A slow day. Started by compiling the new ArtSwarm show, converting new videos and editing the audio for some, this took until lunch. Then music work, completing the string tune from yesterday, and trying to push forward on the album.
In the evening, I decided the reprogram my software, adding a few features mainly to help with tidying up old songs. The first feature was to expand phrases, which are tracks that are full of notes that are repeated often, for example a drum-loop, so that you can point to the phrase track as a shortcut rather than typing the same notes over repeatedly. I used to use these a lot more than I do now, particularly for repetitive tracks; you might have a bassline that is identical throughout the song for example, but now I hardly use this feature because I tend to craft every note individually. Even when the notes are technically the same, the timing, the volume, and the feeling are different each time in a piece of music, so now my music takes more time to make but is less mechanical.
Yesterday, looking back at the some The Infinite Forest music, I thought that it would be nice to remake it, but the notes in each phrase track would need to be manually copied where it was used, which would take hours, so I've added a feature to automatically expand and copy all of the notes in all of the phrases used in a song.
This programming is a distraction tactic so that I can avoid thinking about composing. I'm most productive when working on several things because one thing is too powerful and too intense. The ideas are too thick and overwhelming to allow themselves to be used, so I need to work on several jobs at once. More coding tomorrow, while the music stews.
I'm listening to Genesis' Trick of the Tail for the first time which is inspiring. Phil Collins' voice on the album sounds remarkably like Peter Gabriel's, and if anything, better. Still, I think the golden age for Genesis was this foursome or the fivesome, rather than the later, less varied, output.
