I’ve been working on the audio & video recordings from this gig last weekend, and my poor aging PC is feeling the brunt. It’s a shade over three years old now, a humble Athlon XP 1900+, and while it has served me admirably, it has always had a penchant to run rather warm. I think it actually may be the motherboard (a Gigabyte GN400Pro) – I’ve read about a few problems with inaccurate temperature readings on this particular board, so it may be that it’s not infact overheating – it just thinks it is. Nevertheless, it brings my audio work to a spectacular halt each time. Processing slows to a crawl, audio stutters, the poor machine starts emitting a series of strangled beeps, and then has to go for a bex and a good lie down before it’s good for anything. Now I’m not one to deny my PC the right to its R & R – it’s getting toward the twilight years in PC terms after all, but I still need to do my work.

The recording & video itself are in fair to moderate shape. Some of the problems reflect those on the night – Cornel’s vocal parts are virtually inaudible, and the pitch is pretty wobbly (due to the fact that they were virtually inaudible on the night as well, so he couldn’t hear himself). The acoustic guitar was a bit out of tune for a couple of songs (again, we didn’t catch it, because we couldn’t hear it). Nothing irreparable, but then you start to encounter the slippery slope of concert recording post-production fixes. The acoustic is out? Well, let’s just grab the Maton & plug it in, we can re-do that one easy enough. Hmm… except now the vocal doesn’t quite sit with the acoustic for a couple of lines. Ok, where’s my SM58, I’ll just fix that up… oh, but the sound is a little different, I can’t quite match the EQ, and it’s really obvious where all the bleed drops out in the new section, so I’d better re-record the whole song – just so it matches sonically of course – I’ll reproduce my performance on the night, flubs and all, so it’s honest. Oh, well, except for that note, and this one here… and ohhh that one was quite bad. I know I can sing them correctly, so I’ll just do them here, and it’ll be more of a “hypothetical gig recording”.

The next thing you know, you’ve got INXS’s Live Baby Live, which while it has the word “live” comprising a full two thirds of its title, ironically contains about the opposite ratio of actual live recorded material.

Now, where’s that autotune plugin?

I picked up the “latest” Beatles album the other day as a Christmas present for Dad, but I couldn’t resist giving it a spin myself before I wrapped it up and stuck a ribbon on it. Now I think I’m going to have to get another – this is a rather intriguing musical journey into Beatles-land.

Mind you it’s certainly not one for the purists – there are some pretty huge liberties taken with the material here – but as far as the “how is it to listen to?” test (always the most important one, I think) it passes with colours of some sort.

George & Giles Martin have mangled & recontextualised this incredibly familiar material (as well as some lesser known and unreleased snippets) into something that’s great fun to listen to. The orchestral crescendo leading up to Get Back brought a huge smile to my face, and the acoustic/orchestral version of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Caveats – it’s a bit odd hearing the Beatles recordings sound so clean. I’ve been reading some griping on this front from audio engineering folk who feel that it doesn’t have the character of the originals, and that it’s basically tantamount to trying to cut the Mona Lisa into little circles and re-assemble it as pointillist art. I suppose they have something of a point, but I must admit I find the simile is a bit troubled. For starters, you haven’t actually destroyed anything; the originals are still sitting safe and sound on the shelf, so at worst it’s a poor derivative work which you are fully at liberty to not listen to!

For me? Well I grew up listening to the Beatles (thanks Dad!) and I don’t see this as a betrayal of the material at all. Is it a cynical marketing/moneymaking exercise? Well… maybe. Do I care? Not really in the slightest. I’m enjoying the music too much.

In other news, we ran through all the covers for the T3E gig last night, and it seems I had managed to forget large swathes of my keyboard parts. Not good. Nose to the grindstone today then, as we’ve only got one more rehearsal before Saturday (although we’ll probably have a little bit of time to run things in soundcheck). 24-track recording appears to be the order of the day, so hopefull there will be something to show for all this…

…now we just need to play halfway reasonably