A good day today. Started with new vocals for Passive Aggressive - which I haven't processed or examined yet, and some more for the chorus of Hilter in High Heels. Layering is very useful at times but there are limits to how effective it can be. I layered about 20 vocals for parts of Burn of God, but after about four layers, the effect diminishes, new voices work better then. I think Mike Oldfield layered tens or hundreds guitars in Hergest Ridge, and it sounds a bit odd, muted and squidged somehow, like a river where the interesting flows of water are lost. Some of Phil Spector's music has this, it can sound epic, so big it sounds distant and blurry.
I had a surprise payment from the PRS, my first ever, perhaps in part due to the fact that I had neglected to register my catalogue there correctly until recently. I was surprised to find that Loneliness and Divine Love from The Love Symphony has had 2,962,526 plays on YouTube India; nearly 3 million, and 636,969 plays in Italy. This amounts to only a few pounds in royalties. This, for me, indicates the haphazard and stochastic nature of the internet. Loneliness and Divine Love is one of my favourite parts of the The Love Symphony, one of my best albums, my second 'symphonic' album after The Spiral Staircase. Oh for more time and resources to write more such works! The Death Symphony has been in my mind for years.
So, with more urgency I attacked this album. I got to work on the complex Always in the Morning. It has piano, with epic drums, plus strings, a viola, then I added a synth part. The structure is verse, verse, chorus, solo, interlude, chorus, verse. The solo breaks into a quiet picture-scene of night, a graveyard. I added a tolling bell and some strange night sounds (a backwards song thrush, tuned down), and a funerary organ. This then explodes into the second chorus which end with some dream lyrics...
I've bought your favourite thing for tea
but I'll cook it for myself
and when I click the nightlight, see your x's on the phone
I'll close my eyes and see you
back in our home.
... so we enter a dreamscape. Then wake up to the sad morning. There is a great emotional dimension to the words, so I'll have to work hard to wrestle this into the cold sequencer. Timing and tempo is crucial. The piano has echoes of the similar ballad Calling Mister Wilson, but those fake pianos, pretty though they can be, and controlled as they are, don't sound nearly as good as my playing.
I'll also have an epic electric guitar solo, and perhaps acoustic strums. Overall, this is a giant production. I must try to keep it minimal and efficient.
