Monday 6 August 2012

Metamorphic

This is a band that I played with in Spring of this year. Should I be sharing this yet? Is it some kind of secret? I assume I have permission as super writer conductor lady has sent me whole album. I'm not really 'playing' on it to speak of - save some token cello bass notes on the last track 'Light Up Yourself'. Thus I feel I have the right to dissect it a bit without seeming scathing/arrogant/as if I'm blowing my own trumpet, which by the way, I cannot anyhow as my playing was dreadful. It took me ages to read the music and even when I had painstakingly worked out where the notes were it was all too fast and I only realised too late that the notes on the second line of the arco section were 'f' not 'b'. Disaster. No really. The writer conductor lady shall remain unnamed for now. Let's call her Mrs Mighty. So Mrs Mighty comes up to me and says "Do you read music?" and I said "It has been known." Thus around three weeks later a ton of orchestral jazz script music lands on my doorstep from Leeds. It's for the cello. I place the music on the top of my to do pile, but for the next week it remains there. Untouched and unloved. Part of me thinks "It's not possible." I ponder the merit of sending an email asking her to find someone else. Then I clear a space on my desk and look up the bass clef. I don't stop until I have written all the notes above the stave. Now to figure out where on Earth they are on the cello. Surprisingly the main problem didn't arise from the notes (except the aforementioned f/b calamity). The real PITA came from the bizarre snake like rhythms and the time signatures which changed approximately every three bars. Which, by the way, were NEVER in normal 4/4. So I practised. I played to the recording. I played without. Sometimes even playing the same four notes over and over until I felt I could bridge the gap. I hardly bridged the gap. But I reckon in some form I did manage to pole vault over some really nasty rocks. https://www.dropbox.com/s/7yl6lkyfra8ml6a/Metamorphic%202nd%20Album%20Mastered%20mp3s.zip Recorded in Spring sometime thereabouts, 2012, Leeds and London

No comments:

Post a Comment