The Enneagram: Day 34, CD booklets and other things

For the CD booklet

In the morning, I decided to start working on the booklet for my CD. Better to get a head start, to find out how much work making a booklet would actually be.

After doing some test prints, I discovered that a normal plastic CD case can hold a sheet of paper 4.83 x 4.75 inches in length. A two page sheet (to be folded) is 9.66 x 4.75 inches. After more mathematical equations, figuring out the margins, learning how to use Publisher, I finally got something decent.

After this though, I ran into the issue that regular desktop printers do not print solid colors well. My beautiful album intro was infested with lines!

Eghadd!

So, I experimented with lighter colors. Some came out better than others

Only a vague appearance of lines

Ahhhh!

After lighting most of the backgrounds I began putting lyrics. Here's what one of the pages looks like.

And it fits quite snuggly.

Now in addition to the issues of ink lines, I think I also need to get slightly sturdier paper, because the regular printer paper is practically bending in my hands, and inking both sides of it would probably push it off the edge.

That whole photography idea I had isn't going to happen, due to technical difficulties. Not like I actually had time to do it anyway, but at least I know I wasn't missing out on anything.

I'm trying to decide how many CDs to produce. Each booklet will need 3 sheets of paper which yield 4 faces each. If I make 50 CDs I have to cut 150 pieces of paper, unless I find my mom's cutting board, which would mean that maybe I could lower that number to cutting 70 or 50 pieces of paper. It's not gonna be an easy task.

However I decided to stop working on this project after a while so I wouldn't loose too much recording time.

Recording

Here's my fallback for my recordings. There will be wrong notes. There will be off rhythms. It won't be perfect. But it's going to be done.

Today I recorded Type 3, 4, and 9 with full parts. Type 4 was easy, because it's only me and my accordion. Type 3 was slightly more difficult, because it had guitar, bass, and me slamming the desk as drums. However, Type 9 was the most difficult, because I had to record the drums straight, sync everything up to the drums, and keep all the instruments together while there's an acceleration at the end. Oh, and I'm doing each and every track by itself.

First, I recorded the drums. Upon that I put guitar, then bass, then a few keyboard things. As each piece joined together, the song became more and more full. When I put the vocals on top, I was basically fully accompanying myself. It was awfully strange. But it was amazing. I had my own band. Which was myself.

Although the beat isn't exact and sometimes I played a wrong note in a chord, I'm actually very satisfied with how the recording came out. I was expecting there to be a lot of empty white noise, lightness, and a feeling that there's some part missing. But there wasn't. The whole thing sounded whole, and if I didn't screw the drums up so much, it could've sounded like a real recording. At least, I think so ;)

At this point, I want to record at least Type 2, 5, and 6 while I still have a drum set. I'd rather do all of them, but the Type 9 recording took me about 3 1/2 hours, so I don't want to overshoot myself. Problem is, Type 2 and 5 are the two songs I haven't finished writing yet. So I have to work fast.