Sunday, November 06, 2011

The hoven of beet...

Playlist
Cloudland Blue Quartet - 2011 Demos
Beethoven - Violin Concerto

Up again around 4:30 - once I wake I just can't sleep - there's a lot going on in my head right now...

Working on the new LP keeps me occupied and my thoughts away from health issues...

So, today quite a bit of time was spent taking the new album forward, with much re-working, tweaking, re-mixing, lyric writing, singing and even a couple of bits of guitar playing...

At present there are eight tracks I'm working on, of which only two feature anything more than voice and samples - there's only one track with no samples (so far) and, today, three of the tracks made the move from instrumental to song, changing the instrumental to song ratio from 6:2 to 3:5 - I say "song", but, for those three, we're not talking verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, fade here...

I have another four acoustic guitar based ideas too which may be "worked up"...

Elsewhere, a visit to Anne's mum's sunny house...



...to deliver a Beethoven CD starring Mr Yehudi Menuhin (Mary and Anne's dad, Andrew, saw and listened to Mr M playing this very piece in the 1960's at Edinburgh's Usher Hall and his version has always been one of her favourites)...

In addition, a Dad's Army DVD was delivered...

Tasty scones, cakes and coffee were recieved in exchange...

Then, I took Anne home as she wasn't 100% and drove to Loanhead to pick up my mum and we returned to the hospital to visit Pam...



...finding her still bright and breezy and, for the first time in two weeks, she didn't fall asleep during a visit at which I was present...



Later on, the nurses took her with her great big bed to another room with a big TV in it so she could watch "Strictly" - her first TV for two weeks...

On the way home with mum, I of course had the latest demo of the new LP playing in the car, eliciting the inevitable question "is that you son?"...

Mum commented on the drums being a bit loud on one (at that point) instrumental track...

In the evening, I took her advice on board and, while adding a vocal to the track, took the opportunity to remix it re the drums...

Maybe she deserves a credit once it's finished...

Considerable time was spent on this track, getting the samples to line up properly to allow it to become a song rather than a meandering instrumental piece created by chance...

Anyway, that was Sunday...

Highlight of the Day : Anne's mum's enjoyment of Beethoven...

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