Real World

 Wow what a place
OK, wish I'd not brought the MPC.It's not fast enough for this kind of thing but fortunately I did bring the Octatrack. No room for the DFAM and Grrind yet but will take one of them in today and squeeze it in somehow. Will search for a few decent sounds in the MPC and get tracks ready to play. 

Tuesday now, just today and tomorrow to go. Yesterday I sorted my Easel Command deal, which made me happy. I also played grand piano on a track (very simply) and squelchy synth on a reggae track as well as some weirdness to Andy's track (which I got lucky recording since I cocked up the monitoring and did it without hearing). Overdubs and tidying/arranging today. The girl Becca is incredible - not just as s singer/song writer but as a pianist. Predict she'll go far. 

Thursday and I'm home - drove back last night in the fractionally cooler air and made good time cos roads were quiet, probably due to England match. Lots to process but I'll come back to that. Meanwhile, the last of the photos

OK, up early on Friday morning. Yesterday I installed the air cond and hopefully secured the window fitting - may need a pipe extension yet, we'll see. Does seem to really do its job, so hoping for a proper test this afternoon.

Back to RW and I woke with some thoughts. 

Really wish I'd had time to prepare a song for everyone to work on. I think that'd have made a big difference to how comfortable I felt amongst all those people who could play so well. I also think that for the kind of music being worked on, I needed to try and fit in with stuff not covered well already. My grooves were a bit pointless given how good the two drummers were and there's no denying the MPC is just too slow to use in that environment, its synths just not interesting-sounding in comparison to the magic Otso was able to summon whenever needed. The Octatrack was OK but, again, I was making up patterns from scratch and as everyone was basically ready to do a take all the time, the fact I only heard my patterns for the first time when I faded them up during recording was too seat of the pants, even for me. Some things worked, others didn't. Having the Trigon-6 saved me from being completely unable to play owt and I guess a few synths of my own plus weird shit like the Soma Pipe or other distinctive instruments/FX would have given me more scope Even something I knew well like the MS20 would have been a godsend. Anyway, I muddled through and learned a heck of a lot about how these things work. If I were invited again (by no means certain), I'd do it very differently. Oh, and working with headphones, doing my own mix of every performer (including myself) totally blew my mind and took several days to even get close to hearing properly. With my back to the Protools display I had no idea of my levels compared to everyone else so had to work basically deaf and blind. So yeah, I don't think I represented myself too well, especially as I couldn't hear the Octatrack loops at all until given a MIDI start command, which only happened as we were about to start recording. No idea what everyone thought of me but they probably put me down as a bumbling amateur, which is how I felt sometimes. Fortunately they were really nice, kind and supportive cos they're lovely people. I confess I'd like to do at least one more so I could bring something to the table - sadly all the Margaret stuff in the lead-up, plus the bloody house renovations totally screwed me. Oh well. 

 

End of brain dump :)

Woke this morning with Becca's soft piano tune going round my head. No idea what I'll do musically today except it'll be in the cool part of the studio. Oh and PRS was down so any gear treats I get to console myself will be minor - an FX pedal or something (maybe the Soma Warp or Strymon Timeline MX). And since everyone plays for 15 mins at a trot without changing, would definitely take the RC-505 looper so that I don't go insane trying to match that. :)