Well, after that strange digression it's time to get back on track.
I had a phone call last night from Jen Chaplin. It was totally out of the blue. She said she'd seen this blog, believe it or not (I didn't think anyone was reading, let alone ex-members of the band, let alone ex-wives!). Hello Jen!
Well, the blog starts to get a bit personal here so I'm not going to go into any details, but suffice it to say that Jen and I parted on a not completely hostile note. We had a long chat about the old days of The Empty Vessel and I was reminded of something. At the time we were recording 'Opium of the Masses' on the good old four-track we got a package through the post containing a tape. It had no note with it, nothing to indicate who had sent it. Well, of course, we played it.
On the tape there was someone playing improvising on guitar. From the style, it was clearly Zed. Most of it was actually not that interesting, but there was one section we loved. After a lot of discussion we decided to use it, and in the end it found its way on to the album as the intro to the title track.
It was great to talk to Jen again. She did take slight exception to my comment that I'll be able to do the bass on my new recordings adequately without her. Of course, it goes without saying that it would be a lot better with her playing, but I don't think that's on the cards somehow!
Tuesday 16 January 2007
Wednesday 10 January 2007
The search for meaning
A bit of a digression this time but hopefully by the end you'll see how it's relevant.
Human beings seem to have evolved with a built-in meaning detector. You only have to watch people rationalising their lottery number choices from patterns that 'always work' to see that we see structure where there is no structure.
Personally I believe that there is no 'meaning' to life in this sense. At one point I did, when I was swept up in the religious revival of the 1980s. My escape from that in 1988 led directly to the lyrics of the 'Opium Of The Masses' album in 1989, and also added pressure on my marriage to Jen Chaplin which finally failed in 1990. No, I know I haven't mentioned that one before.
Anyway, my point is that today I was reflecting that one of the reasons why we enjoy music so much might be that for the duration of the song/symphony/whatever we can lose ourselves in a little private world. The more internally consistent the music, the more of a pattern we see, the more our brain is taken into a place which does have meaning. The more our built-in meaning detector is satisfied.
If this were true, you might expect to find some correlation between those who are 'spiritual' and those who enjoy music the most. Is this what we see?
Human beings seem to have evolved with a built-in meaning detector. You only have to watch people rationalising their lottery number choices from patterns that 'always work' to see that we see structure where there is no structure.
Personally I believe that there is no 'meaning' to life in this sense. At one point I did, when I was swept up in the religious revival of the 1980s. My escape from that in 1988 led directly to the lyrics of the 'Opium Of The Masses' album in 1989, and also added pressure on my marriage to Jen Chaplin which finally failed in 1990. No, I know I haven't mentioned that one before.
Anyway, my point is that today I was reflecting that one of the reasons why we enjoy music so much might be that for the duration of the song/symphony/whatever we can lose ourselves in a little private world. The more internally consistent the music, the more of a pattern we see, the more our brain is taken into a place which does have meaning. The more our built-in meaning detector is satisfied.
If this were true, you might expect to find some correlation between those who are 'spiritual' and those who enjoy music the most. Is this what we see?
Wednesday 3 January 2007
A plan for the next year
Christmas has been and gone, it's now 2007 and time to think about what to achieve. I have a five-year plan to record the albums of 'The Empty Vessel' in new versions. I won't be completing one album each year or anything like that: I'll just work on stuff as the mood takes me. However, by the end of 2007 I intend to have achieved the following:
1) Most of an album worth of material at the mixing stage and
2) Most of an album worth of material at the experimenting stage.
Warren Street is the only song I've really made progress on so far, but I have totally nailed the intro. I think it sounds pretty good. For Christmas I got this R-09 pocket digital recorder (see www.edirol.co.uk) and I will be using it to record the sound of a tube train at the actual Warren Street station. This will be mixed into the intro.
The one problem I have is lead guitar. I can do an adequate rhythm guitar and I can make the other instruments sound good enough, but I'm not sure I can cover Zed's lead work. Obviously this is only a problem for the first two albums so I'll concentrate on the third and fourth while I work out how to solve this. I'm either going to have to find someone to play lead or I'm going to have to do it myself - I don't like either option very much.
1) Most of an album worth of material at the mixing stage and
2) Most of an album worth of material at the experimenting stage.
Warren Street is the only song I've really made progress on so far, but I have totally nailed the intro. I think it sounds pretty good. For Christmas I got this R-09 pocket digital recorder (see www.edirol.co.uk) and I will be using it to record the sound of a tube train at the actual Warren Street station. This will be mixed into the intro.
The one problem I have is lead guitar. I can do an adequate rhythm guitar and I can make the other instruments sound good enough, but I'm not sure I can cover Zed's lead work. Obviously this is only a problem for the first two albums so I'll concentrate on the third and fourth while I work out how to solve this. I'm either going to have to find someone to play lead or I'm going to have to do it myself - I don't like either option very much.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
