Monday 15th
Revisit the Moby Grape song.
Create harmony vocal using Melodyne. Copy main vocal to a seperate track – apply the melodyne bridge plug in as an insert on that track – record the audio into Melodyne. Detect the melody in Melodyne – that is an automatic function, then manually fine tune the note seperations so that is is understanding it as I do. This vocal is already identical to mine so I can simply move individual syllables to different notes to find harmonies that complement the original. This is a very new thing for me, and I’m sure I must use it sparingly. I’m basically able to do what Jon Hassel was doing with his trumpet and harmonizer in the 1980’s.. but I can modify the effect for each individual note. I spend a couple of hours trying this and that and decide to only use it at the end of the song, but it definitely adds, without having a communal sing along vibe. I think I prefer it to sound like some perfect robot voice, rather than Graham Nash.
The other thing I need to work on is the drum track. Spend the rest of the day experimenting with different fills, types of fills, etc. All in digital performer on the drum page – basically painting drum fills. By the end of the day I’m feeling much more confident.
Tuesday 16th
Drums all day. Sounds pretty good when I’m finished. Lost an hour due to computer crash, rare these days though, and I hadn’t saved the tambourine idea. i think the second try was better than what i’d lost anyway. Short day as a consequence of email and phone business most of morning and I need to practice for Saturday’s golf tournament, so I have to finish by 3 to beat the slow golfers to the course. Ironically I arrive in their midst and play a very slow 9 which is not particularly encouraging.