Thursday, February 9, 2012

Still In The Madness

Again I worked on New Years Madness. I was able to finish up the piano part in midi and it took quite a while being that the ending is rather complex and with places of syncopation. I will have to go through it again, making sure it is actually right, but I need to remove myself from that after the hours spent working at it today. I have yet to fix and again alter the tempo transition. That change goes from 120 to 230 BPM or nearly doubling the tempo. I am unclear right now of how to best incorporate that transition using the midi structure that actually holds the tempo, in a way that allow for a smooth duplication with instrument and vocal recordings. I do know that making the shift in tempo from existing will cause those analog recordings to fall out of sync when the new tempo change begins. I won't attempt to keep the existing part that will remain correct for a preference to make it all anew and hopefully better.

I also went through the mid piece lead guitar parts as practice, to keep it fresh for when the time comes to record it correctly. I may get to that tomorrow, or then still I might move on to a different song for a day or three in order to keep myself from burn out. I have found that burn out due to the repetition in this process is a big factor of why I am so slow to finish anything. It is because I have never kept a schedule that rotates the music from time to time or regularly. I've always simply stayed on one song with the hope that I would reach completion, though only a couple of them have actually made it to their end, completed in these past ten or fifteen years. I have to remedy that. Hopefully working with this list can solve this issue, leading to a bunch of finished works by years end.

Time has come today and so forward we go creating more with the memory of this song burned in my mind.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Back to Madness

It has been a few weeks since I wrote. Music has been rather low on the list of priority, but, thankfully that is changing again. This week I have practiced some, and as well, I have done some recording. It seems that I am finding it a problem to remember or to find the will to write of the progress immediately after. Today is different. I wrote it out, three well made paragraphs, then the computer failed in the save function disappearing the document, unsaved, hate it when that happens. Now a couple hours, dinner and a movie later, I attempt to re-write or otherwise write something similar. I am using a different word processor this time.

I had left the song New Years Madness to lose its priority after another New Years came and went, yet again. Last night during my practice session I decided to make a list of songs to finish, seven of them. The list has the song titles followed by the existing tracks and their quality (good, rough, finished, needs editing, etc) to work from. Today I had the urge to work on New Years Madness again. As a motivation, last night I had a thought about the structure of this song. It has a one beat followed by its counter part on the three followed by what I would call a four plus ( with it being at four point five, or the eighth after the four (in 4/4 time). I have been hearing this in my head for years and attempted to record it using different guitars or differing electronic effects between the one and that counterpart, though it never sounded right. Last night was an epiphany, use the piano! I tried it, though my piano playing is still very elementary, and it came out sounding pretty good after a good while practicing. I decided to record it as a rough draft track. Having done that with very limited success and a lot of errors, I decided to write it out in midi by following what I had developed on the piano. I spent many hours there after writing out the score. I ran out of steam before completing it, though there is but thirty seconds to a minute remaining to complete.

It sounds pretty good, progress is being made. I believe that I am going to have to alter the tempo more, going through that transition that brings the tempo up from 120 BPM to something like 200 BPM (I can't remember the final tempo in the moment). If I do decide to alter the tempo, that choice in turn voids the three guitar tracks and the vocal track, leaving them forced to be re-recorded. I may do that before I am done as its sound is still off (to my ear) through that transition.

Progress is happening again, it is good to be back!