"Originally this wall was so well polished that the king could see himself whilst he walked alongside it." -- from Wikipedia, on The Mirror Wall of Sigiriya
Of all the different parts of the process of making and recording music, one that's not a favorite is the ever-glorified moment of inspiration. It's alright, but it's no fun. The moment happens in a heightened, anxious state. One must follow the thought through, stay out of the way, capture the idea before it's lost, and generally become distracted and outwardly incoherent. Furthermore, the moment is preceded by a train of frustrations: the beat up old pet gesture that won't go away, the same dog-eared go-to solutions, and of course, the crap idea.
No, indispensable as it is, the moment of inspiration is not a favorite. I like the part after all that, when some time has passed and the messier details have been worked out: my first reacquaintance with the music, often (as it happens) as it's played back on my cheap cassette recorder.
Over the course of producing my three albums I increased the pleasure of the reacquaintance moment exponentially by forming a policy whereby I would not listen back to anything I had recorded -- I'm talking about improvisations mainly -- for a minimum of a week. In many cases, it was actually much longer than that. The plan worked well: listening back, the memory of the actual recording session was faint and, without much effort, could easily be kept out of mind. And so, except for maybe a few recollections of the time and place or the general trend of the music, I could hear the playing as if it were not my own, and therefore with no investment, happily free of the self-criticism that comes from too-close a proximity to work just done. I could be surprised by my own work, and that is what gives me the most pleasure as a musician.
Of course, just because I don't quickly listen back to what I record doesn't mean that I don't still find most of it disposable. It's just that there's less heat in the evaluation. Not to mention that typically I've done other stuff in the meantime so I'm not dependent on the recording at hand to prove that I can still do worthwhile work.
This brings me in a roundabout way to "The Mirror Wall" and the third approach to building a track touched on in last week's post. That is, to build the music through editing pre-recorded material. Juxtaposing, overlaying, chronologically rearranging stuff; reshaping improvisations that I don't remember performing; removing the unessential bits; paring down to the basic architecture and gesture -- this is fun stuff. It allows me a second, deliberate and clock-slow improvisation on my own original themes.
"The Mirror Wall" was made that way. It's also one of my favorite tracks from Astral Law. The primary recordings took place on November 23, 2008; and the edit, mix, and some additional recording was done on January 11, 2009. I hope you enjoy it.
