A change of heart

Well really a slight change of mind.  I have made two changes to the last sub-section (1.3.3. Gravity).  The first was I wasn't happy with my humming harmonies and so with a stroke of typical genius (and modesty) I have instead substituted some mellotron playing.  Much better.  

The second was a couple of concerns about the ending, having listened to it.  There is a low humming which comes in and lasts up until the backwards cymbals.  At the front of the whole track it is fine, but here, backwards as the outro it felt like there was a little bit too much of a gap between the fade of the hum and the cymbals.  Also the hum is an E note, while this section is in D. Really the hum needed a couple of changes.

Option 1: pitch-shift the audio to take it down a tone, easily done, but doesn't fix the gap.

Option 2: same as above, but add a bit of the same sound in to cover the gap

Option 3: rerecord the first section without the hum, and superimpose the hum at the right pitch

And the winner: option 4: make temporary changes to the first sub-section, lowering the hum and bringing it in slightly earlier especially for this ending.

Something that appeals to my slightly twisted sense of humour is that this ending still sounds like it is the intro backwards, but you would have to be pretty observant to realise that it is different from the actual intro. 

Tidying up

I have come to realize that in my determination to blog the whole process of creating this album, warts and all, that this means I should blog the more mundane parts as well as the exciting creative ones, as all sessions tweaking the music are part of the creative process.

Also, this particular post, I have already tried to post once, a couple of days ago and something went awry and it got lost in the aether.

So I had come to realize that there was something wrong with the brass band parts in the current section - I went through and checked the harmonies.  Yes, that was what was wrong - so I did a bit of tweaking and changing - I am now more convinced that it is right.

The other potential problem with the brass band parts is one that my wife commented on - it is "loose" (as in the opposite of "tight") - the parts don't play exactly together.  This was kind of deliberate to give it a live feel, but my wife seems to think it is too loose.  I will have to let it marinade and see how I feel after a few plays.

The other thing I tidied up was a problem wit the brass in the African part - for some reason it didn't sound right.  I worked out what it was.  There are two parts, so most of the time there should be two notes at once.  It was not working out like that, it was only playing one note at once, despite the instructions.  Whichever note was started second out of a pair caused the first to stop playing.  So I spent a long time separating the two parts (they were together in one MIDI track), and then got the sampler to load in a second copy of the trumpet samples. Huzzah, this worked.  The downside - the computer has to load the samples in twice (I think), but the upside is I can now separate them in the stereo image.

Finally I added a bass to the African bit, live recorded bass, even though it's quite fast.  I like it, it's lively and interesting, and it adds good feel.