Woke late after a sleepless night. Worked on some of the cover artwork for The Myth of Sisyphus, I'd like to get the album completed soon. I filled the holes in some frames, using a powdered general filler which seems to work, though it is a little delicate as a material, little different from plaster. I think if I sanded this it would fall away to dust in no time. Some white Milliput would be better I know, but I've run out of it. Also Milliput is a lot stronger than the wood and plastic-like and repulsive to the paint which might make it stand out. My aim is for these patches to perfectly blend in. I've carefully textured the filler with wood grain.
In the afternoon I recorded the final 'I, Sisyphus' vocals. I've really transformed how I use vocals, as well as my singing, in the last ten months. I feel, as I often do, that I'm at a great start of things. I often feel like I've reached an artistic start. Even in my oil painting, I feel I'm just ready to start; I can see what. I can do now, so much more and better than what has come before.
Unfortunately I started to feel dizzy and queasy from about 2pm and in the early afternoon became too ill to work, the room spinning; another migraine due to my vision problems. My left eye continues to palpiate. I wore a blindfold, which helped, and sat on the floor for a few hours. Even listening to music through headphones was less pleasant than silence. Thankfully the intense pain of a few days ago was absent, merely dizziness, queasiness, and a dull headache that felt like oversleeping for many hours.
I managed to complete the production work on 'I, Sisyphus'. Most of the vocals are fairly unprocessed, but the 'with an ice wind and rain against me' lines wave in a melody like the guitar lead, so these have some filtering and a pan effect for a ghostly feeling. Kate Bush is an excellent guide and mentor for vocal production, her treatment of vocals in The Dreaming are always inspirational; echoes, pans, chorus or phaser effects, and filters. She doesn't tend to use much reverb. She rarely distorts vocals, I do sometimes, as The Beatles did with trakcs like Lady Madonna. She doesn't tend to layer or duplicate vocals in the way that Queen did a lot. As a producer she was as good as any other best: Toni Visconti, Reinhold Mack, etc.
Blindfolded and by peeking occasionally I struggled along working on some music and created the backing for the Style Guru guitar solo, which I'll perform soon.
The Sisyphus album is largely complete, only vocals for We Shall See are needed, and those time consuming final tweaks. 'I, Sisyphus' is so complex and layered that I could work on it forver, changing it in umpteen ways, but there comes a time when work on a project steals time from future work.
My eyes and head are causing problems but I'm certain that glasses, in a few months, will fix it so not a Heiligenstadt moment. To live like this would be difficult.
