On Monday I officially start my sabbatical. My project is to complete my (as Darth Presley) forthcoming album Rotate. I have already released preliminary versions of: “TriStar,” “737,” “A300,” “707,” and “DC-10.” In the interest of productivity, I’ve created a weekly schedule, and plan to give weekly updates on my work. A semester is approximately 15 weeks long, so for each week I’ve noted what instrument I plan on recording. All but the strings are instruments I will be recording myself. Since I don’t play 15 different instruments, I have assigned the instruments that I want to be the core sound of the album to two weeks, and the lesser “color” instruments each only get one weeks worth of attention. For the strings, I plan on hiring a string quartet in Providence to play some string parts I am writing.
1 Theremin
2 Theremin
3 Bass harmonica
4 Bass harmonica
5 Fretless
6 Fretless
7 Pedal Steel
8 Strings
9 Pedal Steel
10 Trombone
11 Taishogoto
12 Cello
13 Voice
14 Lyricon
15 Modular Synth
I may also choose to sneak in some recording on a piano as well.
Ultimately I reserved the right to alter the schedule. I have some temporary frustrations with the project as my laptop died, and I’ve lost about a month’s worth of data. Fortunately all my recordings are safe as I do that work on an external drive. However, I’m waiting on a replacement laptop. Likewise, I’ve developed an ear infection, so currently my left ear is missing it’s to 3-4k of hearing. I was told it could take two months to fully heal. In the meantime I think I can come up with work arounds for fine tuning the stereo mixes.