Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Grrr x 2

Still no luck with my mp3 mix or Medication C. Yesterday evening I had several hours to work on the problem, and I discovered that the doubling effect wasn't an issue with the mp3 I'd made, but rather with the fact that I had two versions of the same thing playing at once from different places. Unfortunately, the mp3 had another problem, which was that "Down by the Sea" was playing at a much lower volume than the other two tracks. I couldn't hear it at all once the talking started. And the only way I could fix it in the end was to make a fresh version of the mp3 with all three tracks set to mono (I'd previously tried to have the straight script on mono, "Down by the Sea" on the left speaker, and babble on the right - so future Audacity users, take notice. You can't do that).

Well, after that, I thought I had the problem fixed, took Medication C, and tried again. Unfortunately, two new problems cropped up pretty quickly: a) I was talking too fast to put myself into trance, and b) all three tracks were playing at the same volume.

But I'm babbling now, so I'll stop. You really don't need all the gory details, do you? Here's the short version: I went back to Mary in the Stadium for another night and ended up having to take more OTC medication on top of Med C again. So now I'm going to postpone this experiment until the weekend and play with other things...like that Silver Robot session, which is looking better and better, and a new Good Driver session I wrote last night but haven't had the chance to test yet.

I'm discovering that some suggestions slip more easily into my subconscious than others, and the driving suggestions aren't "sticking" as well as, for instance, the no-cursing-at-work ones. I guess it's because my bad driving habits (speeding, not coming to full stops at stop signs, etc.) are much more deeply ingrained. So now I'm going to try using some, ahem, sexual imprinting to drive that message home. We'll see how it goes. ;-)

3 comments:

Rubber Man said...

Putting the tracks together, even with stereo, shouldn't be much of a problem ... let me know if you need a hand, I have a couple commercial tools at my disposal in case you can't get it to work with Audacity ... (no problem with fading single tracks in/out, changing volume, etc.)

As for your driving habbits - I guess it's easier for the more sexual suggestions to slip in as that's what you really want, in contrast to the more "daily" stuff :)

Evil Dolly said...

lol, well that's a new one!

... You enjoy coming to a full stop. Coming to a full stop makes you more obedient. You enjoy making yourself more obedient. Stop. Fully. Now...

Anonymous said...

You could use aversion therapy for the driving. Each time you, say, roll through a stop sign you could feel something unpleasant but not too distracting; a twinge of pain, a cramp, or perhaps briefly the need to pee. If you stack up driving offenses close together, the discomfort could grow in magnitude and duration. For example; if you catch yourself speeding, you'll feel the urgent need to pee for 10 seconds for each mph you're over, but if you speed through a stop sign without signaling you'll just instantly wet yourself ;)

Yes, that was only half serious.