A slow couple of days. I had the idea for a new music piece for the album yesterday, and began the day working on it. I imagined a trail, like a caravan of gold and jangles, but the song itself, which I largely outlined at 4am after waking from a nightmare, felt a bit too comical and the unusual instrumentation proved difficult to get right.
Today has been an emotional struggle to get into things. The solution is to make rational goals. I decided to work on a new soundtrack for Future Snooker and have developed 12 tracks, all of which are edits of previous work. I chose about 20 originally, but my old music now seems so simplistic; so crude and loud and emotionless. The newer, more gentle and deep tracks really stood out, and they reflect my current music better. That's the sort of music I'd like people to hear, and it does go well with a game like snooker.
Listening to my music from The Infinite Forest now, it sounds so electronic, harsh and buzzy. The composition is fine, it would probably sound great played by an orchestra, of course. Nowadays I'm much more skilled at crafting more realistic, or at least evocative sound. I've used two tracks from that album in the Future Snooker soundtrack, and for The Talking Butterflies I reworked it with some of the new features of my software that makes it easier to add this human touch.
My software, originally called NoiseStation II, and now Prometheus, has grown bit by bit over many years and its features continue to improve. A lot of the craft of musicianship, or painting, or anything, is not in leaps, but in incremental tiny steps, each of which makes things a little bit better, tasks a bit faster. For this reason it's important to note these procedures, to hold on to what you have learned. In software we have to be aware of adding functionality without adding complexity. Each new feature can add more complexity; more menus, more to learn, more to complicate the super-fast excitement of wanting to get the idea down. Ideally, a feature can open up a new world without that. At its most basic, you should be able to do everything that is possible without the need for a special menu option for it.
How frustrating it feels to have a back-catalogue I can barely bring myself to listen to. The solution is to make more new music, to overwhelm the mere 20 albums or so with 40 or so new ones, so I'm pleased at least that the Future Snooker music will at least reflect my current musical direction and state.
This afternoon I've completed the programming side. Every new level (frame) will start with new music. The music isn't very long, about one or two minutes per track, and then leads to silence. For a game of strategy, silence is often preferred. There are twelve tracks in total, and many are relaxing, drifting music, so hopefully a few players will keep them on the playlist.
