Wednesday started with the delivery of three paintings for the annual Bickerton Village Hall Art Exhibition, then later the Donovan night, which was a lovely evening as John's events always are.
I performed 'Donovan Before I Was Even Born' and 'Superman Sunshine' as planned. Both songs are a little similar, having simple two-chord riffs for the verses and a few single-strum chord changes for a chorus of sorts. The melody is generally monotone and tracks the chords. This is a symptom of my writing for guitar. Next time I'll write as I do normally, at piano, and work out the melody, then try to adapt it to guitar. I was unhappy with my performance of the first song. Deborah fortunately video recorded this, allowing me to coldly analyse my performance. I needed to take more time. My few fumbling mistakes were due to rushing, and the feeling I needed to rush, when this was not at all needed. A pause to get it right was required.
The second song fared better, though I was somewhat unhappy with all of my vocals. My throat was tense all night. I felt thrown in at the deep end to perform 'Colours'. I'd volunteered to help with the vocals, only to find myself asked to sing AND play guitar. Due to these events and the library strums this year, I've played guitar chords and sung about 4 or 5 times this year, this for the first time in my life. On my recordings, my guitar is predominantly melodic lines, very rarely chords. I still find it quite a challenge to sing and strum at once. I suppose it's a compliment that others want me to do both, it must appear that I can easily do it. 'Colours' was also 2 semitones lower than the official recording, starting on F# and moving down to a low A; an ugly range for me, the A is the very bottom of my vocal range. I could manage the high F# perhaps better, except that John, who sang alternate verses, sang low, so I'd have to leap an octave up as I followed him. All in all, it was a bad song for me. I volunteered because it was stated as an ensemble piece (I imagined a group of us all singing), but it turned out to be John and I (with help from John Miller and some in the audience!). I didn't expect to have to play too, and it was a lower key from the song which I'd practised. All tricky challenges to navigate!


Yesterday was spent recovering. I sent Tor details of the new album release, and sent off an email about a Fall in Green performance at The Little Street Cellar. I also promoted a little sale of SFXEngine, sent off my new single to Pete Saxer, then watched the latest episode of his YouTube show, The Flip Side.
Listening to the indie music on The Flip Side made me reconsider my mixes on Another Violet Night. I was hit by a sudden paranoia about the mixing of the 'parents' song. So, today, I made a few adjustments. The changes were raising the high pass filter on the vocals, and lowering their overall volume, adding a high-shelf to the strings (the whole song needed more sparkle), and lowering the bass a little. I made more changes, but gradually rolled back on almost all of them. I ended by comparing the mix to 'Hello Earth' by Kate Bush, which is somewhat similar in feeling. Kate's sounded mid-heavy and far more like my mix before I made the changes! This made me feel more relaxed. An odd thing about raising the high-pass on vocals is that it seems to make them louder, clearer, despite technically making them quieter.
The other tracks were fine, but I decided to add Zeitraum effect on the 'Daytime Teevee' vocals. They weren't too bad before, but this made them a tiny bit more interesting. This was because I listened to one of my favourite songs, 'Kinda Outta Luck' by Lana del Ray, and I noted how many of the vocals were layered.
Between mixing today, I toned a panel and traced over the underdrawing for the Claire Luce portrait.