The Album’s in Sight

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Jun 152008
 

We had a pretty long, and fairly intense, recording session today, getting drums, bass and lead vocals completed for all the remaining album tracks. Since we’ve done most of these in practices for over a year now it was not a case of learning things anew, but rather laying down the definitive takes. After a slightly creaky start we got well under way, with Sean adjusting to playing along with a click track on some songs – not something we’ve ever done before, but a necessary evil of doing the initial base tracks that I’ve been working on over the last couple of months.

We got some good recordings for the three ‘big numbers’; “Performance Evolution” where we managed to navigate through several time signature changes and vocal styles, “Fairytale Propaganda” which we’ve tended to play too fast in the past, but settled on a more laid back tempo today, with a long building introduction partly inspired by Pink Floyd’s “Shine on you Crazy Diamond” and the new song “Freeman” which came together quite naturally and took on a new life with bass and drums.

The two atmospheric spoken-work songs, “PKD Dum Dum” and “The Bell Curve” had a few layers of percussion and vocals added, which I’ll be editing down to fit into the style of the music. “The Parallel Curve” also started life as a slow spoken-word thing, but we’ve tried a number of approaches to it over the last year without success. Today Sean started singing the lyrics at a much faster tempo and it fit well, so we quickly pulled together a rhythm part for him to sing along with and we finally had a recording of the song that actually works.

With all that put together, I have some further overdubs to add, then work can begin on mixing, so I’ll probably not be reporting back on here until I have some completed songs to comment on (i.e. Hype!)

There will also be some lead-up PR work being done over the next few weeks to let people know what’s coming from The Board, including the cover for the album, which is now complete and agreed and the ability to pre-order the album with a special incentive!

Dum Dum

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May 212008
 

I’m progressing well with the base tracks I’m putting together, but took a little detour tonight. Shortly after we recorded ‘The Unofficial National Anthem’, Sean wrote a song called ‘PKD dum dum‘, which had a set of pretty complex chords. Not unplayable, but certainly hard to commit to memory. I’ve been sitting on it for a while now, digging it out every once in a while to see if I can fit some structure to the chords, but it has always evaded me. I tried again tonight, not using the guitar as I would normally, but very slowly on the keyboard instead. What emerged was a dream-like track which wouldn’t seem entirely out of place in Twin Peaks. I love it when a song takes you somewhere you really didn’t expect!

Xenochrony

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Mar 062007
 

One of Zappa’s favourite tricks around the “Joe’s Garage” era and beyond was the practice he called “xenochrony” or “strange synchronisation”. This involved him taking a piece of music (often a studio backing track) and overdubbing it with a totally unrelated (usually a live guitar solo) track from a completely different song. After some fiddling about, the result was a melody that would play what appeared to be insanely complex polyrhythms over the top of the new song. It’s something I’ve always wanted to have a shot at, but lacked the source material to work with.

Then I came across a beautiful bass solo written by Doug Boucher over on his MySpace page. It’s called “Requiem For A Head Laying In A Field In Butler” and is dedicated to the very wonderful Mike Keneally. I really enjoyed the piece and tried playing some haunting theremin over the top, some of which came together quite nicely, and other parts of which were less successful. I then tried putting the piece together with some of Sean’s drumming for (I think) The Winning Smile – two unrelated bits of music coming together to form something new altogether. To this new hybrid track I set about playing guitar and theremin, with pretty good results. There are places where the bass and drums drift apart to give a very laid back feeling, and others where they synchronise exactly, including some where the drums and bass reach a crescendo at the same time before gently tailing off.

As usual, you can find more about the track over at The Lunacy Board site.

All Stand, Please

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Oct 092006
 

We had a good Lunacy Board session last weekend – first time using the new studio set-up, which worked out pretty well, though we didn’t exactly put it all through its paces.

Sean brought a few ideas for lyrics and music, which we mulled over and mangled into the skeleton of a song. I think we managed to capture the intent of the original text, but the music went off in its own direction, as often happens. What we thought would be a deep and meaningful anti-anthem became a perfectly formed 3-minute pop tune, albeit with deeper than the average lyrics.

The piece (“The Unofficial National Anthem”) features Sean on vocals and drums and yours truly on guitar and bass, which was all recorded fairly painlessly with a couple of back-up takes just in case. The result was very pleasing, and positively catchy, if a little ragged around the edges. We’re planning on doing some rehearsal of it before the next session to tighten it up before re-recording, as well as trying something more suited to our musical roots in a Can / Robert Wyatt style.

Embryonic Prog?

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Dec 062005
 

This weekend I had a good little jamming/writing session with a friend of similar musical sensibilities and abilities. He played bass and sang, whilst I was on the keyboard. We tried a few things, and got the start of a backing track together for one of his songs. My keyboard skills were never too hot, but by the end I was feeling quite comfortable in the chord structure we arrived at, and was starting to add some ornamentation to the part.

He has a contact who plays drums, and we talked about looking to put together a recording over a long term with a couple of other like-minded folk. I’m really keen, though it’s almost 2 hours to get to him in the centre of Glasgow which is a bit of a pain, though hopefully worth it in the end. I’d like to focus on keyboards and maybe backing or acoustic guitar parts, and even bring in the theremin once I’ve got a better handle on it.

In the meantime, I’ve still to get the Deserters’ tracks onto CD, which has turned into one of those jobs that gets covered in fits and starts and will hopefully come to an end soon….