Friday 25 May 2001

Another day glued to the computer working on the CD. It's slow and laborious doing the 2nd edit - the first one is always more fun, as you hear the record gradually come together, whereas you spend the second searching for tiny fixes and working on little details. There's an attitude in some quarters that it's a bit infra dig to do lots of edits, but the truth is that even with hundreds (and I invariably do hundreds of edits) you still can't turn a lousy performance into a good one. All you can do is minimise the distractions from the good bits. I anticipate a long night of editing ahead - I was going to start at 6 this morning but couldn't get out of bed ...

I invigilated a harpsichord exam at the RSAMD this afternoon for a bit of light relief (!), with time for a quick word with Graham their in-house recording engineer - the studio there has a wonderful Neupert fortepiano in it which is rather useful. 

The second McFalls album came back from the factory this week, and I'm rather proud of it. Everything from James MacMillan to smashing crockery and me playing E flat harmonica. Unfortunately they included in the booklet a photo of me laughing uproariously while holding two saucers in a threatening manner.

Adrian left a message on my answering machine last night to say he was playing a gig in Bath, and in the hall there was an 18th century poster for The Gentle Shepherd - 'if you want to know what's on it, ring me back'. It was for one of the English versions given at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, but a different cast to the production I've got the scores for ...

Meanwhile, it looks like the Prefab Sprout project may be about to be resurrected in a slightly different form - hope so anyway.