Innuendo, The Joy of CDs, Enzymes

Just been listening to Queen's Innuendo. I now have all of Queen's albums apart from Flash. There are a few artists and bands I have most of their album catalogue: Queen, Kate Bush, Jean-Michel Jarre (and E.L.O. by chance, as Simon gave me his whole collection). I don't have all of any one artist, perhaps one or two albums missing. I did have all of Kate's, for example, but I disliked The Director's Cut so gave it away, and I dislike the drippy and passionless 50 Words For Snow, though I still have it in a paper sleeve of shame.

I digress. Innuendo is great album. Perhaps Queen's best, for several reasons. Primarily it's dominated by and suffused with Freddie Mercury's emotion. An expansive joy, a cry, not present in other work apart from his Barcelona. It's joy, but you can hear that it's a mask of his facing death, anguish and joy in an electric embrace. There's little like it in my collection, perhaps Strauss' Four Last Songs or the Beethoven's Late Quartets. I've not heard a vocal performance like it, again, apart from in Barcelona, the overwhelmingly saddest song I've yet heard.

What a joy it is to listen on CD too. Streaming is awful (I've never listened to an album by stream; apart from anything else, I don't have a device to do this with apart my huge desktop PC). For me, streaming has killed music, handed British culture (and indeed much of America) to a minority of super-rich American tech corporations who are culturally vacant and bleed their philosophy of addiction and greed into the world's minds, into the soul of the young and poor everywhere. If I were Queen, if I could meet Roger Taylor or Brian May, I'd ask them to take down all of their music from streamers and sell only on CD. Piracy, which was one of the main reasons for streaming at all, is less of a problem now because it's easily detected on the major channels; the very streaming architecture does this automatically. When pirated in secret, it's the same as it ever was. I'd ask Roger, ask Brian, to buy a CD player company, and team up with other bands to sign a stream-free pledge, form a collective of like minds to wrestle culture back.

Buy, sigh, even I don't do this. Streaming is, just about, my only audience. Hardly anyone buys my music on CD, I don't think any album has ever sold as many as 10 copies over the past 27 years. Many friends don't even have a CD player. My own philosophy would kill my personal expression. Alas. Alas.

My stomach is fine now. The magic bullet of Solgar's digestive enzymes has allowed me to eat totally normally in an astonishing way, an about-face to what is so often a struggle.

Onwards we slowly march. Head held high. Head held low. Onwards to the setting sun. Onwards to the rising sun. See, our rock-of-art awaits. Hello my rock friend. Hello again.

Nightfood 2026 Complete, Art Competitions

A busy yesterday, first proofing and rendering all of the music videos for Nightfood. Many have two versions, one with and one without subtitles, although some have no subtitles and some have subtitles only. After this, uploading, then rendering the archive versions for myself, which have a lower bitrate. A tedious and stressful part of this process is waiting, here rendering each up to three times.

By the mid-afternoon, all were complete and I spent the afternoon and evening with Deborah, but alas the night in agony again due to my recalcitrant digestive system. I eat at 17:30, but by 22:30 I'm still digesting and have a full or partly full stomach. My digestion is so slow and malfunctional and this causes great pain. By 5am my stomach was still busy, so today has largely been a fast day. All of this may be caused by stress (I hope there's no pathological cause), but once that is gone, the inflammation, twitches and other problems remain for many days. Such things make me fear food. I have great sympathy with Kenneth Williams (and Beethoven, and Ingmar Bergman) due to their similar problems!

Today, a rest day. I heard that all paintings were accepted into the Castle Park Open, so I knew my options for the Grosvenor. As this entry clashes with Castle Park and with Ty Pawb, it means a whole set of new paintings for it. This unusually means that almost all of the paintings I've painted on this productive year will be displayed (or at least entered into) one competition or another, or on show and for sale in Knutsford.

My next jobs for the week: to complete the formatting of a new Fall in Green book of our complete lyrics so far, an item which will be useful as gig merchandise. Then completing music for the Radioactive Soundtrack (exclusively for Steam, it will have a few unique tracks or mixes), and ideally working on the cover for our next single, but this requires that I make a custom owl mask for Deborah which depends on her work schedule. In November I'll work on the sheet music for Remembrance Service.

Dream Of Wasps Video, Quadrophenia

A power day of video work. Completed the 'Dream of Wasps' video, and compiled the subtitles for all of the others now have first draft videos for all 7 works.

One hard part of this is the time and tedium. A rendering in Argus tends to take 2 to 3 times the length of the video, so 8 to 12 minutes for a 4 minute video, and now four renders per video (mask layer, additive layer, subtitles, subtitle mask/alpha). The compilation using FFMpeg too takes ages, so much of the day is spent waiting rather than creative work; and always frustratingly so!

I've done the best I could using the time budget allocated. Also today, uploaded the album to my website and Cornutopia Music catalogue. Created YouTube text for the videos and thumbnail images, both jobs take longer than you might expect. Plus, edited the sheet music to remove the old PRS Tunecodes; I'll not use these in future.

Next, final proofing of the videos, then uploading (just that will at least take a day, assuming the proofs need no changes, most videos are large and have two versions - with subtitles and without). Then making the 3000kbps versions for archiving. Then the video work will be done, and the album technical work complete! Every promotional job on Nightfood 2026 after that is a bonus, but I'm already aching to move on to something else. How soon I become bored!

I've been listening to Quadrophenia. Brilliant! It takes hour of intense study, focused listening many times. Bliss. Of course, I love this sort of symphonic album music. Of note is the importance of the French horn as a key instrument: guitars, bass, drums, French horn, synthesizer, vocals, in rather equal measure.

Nightfood Videos

The music was listed yesterday, so had time to do the last part of the technical release registration. Awake for most of the night with agonising stomach pain; once common, a rare occurrence these days.

A full day today. Completed the first draft of the 'Nightfood' video, over 7:30, so no wonder I felt overwhelmed by it. Also completed a text-based video, with some animated elements, for 'Young, Attractive, and Physically Fit', and one for 'Dreams of You'. I'd like to try to do a little more for 'The Dream of Wasps', and have a day for this.

Power Days, Nightfood Video

Two intense days working on the 'Nightfood' video, for the title track of the album. Filmed some inserts yesterday. The video will have two independent tracks, as many of my post-Argus videos do; a filmed layer edited in AviSynth+, and an animated part made in Argus which features an alpha layer for the video parts, and an animated overlay. This is a simple but very powerful option. The 'Cat Covid!' video had 4 layers if I recall, but almost everything can be done with these two: mask and addition.

This means darting between segments, creating two videos and working out what will work when. For a 7 minute video, the challenges are considerable.

Today, submitted the music, and I noticed that the PRS Tunecodes for all of the tracks have changed since updating the records with the new ISRC codes a few days ago (noooo!). This is the first time this has happened in over a decade and 50 to 80 albums. It's not serious, but is a big headache regarding my admin work, as now some records (and the sheet music) have incorrect codes. I hope that the old codes are also still valid in some universe... to some extent. This is very annoying.

I've updated Argus a bit today, one key feature making easy to mass-colour tracks, as colouring these one at a time is too time consuming, and this multi-layer technique demands it.

I've decided to rein in the video work generally. YouTube is one of the main ways people listen to music, so that's one reason to make videos, but even the fast speed of a week or two per album is a quite a lot of time. With over 50 albums, that's over a year or my life just making videos, a medium I don't really like. Many are not as artistic or creative as my music or my painting, as well as being heavy in computing power and storage. If I had a year to live, would I keep making music videos for old music? Probably not. I would, I think, keep transcribing the sheet music as a legacy record of my musical art.

'Young Attractive' will feature a relatively simple lyric-video (still hand animated, of course). The first two tracks may use elements of 'Nightfood'. The waspy imagery is quite horrific at times, but it does reflect the dark nature of this music of loss and heartbreak, this romantic true story of those years from a decade ago.

I've heard that 'Punishment of the Sun' is to be exhibited in Ty Pawb over winter. This means finding new work for the biennial Grosvenor Exhibition on Chester. It's somewhat annoying that these two big biennials happen at the same time every two years. This will be the 4th time I've exhibited in the Ty Pawb Open; in every year it's been held apart from the Covid-19 year, which was heavily restricted. I don't think that one was possible for me to enter.

Nightfood Videos, Prometheus v3.98

Two slow days. Made a slight change to the Nightfood audio yesterday, and a final proof listen; it is complete! Also completed the video for 'Theme From Burnout', one of the better 'electric pinball' style of video which date back to my early days of 'Challenger' (and perhaps even 'China Syndrome' before that). My main job is now video work, although I already have two more videos than I had for the first version of the album, and the music is far better too, so even an immediate a new release would perhaps be good enough.

I seem to have hit a wall regarding the videos and am struggling with motivation. As a first step I decided to print out the song structures. I can use this as a mental guide, a skeleton onto which I can sketch. The structure of 'The Dream of Wasps', for example, is (as exported by Prometheus):

Section: Wind Intro, Measure/Beat: 0:0, Frame: 0, Sample: 0
Section: Verse 1 Intro, Measure/Beat: 14:0, Frame: 1400, Sample: 2469568
Section: Verse 1, Measure/Beat: 18:0, Frame: 1800, Sample: 3175168
Section: Verse 2, Measure/Beat: 26:0, Frame: 2603, Sample: 4591744
Section: Listening, Measure/Beat: 30:0, Frame: 3017, Sample: 5323648
Section: Verse 3 Intro, Measure/Beat: 42:0, Frame: 4217, Sample: 7440448
Section: Verse 3, Measure/Beat: 44:0, Frame: 4417, Sample: 7793216
Section: Solo, Measure/Beat: 50:0, Frame: 5015, Sample: 8846784
Section: Verse 4, Measure/Beat: 62:0, Frame: 5979, Sample: 10547264
Section: Makes Me Better, Measure/Beat: 68:0, Frame: 6459, Sample: 11394880
Section: Ending, Measure/Beat: 72:0, Frame: 6779, Sample: 11959360
Section: End, Measure/Beat: 73:0, Frame: 6859, Sample: 12100480


But I thought it would be useful to know the length of each part in seconds... so I updated Prometheus to add this; so I'm on version 3.98 now. In doing this I added a few more optimisations for calculating the end of the song. Some procedures demanded a 'Stop' event, but some sought a last event if a 'Stop' isn't found, so I unified these things. Anyway, after today's update the output is now:

Section: Wind Intro, Measure/Beat: 0:0, Frame: 0, Sample: 0, Time (Seconds): 0.000, Length (Seconds): 55.999
Section: Verse 1 Intro, Measure/Beat: 14:0, Frame: 1400, Sample: 2469568, Time (Seconds): 55.999, Length (Seconds): 16.000
Section: Verse 1, Measure/Beat: 18:0, Frame: 1800, Sample: 3175168, Time (Seconds): 71.999, Length (Seconds): 32.121
Section: Verse 2, Measure/Beat: 26:0, Frame: 2603, Sample: 4591744, Time (Seconds): 104.121, Length (Seconds): 16.596
Section: Listening, Measure/Beat: 30:0, Frame: 3017, Sample: 5323648, Time (Seconds): 120.717, Length (Seconds): 48.000
Section: Verse 3 Intro, Measure/Beat: 42:0, Frame: 4217, Sample: 7440448, Time (Seconds): 168.717, Length (Seconds): 7.999
Section: Verse 3, Measure/Beat: 44:0, Frame: 4417, Sample: 7793216, Time (Seconds): 176.716, Length (Seconds): 23.890
Section: Solo, Measure/Beat: 50:0, Frame: 5015, Sample: 8846784, Time (Seconds): 200.607, Length (Seconds): 38.559
Section: Verse 4, Measure/Beat: 62:0, Frame: 5979, Sample: 10547264, Time (Seconds): 239.166, Length (Seconds): 19.220
Section: Makes Me Better, Measure/Beat: 68:0, Frame: 6459, Sample: 11394880, Time (Seconds): 258.387, Length (Seconds): 12.800
Section: Ending, Measure/Beat: 72:0, Frame: 6779, Sample: 11959360, Time (Seconds): 271.187, Length (Seconds): 3.200
Section: End, Measure/Beat: 73:0, Frame: 6859, Sample: 12100480, Time (Seconds): 274.387, Length (Seconds): 0.000


I've done little else today! But have done some social work, preparation of some presents for the gift season. I really must get motivated and in the frame of mind for video. The job seems huge, and to some extent, pointless and devoid of reward - perhaps this is why I'm unmotivated. Perhaps I'm too relaxed at the victory of my work; the album is already more complete than the first version after 18 days of solid work on it.

Yet, I have some time to work on it, so I can allocate a week. Videos aren't my natural medium, but sometimes, as ArtSwarm showed, I can create interesting and startling new things that I wouldn't otherwise, when pushed. I must aim, as ever, to be artistic. What is artistic? It's a personal showcase of something memorable. Memorable is the key word. Only what is new is memorable, you can't be memorable twice in a row with the same thing. The best art is the most memorable, it's unforgettable. The worst art is quickly forgotten. There is no better definition.

I must work hard at the rock face.

Good Vibes, New Take This Rose Video

A couple of busy days. The Good Vibrations event in the library was followed by a visit to Oil Art Advisory, and delivery of the H. Beam Piper painting.

My big Nightfood job now is video work. The song 'Take This Rose' was written for ArtSwarm: Perfume, so this had a video, but it was too short as the song was extended with another verse for the album, so yesterday I filmed some extra parts and edited these into the 2019 video to extend it to fit the album version of the song; and at the same time made a new ArtSwarm-length edit of the remastered audio, so two new videos for this now exist. Like the 'Plastic Superman' video, these differ in technical quality from my current videos. These older ones are 1280x720 and 30 F.P.S.; my new videos are now 1080p and 25 F.P.S. - so it means these two tracks will be a different from the rest of the album in video terms.

In the evening Deb and I went to Congleton to see John Lindley and the Poachers in the new 'bijou' (tiny) venue of The Barley Hops, the first in a new series of gigs organised by Poachers' bass player, sound engineer, and general all-round musician John Miller. Deb and I as Fall in Green are due to perform there at one of these events next year.

Today, charged into a new video for 'Theme From Burnout', which is an Argus spectacular, using different glowing elements which evoke vector graphics, each of which is tied to an note and instrument in the music. This took a few hours, a few final touches remain. In the afternoon, some computer technical work for a friend.

The Stereo Underground TV programme on the Rewind Channel is showing lots of old music videos, and The Smiths' 'Ask' tonight had an unusual effect of duo-chrome brightly coloured band members overlaying various other footage. This colour effect is used in the Nightfood album art, so I may duplicate the effect.

Nightfood Transcription Complete

Sheet music complete! I always underestimate the time and work this takes. I keep changing my standards, my style guide, which annoys even me and it makes all of the older scores invalid and in need of fixing, but these standards are written for a reason. Anyway, there are now 24 scores for this.

At 7pm, managed to proof the album. Two small changes were needed. Was reminded how much of a potentially huge hit 'Young, Attractive, And Physically Fit' is. I also noted that the CD version (of which only I have a copy, it's never been released) is different and better than the stream version, because the tracks blend into each other. The album is ready to split and file musically; the videos are the next big job.

Two busy days in Congleton beckon.