Back to work on the album in full swing today. I awoke feeling slow and lacklustre. I realised this was lack of work, normally I'm full of energy due to so much to do. I need ambitous targets that seem impossible.
I had a thought in the night that no good artist has a family or an employer. I was thinking of the other full-time artists I know and their strange lives, relative to these 'ordinary people' with families and jobs. Children or an employer will distract you, absorb your emotions, energy, and attention. To excel at art, it must have your full attention. Of course, everyone has some social life. Artists usually need customers, patrons, supporters, friends, and all artists must become public servants to some degree; art is after all a dialogue between artist and public.
I needed to focus on the album and today started by practising then recording the vocals for the main rock track, 'I, Sisyphus'. The musicality is fine but my normal relaxed voice is somewhat mellow, like Scott Walker, which isn't the rock voice I have imagined for this song. I'll think about the tone. The vocal production will be fairly simple I think.
I then recorded the vocals for 'I Care' but these sounded a little too sleepy, so after a pause of a few hours I recorded them with more feeling. These were fine, so this is done. I also rebalanced The Invisible Man, and the Problem Of Suicide. Most of the album is done, only I, Sisyphus and We Shall See remain.
My throat is a sore, not coarse to speak but tired. It's very easy to accidentally strain a muscle when trying to evoke an emotion when the goal is singing is complete muscular relaxation. I have sang and trained for a few hours today. I will rest for a day or two. This has highlighted that I can't create vocal music as quickly as instrumental music. I can make an instrumental album in a week, but it seems to take a couple of days for each vocal track. So, future work must occur drip drip.
I can't complete the songs, so changed focus towards to artwork and sketched out two of four pencil sketches for the album art:
I'll work on that tomorrow and get thinking about both some oil paintings (my mind must slowly move towards these, I've not painted in over a year) and other music - the Plastic Superman song or sonata. Technically a sonata is a solo work (or involves a piano) but I think it's fair game to call any group of three or four related small pieces a sonata; I like this word better than concerto or anything else (triplet?). Words are important, they affect and define our thoughts and ideas so a word for something can expand a concept into a new territory. I don't feel like inventing a new word... no need for 'songcycle'... that's almost the root of the word sonata. Sonata already feels light and refined and structured, yet not too tied to any particular type or period of music.
