| << Sweden, day 1 | 2005 > June | Sweden, day 3 >> |
Sweden, day 2 ::
Fortunately I got back to sleep around 7:30 this (Sat.) morning and slept until 10. We went to town to take Jens to the train station and for groceries and a SIM card for Justin’s phone.
Got to the studio around noon. Practiced piano while Justin and Christoffer had lunch, then told them I wasn’t really ready to perform Cobblestone Mirrors that day. Christoffer suggested Artifacts and Fantasies instead, which made me happy because it’s the one piece I’d been practicing a lot on piano in the last week. The first task was to transport the session from my computer to the studio G5; had to bounce all the sounds coming from softsynths and effects that Christoffer doesn’t have, then organize my tracks into submixes to feed the console. Then we started scrutinizing the structure of the first half of the song and made a number of minor changes and one big one.
This all should have been relatively simple computer busywork, but the jetlag seemed to have arrived in earnest and I didn’t feel I was working as efficiently as usual. (Tomorrow I will go to the studio early and get another 2 songs ready to work on. Also I can practice piano while the computers are busy.)
By dinnertime we’d gotten the first half of Artifacts and Fantasies rearranged, adding a reprise of the opening theme.
After dinner, took a 10 minute nap and felt worlds better. I doubled the rearranged theme on a Wurlitzer organ through a Vox guitar amp (distorted and almost screechy at times, a spooky effect) and two layers of cembalo (is that Swedish for “harpsichord” or is it a different instrument? must ask Google.) Then Christoffer, Justin and I doubled the chords under the theme with 4 layers of 3 “monks” singing 2 parts, and Christoffer replaced my bass track with the real thing. The part was a constant 5-quarter-note pattern in 3 keys at 108 bpm, not very technically difficult, but the chord durations have no discernible pattern (just following the quirky softsynth foundation track). We tried a chord chart but I ended up just giving cues: “4 D’s. 3 G’s. 1 C. 2 G’s, 2 C’s. 1 G. 2 C’s... " Christoffer pronounced it the hardest thing he’d ever had to play. I want to think he was kidding.
We moved on to the second half of the song, where the plan is to replace everything (or close to everything) other than the quirky softsynth track on which the song was built. There are three pianos in the studio; one full of thumbtacks, one fairly nice one in the control room, and another, not as “good” as the one in the control room, but which I liked playing a lot more. It had a softer tone and seemed to respond to light playing much better. It reminded me of some favorite pianos I’ve played regularly over the years. Christoffer experimented with microphone positions for awhile and ended up capturing a glorious, sweet, singing tone. In about an hour I had good keeper takes of the entire piano part except the solo. A couple of those takes feature discrepancies between what I wrote and what I played, but those “mistakes” are parts of otherwise really good performances.
On the solo, after a few tries, it became obvious that I really didn’t know what chords I wanted to play, and was avoiding figuring it out by doing some jazzy noodling. Christoffer seems reluctant if not opposed to using the solo I played on digital and I have to agree that it’s worth more time to try to get an equally good one done on acoustic. The acoustic sounds so much better.
| << Sweden, day 1 | 2005 > June | Sweden, day 3 >> |