36 hours

Take note I woke up at 8:30 on Tuesday. I spent an hour setting up for the band from 5-6pm. They're called "Behold The Sun" if I haven't told you already. Anyway, all my planning and stuff really payed off because it only took 2 hours before the first recording was in the bag. THANK GOD the band kicks arse, I wouldn't be able to take another recording session of non-kick-arses. If you have ever heard of Portishead, they sound a little like them. As the night blew on, hunger levels were rising and tempers started to flare (between the drummer and lead singer), so we took a break at about 9:30. Well it turns out that the vegetarian food I bought had to be cooked, not microwaved, so we ended up with just a small packet of "Yum Cha" between 5 people. It got to midnight and we had 3 songs down (7 takes of each). After 5 hours recording I was getting pretty wasted, as were the instrumentalists, so we took another short break to try and wake up a bit. After recording the last song until 2am, the flautist and violinist were too tired to go on (they were young), so they left the lead singer/pianist, drummer and I to do some overdubs. I microphoned the Grand Piano, did some run-throughs (somehow the pianist had already gotten high beforehand) and when it got to 3:30 we decided to call it a night, 10 hours after starting. The two band members helped me pack up, to some extent, and left at 4am. I finished packing up while the 8gig of files were being burnt over 2 DVD's, and at 5 I was done. But. I can't get home without catching a taxi, and even if I had the money to get home, I would have to wake up 30mins later to get back to uni at 9. So I did the unthinkable and slept at uni. I had a blanket that I used to cover the kick drum, so I 'snuggled' into the shower cubicle in the level 11 men's toilets. Yes, that's right. I got to sleep at around 6:30, woke up at 8:30, bought a muffin for breakfast and went to Perspectives in Music Tech. I realised then that I didn't have my notebook (the one with all my class notes for the entire semester), and at 1pm I have 3 hours free so I went all through EMU, asked at the security office as well as Elder Library, but no-one had seen it. I was hoping and praying that one of the band members had taken it home by accident, but it wasn't until 3:45 that I got a message saying just that. So my 3 hour break being wasted, I went to my 2 hour Elvis to U2 class, struggling to stay awake (I did actually fall asleep periodically), and ended up leaving uni no less than 31 hours after getting here, and getting only 2 hours of horrible sleep over a 34 hour period.

Enter session 2.

I woke up Thursday morning at 7:00 to get to uni for Foundations at 9. After workshop that afternoon, I started setting up my own deadroom, as I do not like the idea of there being 8 doors in between studio 1 and the actual deadroom. Using all baffles and my notorious blanket, I set up a semi-soundproof fortress, or cubby house if you’re into that, right in front of the studio 1 window. This worked like a bitch (in a good way) so the session was going great. I had bought proper food this time as well. After plenty of flute, violin and trumpet overdubs, the flautist left early (being 2am) and the violin, drummer, singer and I finished off all the vocal dubs. The morning rolled on and I figured I should get all the new recordings onto disc before 5:30. Which I did. With 35 seconds to spare. The computers rebooted and life went on. It got to the stage where we began improvising the session- the band with musical improv and with me making up microphone techniques as I go. So with the files safe and sound we recorded some abstract stuff, and figured at 7:00am we should start packing up before someone finds us all here still. It was then we realised we had just completed a 12 hour recording session. Packing up is second nature now, so it was all done in 30 minutes. So I went home, got ready for bed, got INTO bed, and figured I would check my email. A special shout out to Courtney for her friendly reminder of our pre-arranged choir rehearsal, which I had to be back at Uni for in an hour. Up I get, threw clothes over my pyjamas and caught a bus back. It turns out I have been singing the bass part an octave higher than it is supposed to be for the entire semester, so Ave Verum Corpus (The Burning Corpse) is in second inversion in our trio. At 11 I had the choice of going home and sleeping, probably until 2am the next day, but I figured “What the hell would I do awake at 2am?” So I did the unthinkable again, and stayed awake for the rest of the day, even managing to go to the lunchtime concert thing. Riding the bus back at 5, I dreamt about changing buses at Paradise interchange, and when I woke up I was on a different bus. When I finally got home, I fell asleep on the couch at 7:30pm, no less that 36 hours after waking up the day before.

At least I slept for 18 hours after that.

Oh, and I got my notebook back, hence the blog entries being up to date.