The Enneagram: Day 23

So I wrote a whole blog post and it just got deleted because I accidentally clicked the tiny red button trying to click to a new tab. ARGH! This will be abridged, because I'm not writing everything I said again.

Today I started out taking random pictures for my CD booklet. I got this really cool one of Scott and I feel like I could use it for something or other.

I decided for my Type 7 song I want it to be pure instrumental, sort of based off Soul Sacrifice by Santana. I hope to include a bunch of random instruments in a semi-comprehendible cacophony of noise.

For this song I wanted to include a clip from this Balkan song in which the singers use a very unusual vocal technique. A few singers sing pitches half-steps apart from each other, and it causes a bend in the sound waves that creates "beats", or a strange break in the noise.

The track had drums on part of it though, and I wanted to see if there was any way I could take them off. I started fooling around with Garageband and I realized, heck I know nothing about audio recording. So many of the terms confuse me like hell. But I'm going to try to define them. If anyone can help explain what I don't get, then that'd be great.

Noise Gate: A device that controls the volume of tracks, only allowing in sounds that are higher than the threshold

Threshold: The level in which the gate (sound in this case I suppose) will open

Release: The time for the gate to go from open to closed

Attack: How long it takes for the gate to go from closed to open, fade-in

Reverb: An echoey effect, like the way sound is reflected in a concert hall

Echo: Much more echoey than reverb, like shouting a word in a cave, an entire phrase is repeated back

Phaser: Sends a sound through different wavelengths

Flanger: Plays two identical copies of a sound, one only miliseconds after the other

Gain: How loud a signal is amplified by an amplifier (?)

Compressor: From what I've seen, really similar to a Noise gate

Equalizer: Shapes frequencies of sound

Overdrive: A distortion effect

Hopefully soon, all of these random sound adjustments will make sense to me. But I don't think I'm gonna remove that drum track. It's ok, because there's one part where the singers sing in a cappella. But that doesn't make up for the fact that I'm lacking basic audio recording knowledge.