I’ve mentioned in earlier posts about the need for momentum with my latest project, for I fear that enforced breaks from the music will leave me underwhelmed and unenthusiastic on returning to it. I seem to develop a ridiculous sense of criticality, even when things are in a draft phase. Knowing that this month is a busy one, I managed to push myself to record some more elements in spare moments, just so I didn’t end up taking a fortnight-long pause. I plan to do a few more of these next week, to keep the momentum going.
When I last posted, I had recorded bass and guitar tracks (there’s no drums on this project) and was unsure of what task to tackle next. I ended up with a ramshackle plan. I worked out that I wanted to ‘fill out’ the sound and dynamic range of each song with a series of sounds. These were broken into four groups: vocals, strings, blowers and plinky plinks. My lack of musical knowledge speaks for itself.
Vocals are pretty straightforward to understand. As of today, I’ve managed to lay down vocals for six tracks. These often include a lead vocal, one counter harmony and a ton of ‘ooh’s and ahh’s’. I’m not sure how happy I am with the recorded ones as I did them in a four-hour stint and not a lot of reflection at the time. I’ll probably play them back before recording more tracks next week.
‘Strings’ is a deceptive title. Not the classical kind. I’m using it to refer to four things; banjo, mandolin, guitalele and the lyre. Stringed instruments, if you can’t see what I have done here. I managed to add at least one of these instruments to each track, attempting to evenly distribute them (five or six songs each). The lyre was the least successful, and I’m not sure how much of it will appear on the final mix.
The ‘blowers’ is probably obvious now that I have explained my labelling technique. These include, harmonicas (including bass harmonica), whistles/flutes/recorders, melodica and an ocarina. I haven’t recorded any of these yet. The ‘plinky plinks’ are the glockenspiel, hand drum, thumb piano, and stylophone. Like the strings, I plan to add an even spread of each across the project.
I haven’t really planned each musical element, so I improvise and add them willy-nilly across the tracks. Then I plan to edit/ remove/embellish at a later point. I’m basically trying to increase the surface area likelihood of having little magical moments across the project, with a variety of different sounds and textures. None of which are midi, unlike An Unreachable Peak.
Hopefully, I want to complete the recording of all of these elements in time for Christmas, so that I can have that holiday to mix things and listen to them at my leisure. I’m still aiming for sharing it in early February. If successful, this will have been the fastest turnaround of any of my musical projects ever. Not that I mention of it as a badge of virtue or quality, rather than in recognition that I can’t bear the extendedly long periods of production and wobbles in confidence that occur on projects where I can’t find a continuous amount of time to complete them. It’s important to make time for your hobbies!
