| << Sweden, day 16 | 2005 > June | Sweden, day 18 >> |
Sweden, day 17 ::
Sunday was a very productive day.
On Don’t Know I Know I recorded a track with timpani and some subtle cymbal work, then Christoffer did another take with some more aggressive cymbals. Then we spent some time starting a rough mix, more as a way of checking our work to be sure that the piece was ready to mix than to actually get a mix. That went well and so we declared that one done.
Next we dove into Talking Points, one of three remaining with major work to do. Christoffer had to spend some time fixing the timing of the drum tracks transferred from tape; there were some sync problems, but there was a reference click on tape to help sort it out.
In our new arrangement, we’d temporarily filled some parts with pitch-shifted versions that sounded bad, so I fired up the Virus and tried to match the sound I’d recorded. For whatever reason it didn’t work well, so Christoffer suggested using a contrasting sound instead. Something cool happened in the arpeggiator rhythm on one take so we kept that. Then he suggested adding a very simple melodic line of some sort; about the third Virus sound I randomly scrolled to grabbed him, so I made up a part. That and a variation of it in the song’s second key ended up being worthy of a fair amount of repetition.
We had a mid-afternoon break—I hooked up a Strat to an amp and had fun playing loud guitar with feedback over the “nuclear meltdown” section in loop mode. Thankfully, it was not recorded!
When Christoffer came back, we did two or three takes with Minimoog bass, once with Christoffer sending the filter into freaked-out oscillations. C cut these up and mixed them with the original Virus bass track.
Somewhere in there we solved the problem of the ending—Jens had abruptly stopped playing drum kit near the end, and it felt like a natural stopping point. Moved some other parts around to match and it worked well.
C and I had some fun slicing up bits of audio for fills/breaks. He made an awesome sound slightly resembling a needle shredding a vinyl record, by placing lots of little bits of a bass drum sample. We discovered a couple of hidden gems in various tracks and brought them out for the fills.
Dinner break—Justin and I went to a nice restaurant east of here. More herring and salmon. Eel! No wine for me tonight. Whew. (Felt tired but otherwise mostly OK today.)
Returning to Talking Points, I doubled the melody in the middle interlude on CS-60 (not kept I think) and Hammond (where Christoffer fooled with distortion and flanger stomp boxes while I played). Finally realized that the fastest way to learn a part to be doubled to open the demo sequence in Logic and print the score.
We checked our work. The track had almost completely lost its dependence on the original granulated samples of Republican speeches and had become quite melodic. For a humorous break I played the QuickTime movie of the speech excerpts that was the basis for original version of the song. The track has gotten very dark, heavy and aggressive-sounding, and there aren’t even any guitars. I think there are three tracks of electronic percussion, two very different sounding real drum kits, and four tracks of synth bass.
Talking Points was done by 10:30 pm. We took a break to do an interview.
Around midnight we picked up Cobblestone Mirrors, which had a short to-do list. Printed another chart and replaced stupid-sounding imitation of electric bass with Taurus bass pedals, doubled the stupidly quantized Virus bass with a decent execution of a tricky part on Minimoog. C and I added a pair of vocal harmonies under Helena’s 4 parts in the middle. Reviewed Jens’ improvised drumming all the way through the track and found some keeper moments. This one feels done now too except for perhaps a little bit of timpani.
So we nearly finished 3 tracks today (including one that had consumed most of yesterday). Justin had been sounding a little concerned that we weren’t going to finish in time, but Christoffer and I both expressed confidence when we talked about it.
We now have two big songs and one little one left, and two days, so given today’s pace I think our confidence isn’t misplaced. Agents of Change, one of the big ones, could get done in two very different ways, one fairly quickly, resembling my demo, as something of a “soundtrack” piece, another (with the shuffle beat drums) reorchestrated as more of a pop/soundtrack novelty. I think I will suggest that we do the soundtrack version for this album and consider doing the pop version later, possibly remotely, perhaps as a “single.” It’s too big a project to start it now unless we manage to finish everything else Monday.
| << Sweden, day 16 | 2005 > June | Sweden, day 18 >> |