TMO Sisyphus Proofing, Argus v1.64

Another full day but perhaps the last day for now of The Myth Of Sisyphus 2026, at a record pace. Today, filed the album, and updated Argus to v1.64.

For Argus, there are two settings for frame numbers, one of how many texture frames an object contains (how many images to load) and those frames as used in the animation itself. This is a bit of a pain, as both need to match. We don't want to load a frame we don't use in the animation, and we don't want frames in the animation that aren't loaded; so to solve this I've removed the first setting. Now the animation is examined when it's set up and the maximum number of frames required is noted for every object, then all are loaded.

After that, I proofed every video. Almost all needed changes. Even the audio had an error; one verse vocal came in about half a beat late. I've made the videos so that the end of one will fit to the start of the next, thus the entire album can be made into a full film, albeit a relatively simple one of animations. These could be useful for a live show, though the odds of me ever performing such a thing are close to zero.

It's almost worthy of such an event though. Watching and listening today I'm reminded very much of Pink Floyd. The Myth Of Sisyphus is like the concept album they didn't do; Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish You Were Here, and this.

I'm ready to move on, and, rather than be creative, I thought I'd charge into a week of just sheet music, to see if I can manage an album, a difficult one like Music Of Poetic Objects, then Burn Of God if there is time. I'm 3 weeks ahead in my plans for the year already, and it's long term goal to transcribe all of my albums, and it's too dark and cold to paint, so it's a good time for this.

The release date for TMOS will be 10th April 2026.

Good Vibes, RSPCA, Remaster Plans

As humans, we know that we will all die eventually. This is our only certainty. So, to wish time to go faster is the most irrational thought. It is a pseudo-suicidal self-destructive notion. We should want time to drag as slowly as possible. Once this is grasped, we start to fill that time with something useful enough not to notice its passing.

A really nice and well performed Good Vibrations event yesterday. Deb managed to read a few Fall in Green poems. After this, a trip to the RSPCA centre for a photo to conclude the Christmas Tails project. No mock-cheque (the money itself was sent on the 1st) so I held the cover artwork. The brilliant Peter Robinson came up to photograph us, and it was nice that Mike Drew joined us too. Here we are, with Lee from the Wildlife Centre:

I managed to fit a few minutes (little more) of video editing for The Myth Of Sisyphus. These are very simple looping things, and I'm torn about whether to include versions with and without subtitles, but there are occasions when either is appropriate, so I expect I'll create both.

There are four main albums that need sheet music: Music Of Poetic Objects, Burn Of God, Nightfood, and Remembrance Service. It would be nice to transcribe those this year, and I think I'll charge into one next week, not to remaster but to transcribe (I do want to remaster Nightfood at some point, this one will benefit most from my new skills).

More Sisyphus 2026 Work

Hard times favour the resilient. The resilient are those who are strong willed, disciplined, and organised.

A motto for Sisypheans. Wrote a song in the night, 'Post Apocalyptic Playground', although the title is the only overtly apocalyptic part of a jolly romp of a tune, with a subtle undertone. This is part of general musing this year for an album about war.

In the day, more mixing of the album, which I think is now done. The tracks were volume balanced and split, and more work tweaking the videos and preparing the sheet music for publication. The videos need to be rendered but I always want to add more... make them better, but there are always limits to me time and resources. At the moment, they use the hand drawn album art which give them an overall unity that I rather like.

Sisyphus Mixing and Videos

A sleepless night and another day of pain stoically working on the Sisyphus videos. Good progress; have completed basic looping animation videos with lyrics for the whole album, and completed the more tedious tasks of preparing the FFMpeg scripts and YouTube text for the ultimate files. No videos compiled yet, that will take a full day of PC chugging.

In between, have mixed the album a bit more. The 'We Shall See' vocals are much better than the old version, but there is still room for improvement.

I Could Have Done That

The worst phrase in art (or indeed in life) is 'I could have done that!'. The irony of such an utterance is that the speaker is instantly proving that they could not. People who can do things just do them, not tell anyone that they could if they 'wanted', if they 'tried'. It's a retort of envy. The positive thing to do is to prove you can do something by doing it, and doing it better.

February Dawns, Christmas Tails, Sisyphus Lyric Images

Awake early today for some productive action. Started with monthly backups, and accounts and the conclusion of Christmas Tails. We raised £411.29 in the end, and this has today been transferred to the RSPCA.

Then some updates to the events page of my website, followed by a day of work on the Sisyphus album, this time calculating the frames for each lyric line for all of the song lyrics, then hand creating those lyric lines as images, one per line, like this:

I like to have the lyric font match the album artwork. This is partly the point, to add more to my videos than cheap automated subtitles can.

How I despise AI created rubbish! I can see that AI could be a useful tool, but for art at the moment I am happy to avoid it by a wide margin. At the moment I feel that to touch AI at all would taint all future art with it, harm and devalue the hugely hard work I put into my art, my music, my videos. I've never used AI anything, or pitch-correction, or any artificial stuff, and wouldn't ever want people to think I had. I fear that those who do use it will never learn a skill, and it they did it would be too late; that people would mistake their skill for AI. I love that Bandcamp have banned AI music, and that YouTube is cracking down on the worst sorts of AI videos (copycats, harvested content, misleading content). The ability to upload a film script to a program and have it create the resulting film is, however, somewhat alluring.

My lyric graphics are now done, which amounts to about half of the work of making full length lyric videos in Argus. The next steps are creating sequences to make each image appear at the right frame. All of this will take about a day for the whole album, not bad.

I also need to mix and master the album, and possibly re-record the 'We Shall See' vocals because I made one mistake in the lyrics that annoys me. This album is, I think at about the half-way stage of its remaster.

My sense of completeness can drive me crazy. I can see how I can next remaster my favourite album, Nightfood, and that my singing and production is now good enough to do some other songs better justice, like those on Secret Electric Sorcery. There's also the need for sheet music for all of my older electronic albums, which is a much easier task. Yet, all of this would take me a full year, and without any reward - or at least no immediate reward. The long term demands such completeness.

I have a few interesting painting ideas and ache to charge into those. I listened to a few Havergal Brian symphonies last night and suddenly feel that I could compose some. My teeth still hurt, several months of this, and money is too short; both explain nocturnal anxieties, yet my drive is strong. The shortness and preciousness of life and ability is daily made clear

Let us charge into the war-torn valley. Our boulder rolls free in this little region of downward slope, we must run to catch it for the next hill. Perhaps over that crest we'll see a greener plain, a dreamed-for goal.

Sisyphus Scores Complete

Completed the last 5 scores for The Myth of Sisyphus today. 3 days work for this is a good result. None are completely perfect (though many are extremely detailed, such as an 11-part score for 'The Invisible Man') but all are hugely better than none at all. Most people who finish such a job get paid or some other reward. Artists must merely hope that their work will be useful to or appreciated by someone in future. I do this for a sense of completion, and because any possible live performance is much easier with the sheet music. Also, it allows others to play or sing the songs.

In a first week of work on the remaster, all vocals and all sheet music is complete, a good result. The next big task is simple lyric videos for all tracks. I've checked all tracks today, comparing with the older ones for technical errors. Silences of over one second will switch-off a track to save processing time, which is a big issue for sounds that fade in very slowly. This was a feature of Prometheus from the beginning but, amazingly, I didn't test it and it didn't work until v2.69 on 2 April 2021, so all earlier albums or tracks may have fade-in issues.

I still need to mix the tracks (this is largely done, but I'll need a quiet day to check it all), and master everything to a modern volume level. That, and those videos, which are optional, but would, I think, boost listenership. The most important jobs of new (much better) vocals and the sheet music are now done.

Onwards we roll our heavy rock.

Sisyphus Sheet Music, Open mic, Scrambled Eggs

Two full days working on the sheet music of The Myth Of Sisyphus tracks. Four done yesterday, half of the day was spent on 'I, Sisyphus', mostly notating the guitars. Today I fed the crazy piano track from 'Life in the Mirror' into an AI music transcriber. The results were no better than loading the MIDI directly into MuseScore (awful, and not at all correct). There's a long way to go to convert highly complex tracks like that. I imagine it only works with simple tunes of regular timing.

In the evening Deb and I went to the Congleton open mic at the Wonky Pear, a tiny venue. The performances were good, I sang 'Nick Drake' and 'We Shall See' without accompaniment, though the latter was too high without a warm up. I needed a warm up all night as the venue was so cold! It was also precarious. My chair was wobbly, the mic (and optional instrument) cable was always in the way and many trips were averted. One wasn't, the tug on the cable damaging the amp. This, plus the fact that we were so tightly packed that we couldn't move, like battery hens, made it all feel dangerous. I was on edge all evening. Comfortable and relaxing it was not.

Today, worked on 'Life in the Mirror' and 'I Care', adding some guitar TAB scoring for the letter, my first use of this. Until now I didn't realise how useful this could be for notating riffs and other guitar parts. I have little chance of notating the 'Life in the Mirror' piano, so merely hinted upon guidance, but scored the choirs and several other parts. This is creative track is very hard to score.

With luck I can finish 'The Invisible Man' today too, making 7 of 12 tracks, and a full week, with all vocals recorded too. I can't get this job over quickly enough.

I've been informed that two of my paintings have been selected for the inaugural Nantwich Museum Open too, and it seems that the '21st Century Surrealism' audiobook is progressing too.

At the open mic last night, John Lindley mentioned that the original lyric for McCartney's 'Yesterday' was 'Scrambled Eggs'. As an exercise that I couldn't resist, I wrote full words for this version...

Scrambled Eggs (to the melody of Yesterday)

Scrambled eggs
With some bacon and some coffee dregs
And some toffee for my toothy pegs
Oh I want pie and scrambled eggs

I've been lost
Since the other place has upped the cost
All my salad has remained untossed
Teeth have sadly stayed unflossed

Oh, there's no tom-a-to
There's no beer, they have no kegs
I might die if you don't fry me
Some of your scrambled eggs