Turn Off Your Smoke Machine and Marshall Stacks

It took a year and a half to decide on, save money for, collect and connect all the pieces for my little home studio. It's a work in progress. That also included rebuilding the room in my basement and little details like grounding the electrical outlets (which nobody who has lived here in the past 65 years has bothered to do). I imagined it that once it was all together I could just grab my guitar, hit "record" and watch your toes curl up till I rocked your socks off.

Instead it's a pain in the butt and I have to read the novel-sized manuals to solve problems like: Why is the keyboard suddenly playing two distinctive sounds at once? Why does my software send the sound through the speaker half a note behind when I play it on the keyboard? But when it's done I should be able to produce a store quality CD, or so my research says. I'm worried that it will take too long and my music will start sounding less like the Smashing Pumpkins and more like Burt Bacharach. Maybe by Christmas 2006 I can post some wave files on a webpage.

It sounds so nerdy and I have to reassure myself by picturing Trent Reznor and the Flaming Lips cloistered away with their manuals, too, working on the same problems.