We've unexpectedly passed another milestone today as the first complete set of mixes for all 13 songs emerged from this afternoons session.
Mr Wizard got his dates wrong, Theo was unavailable and Rosie didn't think he'd make the brief review session we envisaged, leaving it to yours truly and Pete to do the final tweaks. MUAHAHAHA!!!! Feel the Power! Now I can add in all the secret accordion solo's I have been planning.
Or not.
Great! So where does this leave us? Well, we have scheduled a Drum and Percussion review day for Theo, and in the interim we'll all be listening to the initial mixes and making yet more notes. Pete will be doing the same.
That means we wont be finished next week, but thereafter? It's anyone's guess.
When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were taking a break whilst Pete went to Splendor.
For it was written, in my diary, that upon the return of the Pete, yea verily shall we recommence doing 'stuff' and that we would also maybe get some of those nice sandwiches at the food court at lunchtime and maybe have a coffee. So it was foretold and so it came to be.
Oh yeah and I got to read that Syd Barrett bio some more whilst Rosie was doing Solo changes for Black Crow.
11/13 now mixed, fixes and changes made, new vocal approaches tried for Suit Yourself and Light in the Distance, a bit of work on the harp stuff for Even in a Lifetime and some other...stuff.
I've been listening to the updated versions of Black Crow and Texas Rosie and the stuff is sounding more polished. Polished is a good analogy, as we mix, we're starting to reveal the layers of the song.
We have another session scheduled this week and I can foresee a few more to go after that, but not so many. The end approacheth!
What? I'm sorry you'll have to speak up, there was an arms race on last night between the band and the disco party in the room downstairs. I think they won :-)
The first residency at the Taverners Hill Hotel kicked off in fine style last night and saw the return of the blinking lights. Not so many this time. I remarked that the last time I had used a few more, Rosie quipped that a few more was actually 'all of them'.
Still, I think we had a better balance of effects last night.
Cheers to Ross, Dale, Claudette, Michael, Assan, Big Daddy and all the folks that spent the evening with us, especially the 21st birthday party downstairs.
I was trying to work out who was playing music every time we stopped a song. Weren't we meant to finish? What was going on with the rhythm? Then it dawned on me that the music I was hearing was coming from...somewhere else. I had thought someones ringtone was playing incessantly, but no, it was the Doof Doof coming up the stairs. God Bless the Doofsters, I hope they had ear protection, I am a fan of having my internal organs shaken by the sound system from 30 metres, but I take the precaution of wearing earplugs. When the Doof from Downstairs outpaces the drums that are immediately behind you, it's probably quite loud. Next week I'll add further commentary on dance music in a new section entitled 'Get off my lawn'.
The THH is a great little pub and we're looking forward to our return.
I understand our local production hire place also does Bass Sub Woofers. Lots of Bass Subwoofers. Big Ones.
I put this up on F/Book to see if people could be creative to say what they think the Grub is saying to the Birds ,So all you Stormcellar Fans it's up to you ? Go to comments please !
This is the flavour of a not uncommon conversation in the studio.
So recently Mjeb said something that just made me smile. But first a little context:
We were reviewing the latest mix for Even in a Lifetime. Going back a few weeks when I was recording my parts for the song Mjeb had come in and announced that he’d had a vision for rising melodic part at the end of the middle 8 and asked if I’d play it. We worked it out – starting point, finishing point, what scale it was based around etc. I laid it down and thought nothing further on the matter.
There’s a quote attributed to Miles Davis upon listening to Carlos Santana play. He paused for a moment said words to the effect “you need to go to NA. Notes Anonymous”.
Fast forward to last week and there’s talk of recutting the harmonica part that goes in the middle 8, around the rising guitar part, and here’s the quote:
Regular readers will be aware that I'm in Make Some Videos Mode at present. (for a list of the current video clips ideas see this article)
Each week, I try another idea, smile when things go wrong and try again.
Last week I tried to get a quick shoot done for Running Jody from Carl's chair. Fail.
I'll try again this week. If the weather is OK and if I can find the right person, if the steadicam works, if the bike works, if Dions got time, if...
That's the lesson here. try, fail, try something else, fail and smile. Every now and again you win :-) I think Edison said 'Fail early and often'
After my trip to VIVID this year I was kind of inspired by the animations on the MCA and wanted to try and do something in the same vein for 'Hard Times' from the new album
but thankfully, I have learned the occasional thing about my abilities over the last few videos, for example, animation is hard.
It's hard, time consuming and, um, err, hard.
Did I mention hard?
So I decided to go ask for some help via one of the websites where you can post art jobs for hire and we'll see ho we go. I don't think I have the budget to do quite the same level of work that VIVID displayed, but just like Aperture Science, we do what me must because we can :-) I'll post my results as we start working on it.
Will online collaboration with an animator work? Will it all go up in flames? Stay tuned for randomness via the web.
Meanwhile, I am still trying to find a jogger for running jody, a location for Hollow Tree and trying to come up with some other ideas for the other songs on the album. the more ideas we have, the greater the likelihood that we'll be able to get one of them done.
