[LAU] [Music] Prog supergroup's first outings

[Q]

On 30/11/13 19:38, Will Godfrey wrote:
>
> Hmm. Thought I'd commented on these.
> However...
>
> I liked them both, but thought 'as a cloud' suffered from being too 'studied',
> probably due to the way it was recorded.
>

Hi Will

You have commented already, although it was over on KVR -- better twice 
than never :-)

You mentioned there that you preferred Time To Go, but didn't go into 
specifics. I did pass your comments on to Julien.

Thanks, I actually take that as a compliment since personally, I'd take 
studied over improvised any day. It's not really possible to do decent 
prog improvised, by the very nature of the music, unless perhaps when 
you get a band like King Crimson. Even then, I bet they had a fair 
number of misses with their improvs and the ones I've heard haven't had 
the finesse of their composed pieces.

Time To Go is both the exception that proves the rule and an argument 
against improv. I don't think I've ever before, and haven't since and 
doubt I would again in the future, improvised a part that I've been able 
to use whole sections from -- let alone in its entirety as in this case 
-- on the Nth take, let alone the first.

I also had to do a huge amount of editing, correcting timing issues in 
the drum performance (although the performance itself was otherwise 
mostly fine), construct an in-tune and in-time bass part and do some 
serious corrective mixing work on the piano because they were improvised.

The piece was essentially recorded in the same way as Cloud and 
everything else that Julien and I have done individually, with overdub 
after overdub, just in this case we didn't bother to write and practice 
parts for it.

I know Julien loved the mix of TTG and the overall sound, but I think he 
preferred Cloud as a piece of music and felt it had more going for it 
because it was carefully written. It also doesn't help that TTG sounds a 
bit Floydy and he hated them with a passion :-)

It's a shame he won't be able to chip in. But, he has sold all his music 
gear, emigrated and has effectively dropped off the grid for the 
forseeable future, although there's a chance he won't be totally 
incommunicado indefinitely.

Sincerely, thanks again for listening and commenting (again) :-)