A good and productive day. Started by recording the vocals to Welcome to my Gallery. These worked remarkably well in the first take without even a rehearsal, which was something of a surprise. This is happening more and more often, mainly due to knowing what I want and what might sound best.
David Bowie is famed for recording most of his vocals in one take, though I suspect that the number of takes increased in later years and on later albums simply because expense and time was an issue in early recordings, and (I don't know much about Bowie, but perhaps) studio experimentation took place. In the days of tape and cost, artists needed to prepare well beforehand, and songs had often been performed many times, making a first recording as good as any other. It would be well rehearsed and the sound well known. Today, first takes are probably more rare simply because recordings are as good as free and it might be artistically useful to record everything including rehearsals, warm-ups, and experiments, so there's no reason not to.
Anyway, in this case things sounded fine and the song doesn't seem to need any harmonies or fancy vocals. It sounded remarkably good from the outset. Perhaps I am, at last, learning something. This is one of the most electronic-led tracks on the album, and its mood matches the cover. I also finalised the artwork today. Here is the cover and a few pages, which are all simple and will use the motif of darkness (blue) and light (golden):
I'll also include The Girl with the Pearl Earring painting, and one of Cotán's. One odd thing is that the new 3000x3000 pixel size doesn't scale well to 300dpi; the pure diagonal looks wobbly. I expected some impurity as the old format was exactly a 2:1 ratio (which is why I used it) but this was worse than expected. Sigh. Here's the CD Surface:
And the rear:
