Finishing work on scoring the music for The Modern Game today. I only had two tracks to score, but The Trees is rather epic and features three violins, two cellos, tubular bells, glockenspiel and lots of things. Then I spent time tidying everything, trying to format the different versions... making decisions.
At the moment, all of my scores have a mix of instruments. The Fall in Green ones often use just piano, have piano-only versions even if the actual recording has more. For some songs I've included a bass line, with the lead vocal in the upper register, making it really a piano score... but that's not right really. Really, the piano would be two staves AND a third stave for the lead vocal. Sometimes it's been one, sometimes another, so now the 'Piano Versions' will be a two-stave piano plus a plain stave just for lead vocals, and generally, the lead vocal has its own stave in every version...
But there are a few songs with catchy melodic parts, like Love In A Hopeless World, and House Of Glass. It's tempting to make a version which includes that melody in the lead-vocal part, just to add more to it, like this:
Is this right? Is there a right at all? I need a standard. Decisions decisions!
Another full day of work, but the album is more or less notated now. Any notation is better than none, but at the same time it should show something off. These songs are better than my performance of them, even though I've recorded and released this album THREE times now... I feel I can do much better now. I will resist the urge for version 4 for the time being. These are the nightmares O.C.D. is made of.
