A difficult night, more disturbing dreams; one involving a sad Kate Bush who was instantly made to laugh by being given some Chambord, but this seemed to be a short term, and incorrect, fix. She then decided to make a curry with her bass-player partner, I thought the food an inappropriate choice. Then an Irish actor (from a Harold Pinter play I've seen) asked me about my life and was concerned about my dependency on my family. A white dove flew by, into the open window of wooden shed, something like a windmill, where a butcher was catching and chopping the wings off doves, hanging the wings on a line, but skinning the birds. He, upset by the act, repeats to himself that it's only a job. At another point I was inside a windmill which was quaking and shaking due to frightening external forces. Perhaps this memory is related to the climax of the old Frankenstein film, which I watched a few months ago.
I rose with a headache which remained all day and appeared to be psychological in nature, yet unfathomable. I ignored it and achieved my daily goals. Worked on Janus Never Blinks and Mandalino, two of the best tracks so far. The production method seems to involve starting with the plain vocals, sequencing those with optional background sound effects, then playing the music live to that as a dub track, then augmenting that (and generally adding parts).
I'm so used to composing and sequencing everything that this method of playing live seems to be too easy, too simplistic and avoiding melody and compositional complexity, structure, refinement, and so quality. This is good training for playing, however. These pieces have been and will be played live, so the sound can't be too different from a live performance. Recorded and Live are very different experiences; ideally both will be as good as each other and both spectacular, but there are always choices to make. The simpler I make the recording, the easier and more accurate a live performance can be, but the recording will be losing something, not as good as possible. Similarly, if the recording is superb and layered and complex then reproducing that in a live setting is all the more difficult.
