Immediate Payoff

Morning earworm: Vicarious, Tool. That'll get you going - lol.

The deed is done. "Arecibo" was taken off line and deleted at 9:07 yesterday. Not the easiest choice in the world, but a necessary one. I suspect that it is not entirely coincidental that yesterday was one of my most productive and creative days in a long time - housework and chores done, and not one but two song fragments appeared. As if that weren't enough, the two ideas are about as different as they can possibly be, to the point that they might not even belong on the same CD. One is sort of an experimental vocal piece, coming from some other listening over the weekend; the other, a strangely odd-metered tribal instrumental, which is evolving some Tool overtones, possibly resulting in this morning's earworm.

Continuing on yesterday's discussion of unusual listening - I quite by chance caught a piece on NPR Sunday morning discussing a new album by Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble, featuring a capella arrangements of early Armenian folk songs and church hymns with sax improvisations over the top. I can't help it, I just find this sort of thing so unspeakably cool. It almost immediately brought to mind the Bulgarian Women's Choir and pop chanteuse Imogen Heap, with their dense harmonies and Eastern European influence. Naturally, I thought this would be something cool to explore, and soon remembered that I have a stack of lyrics buried somewhere in the Bunker awaiting music - not mine, of course, but from an old collaborator / writing partner. One of these immediately suggested itself for such an application. While I do have the tech to pull it off, it is so far outside both my experience and comfort zone that the challenge is too great to pass up.

The downside is purely of a practical nature -work on both of these is revealing shortcomings in the current studio set-up, admittedly still under construction; which means I'm looking at at least a half-day of physically rearranging and rewiring stuff. The continuous upgrade - a necessary evil. It needs doing, but can potentially disrupt the creative momentum, even though it involves a measure of creativity all its own. Oh, the challenges I face - lol.

And somewhere in there I have to make dinner, too. Sure hope we aren't rehearsing tonight - there are a couple of songs I need to learn for the band, and that would prove a significant disruption :)

Be very careful about the beginning.
Then, be very careful about the end.
Then, be very careful about the middle.