Only 7 hours work this time – still way above target, but getting slightly better.
I think it’s length that has the most effect on how long it takes to do, not complexity. This one is the simplest I’ve done yet – it’s a bit of a cop out really – just a light jazz rock piece with a bossa beat. There’s only two sections, and a very simple melody. The form is equally uninspired – Intro, Head, Solo 1, Solo 2, Solo 3, Head ending. As for the ending: Lamest. Ending. Evaar. But I couldn’t think of anything else.
However, it’s not all gloom – I rather like the bass riff, and it was fun playing around with the keyboards. The solo on the Rhodes sound isn’t wonderful, and I actually meant to go back and redo it, but in the end I couldn’t be bothered, and it’s not _that_ bad. Besides, when I re-recorded the piano, I’d played it against the solo, so if I changed the solo, I’d have to re do the piano again.
Another good thing is the duet with guitar and flute at the end. Unfortunately in both cases I needed to record them in sections and stick them together later. (Only two for the flute, but one per phrase for the guitar). I would have been able to do them in single takes eventually, but it would have taken all night. Especially in the case of the guitar.
This one was good practice for me at play the guitar from music – I’d come up with the melody on the keyboard, then printed it out so I could read it to play the flute and guitar parts. But for Guitar I don’t usually pay any attention to the specific notes I’m playing. I find a scale or two that suits the piece, and just fiddle around on it, so it was a good discipline excercise to not only have to know what I was playing – but to more or less sight read as well.
I have mixed feelings about the flute. It ends up working ok for this piece – and if it was going to work in any of them, this would be the one. But unfortunately my flute playing skill is at the level of your average primary school band member. I have no real problem with the fingering – it’s close enough to Sax in most cases that it comes second nature to me (except I’m not used to nearly dropping the instrument when I play a C), it’s the intonation and getting the right note. Too often I squeak the notes when I get carried away, or I get the wrong register, or worse, I manage to get both at once and end up with this weird confused sound that somehow spans two octaves. Worst of all, I’m absoluely horribly out of tune most of the time. I nearly had to put a big warning in front of this piece saying “Danger may permanently damage your ears”. Between old strings on the guitar, and crap flute playing, the duet portion was absolutely painful.
Fortunately I was able to use the pitch correction feature in Audition to fix it up a bit, so it went from horribly embarrasing, to not too bad at all in just a couple of clicks ;) (Though I do feel rather ashamed at having to use it).
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