Most of the vocal recordings were made today for War is Over and The Apocalypse of Clowns. I had the idea of feeding the piano through the left channel of the sound card, the mic through the right, so that both could be monitored by Deb during recording, and listening to the piano myself through a second set of headphones, so we could perform live together without each other's recordings being contaminated by the other. A separate guide track could be played to the vocalist too, if needed.
This was mostly successful, but the complexity of the system made a good performance difficult for me, as I had to dash from one place to another and immediately start playing. Also, the key depression sound from the piano was audible (just). It did help guide the pacing of the speech to music a little though, there was better live interaction. Overall however, it wasn't much more efficient than starting with a separate vocal recording, which I could chop up as needed before adding music at my own pace.
So far, Asylum Flowers is the most challenging because I've developed a complex 6-time pre-recorded section for the fast parts of the poem, but the slower parts need the live piano parts. It's not too difficult, a matter of timing. A few of the other tracks, Lost at the Fair, Mister and Mrs Knife Thrower, for example, have only been performed live once, over a year ago, and are bound to be different (and hopefully better) on the album. I ache to push the limits more and do more, further than with Testing the Delicates.
We had thought that these releases will be EPs but it seems that they will be full albums instead, as we will probably easily use more than the 6-track maximum, even if under 30 minutes (most of these are under 2 minutes). The only difference this makes is pricing; EPs generally cost £5.99 now and albums £7.99.
More work on these tomorrow and for the rest of the month.
