last minute Swarb question...

[Shane (Skirky)]

Hi Maart;
If you've any time left after rattling off your tax returns, can you tell us a little about the medley you arranged on Swarb's 'English Fiddler'? Who chose the songs, and why? How was the experience? And how on earth did you divvy up the parts between Ric, Swarb and Chris?
Cheers
Shane   

[Maart]

Hi there.

Swarb chose the tunes, as he says in his liner notes, because he couldn't sing those songs anymore. I arranged it on paper for string quartet with guitar and bass, and I passed it back to Swarb. I then recorded the guitar and bass parts and left him to it. I think he played his parts next, then Chris and Ric and Mike Burnham came in separately to overdub their parts. I was not present on these occasions. The cello part was substituted for an octave viola part and the arrangement was changed. Swarb tells me that because all the violins were done on separate days, there were some serious tuning discrepances which took some intense editing. If the chance came up again, I would insist on using a quartet that was used to playing with each other and had developed their own quartet sound. Ah well. Good idea though.

Maart