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

Sisyphus Remaster Work, Tom Karen

Productive day. Managed to add all of the new vocals, and recorded a few smaller ones, completing the basic recording for The Myth Of Sisyphus 2026 in a day; I'll tweak all of mixes later, as well as set the master volumes.

I'm reminded that 'The Invisible Man' was written in 2008, 18 years ago, and that this sequence began 31 Oct 2013, probably for that old experiment under the label of The Harlequin Kings. The track now certainly sounds better than it's ever sounded. I'm keen to move on, charge on to get it done. This updating old stuff is not satisfying, an artist should be making new things - but I like this music a lot. How good it sounds, and this 2026 version is certainly improved compared to the 2021 version. At times today I thought this album was a peak. How tragic is it for an artist to believe in a peak that was 5 years ago! New peaks must await - yes!

I don't want this remaster to drag on for 4 weeks like The Modern Game, so will move straight into the sheet music, which is perhaps the most useful phase, the one with the most need for completeness if not immediate utility. I'll start on the videos too, make the basic subtitle blanks. Tomorrow there's an open mic in Congleton and I plan on singing two tracks without accompaniment. Without the sheet music it's hard to work out the chords.

I've got a few small and unimportant changes to Prometheus, but exciting ideas these act as stimulation themselves. Enjoyable improvements for an obsessive refiner. I'll work on those tonight.

I've finished the Tom Karen book. We share a love of work, a calling. He said: 'Perhaps it seems odd that, after so much success, I should still feel the need for the reassurance of an official accolade. But that's what happens when you've been a refugee. You never feel quite safe enough to relax. I know that, no matter what comforts and luxuries I possess today, they can all be taken away from me tomorrow. My continuing capacity for hard, creative work is the best security I have' - This sums up my attitude and psychology exactly, though I've never been a refugee. It is losing the capacity to do what I can do which can happen at any moment, it will happen to us all. Life and health are so precious. Relaxation is absolutely, an unaffordable luxury and yes, I fear it, but work such a joy when we possess that limited magic that is capability.

Onwards we charge!

Sisyphus Vocals

A sleepless, irrationally panicky night led to something of a power day. I just about managed to record the entire album of vocals this morning, new vocals and harmony vocals for every track, and all instantly better than in 2021.

I feel the need to keep trying on 'We Shall See' though, the high range combined with gentleness makes this a challenge. For all of Freddie Mercury's power vocals, I still think that his best vocal performance was on Nevermore from Queen II. This song is a similar range and style. My takes so far are all instantly better than the 2021 version, but not close to Nevermore quality, if I could ever aspire to such brilliance.

Having done so much in the morning I felt less motivated to charge on with vocal processing and including them in the songs, but I've made a start there, with two songs done, and the two instrumentals mixed too. Perhaps I can finish this tomorrow, then charge into the sheet music and videos. The Modern Game had sheet music but that needed new album artwork; this certainly doesn't, all good.

My anxiety is perhaps not doing enough new art. I need expression and challenges. I must, therefore, charge though this towards a light of clear roadways. Last night I listened to Music Of Poetic Objects. A nice album that also really needs sheet music because it's largely classical and demands to be performed by others. Without the music, that would be impossible (or at least improbable).