There seem to be two people with video cameras scrutinising us today. It's more annoying than you could possibly imagine.
I'm not sure where the idea started from, but we spent the morning putting parts of Black Hole through the vocoder on the smallest of our wood-panelled synths. The vocoder, for the uninitiated, is a synth where the music gets pushed in the shape of what you say into it. I'm not sure that was a very expressive way of explaining it. I'm sorry, I've been drinking.
On this occasion, we're forgoing the microphone in favour of feeding it tracks directly from the computer, which doesn't require any facial gymnastics at all. First we do a vocoder version of the tune, which is fairly conventional, then we get ambitious and see how it copes with polyphonic signals like the piano. It's really great, and mixed low with the piano makes a really interesting texture. Then, because Prince did it on Kiss, we put the hi-hats through the vocoder and that sounds appalling. Finally Matt does a few tracks of harmony using the lead vocal, which sounds almost like normal singing, but just a bit odd. It's hard to see how Black Hole can contain any more funny sounds and textures. Ah well, it's Eric's problem now.
In the afternoon we're visited by Titch Walker, a friend of our old friend Dan Tuite, who is a fine trumpet and flugelhorn player. He's going to replace the pretend trumpet on Cinderella with the real thing, to add verisimilitude to the preposterous fanfare at the beginning, as well as a few subtle textures on the flugelhorn. Once again I marvel at the professional musician with his technical competence and note-reading ability. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. He's done so quickly there's time for some speculative flugelwork in the bridge of Glimmer, and then he squeezes through the camerapeople and makes his escape.
