Adapting and collaging sound...

This morning we watched Dr Who from Christmas Day. It was not bad, but the adversary was pretty lame to be honest. I need another Dalek story but I think we'll wait a while for that seeing as the big enemy this year is going to be the Cybermen...

After lunch I set about creating a new album...

I had recently happened upon a piece of classical music whilst on shuffle play on the old Jukebox. It's Edward Elgar's Opus 70, Sospiri, an adagio for string orchestra, harp and organ....

My original intention was to take just the first chord and use that with other chords taken from elsewhere to build up a kind of "string machine" for future projects. But I ended up taking various different phrases from the five minute long piece and building three new fifteen minute collages of sound based around the themes....

I really enjoyed this...

(note from the future - this recording became this album - available on Bandcamp)...



It's now almost five weeks since I broke my ankle and, in that time, I haven't picked up a musical instrument....

And now here I am, creating a new CBQ album without playing a single note myself. But it's definitely a new creation and , although it contains many elements of the original Elgar piece, it's quite different...

I also added a couple of drum loops and some sound effects here and there to spice things up a bit...

And so, by 7:45 and the arrival of sister Pam and my mum for a visit, I was finishing off and burning the first copy of the new CD...

Pam was round to see the Steve Harley DVD I bought a few weeks back along with the David Bowie live performance of the entire "Reality" album - while my mum brought a book to read...

As we settled and got the drinks and nibbles out, I played the new recordings. My mum pronounced the first piece to be "a bit morose". However, later on, after Messrs Harley and Bowie, the third piece was declared to be "much better and more uplifting"...

This is weird, as both pieces consist of the same elements...

The Harley performance was a wee bit dodgy in places - he's better sampled in the flesh rather than on DVD - whilst the Bowie show was excellent - many of these songs he'll probably never play live again, in fact only five made it into the setlist for the subsequent tour - which I also have on DVD...

Much wine and beer was consumed (except by driving mother) and we also listened to four early tracks by the Tubes followed by Ohio Players' Greatest Hits whilst discussing continuity errors on Corrie, Eastie and Holby...

A good night after a productive day...