More like a mule...

A level below old dogs and new tricks...

I keep telling that to my music partner, Mark.  He is an accomplished musician, and still takes online lessons for keyboard and guitar.  I think the last new chord I learned was about 20 years ago.  He practices diligently; I play at least an hour a day, but it is just making music.  He is an athlete; I once had jock itch.

But, I did show him something last year with the Spire Studio, and he bought one the next day.   We have been working together apart (by about 1,400 miles) regularly.   I am a "one and done" for recording, but will allow myself up to 3 takes, if necessary.   He will practice for hours and record as many takes as he needs to be satisfied.

The Spire gives us up to 8 tracks.  Most of the time, that is enough.  Sometimes, it would be nice to have a few more tracks available.  I can live with it.  That makes one of us.  Mark has been after me to give LogicPro a shot.  I loaded it onto my MacBook Pro, and yesterday, he and I got some instruction from a guy he knows who is fluent in DAW.  It was helpful.

I went to set up my Behringer XR12 to record to the Mac and found out... even though all the promo for the XR12 states "Can do stereo recording", it can only do so to a flash drive or a hard drive... NOT directly to a DAW.  Of course, it took me a couple hours of not getting it to work to go to the internet and find out that the XR12 does NOT have an interface to record direct to a computer.

I knew this day was coming (recording to a DAW instead of just the Spire), and bought the XR12 with that expansion in mind.   Bad on me for not checking into it more thoroughly.   Bad on Behringer for implying stereo recording - you have to get into the XR18 before you have that capability.

That said, I often feel like an old dog when it comes to new tricks.  Well, most days more like an old mule... it makes my head hurt just thinking about learning new tricks.

I pulled out my Zoom H4n Pro, because I KNOW it can be used as an interface.   Plugged it in, dusted off the cobwebs on how to run it, made a couple changes to the input/output for sound on the Mac and LogicPro, and I was getting actual recorded sound.

As a test, I recorded a guitar, bass, drums, and 4 vocal tracks on a short bit of a song.  This is going to take a LOT of studying to figure out all the nuances of using LogicPro.   The more I messed with LogicPro, the more I really appreciate the simplicity and ease of the Spire Studio.

Oh sure, I know there are tutorials online for the use, but that will cut seriously into my biking, boating, and nap time.  Plus, my brain is like a hard drive that is almost full: I will have to clear some space before I can learn anything new.

Anyone else feel like that?

Some days I just want to sit outside in the sub-tropical weather here and play a few songs.  With a carbon fiber guitar, of course, because I'm not a savage.

It took me a while to get used to the Behringer X-Air XR12.  I figured that was as much brain work as I'd need to expend for quite a while.  No real point to this post, I'm just posting here to keep from having to wade through LogicPro any more today.

I took a break and did another "stayin' at home" music video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmGkc2cs7lw&feature=youtu.be