I’ve started editing the audio from our sessions last month. It’s not a job I could say that I enjoy: in one sense, it would be great just to hand the takes over to someone else and say ‘make a record out of that lot please’, but every edit involves a musical decision of some sort and it can be satisfying, especially when you can occasionally make unexpectedly musical things happen with some unlikely crossfade.

It’s also good to be reminded from time to time of the whole purpose of the fiddle band project. More than once I’ve hacked together a rough edit, listened back and said to myself ‘But that’s just not how that tune goes’, or ‘That phrasing is weird, why did we do that?’. Then my research head kicks in and says ‘Yes, we were following the sources, which are the earliest and (arguably) the most trustworthy guides to how the music might have originally gone, that’s the point. Of course the notes/chords/phrases/ornamentation (delete where applicable) don’t go the way you thought – if they did, the whole process would have been a waste of time’. I’m continually surprised at what the music sounds like, and that’s even after I was playing in it. I wonder what people will think when the record comes out, in February I hope.