A low slow and frustrating day which felt like an agonising chore, due in part to eternal stomach pain. Perhaps I'm simply eating too much for my limited activity. Yet I pushed on and have made progress on the album. First I recorded the vocals for 'I, Sisyphus', these seemed to go well. I've not incorporated them yet and may need to record more.
Then I faced the song 'The Problem of Suicide' - which I could retitle The Problem of The Problem of Suicide! It's one of those occasions where the completed song is not quite right. It bothers me that the second verse is rather squished in, and the ending needs more drama or a more definite conclusion. I think it's a matter of pacing. It's annoying because it is nearly good enough, but elements of it very slightly bother me and I'd like to improve it, but the only option is to re-record most it of entirely. The long sections of acoustic guitar chords were made without a metronome and the recording is not long enough... actually, the very irregularity of this adds something more emotional to them, which is another complicating factor. I've started make something of a click-track with the verse melody in.
This made me think about this. Click tracks and regular rhythms have been part of recording techniques since the 50s... but this technique can make the whole song very regular. I noticed that most of the music in my collection is rhythmic and often starts with a rhythm... I've started some songs from no rhythm and many of my improvised piano pieces have great drama by having no regular rhythm, so is that always needed so much? The best songs often vary a lot in tempo: a lot of Queen songs or those wonderful Kate Bush songs on The Dreaming. I wonder how Genesis recorded their complex works... did they jam together first to produce a template to record parts to (I think Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody used a 'live' piano template), or did they all play together? I think, suspect, that they recorded small sections as completely as possible, then stitched these together. This is evident in some tracks where the edits are imperfect.
Well I've started a little on my click track but remain unsure about it. To distract myself I continued work on the new Bites of Greatness cover, which I've also been tweaking for weeks. Both of these activities, and my eternal stomach pain and inability to eat, led to an afternoon of dismay.
The evening was better though, and I largely produced the music to the Nick Drake song. This is very unusual and at times discordant. I thought I would try to write a song that uses just one note for all of the melody. The song depicts the scene of Nick's death, so the music is very still, stationary, and a funeral dirge, so one note is ideal. Each semitone appears in 6 major or minor chords, so I've used those. For the chorus and limited highlights I've changed my one note.
