Tag Archives: Cubase 12

News, Recording

New year is here: Back to work, lazy mothers!

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Well, that was a nice little holiday break, and we all had a bit of a laugh. But now it’s 2024, dudes – time to get back down to it. No more messing around, no more late rising. You had your vacation, damn it! Nose to the grindstone, my fine little friends.

That’s my version of a pep talk. I’ve never been much in the way of a motivational speaker, especially when the audience is me and my brother. Neither one of us wants to take any of THAT guy’s bullshit. And as you know from long experience, Big Green is a leaderless collective. We don’t subscribe to self-imposed hierarchies. Nor do we subscribe to the daily paper, or even a monthly newsletter. But I digress.

A far safer Forbin Project

I’m not sure, but I think we’re in year two of producing this particular album. And if you include the year or so we spent working out which album we were going to make (new songs or retreads), call it three. Why does it take Big Green so damn long to make a record? Well, there are three reasons:

  1. We’re slow as a mother. Always have been, always will be. That’s just the speed we’re built for, man – can’t help it. What the hell, it took us five years to finish International House, and it takes less than an hour to listen to the s.o.b.
  2. We’re oldsters. That’s part of the reason for #1. Not much we can do about that shit. Stick around long enough and you’ll be old, too.
  3. We’re busy-ass mo-fo’s. Matt in particular has a raft of responsibilities. I myself don’t have a raft, but I have responsibilities. Hence, we record maybe once a week, whether we need to or not.

Thing is, we tend to approach each album like it’s the Forbin Project. Whether you’re building Colossus or Guardian, it’s a heavy lift. Though thankfully, unlike the Forbin project, the fate of the world doesn’t hang in the balance … and Patty Duke’s father plays no role whatsoever in our production process.

Leftovers and tailings

Some of you (and you know who you are) have asked if there won’t be a sample or two of the current project available at some point. No man can say! We like to toss random recordings out there from time to time – some are leftovers, some are tailings or abandoned experiments. (As you know, Dark Christmas was one of those from our first album, 2000 Years to Christmas.)

The truth is, we haven’t even done any rough mixes yet, which is kind of nuts. We’re also in the process of upgrading from Cubase 9 to Cubase 12 (yes, I know – they just released 13, the motherfuckers) and changing platforms. And hell, we’ve got at least 25 songs under serious construction, with another 15 to 20 started. And another thing …. OUCH.

We’ll get this sucker done, trust me. Or my name isn’t … uh … whatever it is.

Random Lyric

Here’s an old one by Big Green co-founder Ned Danison:

Now the picture in my mind is hazy
Just like the number’s washed off my hand
I’m just another nameless no one
She’s just another faceless one night stand

From the song “A Name and a Face”. Listen to the demo we recorded in 1986:

BIG GREEN 1986 DEMO

News

In the shop for a little tune-up.

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Mother ship, this is Central New York calling – we need repairs … like, right now. Oh, and one more thing … HAAAAALP!

It will surprise exactly none of you that Big Green doesn’t have tech support in-house. That’s largely because, well, we don’t even have the “in-house” part. But hey, there’s a lesson embedded in every misfortune. And so when I tried to upgrade our recording platform – in the middle of an album project – I discovered that our corporate overlords had made this impossible. The lesson? “Right to Repair” is a thing, it turns out. And the manufacturer of our computer at some point decided that I was wrong to repair. Very wrong, indeed.

Tech for the technically challenged

Now, I’m not great with tools. I get screwdrivers mixed up with other drinks. Nevertheless, I started clawing away at my laptop computer and soon discovered that the likes of me could not open the effer. That’s when I put the tools away and called the repair shop. What we really need is something like bicycle repair man, from that old Monty Python script. In a perfect world, we could resort to such things. But alas.

How’s the project going, aside from our various technical foibles? So good of you to ask. It’s like chipping away at a mountain, actually. You just keep lopping off every piece of it that doesn’t look like your next album. We started about 40 or 45 songs, and we seem to be concentrating on maybe half of them. Matt’s adding bass parts; I’m randomly adding keyboards, voice, etc. It could use some yeast, certainly, and maybe a pinch of nutmeg. None of my bunt pans are big enough to accommodate …. oh, wait; that’s the Madison county bake-off, not the album. Apologies. Always get those mixed up in my tiny brain.

Bitter legacy

We’re working off an old legacy platform that can’t be updated, and we’re at least three versions behind on our multi-track workstation software (Cubase 9). This is a good time, it seems, to upgrade. So we bought the computer, we bought the software, we put the two things together, and … bupkis. That’s when I started working away on the computer with various screwdrivers, Allen wrenches, and the like.

Now, I suppose we could just hike up the street a few blocks and record at Big Blue North, but hey … that would take money. It may surprise you that we haven’t been given an advance on royalties by our corporate label. (If so, you must be one of the legions who have never heard of Big Green. And to you I say, welcome!)

Oh, well … we’ll manage. You’ll see. And if you want to pre-order a copy of Big Green’s next album, I would strongly advise you to wait. We’ve still got some managing to do, you see.

luv u,

jp