Sunday, July 17, 2005

Progressive Progress....

I was up early, despite having stayed up till 2am both last night and the night before, and I compiled and burned a prog rock CD for the car - even did a cover and a label.

I decided to keep it "old" prog and to keep it British - so no Rush, Marillion, Spock's Beard or Focus....

Tracklist
Gentle Giant - The Boys in the Band (Octopus) 1972
Yes - Heart of the Sunrise (Fragile) 1971
Soft Machine - The Soft Weed Factor (Six) 1973
Jethro Tull - Aqualung (Aqualung) 1971
Van der Graaf Generator - Killer (H to He) 1970
Hawkwind - Master of the Universe (In Search Of Space) 1971
Emerson Lake and Palmer - Trilogy (Trilogy) 1971
Genesis - Firth of Fifth (Selling England by the Pound) 1973
King Crimson - Starless and Bible Black (Starless and Bible Black) 1974
Pink Floyd - Brain Damage/Eclipse (Dark Side of the Moon) 1973

Tasty!

Then I relaxed a bit - listened to a Schumann String Quartet and then, while Anne watched the golf (the commentary is very relaxing, especially Peter Aliss), I leafed through my new book of "Apartments".

This made me exhilarated and depressed at the same time. The former because so many of these rooms are exactly the kind of rooms I'd like to live in and the latter because I know I never will...

Rather than moping around or watching the golf, I decided I'd do some real work on the new album, my first attempt for over three months.

I recorded the programmed backing tracks and 1st acoustic guitar on 21 November 2004. (I added vocals to this on the same day and it's these versions which are on the "Deeperdown" EPs released throughout May).

On 9 April this year I added electric guitar (and dabbled with some synth lines over the top but took it no further).

Today I added a 2nd acoustic guitar to the previous synthless backing tracks, bringing the line up to Drums, Bass, Keyboards, 2 Acoustic Guitars and Electric Guitar. Then I added demo vocals. I'll be listening to these recordings over the next week or so to see if I like them or not. It may be that I will still end up re-recording everything...

A good day.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see your tracks on the prog cd weren't filed by year, why?

Cloudland Blue Quartet said...

The running order is based on the music rather than the year it was recorded. You're right to question this though as I'll often do compilations where the running order is determined by something other than the music itself - e.g. shortest track through to longest track, or, indeed, release date of the track...