Activities

DLDown is slowly getting back into doing some recording. Firstly, this involves getting to grips with the many shiny knobs of Logic Express, then working out how best to go about recording each track.

Usually it's best to get a basic guitar or keyboard track laid down for the whole song, normally with a metronome or temporary drum beat to keep the timing predictable. (A live take with a little ebb and flow in the tempo can add some nice expression to a performance, but it's then incredibly difficult to go back and multi-track other layers over the top.)

This is often the hardest step, and the most crucial to get right, as all the other parts making up rest of the song will then hang on this. I'm having a go at doing this for a re-run of Lilies & Sparrows and new song Left to My Own Devices (live version at The Art of Joy show, here). They're progressing, but slowly.

My other project at the moment is to update the DLDown website. I wrote the previous one fairly quickly in a WYSIWYG editor, which produces a usable page, but horrible source code which is a nightmare to edit. I'm having fun writing the new one from scratch, and brushing up on my html and css programming into the bargain.

Not having paid employment for a while has its benefits :o)
J