Sunday 30 October 2005

I've been checking the Lion CD to see if it makes sense - the real shock has been listening to it at home with a real CD player as the source rather than my iPod. Even at 320bps, it's startling how much better and more involving it sounds on proper grown-up equipment.  This year is the first time I've consciously started listening to music on worse-sounding equipment for the sake of convenience - and let's face it, the iPod and its friend the iTrip are pretty convenient as gadgets go. But the shock of hearing what I've been missing all year is rather instructive. It sounds much more like music you would listen to rather than just something you'd have on in the background while you got on with your life.

One track - Captain Hume's Lamentations - was obstinately refusing to sit in its place in the running order until I realised that we'd recorded it at 392Hz, a semitone lower than everything else on the record, with the intention of speeding it up later. And sped up to 415, it fits perfectly!

So now that's done, it's back to the logistics of forthcoming concerts and broadcasts, booking flights, finding rehearsal venues, and lots of other things too dull to recount. We've also had emails from promoters in Germany in Austria who liked Fiddler Tam, so I wonder if a short European tour might present itself in 2007