Sunday 13 December 2009

Thanks to Jim Donegan for his 'I've just heard you playing the harpsichord on the radio' text last night - after a bit of investigation, I discovered that Iain MacInnes's album is out! The ideal present etc. ... Listening to it once it had been through a broadcast compressor did help to reinforce my opinion that pianos have just got too big - I was playing a Bosendorfer Imperial which makes a pretty huge noise, and as a result I wasn't hitting it very hard. So although I'm being reasonably rhythmic, it doesn't have the dynamic impact I wanted it to. It's not such a problem in the piano tracks on Spring Any Day Now (also an Imperial, oddly enough, the one Peter Gabriel now has at Real World) because Tony Kime recorded that one like a classical record with full dynamic range, rather than with separation between the instruments. Still, piano and overdubbed harpsichord together make quite a racket for accompanying bagpipes: I don't think I've ever heard that sound before. It's here from about 17'45 in (and at 32'30), for the next few days.