So much for the daily-blog-post idea! So, what happened was that the contact mic seemed to be messed up and the MBox was crackling all over the output and all I had to monitor on were my (nice but not flat-response) Bang & Olufsen earbuds. Everything seemed hopeless and doomed when a friend came to the rescue, lending me some kit he had lying around, and testing a bunch of stuff to get it all working. Result: One binned MBox, one thankfully intact contact mic, one slim chance left to actually complete RPM by Saturday!

The past few days I’ve been working on a single mammoth track – 27 minutes long!!!! All from a single recording, and it moves quite slowly, so it’s going to take some patience to listen through to it. Hoping to send it out into the world on Thursday or Friday, although after tonight’s tweaks I think it’s nearly ready. It’s been a really interesting process. I’ve been using Logic’s Flex time tool and doing a lot of time-stretching, but I’ve also learned how to automate not just volume and pan, but also inserted effects and sends, which has been raaaaaather exciting (for me).

Nightbirds is only three minutes long, so I’ve got to finish the mammoth, and somehow find another five minutes by the end of Saturday. I’m not sure yet whether I want to extend Nightbirds (now that I can actually hear what I’m doing properly it might be a bit easier to work on!) to be double its length or just start on a shiny new piece. I have some bits of voices from Borough Market. And a very nice squeaky door from the Barbican… guess I’ll have to see how I go!