One of the worst aspects of vocal recording is getting trapped in a quagmire. You make a take that's nearly right, just one or two lines not quite right, somehow, so you decide to retake just those bits, but they seem to jar, somehow, and then you retake another little bit to try and fix that, but, gradually, entropy takes over and the whole things feels and sounds like a mess. This can absolutely happen in oil painting too. Some painters like to fix this up or that up, a dab here, a dab there, but I've always hated the whole idea of these patchworks and, I tend to throw the whole painting away and start from scratch. For the Roman Legionaries painting, I painted three copies, which are almost identical to the eye of a casual observer, but I know that only the last version was right 'from the start'.
Yesterday I became trapped in a quagmire like this with the Eyes Of Pity vocals, partly because the song sounds so simple, when it's actually rather complex due to lines that don't scan and which can have long pauses between, or hardly any, and are filled with jumbles of words.
After a few days of practice and adding lots of little background effects to the song, I today recorded the whole song in one take; which is the ideal so that it maps the emotional flow of the performance exactly. I've added some backing harmonies, then erased a lot of the background parts that I added - it was all fine as it is. Most of the songs in this album are based on other songs and this one has 'I Only Have Eyes For You' by The Flamingos as inspiration.
In other news, I took some photos and started on the cover artwork yesterday. Here is the draft so far, but it is certain to change:
This morning Deb and I went to Frodsham to drop off artwork to Castle Park Arts Centre for the open too, the first local live art exhibition in over a year. The luthier there showed me a nice electro-acoustic guitar. If I didn't have one, I'd have thought about buying it, but I won't. It seems that every guitar player seems to own about 10 guitars. For me, one (caveat: of each sort...) is enough.
I've had a few low days and hours, but at the same time, I know with certainty that success is inevitable and that my work is better than ever, and still growing. On we march.
