It did not start well – the Omnichord was hideously out of tune and unfortunately the tuning screw underneath was broken off. The joys of buying stuff on Gumtree I guess. So, as per usual, out with the screwdrivers, back off, some fiddling around getting frustrated as it was further out of tune than the fine tuning knob would cover. On the verge of giving up with yet another call to Pete Hampson, I discovered a coarse tuning screw – hallelujah!
I eventually got it in tune and started to record the sequence of chords for the whole song, recording it through the Dickinson P1 to give it a bit of a vibe. Added some of the famous Omnichord “synth harp” glissandos running through the choruses and it is starting to sound quite cool. The Omnichord patterns are a bit “reggae” so I needed to break that up with a bit of a backbeat.
Beats came from the Korg Electribe (such a fun little box – I love it), Roland CR-78 and the old hissy white noise hi-hats of the Rhythm Ace. It still needs a bit more weight somewhere – probably from the 808, but I’ll do that another time.
Its hard to work when the machines are not in sync with each other. I’ve never managed to get the CR-78 to sync up with anything due to lack of kit, and I don’t like time-stretching, so tracks with it on them always end up with ludicrous tempos, like 69.2205 which happens to be the exact tempo of Champagne Dividend. I have a serious sync box on order from Berlin which should be here soon and sort all the sync woes!