On Thursday morning I drove Madame and Pest to Glasgow airport for their week at the Red Sea, and with two days off work, settled into a binge of musicmaking; recorded vocals for a couple of songs for the coming-soon Romantic Fiction 2, and for its as-yet-untitled followup. With the help of Plague I’ve got a setup for Cubase and Reason that lets me take advantage of Reason’s excellent orchestral sounds. On Thursday evening I went to Lynsey’s to rehearse for tonight’s Queensferry Arts Fest show, and to record harmonies for Crying in the Street, which she delivered flawlessly. We watched two ‘making-of-the-album’ DVDs, one by Bruce Springsteen and one by The Divine Comedy, both breaking loose from the headphones-clicktrack-layering approach to get the feel of people playing together in a room. You accept risk and hazard in order to avoid sterility and self-centredness in the musicians.
Friday was spent tidying the house and editing the recordings from Thursday, then preparing for the opening party of the Arts Festival, which went well, with a good speech by Baillie Jenny Dawe and a variety of musical performances by myself, Impossible Songs and Tommy MacKay, both sounding better than I’d ever heard them before. I played I’ll Be Back, an old song I’ve revived in a couple of recent solo spots; I was so vibed up that when I got home I unearthed an old backing track for it and knocked it into shape for a future session.
Today, shopping and suffering from the worst aspect of recording – the mind-worm phenomenon where the songs I’ve been working on repeat endlessly and loudly in my head. Then down to the Priory to play WaveForms at the art exhibition. This attracted the attention of the Tai Chi teachers who were doing a session in the afternoon and they asked me to play for their demonstrations, after which I joined the class. It looks likely now I’ll create some similar music for the video they’re working on, just for their students. A glorious day and I took a walk to the Picnic Cafe and enjoyed Duncan Smith’s photographs, on show there.
Pest texts me daily to tell me what a great time they’re having at Sharm el Sheikh.