I’ve been working on the audio & video recordings from this gig last weekend, and my poor aging PC is feeling the brunt. It’s a shade over three years old now, a humble Athlon XP 1900+, and while it has served me admirably, it has always had a penchant to run rather warm. I think it actually may be the motherboard (a Gigabyte GN400Pro) – I’ve read about a few problems with inaccurate temperature readings on this particular board, so it may be that it’s not infact overheating – it just thinks it is. Nevertheless, it brings my audio work to a spectacular halt each time. Processing slows to a crawl, audio stutters, the poor machine starts emitting a series of strangled beeps, and then has to go for a bex and a good lie down before it’s good for anything. Now I’m not one to deny my PC the right to its R & R – it’s getting toward the twilight years in PC terms after all, but I still need to do my work.

The recording & video itself are in fair to moderate shape. Some of the problems reflect those on the night – Cornel’s vocal parts are virtually inaudible, and the pitch is pretty wobbly (due to the fact that they were virtually inaudible on the night as well, so he couldn’t hear himself). The acoustic guitar was a bit out of tune for a couple of songs (again, we didn’t catch it, because we couldn’t hear it). Nothing irreparable, but then you start to encounter the slippery slope of concert recording post-production fixes. The acoustic is out? Well, let’s just grab the Maton & plug it in, we can re-do that one easy enough. Hmm… except now the vocal doesn’t quite sit with the acoustic for a couple of lines. Ok, where’s my SM58, I’ll just fix that up… oh, but the sound is a little different, I can’t quite match the EQ, and it’s really obvious where all the bleed drops out in the new section, so I’d better re-record the whole song – just so it matches sonically of course – I’ll reproduce my performance on the night, flubs and all, so it’s honest. Oh, well, except for that note, and this one here… and ohhh that one was quite bad. I know I can sing them correctly, so I’ll just do them here, and it’ll be more of a “hypothetical gig recording”.

The next thing you know, you’ve got INXS’s Live Baby Live, which while it has the word “live” comprising a full two thirds of its title, ironically contains about the opposite ratio of actual live recorded material.

Now, where’s that autotune plugin?