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Thursday, 5 January 2006
New Years ::
On New Year’s Eve I got a head start on my resolution to spend more time making music, with an aim to performing live. There’s a mental block around working with the songs from my album. Maybe it’s that all the tracks are in Digital Performer and I’m not sure yet whether I want to use it or Logic to play backing tracks. So I postponed that ball of wax and started working on someone else’s piece, David Borden’s Continuing Story of Counterpoint, Part 9. Beyond being one of my favorite pieces ever, it will always have some special symbolism for me about performing. (I performed it with Mother Mallard in Ithaca in 1998 and 1999, Washington in 2000, and with my own group in Santa Cruz in 2003).
I started with David’s MIDI File and began sketching in some synth sounds. I wrote on SynthSights:
It’s a promising starting point, but a good chunk of time will be required to orchestrate it decently ... at least one or two parts want to be played on an instrument where staying on pitch takes real effort. Crud, the last time I had that idea, I ended up pulling out a microphone and singing!
Someone jokingly replied with a plea to have me banned from the list for spreading this insidious heresy!
And now every day since Saturday, I have been alternating between experimenting with synth sounds (especially for the Access Virus), playing along with the backing tracks—and recording vocals. I’ve come to the conclusion that I should resist the urge to edit, other than to discard obviously bad takes, until I have done the entire piece several times through and can pick and choose between takes. It’s too demoralizing to keep switching hats between Inexperienced Vocalist and Perfectionistic Producer. I’m maybe a third of the way through Pass 2.
My right hand is insisting that I not play this piece too much or it will complain. OK. Singing hurts less and promises to keep me busy for awhile.
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