Monday 4 June 2001

I finally finished the sleeve notes for the CD today, so I have no distractions from working on the score for Gentle Shepherd.  The super-hi-fi 24 bit recording necessitated a trip across the country on Friday.  If it had been bog-standard CD-quality 16-bit I could just have churned out copies on my computer at home, but instead Friday morning was spent with a mobile recording unit parked outside Calum Malcolm's place, recording from one super-duper flash SADiE machine in the truck, to a groovy Augan machine in the music room.  Now Calum has to transfer that onto data CD-Rs to send for mastering.  The slight complication is that no-one really knows how to do this, so the boffins back at the Augan factory in Holland are going to have a go there, and if necessary do it to our album on Calum's machine by remote control from Holland.  Isn't technology wonderful?  Listening to it on studio quality monitors, you can hear every breath, squeak and creak in the silences between the tracks with breathtaking precision - it's almost like being there again - but if you forget to turn the volume down again before we start playing, the music is so loud it will make your ears bleed.

Overheard in the BBC canteen queue today - technician to political correspondent: 'So, what pish are you doing on election night then?'