Besides carrying nine graduate credits and continuing to work at my second job (bassist for Hank Lane Music), I've been obsessing over a personal music project which also shows parallels with the concept of reflective teaching practice.
I recorded an album of nine songs last summer. I played all the instruments and sang all the voice parts, and engineered the recording myself with equipment I own and keep in the basement. Once I had all my parts recorded and had selected takes and edited together performances for each part of each tune, I sent five of the nine to an outstanding drummer I've had the pleasure to know and work with for many years. He recorded drum parts to my five tracks in his house and sent me back audio files with at least two takes for each tune, with a separate audio file for each microphone's audio capture. So, for each tune, he recorded into two mics positioned above the whole drumkit, a third one aimed at the snare drum, and a fourth aimed at the bass drum. I paid him for his considerable trouble but certainly not what he's worth. He's a very nice guy in addition to being a fabulous musician.
The performances he turned in on all five of the songs were stellar. Now my job was to blend those drum tracks in with the rest of my multi-track file for each song. I record into my computer using digital audio workstation (DAW) software called Logic. It's like having a virtual recording console and tape machine all inside your computer, without the hassle of aligning tape heads or spooling tape. It allows the kind of audio quality that was once financially prohibitive for almost everyone.
But enough about that as I try to get to my point. I received all my drum tracks from Dave back in late August of 2014. The school year began, and I did my best to find an hour here and two hours there, staying up too late, to mix down the multi-track files. If you have never done any audio engineering, you have no idea how deep and complex a craft this is. Good mixes require hours upon hours of critical listening, revision, research on audio techniques, second opinions, listening on different systems, taking notes on mixes for future revisions, referencing against commercial recordings and other mixes previously completed, and on and on.
It's nearly a whole year after that last note went in the can, and only TODAY did I finally send nine mixes to the gentleman who will master them for release. I'll spare you the details of what mastering is, but it's just as deep and complicated an art as mixing is.
In short, it's very much the same as the introspective, non-linear, artist approach I see this course taking toward the work of teaching.
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