Sigh, a long and hard, non-stop day of hacking away at the rock face of music today. The most complex track on The Dusty Mirror is Fear Of The Thing Itself, a song I'd already recorded years before. Today I revisited it and started to note and re-record all of the vocal layers.
Many lines have one vocal, sometimes at one octave, sometimes at a octave higher. Some lines have 3 or 4 layers, and some sung in certain ways. When singing in my normal voice of today the results are much more musical and similar than the old vocals, but more conventional as a result. There was a certain Tolkien Dwarf-like chant to many of the vocals, which I like. They aren't tuneful but that very fact makes them work in a nice way. To sing them like this I'd have to do an impression of myself from years ago - but there's no need; I'll keep many of the old vocals, and add a few new when needed to make a unique duet with a person now gone, the me from 4 and a half years ago.
There are so many layers here that the recording process is time consuming and exhausting even when I know what I need to record. I have 56 individual wav files, some in stereo. Many need lining up multiple times.
My left ear is still horribly blocked. I'm as deaf there as an ear with ear-plugs, or underwater, so very muffled that I can't recall what the real world should sound like. My voice is resonant and deep and strange there. It's annoying. I must continue with my ear-oils and make prayerful offerings to Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia!
Onwards we forge. How quickly the days fly. How precious each hour is.
