past crusty anyway, so getting back to my low level is pretty quick. As for Reaper, I don’t go too deep either so that’s a huge plus in not forgetting a lot of stuff that was never known in the first place.
Im not bragging but just stating fact… actually my current recordings don’t sound much better than the recordings I did at 15 so… no problem here.
Thanks guys, definitely sucks. What worries me is that this is more than “politics as usual”, our tribal division is laid bare in this fight, and it’s gotten personal and ugly. There is already zero margin for error in my entire 2019 timeline, so every day this drags on makes the teeth gnash a little harder…
Sorry you’re in the middle of this. Although shutdowns are relatively common, Trump is making this one more of a personal vendetta than he should be. I am for immigration reform, at least to the extent that the process is organized and safe to all involved. The whole wall thing is outside that scope, and is just a symbol that has very little practical impact.
As to recording, I’m so sporadic I basically start over every time I start. I switched to Reaper from Cubase a while back and also let people who know what they are doing mix for me, so I haven’t really learned enough about Reaper to get comfortable with it. I have the time now, but motivation seems to be fleeting.
I had serious computer problems for at least 5 months. I’ve gotten most things back up and running after a complete reinstall of basically everything. I never realised how much I’d already made custom in Reaper. Now I have to find out all over again from watching countless Reaper vids… On the upside I can reinstall things with a bit more knowledge and understanding of what certain actions are for and which of those I actually use and which I don’t. Of course customising Reaper tends to turn into a hobby by itself, there’s no end to the way you can personalise your workflow. Problem being that I get no real work to flow because I spend all my time farting around with the settings and all those shiny new plugins. I think the biggest challenge is to simply commit to recording a new song…
I find that government shutdown thing so very hard to understand… well, it feels incomprehensible and just plain daft to be honest. How can they just not pay people? Well… I remain bewildered… and how utterly totally frustrating, not only for the pay loss and insecurity but the job flow and planning etc must be an utter nightmare.
Shutdowns are generally political ploys used to shame one side or the other to pass legislation that funds money to get somebody’s pet project or tax hike off the ground by altering our already abused federal budget. Quite a few of our Presidents have used them. It makes a bigger splash when it’s about Trump not getting his toy for Christmas, which is how mass media presents it. Fortunately they are usually resolved rather quickly.
I guess it never dawned on me that Dave would be caught up in the backwash.
By the way, shutdowns are frequently threatened around the holidays, with the hope that Congress will feel more pressure to get things done, but with our current group of millionaires that was clearly not the case.
Actually, not so. The Senate passed a clean continuing resolution by unanimous voice vote, and word from the White House was that Trump would sign it-- then he did a 180 after the right-wing echo chamber blasted him for it. Only then did the House put up its bill with Trump’s money in it. If Trump had stuck to his commitment to sign the Senate bill, there would be no shutdown.
We are being governed by Fox News, Drudge, and Breitbart…
