‘SPHERES’ has had protracted development. Another problem child, in fact. Myriad have been the arrangement and instrumentation changes. But I am glad that this final version eventually lead me to a very different melody sound, that of the trained voice of Tanya Bail. The album’s cover credits her by her maiden name Tanya Riordan.
Yet another tune that started out as an instrumental, sounding perhaps a bit like the ubiquitous movie soundtrack, perhaps a western of the spaghetti variety. The usual rhythm guitars, double bass, drums and piano accordion line-up; also a lovely piano track, dramatically played by Bruce Haymes. With the strings I tried for an effect that I had heard Joe Hisaishi use on the soundtrack of a Miyazaki movie (yet another Miyazaki influence), a chord played by a large string section starting very quietly and then swelling to a sudden cut-off. As before I used the technique of Jen Anderson on violin and viola and Mei Lai Swan on cello multi-tracking to build my string section.
Up till this point the melody was played as usual on classical guitar, but listening to it back one night I started singing along with it and decided it would make a very dramatic song, so I wrote some rather arty words for it all about the music of the spheres, angels, symphonies-out-of-tune and other esoteric waffle. This I recorded with me singing. Not such a great idea, but its all part of the process.. that’s the theory anyway! After much effort and angst I threw out my vocal and the lyric, and luckily had the weird idea of copying Villa-Lobos and many other classical composers wand use a wordless vocal sung by a trained voice… meaning an opera singer. Diana Clark kindly put me on to Tanya, and she adapted my melody to fit the key and recorded it very professionally, coping with the different musical environment with aplomb.
So there we finally have it, and it still sounds like the soundtrack for a spaghetti western!