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Tuesday, 14 June 2005

Sweden, day 4 ::

Today we got to the studio at noon and had brunch right away. By around 2:30 pm, we had Cobblestone Mirrors bounced from Logic on my PowerBook into Digital Performer on the studio G5. We spent the rest of the afternoon scrutinizing the structure, discussing the focus of each of the sections of this 9-minute piece and slightly shortening a few passages. By the time we broke for dinner at 6, we had a solid plan for the piece.

After dinner, we took some publicity photos in the studio and then got down to the business of replacing the digital piano track. Many of the parts are tricky two-hand affairs with a lot of big jumps, and it became apparent that I had to mostly memorize them so I could watch my hands instead of the score. One bit has the same phrase shape repeating, but the notes change every time through; it took quite a bit of practice to discern enough of a pattern in the variations to be able to memorize the part and then to actually memorize it. Recording the piano took about 3 hours total, which felt like an eternity while we were doing it but in retrospect isn’t bad for a 9 minute track where the piano is playing most of the way through and is often the prime focus.

Then it took about another 60 or 90 minutes to bounce the tracks from tape into the computer and stitch together the 7 or so separately recorded sections.

The one other overdub we did was Christoffer playing a low note on a bass ocarina (?!) that added a really nice organic quality to the ending.

This piece really highlighted the differences between acoustic and digital pianos. Notes struck on an acoustic piano sustain a lot longer than on a digital. Holding down the sustain pedal for two measures while playing notes in multiple registers produces a distinctive set of resonances as the sustained notes are re-stimulated by new ones. There is a lot more dynamic range. 10-note chords are LOUD. There is a lot more variability in the sound.

By the time the piano was done, both Christoffer and I were tired enough to want to call it an evening. Tomorrow we’ll work on fine-tuning and/or replacing some of the synth melody sounds on this track.

I’m a little concerned about our pace. It seems the phases of the process for each track are: (1) analyze the song and make structural changes; (2) add anything necessary to create a solid foundation (e.g. piano in these two tracks, drums on Implications on Friday); (3) add overdubs until we feel like no key ingredient is missing. Phase 4 we haven’t gotten to yet on anything, but it will probably be to review the previous work after some time has passed, and add/replace/remove as necessary in preparation for mixing. Of the 9 songs, after 4 days, we’ve finished phase 3 on 1 song, and for 2 others we’ve finished phase 2. Oh well, the two songs that have occupied so much time so far are the only two where the piano parts are so crucial. Also they are both among the longest songs.

Worst-case, I’ll have to come back and finish in the fall. But it’s natural for things to move more slowly at the beginning before everyone’s sure of what they’re doing. It could be that many of the other tracks will be simpler.

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2005 > June

Sweden, day 5 >>

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