Losing songs/work when things break.

Gah. My own stupidity. At 2am last nght after a 9-till-midnight day at work I was mentally/creatively refreshed after listening to some new music, and, having been totally exhausted was in a very creative state, hearing melodies as I walked home, that kind of thing..

I ducked inside and at the expense of work the next day I stayed up and recorded ten song snippets (chords and vocal melody for at least one section of a song - sometimes verse and chorus - essentially the crux of a song to revisit later to expand, fill in the blanks and add lyrics. I use my mp3 recorder like a notepad for later on when you've got time to spend a couple of hours putting flesh on some good bones.). The only thing was.. When I started I was right at the end of my mp3 player's disk space.. and when it automatically stopped and saved the recording I didn't know wtf was going on..

So I pressed some buttons to try and get it out of it.. which crashed it. nowww.... being in the IT industry... for some reason the hole in the top of my creative zen looked exactly like a "programmers keyhole".. (the little hole in your CD drive you stick an unbent paperclip into to open it when it's jammed) and I'm pretty sure i've done this before for some reason.. jammed a safety pin into it... which didn't do anything.. so took the battery out and put it back in again.. ok everything is fine now. I record the ten songs... I go to bed and put the earphones in to listen to them and all i'm hearing is hiss and static... and after about 5 minutes of fooling around I realise what i've done... the little hole is the mic (I KNOW it is the mic).. but i'm too delirious with tiredness and lack of food (no dinner - working late) and I forget.. the little mic icon is also a little far away from it.

I think it was actually ok.. it was only when I tried to straighten the bent pin using the mic hole that I think I screwed it.. so there it was.. missed out on precious sleep.. used up a creative flow.. wrote at least 2 decent songs and it's all gone... not to mention it's hard to get straight to sleep knowing you've just broken your main portable recording device. And it's too late to try and remember the songs.. and probably can't record them anyhow - main recording set up is next to bedroom - need the zen to buger off to the other side of the house to make a little noise while the wife sleeps. I work so fast I wouldn't be able to anyway... it's record forget, record forget, ten "songs" in an hour and a half. I visualised the chords from the couple of decent riffs and i'm basically going to try to play the 3-4 ones I might remember tonight and see if the melodies come back. It's NEVER the same though...

I HATE losing work!.. especially when it's my own stupid fault.. luckily it's been ages since it's happened.. I keep 3 seperate copies of all my recordings ever since a hard drive crash took everything a few years ago and it cost 1000's to get at least some of it recovered.

bleh.

lol

Backing up right now!

(just in case!)

Have worked till 3am these past 3 days... argh!

Outch! That is never fun. I've been there a few times before, back when I was working on a PC based recording setup. Once I was doing some mastering work on one of my friend's recently recorded tracks. He came in to listen; I did some extra tweaks at his request and when I tried to save it the computer froze and eventually crashed! We eventually recovered the songs data (two weeks later), but having your computer crash in front of the person you're doing work for is horrible. I recently made the switch to a Mac based recording setup and things run like clockwork...but I'll never forget that frustration and embarrassment.

lol Backing up right now! (just in case!) Have worked till 3am these past 3 days... argh!

Gah - got me beat, i did 2am mon-wed and only 8:30 pm last night..

Although I wouldn't call the last hour work. Luckily I gave my wife a video version of the Creative mp3 players for her birthday this year. It's better in every way and I've basically stolen it back now that i've broken my cheapy older one.

So being so pissed off after losing monday nights work, on tuesday I took my guitar into the office with the newer player and between 12-1am started to write again and try and remember what I lost the night before. It didn't work at all but I came up with some new stuff so it's ok. I did the same on wednesday as well.. all up 27 snippets between the two nights although some might be doubles/expansions of others. Out of that.. maybe half a dozens decent ideas so it's all ok... almost like I had to go overboard to make up for losing some.

It was far worse when my harddrive died, I wasn't prepared for that at all.. it's good to have one bad thing like that happen though.. becase I'll never lose all my work again.. it's spread btween two computers, a back up drive, back up dvds and the mp3 player.

Outch! That is never fun. I've been there a few times before, back when I was working on a PC based recording setup. Once I was doing some mastering work on one of my friend's recently recorded tracks. He came in to listen; I did some extra tweaks at his request and when I tried to save it the computer froze and eventually crashed! We eventually recovered the songs data (two weeks later), but having your computer crash in front of the person you're doing work for is horrible. I recently made the switch to a Mac based recording setup and things run like clockwork...but I'll never forget that frustration and embarrassment.

Yeah, that would suck a helluva lot. I have never found Macs any more reliable though.

I lectured classrooms on them and one student per class would lose his work due to a crash and have to share with the person sitting next to them. I was almost tempted to switch when g4's came out with all the BS about them being super computers but importing a simple sound file crashed Flash on two different g4's I tried and I had to do it on a PC. My business (design) is a fairly Mac dominated industry (except the 3d part) but when I set up the office I went PC, All ten of us run decent machines and I haven't had a problem to date (well two burnt power supplies but thats just a part fault and you get that when you have a dozen computers over several years.)

My HD failure was either component fault or electrical storms. It's basically Seagate's fault not the PC's - same thing could have happened on a mac, they share so much hardward these days.

For home recording I got a 2Ghz core duo, 2GB ram Dell laptop + an mbox/protools almost two years ago. (part of a multimedia "business" loan i'll be paying back for a while ) I'd like to upgrade things a bit more than an mbox 1 but i've kind of banned myself from getting any more gear until I actually produced a full amateur cd on it. It's too easy for me to lust after gear that will solve recording issues.. I have to remind myself that a lot of my favourite albums were recorded on a tape 4 track.

But it would be nice to play around with garageband etc on a mac.

Actually I've compromised that a bit.. after 6 finished songs i'm rewarding myself with a banjo. And i'll probably be buying the wife vdrums in the next few months for xmas/birthday

Oh, man!

I feel your pain.

Yow!

I could easily imagine myself in the same position.

Once or twice I've overreacted to perceived security threats on my computers and gone into a kind of panic mode -- that hasn't always ended up felicitously. A few times I've undone things that didn't need to be undone and lost valuable time and bought myself extra trouble. And lost some data, too.

I almost had one of those yesterday when a malware pop-up that had been dogging me (I believe I've now gotten rid of the potential exploit via Ad-Aware and Spybot -- a reported browser highjack attempt that fits the bill and a tracking cookie from a company called adviva.net that is apparently frequently exploited by malware and spyware bad guys) and I'm watching the suspected vector site, All Music Guide, very carefully. (My guess would be that the 'bad' advertisers piggyback on another ad buyer -- the same thing happened at Soundclick last summer, according to SC's security people who I contacted about that potential hazard, who since banned the 'innocent' advertiser who let the bad guys piggyback. Gosh I love 'net security issues... they're more complicated than an Agatha Christie mystery.)

Anyhow, when the bad guys took over Firefox (yeah, that's not supposed to happen, is it?) I did an emergency shutdown...

When I tried to power back up the light flickered, the power came on for just a second... and I heard a sputtering/hissing kind of noise from elsewhere (this is under/behind a work table so not super accessible). I notice my outboard USB drive power light was flickering back and forth. I found the power strip they were both plugged into and it was the source of the sputtering/hissing noise -- I quickly pulled it out of the wall when stabbing its off rocker switch did nothing.

Replacing the power strip brought everything back to normal (and I then proceeded to do the Spybot and Ad-Aware scans). But there were a few moments when I was teetering on the edge of panic... and that's when I do stupid stuff. I've learned the hard way to stop myself and think, one step at a time, about the situation -- no matter how urgent it seems.

hey, why not get a real life.

Blue two blue is a cyber bullier with nothing constructive to do with their damn life.

I addressed your longer post in this thread: http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?p=25036983#post25036983

Since I see that this is apparently about "Marissa Marchant," I'm considerably less taken aback by this than I at first was. But please read my comments there. And, again, if you have any concerns about my performance as a moderator in this forum I hope you will take it up with Harmony Central administrators.

Were you aware that Marissa Marchant never gave this guy an interview?

She never sold Cd's at a price of 1000 dollars and never called herself a Genius. Were you aware that someone was posting things that are untrue and posing in her identity?

She never said anything about the music industry being prejudice against tall and good looking people with talent.

Someone was cyber-stalking and posing in her identity on the net.

That is why she is gone.

Do you have proof that she said any of these things? No.

That is why you should question, really, what you are reading.

Also, it is not nice to insult someone's demos when they are not completed products.

It seems vindictive.

She is just a quiet person, really doesn't talk to people.

I know.

The newspaper SF Weekly did a front page article based on a false interview that was on net, and never spoke to Marissa. The article was taken only from an interview that Marissa Marchant never gave to anyone. The article was false and yet people continue to talk about something that was never real as though it was real.

Someone must have a serious poser here.

Something or someone.

Also, name calling you know, and calling someone who is posing in someone's identity an attention whore is actually laughable.

If you have nothing positive to say, say nothing. If you don't know someone, don't assume you do from the net.

Do you know that Cyber-bullying and Cyber-stalking is a federal crime?

Are you aware that this person who won't give their real name, named Super 8 is also on the net obsessed with control, insulting someone they don't know and obsessed with controlling people's opinions to the point where they are also still talking about something that is untrue for four years on end?

anyone who talks about a subject that was never true four years after it took place must have no life at all.

The fact that you insult people's music anonymously is sort of twisted especially when they have done you no harm and have been minding their own business. marissa marchant was never outspoken about anything.

she was just a quiet person with a cyber-stalker.