Well, I'm counting down the hours until we start recording. In just over 240 minutes, it begins. All the cables have been made, the software has been installed, the mixer has been dusted and the computer's been shut down and disassembled for transportation to Casa Sinister.

As before, we're recording on a shoestring budget, but this time things will be done differently. It's a wonder we survived the first recording session without strangling each other; fortunately, we learn from our experiences.

Way back in 1998 (it seems like an eternity ago), we decided that we wanted to record a CD. We didn't know much about it, never having done such a thing before, but I had a multitrack recorder and some experience using it. Brian, the guy who'd started the Consort, was "on sabbatical", but we still had five people, so we could cover all the parts. Well, more or less.

We rented a bunch of microphones and microphone stands, and I cobbled together a truly crufty setup that would have made Rube Goldberg blanch. We had eight microphones, but the multitrack recorder would only accept two (the rest of the inputs were line-level). So I hit the Radio Shack and picked up two mini mixers, which took four microphones each. Those mixers went into the recorder. For monitoring, I had to connect up a whole lot of Y splitters for the headphones (which had short cords, resulting in a really cramped setup). The splitters went into three headphone extension cables, which led back to another Y-splitter at the board so that Mike (our recording engineer) could also hear what was going on.

I didn't know enough about audio back then to realize that every connector and adapter degraded the signal. Perhaps not terribly noticeable with one adapter, but when you added them all together, and put in six pairs of headphones (all with different impedance values), we could barely hear the monitor signal even when it was turned up to full volume.

I don't recall how many songs we recorded, but we did several more than the 23 that ultimately ended up on the CD. The days blurred together so much that I can't remember whether it took one weekend or two, but we schlepped our instruments up to my office, shut off the AC (to prevent picking it up on the recording) and crammed together for take after take after take, from early in the morning until well past midnight.

The worst part was when Mike didn't see that the tape was nearly out, and we were really hitting Ne je ne dors right on the nail... until the recorder shut off with a depressing THUD. (A completely empty 80GB hard drive should prevent that sort of thing this time around!)

Mixing afterwards was a nightmare. The recorder only had treble/bass equalization controls, and (because all of the microphones were mixed together onto two tracks, or four when we overdubbed additional parts), we couldn't fix the levels of individual instruments. Fortunately, I had two outboard effects processors, one of which I used for a parametric EQ, and the other was used to alter the acoustic environment, which helped slightly.

Because we were rushed for time (had to get the microphones and stands back early Monday morning), we weren't able to spend the time to get everything perfect. That's always bugged me, and it's one reason I can't stand to listen to the first CD.

And now we've got Brian back, two other members gone, and a new plan. In the four years since that horrible experience, we've picked up enough equipment that we don't have to rent anything, and we don't have to make do with makeshift mixer setups. We're recording a maximum of two songs a week, which should give us enough time to do things right; we're doing it all digitally (which opens up all sorts of postprocessing options); and we're recording one instrument or voice per track (which means we can tweak individual parts to our hearts' content without affecting the others).

It might take us six months to finish, but it should be pretty pain-free.

As long as everyone practices.