A somehwat ironic day of song production on 'Young Attractive and Physically Fit' because I've been gripped by disabling stomach agony for most of the day, but now I know that I must avoid fructo-oligosaccharides. Maybe I could make a song about that. At times the pain was quite unbearable, but what would be the point of doing nothing vs. doing something in such circumstances? Rest is the same as work without anything to show at the end of it.
I had a dream of wandering in, I think, a science facility (this biosphere-like setting may have been inspired by an evening listen to Jarre's Teo & Tea - one of Jarre's worst albums). I was due to leave after spending a specific time there, and had to climb a ladder and exit via the skylight. I climbed the ladder and smashed the dome of glass there, but strange animals which were outside on the roof: goats, pigs, ducks, all sort of things. Before I could exit, these creatures climbed down en masse and tried to eat me. I became afraid that the facility was being flooded by these unwanted enemy invaders.
I listed the final Myth of Sisyphus artwork for sale on RedBubble (I put all of my album art on there). I then got back to work on the song. The vocoder vocals from yesterday were adequate, but needed a bit more depth in their vocalisations, so I recorded some more. The last required part was the solo, I wanted a live solo, this is so important. Piano and guitar has taught me how expressive live performance is and how dead sequencing is. I spend most of my hours in Prometheus adding expression to each note; it's far more efficient to play it live.
I listened, yesterday evening, to La Roux's first album for some production inspiration but was reminded how regular timing, over-loudness, and everything crunched to a steady volume kills emotion. The feeling must, in such circumstances, come from the vocals and lyrics, and the melody (but even J.S. Bach with his organ music struggled to add much feeling to his genius compositions). With La Roux there is hardly any melody. The only note I took was how distortion was used extensively to break up the 'order' of the fixed timing, fixed volume, fixed timbre.
I recorded the solo on the Reface DX, this is such a great instrument, far more expressive and better sounding than the Microkorg.
Then I needed to add more... the song needed image and location. I started by adding a 'party' sound at the start (actually a recording of a noisy street party here I made years ago). I also needed to add more drama and impact, and focused on making the quiet parts quieter and the loud parts louder, and added a (yes, Commodore 64 inspired) pair of white-noise 'snap' sounds. One of my favourite tricks.
That's the state of the song so far. It sounds like a hit, like Da Da Da, like The Model, like Video Killed The Radio Star, yet with a tune that is basically one note and one chord most of the time.
This song will definitely replace Style Guru on this Velvet project; so one track remains...
