the three week endurance test

i'm happy that i have so much to do in the coming weeks as it would be hugely beneficial to me to not have to spend much money as i'm way behind on my christmas shopping. so far i've only bought one birthday present for my dad. i haven't even started any of my christmas shopping. yikes.
things are things right now. i dunno. the band is pretty much ready for the martyrs' show- we have our first full band practice for it on tuesday. we're also going to record strings for 'christmas song pt. iv.' i'm still trying to figure out what to do for a video for that one. i don't have a terrible amount of ideas for it- a few little loose bits in there, but not much more... it hasn't snowed much yet, so that's made it a bit tough. i'm pretty happy with the new 'christmas song, pt. iii' video- much moreso than the old one. i wanted to get the videos together and try to burn dvd-r's of them. i was going to have the tracks mastered as well. i will probably take 'pale' off of the current release and put 'christmas song, pt. iv' in there and use 'pale' as a b-side for the 'falling stars' digital single along with 'all hope is blind' and possibly 'your pictures' or 'down to the willows.' i was also thinking of finishing 'flowers' by adding a bass part and a few guitars to stand in for what i thought up for a string part. i suppose i'd better get going on that stuff.
nothing much else to report- i haven't recorded anything new in quite a while. the day after thanksgiving i spent doing some post-production stuff- adding reverbs to a few things- our 'real love' cover (which i fleshed out with a few extra parts) and 'christmas song, pt. iv' which turned out really beautifully. i'm going to secretly keep the original strings part and double the new one. i think it might work very nicely and make things extra dreamy. the track is really starting to come along and i'm much more happy with it than i was when i did the first mixes and i think re-recording the strings with everyone around will be a bit easier this time out. at least i hope so.
i've figured out a solution to my tape calibration blues- i need to get to work on that asap. i started messing around with the tone generator on audacity and i have the right tones loaded into my itunes- i was going to calibrate the record function first and then record the tones onto a tape and keep that as my calibration tape. at first i'd thought that this wouldn't work, but i believe that it definitely should. we'll see, i suppose. yikes. maybe that's what i should get to work on when i get home. i'm a little afraid to give it a shot, but i think it should be fine. i've been able to figure out how to do all sorts of things on my own and i have a little how-to guide that i found online and it makes sense to me, so it should work just fine, dammit! it'll probably take several hours, but i have that kind of time today. i have visions of it getting very dark in the music room as i'm in there working away.
tonight we're going to a show at lincoln hall and then i have to work in the morning nice and early. i believe stefanie is going to want to cab it back to our place as the show doesn't start until 10. i'm beginning to think that my show-going days are coming to a close. several great shows are coming through next year during the months of february and march. i keep meaning to get godspeed tickets, for example. i think that katelyn and aleksa want to go, but i'm reticent to buy them tickets after the kurt vile incident... other than that it's two shows at the empty bottle- disappears and dum dum girls. hopefully we'll finally get to see the dum dum girls live- it's only taken a fucking age for them to come through without being an opening band.
so it goes i suppose... so it goes...
also i might almost be finished mixing the 'field of flowers' tracks and then i'm hoping that i can get those tracks mastered along with the 'christmas suite' tracks with my christmas money. at least that's what i hope will happen... haw haw haw...