Thinking by typing

I’m strongly considering leaving “Getting Away with It” off Dick Tracy Must Die. The album is already almost 44 minutes long, so it’s a decent length now. But much more importantly, I’m starting to think that “Getting Away with It” just isn’t ready. Worse, I’m starting to think it’s not going to be ready very soon. I’m starting to get the outlines of a new, even longer version of the song in my head, one that’s a little less hip-hop and is a little bit slower. I’m not sure. Part of that is… well…

…”Getting Away with It” should be epic. I’m sure of this. In my head, this thing is an opera, a showcase, a sprawling showstopper. It’s technically difficult, it’s already long (about 5m30), it’s got two levels of story going on… frankly, it’s a monster. But right now, it’s not having the impact I think it should, live, and right now, I think people are just plain overwhelmed by the sheer number of words. I’ve been thinking I can fix this when I record the studio version, but now I think it needs more than just the studio treatment.

If the live recording of last Saturday’s show came out decently – I haven’t checked yet – I might include a live cut as a bonus track. Then I’ll do a reworked studio version later. I’m honestly… I was sure for a long time that it was ready. I really was. But the more I work on it, the more I think I was premature. I think that’s why I have such a difficult time with it, still, both live and in studio.

I don’t think I’m cheating the album by doing this. Originally, Dick Tracy Must Die was going to be a 10-track CD, with “Getting Away with It” as the final track. I’ve cut other songs that were originally going to be on this album – most notably, “Life in the Underground” and “The World Falls Down¹.” And I brought forward tracks from the untitled third album². As of now, even without “Getting Away with It,” Dick Tracy is 13 tracks, with one more song than originally planned; with a live version of “Getting Away with It” in its current state as a bonus track, it’d be 14, with the final three tracks being “Stay Away,” “Shout at the Desert,” and “My Boyfriend.” I think that’s a pretty good closing – two hard-driving songs about existential questions, followed by dessert in the form of some comic relief.

…and with all this typing, I think I may have realised that the third album – the second “real” album of vocal/full-band original music – is called Getting Away With It, and that a reworked “Getting Away with It” is the title track. It’s definitely something to give serious consideration.

That kinda works in my head. Anybody out there got any thoughts? Particularly any of you who’ve heard “Getting Away with It”?

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1: I put part of “The World Falls Down,” changed a bit, on the ending of “Thought You Knew,” if you want to have an idea about what it sounded like.

2: YES I HAVE THREE ALBUMS PLANNED OUT. The second, Distractions, is a collection of instrumentals and was originally going to have some traditional songs but I may do that as a separate EP. The third one has no title yet but starts with “Something’s Coming” and may have a tracklist of “Sad Muppet,” “Get Out,” “Hate Your Day Job,” “(Sick of) America,” “Roughrider,” “Taking Away,” “Elementals,” “December Storms” (that album’s instrumental, if I can come up with an ending), “What the Hell?” (which really needs a new title), and, if it works out, “Coyote.” It’s actually quite a bit lighter in tone than Dick Tracy Must Die. The fourth one is going to be called Rule the World but I don’t have any tracks written for it yet. Um. Except “Death Fat.” That’ll be on Rule the World. Have I mentioned I write a lot of songs?

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil.

I know this can be done, just not how exactly.

…I even know how the math works. But that’s a long, long way from code, and besides, I know this already exists.

I have a live recording from last Saturday. On the left track, I have vocals + instruments. On the right track, I have just instruments. I want to subtract the instrument-only right track from the left track to get a clean, or at least reasonably clean, vocal track.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, because I’m going to put it back on top of the same instrumental track, I need to level some stuff and get rid of a couple of weird pumping-like artefacts and that’ll work 100x better with the mostly-clean vocals hanging out over there —>. People do the same audio math all the time, removing vocals for sampling, remixes, karaoke, stuff like that.

My digital audio workstation is Ardour running on Ubuntu Studio 8.04. I’d prefer to do this in Ardour, but if I have to install something else, I can. (And I have the Ubuntu Studio audio suite already installed. I also have an OSX box, and can boot the Ubuntu box into XP, if I must, but it’s kind of a pain in the ass to get things across the systems.) Google has not helped me.

Can I do this in Ardour? That would be optimal. I have Audacity running on the same Ubuntu box, tho’ I’ve never used it. I also have Rosegarden and it seems to run, and a bunch of other things I don’t know anything about yet because I haven’t tried them but none of them seem likely to do this. (Drum sequencer, stuff like that.)

If so, how? If not, what do I need?

Thanks in advance…

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil.