Lots done! Lots to do! I'd better blog this for the sake of history for it's palpably struck me that history and myriad millions of people will read this blog in the infinity of time to come, far more than will today or in my lifetime, and history deserves at least a detailed and informative and inspirational read!
When the last track was completed I had to revisit the others to make sure they all fitted. Things had changed so much since the first that the album sounded a little disjointed. In particular the first track I wrote, "Loneliness and Divine Love", had more electronic sounds than the others. To combat that I added a small pre-track that introduced it, that represented an encounter with (rather specifically in my imagination) some Latter Day Saints missionaries, whom, in their electronic way convinced the main melody to become religious.
At the present moment that track ends happily, which doesn't quite suit my feelings because the lack of "satisfaction" should be apparent when leading into the final movement. That track is very regular. It pulses, and regularity is in this case meditative, any changes in passion being in volume or timbre.
The conversion part happened just before that. There are a few conversations here, and in the third part a harp (the most oneristic instrument due to all of that plucking between the legs) meets a flute and the melody transforms into the love theme of the finale. Today I expanded that part by adding a third track, thus there are now nine tracks divided into three distinct sections. The third track is called "Masturbating Harp" and it's a simple sequence of plucks in triplets (triplets are the recurring musical motif of the whole album) that accelerate into a glissando. I also revisited track three, The Dream, and made some pizzicato strings there harp strings instead because it sounded more quiet, more gentle and definitely a very light sky blue, which is the exact colour that part of that track needs.
This has been a complex work for me and I've put in more time and thought into it than perhaps any album, certainly as much as The Spiral Staircase. I'm not really sure about large sections of it! and I see as many flaws in each part as I do in my paintings, which for music is rare for me, but perhaps that's because I don't think about or care about the music I write very often. Usually I don't have time, and I rarely push myself to write new music with new feelings. These feelings are all positive signs. I must promote this album well.
The next step for this project is to design the artwork. Hardly anybody seems to use compact discs nowadays but I like the look and feel of the physical case, and so I try to make each one very pretty. My downloads now include lots of artwork too, often the same amount as in each CD, although never exactly the same because I make the download art all square.
Mastering should be easy. For a long time I spent many insecure years tweaking the EQ this way and that, endlessly comparing and trying music out on different systems, but it came to an end when I listened to some really old music on bad speakers and it sounded fine. I simply don't have the time for endless tiny tweaks. Things can be made easier in that regard though and I'll post some of my EQ tips sooner or later.
Meanwhile, the cover art is changing and refining a bit. Here is the latest draft; the portrait waterfall is better defined and some awkward blurry edges have been confidented with a silver hammer. Parts that are grainy upon closer inspection have been cleaned up too. The full image is 3072x3072 pixels (and there's a 20mm bleed with that too) so there's a lot of resolution here, which demands good quality source images.
