Over the past two days I've been updating my music software NoiseStationII, adding the ability to fade between one parameter and another with a single command. This doesn't make anything possible that was impossible before, but it makes it much easier. I can, for example, set a start point and an end point to fade the song out or in, or fade the tempo down, or a filter, on the song, or any track or any instrument playing. Anyway, the changes took two days.
Today I've been trying to write a little tune about black holes but it's been a struggle for production reasons. The tune is fine, and I've got lots more noted down, but the sound isn't right. I imagined something big and booming like Mars in The Planets Suite, but a bassy lead sound like that is quite tricky because the bass marks a beat more than carries a melody. I've tried a strange brassy distorted sort of sound here. It'll come eventually. The melody is a little too slow too.
In the end I lost interest in it and went back to the "fugue" track in the post below which now sounds a lot better, thanks to some timing changes and the addition of a proper fugue, that is two melodies not just cycles of chords. At the moment it does have a sense of growing and good dissonance contrast but it's not got much to do with the big bang (although it's definitely approaching mathematics).
I need to add the next layer, which often comes at about this stage. This requires visualisation of the thing to convey, and new music bits and/or changes to what is there already to portray and represent the things in the scene.
Now, other news.
Tomorrow I plan to switch jobs completely and get back to painting. It's time to design this year's Christmas card for my friends. I'm pleased to say that the Thinking About Christmas painting raised £95 for the Resources For Autism charity I donated it to. I'll be attending a reception event in London next month where the total will be announced. There were quite a few famous names in this auction like Sir Peter Blake, Lord Norman Foster and Anish Kapoor.
My painting is now hanging in the Grosvenor Museum too. I'm in the local paper woohoo. The write up was very complimentary, I must send a thank you to the journalists. They mentioned my next exhibition too which starts on Tuesday. Tick tick. Tick!
