The very first time I heard any part of Incantations was the ending of Part 4 – The Ode to Cynthia – from “The Complete” compilation album. I think I got it for Christmas in 1985.

The opening marimba, the percussion combination of sleigh-bells, vibraslap and clapping, the bass guitar melody, Sally Oldfield’s voice layering out this strange chord of 4ths, the Solina string synthesizer tune, the change of key and guitar solo and then, incredibly, Maddy Prior’s voice!! I was hooked. It was a couple of years before I would hear the entire album but this section has always been a magical favourite.

So I was apprehensive about recording it…

I borrowed Andrew’s marimba a couple of months back and so had already recorded the main marimba parts for this section (as well as for Hiawatha and a first go at the ostinato in the big guitar solo in Part 3). Then I recorded the percussion and played the bassline with a sampled pizzicato double-bass.

For the Solina tune, I used a plugin that recreates the sound quite well. Would love to get hold of a real one…

Played the guitar parts on a piano – it sounds ok but I will try some other things.

And the vocal melody – for now that’s an orchestral oboe sound.

I really wanted to put something “out there” for Christmas time and so have posted this to Soundcloud!

Also here:

It’s my birthday, I had a few drinks and decided to record the drums. A bodhran, two Egyptian tablas and two darbukas. Not the same sounds as Jabula’s African drums but that’s ok. In fact it’s good!

My friend Andrew lent me his marimba. I double tracked it so now I have this as well.

And then I made a nice drone out of Solina strings, choir, real (sampled) strings and a few other bits and pieces. C#-B-E-F#-B

Now I’ll need to find a singer.

Many thanks to my friend Andrew Barnard for lending me this great instrument!

Really looking forward to recording with it 🙂

I decided early on to record everything in stereo as much as possible. That is to say, with two microphones even if it’s a single solo instrument. In particular, I’ve been experimenting with a mic configuration I recently read about in Sound on Sound.

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/gerzon-array

The author calls it the “Gerzon Array” after Michael Gerzon but apparently the original idea was from Tony Faulkner. There are a number of interesting technical rabbit-holes I’ve just sidestepped there but the main idea is you have the two microphones at 120 degrees and 5cm apart:

I’ve been recording orchestras for a number of years and have tried various combinations – OTRF, NOS and DIN near-coincident configurations and also spaced omni AB pairs – but for Incantations I’ve been trying this Gerzon Array.

Knowing in advance that I was going to have instruments panned left and right in the mix, I’ve been recording each instrument by standing (or sitting) to the left or right of center of the array and letting the microphones do the panning. It sounds quite natural and spacious to me so I’m going to keep doing it and see where it goes.

Michael Gerzon was a fascinating character, he practically invented Ambisonics on his own, the ideas he came up with in the 70s and 80s were way ahead of their time and only now with things like Dolby Atmos, Spatial Audio, Ambisonic sound encoding in VR gaming and so on are we seeing it hit the mainstream. I went on a real deep dive into his writings over lockdown.

https://michaelgerzonphotos.org.uk/microphones-michael-gerzon.html

in particular but also his essays about quadraphonics, Dolby, ambisonics and all of that.

And I’ve not even mentioned Alan Blumlein 😀

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Blumlein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumlein_pair

Quite pleased with this. The structure is there but some of the sounds are all wrong. Would like to get some better string sounds …

I posted version 3 to Soundcloud but, just in case, it’s here too:

I swapped the electric guitar parts for oboe and bassoon. Sounds quite nice I think. Will experiment with this more.

And I’m not at all sure the string chords are right in the heartbeat section.

Re-created the classic Roland SH2000 “Clarinet” preset with a Waves virtual synth. Sounds pretty close.

Posted the very first version to Soundcloud

Someone immediately pointed out it was too fast! Which of course it was. So then posted this version which is at the proper tempo.

Better!

First came the harp parts, then the drone in fourths made from a combination of strings and choir. Arpeggios on flute and piccolo. I made a repeat so that we get the main theme twice, the first time on doubled acoustic guitar and piano the second time with the guitars coming in again for the second half and some timpani at the end. Pretty pleased with this! I got some nice comments from a few peeps on Facebook 🙂