The Garages

In which I crack out a nice microphone, sharp pencil and in-tune guitar.

In the last newsletter, I spoke about The Garages, the story that I illustrated for David Gaffney’s performance at the Show N Tell.

The story is from David’s book Concrete Fields and you can rush and buy that here.

I took some time this week to try out a few things with it. I wanted to take a swing at a vocal performance of it, and to attempt to soundtrack it in some way¹.

I updated some of the visuals (added some images, re-drew some that no longer fitted due to the re-drawing) and recorded myself giving a ‘dramatic read’.

For the audio tech nerds out there, I’m using a Shure SM7b², which is running through a Fethead³ into a Focusrite Scarlet 2i2⁴ into Adobe Audition⁵.

I wasn't planning at first to add a soundtrack to this, BUT two planets aligned on the morning I was working on this. The first was that I had a small piece of music that was creepy-ish that wasn’t doing anything. I’d tried to write some halloween music but it came out a bit jaunty.

The second was that it rained noisy Hollywood John Cusack⁶ rain that morning and my studio has a flat roof. Rather than spend ten entire minutes re-recording the voiceover once it stopped raining, I decided to mask my unprofessionalism with the aforementioned music.

Here’s the track in the state it was in before I chopped it all up and aligned it with the story;

I put the whole thing together in Adobe Premiere⁷ and here it is, enjoy;

David and I have spoken about possibly doing the whole story this way. It’s a fairly rapid way of getting a story together, and I love figuring out the imagery, timing, vocals and music. I do like the way it leaves you wanting more though.

It’s a kind of a throwback to the first incarnation of our book The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head, which was originally conceived and produced as a stage show with the fantastic Sara Lowes playing a live soundtrack. We only performed it one time and it feels like a bit of a pity. It was so much fun to do on stage. I might see if I can dig out all the files and put something together.

In the next newsletter, I’ll talk about redesigning the website I’ve had since the very early 2000s⁸.

1. This is what I do for fun.

2. Which is a fantastic microphone. I have tried and failed to use my Røde NT1a for podcast/voiceover stuff mainly because it is too good and my guts are too shamefully noisy.

3. An in-line preamp that boosts the SM7b up really nice.

4. It’s a good audio interface. I have mad dreams of getting the larger one but this little one is just fine for what I do.

5. Getting increasingly frustrated with Adobe stuff. I’ve used Reaper64 a bunch as well, but all my presets are annoyingly in Audition and when presented with a uphill or downhill path, turns out I’ll walk downhill all day every day.

6. You know the kind - the sort that John Cusack flipping loves standing in at night, probably on someone’s lawn.

7. Getting increasingly frustrated with Adobe stuff 1. I’ve used DaVinci Resolve a bunch as well, but my fingers already know all the shortcuts for Adobe stuff. Ah well, downhill I stroll. Also, can you footnote a footnote? Here goes;

1. I’m not a fan of the subscription model or the AI-ification of their products. Feels like they are on a ‘growth at all costs’ path, which I’m not sure is necessary for existing users who just want their software to do software things. Maybe the feature bloat is how they reel in new customers? Who knows.

8. It’s not finished yet, please do not investigate.