Currently working on another ‘Séance’ project. Quick recap – ‘Sound System’ is new music for a particular event on a particular theme. ‘Surround System’ is about surround technologies (note me sneak in a subtle change that allows visual elements – will Apple actually sell any headsets?) Séance is old music reformed.
Each is a risk and investment – the Sound system adds new tracks to the kitty and Séance makes old favourites active again. The first Séance was supposed to be for a festival but ended up online. This one acknowledges that a vinyl set named Séance has ‘gone quiet’. In the past when things ‘went quiet’ I held on and kept preparing. That’s been a fool’s errand – now I just assume it’s dead and move the work to another venue. If it comes back – great!
The first Séance was old favourites, but there’s lots of other things we played live back in the day. Adolf A Karrot? never got a video because – how to make Hitler? … but now the Power™ of AI™ means I can make as many ridiculous Hitler pictures as I need. Lower Than The Grave has a live video recording, but that’s just one performance – why not more? Houses Still Standing used to be performed with an old UMatic video – let’s update that. And how about versions of tracks like Harold and Cindy Hospital which were actually created back in 1983, but are better known for a later remake (true! some of the ‘original’ tracks you know were new versions).
A meticulous process
It’s a meticulous process. Let’s take Lower Than The Grave. That’s based on an 8-track tapeloop, a few synthesiser lines, cassette editing of the voice, lead guitar. The 8-track loop was dubbed to a cassette in 1982 then digitised in 85 – we can clean it up with digital noise reduction and fix up the BPM. The cassette voice editing can be extracted from the final mix, but in poor quality. So I found the original radio sound source (The Pilgrim’s Progress) and meticulously edited digital parts to align with the tape. New synthesisers are not too hard – the guitar is still the biggest problem!
Along with this comes a new video for the new digital master. Everything is very close to the original but is now mixable, performable and sounds more vibrant.
Given there’s other demands this could take some months to get anywhere. That’s fine. No one is hanging out for new mixes. But new mixes (and new works) will keep coming. It ain’t dead yet.
Not a musician but fascinated to learn how you do these.
Runner died
At last a useful use of AI™! Very tidy.
“In the future…a CD copy of Bulkhead album will be unearthed from the toxic rubble of what was once called Sydney. The World Technology Museum will be scoured for a working Optical Drive and the race will be on to find out if Tom Ellard was uploaded to the Archives as a backup copy…Bulkhead is recognised as Classical Music…again”.
I’d love to hear more about how AI is working out with your projects!
AI is an interesting failure. As I am also an interesting failure we get along pretty good.
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