The lecture in Stats was rather rushed today because more people had problems with the homework than the teacher had anticipated. Because of that the class didn't do any practice problems, which is when I traditionally do the homework. So I'm actually gonna hafta do the homework at home now. Pfft. Don't let me forget.

They painted lines on the new parking area today, though the barricades are still up. I'm not sure why; the paint is well dry (they painted it sometime this morning). I had to actually leave campus today because I needed to buy a newspaper for my ethics class. I was a bit afraid, because as I was pulling out I seemed to be creating the only available parking space on the entire campus. I went out, bought the paper, and came back, fearing that my one space would be taken and I'd have to park up at the mall a mile away. But by some grace of some divine being the exact spot I left (which is actually an amazingly good spot) was still there. I thanked the powers that be as I pulled back into it.

Then was marketing, which was pretty short because we had a test. I was reminded why I hate True/False questions because of their ambiguity, but I think overall I did pretty well on it. I breezed through the multiple choice, got caught up on a couple of the true/false (more issues with "what exactly does he mean by that?" than "I don't remember reading about that"). And the two short answers I knew well enough but on the second one I gave possibly the worst explanation in the history of the world. I knew what I was talking about, really. Hopefully my marketing teacher will know...

We had a floor meeting tonight. I couldn't go. I had actually planned on going, but I realized halfway through today that the RA scheduled it right smack in the middle of my audio lab time. So my roommate made my excuses. Apparently all they talked about was the floor educational (which coincidentally is also scheduled to overlap with my audio lab time) and the fact that guys aren't allowed in our bathroom. And other mundane stuff like no burning incense because it really stinks up the hall, no smoking in your rooms because it sets the fire alarm off, no hanging your roommate by her hair out the window... stuff like that.

In the meantime I was in the control room working on my mix. I think I mentioned that we had to pick a different song for this week's mix. We actually had three to choose from; an acoustic song with lots of background vocals, one that I guess was a typical pop-rock type thing (I'm not sure; I didn't even listen to that one all the way through), and a sort of countryish, bluegrassy sort of thing. Of course, I'm probably the worst person in the world at classifying a song's genre, but you get the idea. I almost chose the country bluegrassy one for the sole reason that it has a dobro in it. I love the sound of a dobro. And I might've actually chosen that song if the dobro had a more significant part, but it was mostly just a background thing, so I ended up going with the acoustic-ey song, which was the one I had planned on doing anyway.

Even though it was a largely acoustic song, there were two electric guitar tracks that sounded very Unforgettable Fire-esque (for non-U2 fans, basically they were very ambient, with lots of drawn out notes). I had some fun with the panning of those. The real challenge was getting a reverb on the lead vocal that would make it sound like it was coming from roughly the same place as the guitars. After EQing I put the reverb on the vocal and another one on the acoustics, then started automating my fader moves.

In order to automate fader moves, you have to be smarter than the console. Which can sometimes be hard, because it's a very smart console. As I usually do I did two passes of every track (and I'd love to be able to say that I do that for some special technical, a-pro-would-say-something-like-that reason, but in reality it's just because I can't get it right the first time). On the second pass for one of the background vocals I went to move the fader and the fader just said, "I don't think so. I'm staying right here, leave me alone." So I stopped the song and glared at this fader that had suddenly developed a punk attitude. Then I realized that I didn't have the channel in "write" mode and the stubborn fader wasn't moving because I hadn't told the console to allow it to move. But I still say it was the fader's fault. I mean, I realize that the people at Mackie^TM have a sense of humor and in most cases I appreciate that, but giving faders attitudes is about the same as giving computers musical preferences; it does nothing but frustrate the user.

After the crisis with the punk fader was solved, I finish setting my levels and put in a reference CD to hear how my mix compared to Bill Halverson's mix of a similar sounding song. Decided I had to change the levels of a couple of the background vocals so I went and did a third pass of those channels, listened again, and decided that it was as good as it was going to get considering Halverson is a pro and I'm a student and I'm sure he had longer than three hours to mix CSN&Y.

Went to record it onto my DAT but before I did that I listened to last week's mix, which I guess wasn't bad but was really kinda muddy, and I noticed it even more this week than I did last week. Then I listened to this week's mix as it was recording and it sounds a lot cleaner, which is encouraging.

And I just realized I have more paragraphs on my mix project than the rest of the day combined. What can I say? It was the most interesting part of the day.