Completing sound work on the Herr Kasperle music today, although a lot of the morning was taken up with various admin duties, and repairing a sofa which has a central 'foot' type leg attached only by about 6 staples (a big block of wood, about 25x80mm). I had to remove the staples with wire cutters, glue, drill and screw the block firmly in place. I think my repair is one of the most solid bits of the whole construction!
I worked on a few bits of electro-pop tunes in the afternoon, but eventually got round to Kasperle. The start is a drift, dreamy landscape of sound with little melody. What melody there is sounds oriental or like the soundtrack to a Bladerunner-style fantasy film. This leads into some throbbing strings, a bit like Koyaanisqatsi, a bit like Palladio by Karl Jenkins, a bit like the verses to Eleanor Rigby. These give way to a line about a woman descending a staircase so I literally descended the strings along a scale, which is now firmly in D-minor, although there's a strange ambiguity and romance with E and B, which adds an eerie feeling to the music.
The next part is about the life of the puppet, ghosts and memories, so I played acoustic guitar for that, using the same melody as the throbbing strings but now in gentle single notes which echo into darkness. This part was tricky to compose because the gentle oriental part is already very quiet, so I needed something different from that, but I also wanted a contrast from the powerful strings, so using that melody seemed to be one solution, to make it melodious.
I rehearsed a bit then played this in one take, which is an improvement on the Jabberwocky recording which took a few tries. One key part was moving the guitar in dialogue with the mic, so that it had feeling and expression. I avoided headphones. One of the worst bits about recording guitar is the issue with wires and physical restriction. Electric guitar is even worse; a long wire leads to the amp, which is mic'd up and being recorded, and another wire plugs the headphones into the computer to listen to the backing track or beat, but I need a free ear to hear what I'm playing so have to half-wear the headphones, AND I'm strapped into the guitar so moving anything becomes awkward. This time I cheated and simply played the backing track through speakers quietly, so it will be slightly audible on the recording, but the ease of use makes it all so much easier to play, and so the performance was better. I've heard Paul McCartney's vocal for Something which also has similar audible backing music there.
The tune then returns to that dreamy, discordant opening, then a brief burst of strings again for a final quatrain, before again drifting away into a sort of scene where the final words of the song reside. After this, a camera clicks and we are outside, actually using a sound clip I took from France, and the last words of the poem are spoken; they break the fourth wall as they narrate to the reader about the outcome of the day.
I still have Deb's vocals to add to this. The album now has two tracks to do: something for Siamese Twin Domestic, and some sort of opening and/or closing music to form a themeatic bracket. I always treat albums as wholes, symphonic artworks that hold together thematically.
