I’ve been telling myself I had one week’s worth of work left for almost a month now. Not counting the week and a half my parents were here for the kids’ fall break, I’ve been working very hard to get Advent finished. But every time I reach what I think is the final milestone, I realize there’s “one more thing” I still need to do.
At this point, I’ve got the entire book put into one BIG file, and I’m going through the whole thing with a fine toothed comb. I hope this is the last pass, but who knows? The whole thing is about four hours long. I’m not sure if making one big file was the right thing to do, but it seemed like the easiest way to work on leveling out the volume across all the recording sessions. Later, I’ll cut it back up into shorter tracks.
I’m not sure if I want to do short tracks (3 minutes) or longer tracks, or perhaps offer both, simply because I know that on my iPod, longer tracks work better, but on my shuffle, shorter tracks were easier to use. Then there’s the question of format: mp3 or audio?
Of course, all that is a bit premature since first I have to submit it to the Baha’i review board, and I want to see if my sound engineer can make it better through mastering. I’m not sure which to do first, or how long either process will take.
I wish I could say with certainty how long it will take before I have something to put online for sale. (Hard copies will take even longer.) All I can say right now is that the current process of fine tuning the whole file should take about one more week. But then, that’s where this whole discussion started, isn’t it?
