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Friday, 17 June 2005
Sweden, day 8 ::
Short working day today. When we got to the studio at 12:30, some workers were there stringing CAT5 Ethernet cable around. We started to tweak the arrangement of Where You Laid a bit more but then the workers needed to drill holes in the walls of the control room, so we adjourned to the kitchen for sandwiches (still not tired of salmon and cheese).
When we got back to work, Christoffer, Justin and I could all be on the Internet at once and share files without disconnecting and reconnecting Ethernet cables. I downloaded V’s 160 MB of multiple uncompressed guitar tracks for Where You Laid. One of my many weekend projects will be to listen and see how they might fit.
I kept to myself as Christoffer finished the arrangement. After awhile he played it for us, and I was happy that the end result still contained everything I most liked about the original, and that it had not taken many tweaks to make it as much more simple and direct as it seemed. The rearrangement contains a number of awkward transitions on parts that might be kept, so another of my weekend projects will be to rework my Logic document to match C’s form, and make all the transitions sensible (at least on the two or three synth parts from my demo that could be kept, and probably on the piano, so that I’ll know what to do when we rerecord it). We set that aside.
Then we transferred Agents of Change from Logic to Digital Performer. That went quite painlessly and I was happy that we all agreed that no structural changes seemed necessary. The work to be done on this one will involve orchestrating, both in the traditional sense (it’s one of the string charts I have to do before Thursday) and in varying some of the synth sounds used for melodies.
Justin left for the festival around this point. C and I transferred Don’t Know I Know and the tracks were wackily out of sync. We broke for dinner (homemade sushi!) and continued to bang our heads against the sync problem. The piece is ambient and there are not a lot of solid rhythmic markers. It turned out to be perhaps 4 separate minor pilot errors on my part during the bouncing process. I kept apologizing but C was quite patient. Finally everything lined up and we listened for awhile and talked about what might be done to the piece. This is one of the tracks where Justin has wanted to be involved in arrangement decisions so we just took a lot of notes. C’s initial impression is that the arrangement is fine; we just need to replace/augment some sounds (including piano as usual), and add drums and electric bass.
Finally we transferred Talking Points. C went in the house while I worked, so I took my time and checked the imported OMF file in Digital Performer before going to fetch him. This one will get massively rearranged, I’m sure, though of all the songs on the album, I’m least attached to the structure of this one. We listened and made notes on this one too, and agreed that Justin should be present for any arrangement decisions and that we were too tired to go back and work on anything else; got back to the guest house just now (23:30).
We talked about the fatigue factor; we’ll try to stop by midnight for the first half of next week and conserve energy for the last 4 days or so, which promise to be intense. (I leave on Tuesday the 27th, so Monday the 26th will be the last of the 16 days in the studio).
Tomorrow I’ll probably go visit Copenhagen, wander around the city a bit, try to put a good dent in my homework, and make sure I get a good rest.
* * *
J writes that his band records drums and bass first, then overdubs additional layers, while our approach is almost opposite by recording the drums nearer the end.
That kind of approach is ideal in many situations. But on this project, there are several factors that have led to the drums being done later (a little past midway). All of the tracks contain parts that I recorded before coming to the studio and that are being kept. There have been a couple of spots where the previous foundation has been completely removed, but those have been exceptions (other than the cases where entire chunks of the arrangement have been removed). This first week has been a combination of “final pre-production” (finalizing arrangements) and “early tracking” (recording key parts). Next week we’ll be in “full production” mode. I’d say that maybe 4 songs fall into ambient and orchestral categories, where the drums are not as primary to the feel as they are in other styles—those key parts recorded before drums are on the ambient/orchestral pieces. The other 5 songs are closer to techno and pop, where the live drums have to mesh tightly with prerecorded electronic drum/percussion tracks. On those ones, the drums are mostly being done before other overdubs (Serentripidy being the exception).
* * *
After that bit of “anger management therapy” with the chair the other night I told Christoffer that I’d found it fascinating when at the dinner table one evening his daughter had used a Swedish word that was translated for us as “shy/angry.” In English those are unrelated concepts. But I’ve had a tendency towards shyness ... and a tendency to repress and internalize anger.
Then we went and looked at the “programmer or serial killer?” web site (Google knows where it is and I’m offline at the moment) and laughed a lot.
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