A full day yesterday remastering Cycles. Completed all of Shadows yesterday, a matter of re-recording the piano, changing the reverbs from old to new, and cutting the bass on various parts (particularly the vocals). Everything sounds much better and nicer, clearly better than the old versions. When listening without a side-by-side comparison with older versions, the changes are very slight, to the extent that almost nobody would notice any difference. Musically, these are note-for-note identical (apart from two near-silent off-key piano notes which have been removed). Most of the work on this remaster is/will be the admin, rather than the music work.
Cycles III, however, was my primary motivation for the remaster. It's a nice piano tune I've played live often that was somewhat drowned by orchestration in the original version. Today I've reworked the whole thing with a new piano part, and toned down much of the backing, removing or attenuating many strings to allow the basic melody to rise. Cycles I and VI sound like piano concerto movements, with quite a lot of orchestration, but III had perhaps too much competing with the backing, and that balance is restored in the new version.
The final step is mastering for volume, a secondary objective.
Cycles is one of my few albums on CD. I've sold a few over the years, so the question is what to do with those. The most efficient option is to keep the old artwork, and have new plain CDs made to replace the old ones, as I did with Burn Of God. It will mean that any liner notes regarding dates will be incorrect, but I can add on-disc printing to mark the distinction. A cheaper alternative would be to print none, but then I'd have to destroy the existing CDs, which is silly. I wonder how many I have..?
