A happy and full day today. Started by fine-sanding and varnishing another coat to the Love and Wi-Fi frame, this is ready for the spacer and backing board. I'll not be putting glass in this. It's too large for glass for safety reasons, and Perspex is troublesome, expensive, scratchy and can easily look a mess. The cheap Perspex on the Cromwell painting did it no favours in the Grosvenor exhibition, so I'll show and store this great painting without glazing (how I still miss painting! How I feel I can paint much better than ever before - but alas! Too little time, too little incentive).
The rest of the day was taken up with editing and including the vocals into the Salome tracks. These generally need very little processing; certain compression, and snipping into verse/chorus sections to include at the right points. My default is a high-pass filter and some reverb, little else, the rest depends on the context of the song. I've started with the most difficult and complex tracks - I always do the most difficult or unpleasant jobs first, this has been part of my personality since childhood. Doing it this way I can learn anything most quickly.
I started with Truth Seeker, then Entwined in Infinity. The epic orchestral nature of the latter clashes a little with Deb's dreamy, romantic vocals. A live performance with an orchestra would need a powerful singer or voice, almost shouted, but the mood of the track itself is romantic, gentle in speech, but this word itself implies an epic, swelling, loud nature in classical music. I didn't do much to limit things, but cut the bass on the piano a little. This is often done in recordings, pianos are often pushed up into a more twinkly and tinny register, but I've only shaved off a little. I really dislike excessive processing, and hardly ever use equalisation or dynamic compression.
The other tracks were Freud's Lecture and Dream Sequence, the latter a very dreamy and drifty piece. Freud generally worked without many changes, I did make use of my unique Zeitraum effect for some lines. I've added some expansive, hypnotic 3-tap echoes to the vocals of Dream Sequence. I'm used to gentle vocals in Fall in Green tracks, like Who Is Afraid/She Floats, or Mandalino. These hardly need any backing. Things are unusual here with an already very filtered piano.
I'll continue on the music tomorrow. I still need to finish production on Empathy With Daisies, and do all of the work on the last piece; Sit With Your Ghost.
Freud's Lecture sounds amazing, however. I'm aware now how new, how special, unique this music is, though also aware that the world will probably not notice it; yet I remain hopeful and have certain faith that it will be noticed one day. I can see in music how groups stumble into new and amazing areas, then retreat, not finding success or popularity there, only to, years later, find acclaim and regret their retreat. I know our music is special and I (and we) will keep pushing to new areas with greater aplomb. We submit tracks to BBC Introducing every so often, which are heard by BBC Radio Stoke, perhaps the least appropriate radio station in the country for our avant-garde, poetic work. Radio 3 would be far better, but such is bureaucracy.
