A wonderful productive Monday. I've been getting frustrated with The Golden Age, the time it's taking, but this is party due to a change of computer and new versions of my music software, getting used to Visual Studio 2022. I awoke keen to make good progress.
I started by recording the vocals to The Legend of Zurbaran, then more vocal recording for Tycho Brahe. This is a troublesome song, partly because it was written a few years ago and pitched too low for my voice, so I took a radical step of removing the melody and improvising over the backing instead and this worked far better. In the end, the track was far easier to sing, all done in a take at an 8th higher than originally written. I know the melody backwards, so the freedom of removing the 'training wheels' is something I'll do more often, if not all of the time.
The Legend of Zurbaran sounded great first off, so that's as good as complete. Then back to work on Cotan. I wanted to expand the intro and general mood, painting something of the night, a cold monastic cell, so I recorded a MODX sound which had that mood (and robot crickets!). The whispered vocals sound good, but perhaps only to me because I know the underlying melody, which is now totally removed, so I had the idea of an instrument playing this melody, and tracking it to the vocals. This sounds ok, but perhaps the lead instrument needs some toying with.
Then, in the late afternoon, a new guitar part and interlude for Rembrandt. The song is fine, but the structure was a little boring; two verses interspersed with a solo in the same chords. This song was partly inspired by Something's Burning by Kenny Rogers, a song I loved when I was about 4 years old due to its pyromaniac undertones, but Rembrandt lacks the drama of that song. I thought that it also has elements of Something by The Beatles/Harrison, so I wrote a simple countermelody for electric guitar and added this to the start and used that to replace the middle section. This sounds much better, but the song still needs more drama.
Eleven tracks are just about complete. The first planned track, Welcome to my Gallery, has only words... not even a mood, but there's pressure on as it's the opening track.
I'm most pleased with my vocals this year and, again and repeatedly, reminded that I've not recorded an album in nearly a year. I'd like to re-record a few songs from previous albums, I can sing them far better now and some of those old songs make me cringe, but perhaps this is negative thinking despite this plan being considered from the start. The year is running away. I must fill it.
Lots more album work to go, mainly that first song, and the cover art. There's also a few other songs to work on, notably Style Guru Fashion Queen, but that's electro-pop and will need a special platform.
