Sunday 30 September 2012

The Mackintosh album is gradually taking shape. It’s strange to go back to recordings where we had a bit of a ‘the next take will be the best one’ mentality, rather than ‘we’ve only got two or three goes, and then that’s it’. So I have spent an awful lot of time over the last few months staring at screens that look like this, and trying to figure out whether take 16 really is an improvement on take 3 (it rarely is).

Still, the 2nd edit is done, and even though there will have to be a 3rd for final tweaks, I’m now thinking about the running order and trying to strike a balance between reflecting the shape of Mackintosh’s 1783 book, and having a sequence that makes musical sense if you start listening at the beginning and stick with it till the end.  I nearly didn’t make my 2nd edit deadline of Friday night as our home broadband connection has been erratic for weeks, and on Friday it was completely dead all day. So I had to decamp the editing gear to the university, rather than my usual alternative venue of the hammock in the garden.  Still, in two weeks’ time I will no longer be one of Virgin Media’s customers, so some good has come out of it (assuming BT can do better of course).

key items L-R: score, notebook, tea, laptop, Grado SR-60 headphones

I’ve been inviting various musicians to take part in our next Aldeburgh project in March, and the reply emails have been quite entertaining. My favourite opening lines have been “Blimey!” and “O LORD JESUS I'D F$&@ING LOVE TO!” You’ll have to guess who wrote which.