Tracks

Integrated the shaker parts that I recorded last night into "I Wanna Be a Webmaster" and "TEOTW". The latter still has some sync problems on verse 1, but it's not as bad as it was. The vocal track I'd been using showed signs of having been a cut-and-paste job, and I might well have bungled it.

I think there are still some timing problems on both songs -- there's nothing like a percussion track to highlight the places where I was playing fast-and-loose with the beat. I may have to start using a click track, or something.

Shiny!

It seems that Musician's Friend is having a "moving our warehouse" sale. The old bear can't resist the shiny stuff, so I snarfed up a pair of CAD GXL3000 PRO multi-pattern mics for $70 each. List is $219, they say. They arrived today. Sweet!

Gave a listen to the current state of CC&S in the car -- level problems on 5 tracks, plus the two that still need major work. Getting there.

Caution: talking may be hazardous to your health

Get Shrunk at Your Own Risk

Few of us will need therapy for multiple-personality disorder. But everyone will experience grief\u2014and counseling for normal bereavement may not always be benign. A 2000 study found that four in 10 people who lost a loved one would have been better off without grief counseling (based on a comparison with people who were randomly assigned to a no-therapy group). That was especially so for those who experienced normal grief. In that case, counseling sometimes prolonged and deepened grief, leaving more depression and anxiety than in those who worked through their loss on their own.

...

That 40 percent figure is likely inflated, argues psychologist Dale Larson of Santa Clara University. But he agrees with Lilienfeld's estimate that 10 to 20 percent of people who receive psychotherapy are harmed by it. Even the American Psychological Association acknowledges that too many clinicians practice "psychoquackery," as psychologist John Norcross of Scranton University puts it. If we had FDA-style regulation of psychotherapies -- difficult though that would be to do, especially since the effects of psychotherapy depend on the therapist -- "fringe therapies would not be on the market."

How fringe is "fringe"? In percentage terms, very. But the number of people undergoing potentially risky therapies reaches into the tens of thousands. Vioxx was yanked from the market for less. To be sure, even risky psychotherapies don't harm everyone, just as most people who took Vioxx will never have a heart attack. What is remarkable about psychotherapies, though, is that few patients have any idea that "just talking" can be dangerous to their mental health.

(From kayshapero.) Nevertheless, some kinds of talk therapy have been proven to work, and on the average you're probably less likely to be harmed by a shrink than by psychoactive drugs. Especially since there are fewer side effects and it's less dangerous to back out if it's not working. As always, your mileage may vary.

My one brush with "grief counseling" was totally useless, but I'm OK with that.

Tracks

So far this evening I've done the easy fixups on "Demon Lover" (re-do the reverb on cflute's vocals after filtering out the sibilants), "I Wanna Be a Webmaster" (pull down the shaker part a little), "TEOTW" (take out the tamborine except for the little shake at the end, and time-shift that), "Vampire Megabyte" (less reverb on me), and "Cicero" (take my vocals down a notch -- again).

"Guilty Pleasures" and "Programmer's Alphabet" will take a little more work, since they involve balancing between verses and choruses with different numbers of parts. This may be a job for Audacity's new auto-duck effect.

(Later:) "Programmer's Alphabet" -- definitely auto-duck, though it seems to interact oddly with envelopes. I'll have to be careful with it. When it works, though, it's great. No more than 3dB of duck, though. The other one that wants balancing is "Guilty Pleasures", and may not be much point in spending time tweaking that until I have the drum part.