How To Audiobook

I've decided to charge into more audiobooks and sheet music transcription, spending the next two weeks to see how much I can manage of those four projects, the work of which is an ultimate goal anyway. Today, a first day of work on the How To Organise Your Computer Files audiobook. It presents a few challenges, as the book has a few text boxes, so I've developed a sound effect to indicate when the spoken text is read from a text box. Some of the text itself necessarily changes a little so that folder trees, for example, are described.

First job was creating those sound effects, then adapting the cover:

About 50% of the text is now read in its first draft, far faster than the much larger TMBWOD. My target is to finish it all by the end of Tuesday, anything less would be a bonus. Onwards we charge.

TMBWOD Complete, Prometheus v3.84

Completed the final small edits and proofing to The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death today, then submitted for approval.

Then updated Prometheus a notch. One tiny improvement was the track lights. Until now the top (green) light is lit when all tracks are active (as most songs will be when on the final render) and dark green when some are not, but for audiobooks, I tend to only want one o two active, just those for the current chapter, so it's useful to be sure that no others are; so a new black icon is now there when all tracks are off.

My 'Hello Earth' painting has taken off on BlueSky, a similar level to the Philosopher painting. Strange how this happens, but it is a welcome and pleasant feeling of appreciation. It's confirmed that the 12 paintings with Galleria Balmain will remain there exclusively until September or so.

I could start on new creative material, or work on more audiobooks or sheet music transcription. Next possible books, How To Organise Your Computer Files or William Blake one. Next possible albums to transcribe, Burn Of God or Remembrance Service. It's an ultimate aim to do all of that, but I'm feeling I'm not creating enough. I need to make new art.

TMBWOD Audio Production

A full day working on the production for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death audiobook. This is the fun part, made so much easier by Prometheus! After maximising the basic recordings I apply basic dynamics, then load those waves into Prometheus to apply effects, always a high pass filter (plan voice recordings are always too bass heavy), a noise gate, and a tiny bit of reverb.

After that, special effects for the work in hand. I've applied a tinny voice filter to Arturo, the funny robot man, a reedy voice to the gramophone, a telephone effect for God, and a thinner voice for Adam, the mechanical child. For the main computer of the trans-dimensional gateway, I used the very retro sounding AnalogX speech synthesizer. I experimented with the DEC Talk synthesizer (as used by Stephen Hawking!) but that sounded too realistic!

One tricky voice was for 2me, the emotional spirit entity. I read it plain but thought that a female squeaky voice might work. Turning up the pitch sounded good enough, but not intelligible enough, so I decided to tag on a sine wave which tracked the amplitude. This seemed to work well, fitting the description of a 'smooth glass' voice.

The main song was included, and I made a small edit of music, a few notes, for the introduction.

Then it was a matter of rendering out the final files and making tiny volume adjustments so make all waves between -20 and -21dB.

All is set for proofing now. I may re-record parts if I'm particularly unhappy with elements, though this would be troublesome at the moment. The entire book is a little over 5 hours.

TMBWOD Audiobook First Draft, Complete Game Bundle

Completed the basic recording of The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death audiobook today, and started the process for the balancing and volume levels. The first chapter is, unusually, a song, so I had to sing this today too. More than a song, it's one of the most difficult songs to sing I've ever written! It ranges from G2 to A4 and changes key too, all in 8 short lines.

If I had the opportunity I would perhaps make a few changes to the text, a few. The punctuation needs some changes, as I tended to read this differently to how it was written. I spotted one or two actual mistakes, small words here and there, and there were a few moments of 'I could do better' - but on the whole I still like the book a lot. I'm still proud of it, still think it's one of the best things I've done as an artist, and it's still tragic that the world of literature is oblivious to it. Some parts, like the telephone, bed-side LED clock, and computer references place it firmly in the late 20th or early 21st century, so it's not timeless, but much of it is.

I'm in a flux of emotions. The year I wrote it, 2012, was something of an annus mirabilis for me; that book, The Love Symphony, the Richard Dadd painting and cabinet, and many great artworks as I charged from one thing to another. Can I do the same? I must try twice as hard to better myself.

The year feels special, like a year of change, and I want to push to do better things, the best things, to try to improve and learn, to strive.

Another job done today is the release of a 'complete set' bundle of my games on Steam. There are one or two games not deemed worthy of the $100 release fee; Bool, Firefly, Breakout Velocity, Outliner. There are always more I could add. I could make a better, bigger Yinyang, and could improve most of these games. Almost all of them were made in 2002, another annus mirabilis, in which I founded Bytten, Cornutopia Games, and IndieSFX; the foundations of my first period of growth.

I'll spend tomorrow working on the technical audio for TMBWOD. There are opportunities for special audio effects, but it's a big book, a huge job, perhaps not worth it. The readings did make me feel like an actor, I enjoyed some of the character voices, and inwardly laughed at others; but all are good experience. All showcase myself as an author as well as performer.

If I did more of these I would choose my next most popular books; How To Organise Your Computer Files, and the William Blake poems, which I get nothing for (despite my illustrations, Amazon consider it public domain). There are probably countless version of Blake's poems in audio form, probably read by great actors, but it would again be a showcase of my skills, and something of a legacy if I am lucky.

The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death Audiobook

Two more days of audiobook recording for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. I've already read as much as all of The Intangible Man book yet am only about 60% of the way through. Many chapters are 40 to 50 minutes.

My mood is stoic. Life is about the survival of the fittest. The fittest are whom? The most resilient. Fitness is not about strength or power or surging forth but informational resilience to harsh conditions.

TMBWOD Audiobook, Proto-Viral Philosopher

So many options for things I may do, and anything is really possible. Creating new things feels different than working on old things, but then working on old things often means creating new things for them! The small video talking about The Myth Of Sisyphus is fine, and perhaps it's a good idea to make a promotional video of sorts for each album, and each book, and each painting, and each game; but again, there is the question of workload vs. value. Everything is ultimately valuable, and anything justifiable if rationalised.

I've sold a couple of audiobooks, after recording two in January, and, as with having sheet music for all of my albums, having audio versions of all of my books seems like a good idea, so today I've charged into recording an audiobook for The Many Beautiful Worlds of Death. Recorded 3 of the 14 chapters today, though the first chapter is (I'm sure you know) a short song, so there are really 13 chapters.

I've been postings paintings and links to existing works almost daily on social media this year and my Philosopher painting has had an explosion in views overnight and on BlueSky today, a first such result for me which, on its own has been an inspiration and source of some happiness.

Deborah's holiday and the Olympics have both been a distraction in the past week, contributing to a lack of focus. Hopefully this focus on TMBWOD (and perhaps even afterwards, another book, perhaps Deep Dark Light, perhaps another) will acts as a stabilising force.

Wuthering Heights, Einstein

Many slow days, at the end of the sheet music project and searching for new directions. Watched the new 'Wuthering Heights' film with Deborah on Tuesday and rather liked it, though the overtly artistic moments seemed consciously arty rather than genuine somehow, so much borrowed from Lynch, and many painting references; Vermeer, Ingres, Millet, even Francis Bacon. Excessive borrowing is not influence it's struggling for identity, someone without a creative soul desperately trying to appear artistic.

I have many possibilities for direction. I've considered everything from a new album, to more sheet music, to more audiobooks, or painting plans, or even revising my old game Bool.

Today I've toyed with a music sequence for a song called 'Einstein' but, working on the music led to a melody which didn't fit good words. I wrote some better words but these have bent the melody in strange ways. Stll unsure if I should work on it at all. Too split. Too many choices.

Ironverb II

A slow day. I had hoped to do some work on promoting my music but did not even begin.

I did, instead, develop a new reverb for Prometheus, Ironverb II. The original Ironverb is a tinny plate-type reverb, with a band-pass filter and limited settings (not even bandwidth for the filter). For Ironverb II I've added an internal delay to the reverb tail, plus left/right (and front/back/up/down - Prometheus is natively 6-channel) controls over the delay gain and diffusion. Diffusion affects the hardness of the reflection, so it's useful for creating new surface-spatial types. I added a 'Preverb' parameter, which is the amount of reverb tail that isn't in the delay. When zero, this makes it only a delayed reverb, creating an odd effect. All of these settings are useful for creating lots of variety. The Dry (original sound) can be turned down if required too.

Doing this revealed a small bug in Prometheus, so that's now updated to v3.83.

This feels like a distraction. I must target something new. Life is short.