Solitude

May 15, 2010 7:16 PM

It took Duke Ellington fifteen minutes to write this song, but it only took me four and a half to tear it apart.

I actually had a lot of fun with this. This song is pretty much made for So What chords on those major sevenths. I've always admired Duke's version with Roach and Mingus on Money Jungle (the alternate take, natch) where he does the rumbling, roiling bridge, so I sort of cribbed that here. I even managed to fit in a Powell-esque run on the augmented scale at 2:54, and I was sort of pleased by the solo.

Second try with this setup – I think it's improved vastly. I picked up an XLR cable, so the preamplifier is working, and now the thing's actually hot enough to pick up sound properly. In my mental notes for next time: aiming the microphone better (the way it's hanging down now, it picks up a lot of rattles from the keyboard and the bench) and maybe a second microphone, although I don't know yet how I'd do that. This time I convinced myself to put some effort into mastering, doing a kind of false stereo and compression and some other junk.

posted by koeselitz (2 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

oh yes. i actually quite like the rattling, but that's possibly just me. the recording's so much better, and the fake stereo's good too. but mostly, this is a really genuinely lovely performance imho.
posted by peterkins at 1:45 PM on May 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


Made me smile. :) And made me wish I could play the keys that well.
posted by MaiaMadness at 4:05 AM on May 23, 2010 [1 favorite]


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