A day working on a new special and secret track for the Apocalypse of Clowns album for Fall in Green. This is a long complex piece in the mould of a Renaissance track, like Mother Russia or Ashes Are Burning. It feels difficult, and exciting, because I'm making it in a different way this time.
For years, my main way of working has been to feel the feeling and think the idea then get to work in the sequencer. Up until 2015 or so I might have focused more on making something that sounded nice there, then playing with it, crafting the edges to make it pretty. This has an analogue in the digital artwork I made before I painted. After The Anatomy of Emotions and Cycles I began to think of music as 'art' more, and changed my way of working to began with the idea and feeling first, as I tend to do with visual art. of course, I always wanted my music to have lots of feeling; it's just a matter of how this was done.
Over recent years, I've performed live a lot more, and played a lot more so my playing skills have improved, and so my live expression. Most of the Fall in Green tracks, like the Shadows tracks, were made by playing the piano live, then adding speech over the top, with a few strings too or other slight augmentation. These sound so much more emotional compared to the purely sequenced tracks, but they are limited in depth; they tend to be solo piano, or 'piano plus a bit', tracks.
For the Music of Poetic Objects tracks, these were largely sequenced rather than played live, although these two methods began to move closer. Many of the tracks had extended live piano, as did the songs on The Modern Game; and The Dusty Mirror included some live guitar and harmonica - notable because they are the first multiple live recording streams to be inserted into my sequences. So, I'm gradually merging live and sequenced.
The questions for me are where to do the writing and creating phase. Often I still sequence to create this, and make something sound nice first. Perhaps with songs I'll sketch the idea mentally, play on the piano or write the words and so know the song before I start to sequence. I don't generally 'compose live', but for this track I find myself doing that. I'm reminded than my 'piano sonatas' that I've performed in the church here were essentially improvised on a few basic themes.
Generally I have an idea of what I want in terms of ideas. Here I have three main themes for the different verses of the poem. Here I am imagining Deborah reading the verses to the bits as I play. The music of Renaissance runs through my head, the way that extended musical sections play across different instruments; they were the most classically integrated of groups.
So, this time I'm playing live piano sections, which sound much more like the sort of playing I perform live, which isn't often recorded for me... my live playing feels much better than my recordings, partly because of these composing and recording issues. I tend to simplify the recordings in some ways, and these sound more mechanical and less powerful and emotional as a result, but often have many more sound layers and a technical smoothness which make up for this.
My method this time is to work out the melody or themes, then play essentially improvised sections over and over until a roungh guide to the structure is arrived at, then record this as a guide track. I suspect that this is how Mother Russia was written, or at least recorded, because the piano there is almost constant, even when other instruments take over the lead.
Then I record this. The idea is add layers over the top, but perhaps replace the piano entirely later.
It all feels more complex and more difficult than usual. I keep reminding myself that I've done this before, particularly with the Music of Poetic Objects tracks, that this time I'm merely deciding to usurp the piano more and take over with other instruments. Essentially I'm doing it this way to add more freedom to the composition, not necessarily expression to the performance. I can compose quickly because I'm doing it by 'live feeling', being skilled enough at playing and improvising the compose on the fly and making use of that. I've done it with solo piano tracks - all of those on The Anatomy of Emotions were improvised, and others like 'Notes from Space' from The Modern Game, but now I'm making these more structured... moving things closer to my sequenced music in that way; merging these two distinct methods for creating.
In other news I'm playing guitar better than ever and have started to go through my CD collection again. It is day three of this and today I played to Space Oddity, an odd and discordant album. The long Cygnet track reminded me of mine today - a long ramble that sounded improvised and sang to live guitar, then other layers added later.
