The Intangible Man & Other Strange Tales

Have spent most of today working on the cover artwork and other arrangements for my short story collection which will be called The Intangible Man and Other Strange Tales. Many short story compilations feature the title of one story as the title so I've followed that suit.

The cover went through many iterations. The initial idea was the outline of a man made of clouds, a recurrent theme in my designs (see my album cover for Once Upon a Time, and I've painted, or wanted to paint, this a few times - curious). Here is an early draft of the cover:

And the cover so far:

The second seems very similar but includes many hours of tweaks and adjustments.

I like it but one possible downside is that it has a very sci-fi sort of appearance. The stories are imaginative fantasy, perhaps in the style of The Twilight Zone, but often real world and surrealistic, Terry Gilliam-like, rather than William Gibson. The title story itself is a light hearted ironic tale.

It's the last day of a productive month: I've completed Burn of God at last, and War is Over, which we have in CD form too. I've a few art exhibitions lined up, and several Fall in Green performances each of which is bigger than before, have completed The Burning Circus ready for its April release, and about half of the Clowns album, plus a few tracks from the next Marius Fate album, and made lots of enhancements to Prometheus. It's been a bad month (and year) financially, but it has for most of the world. Such mountains are there for us to battle; every day is to be a fight of life and death. I'll live as frugally as I can and strive to make the best artwork I can, as is my duty to the world. I'm sure the quality of my art is better than ever, so must keep creating. I can only hope and pray for another decade, or 70 more years, of such creativity. We are in the hands of fate.

Vermilion Dream

A difficult night to sleep. I awoke unable to breathe due to congestion, which has been a regular occurrence for me for the past decade or so. I dreamed of vermilion; I had to make some sort of painting, sharp red streaks on a prussian blue background, and decided to mix vermilion paint from powder. I was careful of this poison but someone bumped me while I was gently stirring the powder and I accidentally breathed in a cloud of the particles. I became aware that this would lead to irrational paranoia.

Strange Tales

Not much done today, awoke late having hardly slept. I began be editing a final draft of my story Erasure. All of the protagonists in my stories are names George. I liked the name initially, it had a feeling of ordinariness, and it adds a unity to the collection to have the hero of each tale names George.

The collection is now largely compiled, but I don't have a name for it... I would also like to ad more; more illustrations, a preface perhaps, or a foreword. Most urgently I need a title. I had thought about simply Strange Tales, but that might compete with the existing magazine (and lots of older ones, and might have some sort of legal precedence). There are lots of similarly generic titles that also tend to hark back to the pulp magazine era. I does sort of match the mood of the stories; slightly sci-if, or more like imaginative, slightly surrealistic tales, stories of magical reality... of course if I wrote more... what would that collection be called? Many compilations name the book after a notable story, so that is one option.

This arrangement didn't take long. Now I have set-lists for the four Fall in Green shows I can work on instrumentation, so I dragged out the SY-85. What fun it is to make instruments, but very time consuming. I can make a list of possible sounds, but most still use piano. My Behringer B207MP3 amp is very crackly in the volume control, almost unusably so, very bad considering it's a new unit. In fact, this is the most crackly and unusable control for any piece of music equipment I've ever bought! I should send it back, but that would be an annoying delay. I could simply set it high and use the channel controls for actual volume.

The sound quality is not bad, and it is loud enough for most small or medium venues, but I'm thinking that the big 800W amps would provide better sound quality, even in a small venue, and we'd have stereo. I would prefer, ideally, each instrument to have it's own amp, like the instruments in an orchestra. The different timbres of each amplifier (and spatial location) would make the performance more stochastic and interesting. Feeding all of the instruments, mics and all, through one mixer and sound system kills an element of interest and variety.

I need to list and start on the videos next, and work simultaneously on the book title and cover. The second proof for The Burning Circus has arrived and looks good. I've also finished production work on Clown Face, which (unusually) took make vocal takes, but was really worth it. This is a masterful poem/tune/track. I'm reminded how unique the work we are doing is. There's really nothing like this out there.

Short Stories, and Fall in Green

A productive few days, though I feel less productive than I probably am.

On Monday I started to compile my short stories into a collection. I wrote these from 2011 to 2015, with my novella in between. For some reason I thought that these stories spanned a much greater time period. All are strange tales, usually with a twist; little imaginative vignettes, often with a fantastical quality. There are no limits to the imagery to present the tale, these are dream images, rather than sci-fi. You could think of them like episodes of The Twilight Zone, or The Outer Limits, or short stories by Terry Gilliam, if he should ever do such a thing.

Yesterday Deb went I went to meet David Lawton in Chester, an artist of great energy, and passion and knowledge for painting. His meticulous, typically miniature portrait, work barely shows his boundless energy and intellect, perhaps discernible only by its extreme attention to detail. A lovely friend and a wonderful and inspiring day all round. How I wish I had more time to paint!

But this is a time for music, and today we worked out the set-lists for the four Fall in Green shows so far this year. Each requires a lot of music, and new projections - I need to make a film for each track (and our songs/tracks/poems are short, typically under 3 minutes, so we have many per show, this in itself presents artistic challenges). The way the projector works means that I can't easily have some tracks without films and some with; for a smooth performance, everything needs some image or video. This attention to the smoothness of presentation is a key difference between an amateurish and professional looking show.

I'll try to perform three of these four events with three synthesizers too, for the first time. This means designing lots of new sounds as well as memorizing every piece of music and the transitions between. I can't read music well enough to perform from it, so I perform every show from memory; each is normally over an hour, and each is a very different mix of music. This isn't that difficult for my generally good memory. The trick is to know the mood, the feeling, the key... then anything is authentic.

The job of loading, carrying, setting up the equipment, testing the audio, putting the amplifiers here, the projector there... this work is the most tiring and difficult. Each show takes at least an hour to set up in situation, and three or four in the day beforehand, and all again at the end. I can barely focus on any aspect of the actual performance given the exhausting work of setting the heavy equipment up. Still, this must be done.

We will be performing at least one new work this year for the Knutsford Music Festival, which we will open on the evening Thursday the 11th of June. Our other two confirmed shows are at Crewe Library on Tuesday 19th May, and a short performance based on War is Over in Crewe Town Centre on Saturday 11th May.

The time for me to paint something for my Nantwich solo exhibition is scant. I might have to start this in July.

Clown Face

Wrote the music for Clown Face today, a simple piano tune, and recorded and sequenced it. There seem to be three different types of Fall in Green music:

1. Speech with sound effects or non-musical sounds which augment to speech with a location.
2. Simple music without specific melody; either repeating structures, or chords, meandering between keys, pleasant or unpleasant, to evoke the mood. These are very freeform and have the utility of being able to match the mood of the words more easily, but are generally simple, easy; music which would struggle to work without the support of the words.
3. Melodies with speech between or in specific passages. Of course, there is some crossover with the second type; any sound can be melodic, but here I mean music that you can hum or whistle, with a lead over specific chords. These are my favourites. Can they suit any sort of poem or speech?

I felt the need for more melodic pieces, so the Clown Face tune is one of those. It's very simple, no layers of complexity, and if there is a theme at all it's two repeating notes, but this is one of the first where I designed different lines of the poems to fit into the music while I composed it. Similar Fall in Green music; the Time, Falling theme, or the music for We Used To Store Sunlight (which we haven't yet recorded, although it has already become a live staple), were composed on the fly so to speak, with Deb reading the words as I composed.

All day for these few minutes. It feels like a slow day. I'm impatient, but time is limited. Life is limited. Must keep trying. My Lexicon Alpha appears to be dying. I light need a new sound card soon.

But wait! I did something else too, the last illustrations for The Burning Circus, my next poetry book, and the one that by coincidence includes Clown Face. I'm so pleased with the poems in this book, certainly my best work. I love it. Here is the Clown Face page from the very book itself. It will go on sale on Amazon in April and I'll have some reading and book signing events at that time.

Back to the Clowns

A busy day of actual art yesterday. I'm reminded how much time I seem to spend on admin or procrastinating... yet this tends to be proactive procrastinating, that is, working on something that will help something else, while unconsciously working.

However, yesterday was was one of creative work. I made the preliminary music for Lost at the Fair and The Knife Thrower. I'm not happy with either. The knife thrower track has a gentle, romantic feeling, like Barefoot, or She Floats, or some of the other tracks we've done; gentle piano with strings. This suits the mood of the poem, although the pacing is wrong. With a song, the pace of the vocals is set by the melody, but with a poem, the pacing can be anything, but it needs to dialogue with the music. This interplay makes the whole recording and production process extra challenging, but fun; the possibilities are greater.

The pacing is easily fixed, but I'm a little bored by the sameness of the track to others that we have done. It's odd; I used to wonder why Genesis didn't make ten more albums like Foxtrot, as I liked Foxtrot and wanted more like that. They felt the need to move on though. Now I feel the need for newness too. However, mood is mood, so I'll tweak things a little and probably keep Knife Thrower as it is.

Lost at the Fair is more complex and difficult. It's one of my favourite poems with a double meaning about losing ones mother to dementia (or something else). It's subsumed with emotion and so one of the most difficult. The imagery of being in a blur of a fairground is easy to conjure, however. This one must be right.

Other jobs today:

First, emails. I'm part of three performances this year it seems and we'll probably do something at Crewe Library in March or April. I want to help with local arts as much as I can too, and will certainly take part in a major way in the Crewe Storyfest in July. I've also listed the Facebook event for the next live ArtSwarm event, and spent at least an hour fixing a long term hardware problem on my PC, getting it to re-detect my Lexicon Alpha after awakening the computer; this involves a DEVCON command (sounds like a nuclear war controller, it is, instead, a command line version of the Device Manager).

This afternoon I finally, tada, submitted Burn of God for publication. I made on last minute change to the music, some stark breaths after the Skeletons track; an awakening from the nightmare. This is one of the most arresting parts on the arresting album. I also tweaked the album artwork, after receiving the new War is Over discs, which look amazingly good, some of the best graphics I've worked on so far.

I've also spent a good 45 minutes today playing electric guitar along to Amarok, the Mike Oldfield album, and the classic Starfleet Project E.P., which is perfect for jamming to (if you want to jam with Brian May and Eddie van Halen).

Reverb Recoding

We went to an inspiring poetry reading last night in Crewe library, and heard new poet Lenni Sanders who had a captivating performance style, and imaginative output and use of language. Afterwards we drank champagne infused with Pixley Berries blackcurrant cordial, which was exquisite, and watched No-Man's Land, the Harold Pinter play, on television via YouTube. Only a fez and quilted smoking jacket could have made the night more perfect. Maybe I could wear them to future poetry nights!

We may have a Fall in Green gig at Crewe Library in the coming months.

Reprogrammed all of my reverb plugins today. The bug in them wasn't serious, but, given a long silence, could have pushed some floating point values beyond their limits. My reverbs are:

Oxyverb: a plain (6-channel) reverb with Left/Right stereo delay. The delay has a degree of softness which can be adjusted. Nitroverb: like Oxyverb but the delay has feedback. This can create immense space, it's the one used on the original Flatspace theme. Hydroverb: Like Oxyverb but includes a band pass filter rather than low pass on the reverb tail. Gives a lighter sound. Simple Reverb: A quick, plain, monophonic reverb. This is very fast to process and useful for things like snare drums or special effects or instruments that could use a smoothed out sort of sound. Kryptoverb: Like Oxyverb, but is monophonic. You can specify how much information from each channel is selected for the mix. Ironverb: A very tinny, plate-style reverb with a band pass filter. Good for robotic speech effects.

I also have Oxyverb II, Nitroverb II, and Hydroverb II, which have 6-channel delays. All reverbs operate in 6-channels anyway, for full 3D sound in each axis; rarely used, but at least I have the functionality. I can produce a 5.1 mix of any of my tracks automatically, if I ever needed one. I really must program in some sort of ambisonic exporter one day. These 'II' plug-ins allow customisation of the shape in each channel. Oxyverb II and Nitroverb II also feature high and low pass filters on the reverb tail.

All of the reverbs use a decay which can extend to infinity if required; so you can 'play' the breathy reverb tail if needed, or fade it to a custom shape as needed. My aim is functionality and efficiency, nothing too complex, too much or too little.

Every parameter of every plug-in I use can be modulated; either using an L.F.O. style modulator, like something simple like a sine wave, although these are just wav files, so any pattern can be used and/or looped if needed. You can also trigger, attach, or detach a modulator inside a sequence, or set a parameter inside a sequence, or fade from one to another. This power means that every act in a song can be really quickly and efficiently automated. Even fundamental operations, like the total song mix volume or song tempo are standard plug-ins, which use the same system and can be modulated in this way.

Next, I must update The Burning Circus and move on. I feel as though the year is wasted on wrestling with Burn of God. The project evokes the spirit of Wings, the Howard Hughes behemoth which gave him so much trouble.

Birthday and Reverbs

A break yesterday to celebrate Deb's birthday, a full day with trips to Congleton and Sandbach and more.

I really wanted to get some creative work done but felt unable, still too tired from the weekend. I pressed another draft of Burn of God. I will keep listening repeatedly until I'm happy with it several times in row, then it is done.

I've toyed with the idea of adding a high pass filter to my reverbs, and then realised that a potentially faulty volume tracker is present in the code, this means that I must recode all of the reverb effects, so I might as well add that filter. This should really clear up my future mixes.

Also today, some new guitar picks arrived, which are the best I've tried, renowned picks; Jim Dunlop Jazz IIIs. These are excellent for note picking, thicker and pointed to a bevel like an arrowhead, and polished there to be very smooth. I have a frosted yellow one with a slightly rougher texture too, and they're smaller than normal, which is good because your fingers are closer to the strings. Not so good for strumming though. I find scales a easier with them, but I'm only just beginning here.

I cleared a page to start a painting, but haven't got further. I'll probably spend tomorrow coding these reverbs. Such a frustrating few months, I have so much to create yet feel blocked at times; yet I've learned a great dead about music engineering and have programmed some very useful new plugins. I must push on, life is short.

Tonight, poetry at Crewe library. We may pursue a performance there.

ArtSwarm Felines

A good ArtSwarm night last night. Spent most of yesterday preparing. I always think it would take hardly any time but it ends up taking almost all of the day. I ate just before leaving but was still starving and exhausted at the end of it, too tired to sleep after carrying the equipment up and down the stairs. After I've survived, I consider it a great workout.

A very good night, a huge mix of acts including poetry, story, and play readings, to songs, music without words, and a projected slideshow. Our most eclectic night yet. These nights are so hard to judge, the acts, the 'quality' of them, is very subjective, and part of the aim of this is for performers to learn and refine their own skills, so everything that takes place is equally good (except, from my point of view as emmcee, acts which overrun or avariciously grasp at shared resources. This is very rare, in fact, I think of the 60 or so acts over 6 events to date, only one has overrun their allotted time). I like to try new things and, if anything, gain most from things which are rough and flawed. We can't learn from things that go to plan. It's public practice of the new that this sort of event is exactly for.

Generally, I feel elated and uplifted at the end, as well as shaky and aching, and often annoyed, worried, exhausted, wondering why I do them and if I should continue. At the end of each one I tell myself that it was the last one, that I can't face another. Not due to any treatment by anyone else; Deborah, performers, and audience alike are hugely supportive and positive to an amazing degree, but these events are draining physically and emotionally, and can feel unrewarding and relentless. Yet, perhaps that is the essence of art itself, and the essence of life too. The essence of art and life is the pursuit of crazy, seemingly meaningless, excessive and tiring explosions of expression; climbing a mountain in a storm, raging against the wind, smashing the walls with fists and warrior's cries. This is the romantic ideal. As such, perhaps this feeling itself proves that these ArtSwarm events are indeed art, moreso than the ArtsLab on the radio, moreso than ArtSwarm the YouTube show.

Here I am as 'Ttom Catt' singing Let's Dance Little Squirrel. I rehearsed it a minuscule three or so times, yet discovered on the night that my mask made seeing what I was playing impossible, so the performance turned into a surrealistic punk performance. I am sure that this made it better, turned a mere rock song into an transdimensional emotional orb.

Little squirrel...
Hey, little squirrel...

Let's dance
little squirrel
Let's dance
to-night

Take a chance
little squirrel
I will not
bite

Ready or not I'm coming
My heart is beating fast
I feel my eyes dilating
wide
and you are in my sight.

Little squirrel!
Little squirrel!

Let's dance
little squirrel
Let me have a
taste

Try your luck
little squirrel
there's no time to
waste.

Ready or not I'm coming
My heart is beating fast
I feel my eyes dilating
wide
and you are in my sight.

Little squirrel!
Little squirrel!

More Burn and ArtSwarm

Back to tweaking Burn of God today. I've only made seemingly changes to the vocal and bass balancing but I'm so much more pleased with the music now. Things are never perfect but it must be at least artistically sound. I must at least feel happy with the result.

I programmed a new Fuzz Compression effect too, a replacement for an existing one. For actual compression it's not very useful because it invariably produces distorting artifacts, but sometimes this sounds rather good, like a warm fuzziness, ideal for bass sounds, or odd vocals, or smooth strings, or other special effects. My code had an error with the powf(x,y) command. I'd assumed that when x=0, the result would be zero, but sometimes it could be infinity, or cause other sillyness.

A busy day otherwise with arranging future engagements: plans for the Crewe Story Festival, and thoughts about organising other events, two performances, and a request for a new ekphrastic painting for a second exhibition at Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery, after a successful exhibition last year. They want a painting delivered by March 1st; a tall order given that it would take at least 10 days to dry, never mind composition and painting. Ideally I need a minimum of 4 months to develop a painting... although I'm reminded that last year I rushed through three to good effect (although only in one layer, and the paintings were barely dry).

With the new Apocalypse of Clowns album, and a second Marius Fate album as targets before the end of March, possibly two festivals to help organise, and one to take part in, the year is shaping up to be busy, which I like.

Tomorrow it's the live Cirque du ArtSwarm: Felines event. A huge storm is forecast. I recall that heavy rain arrived on two of the five ArtSwarm night last year. This does put off visitors. I typically dislike every aspect of these performances, primarily the exhausting physical work of carrying equipment, setting up, welcoming, hosting, and performing; yet I generally feel elated after them. I am reminded that one of Leonardo da Vinci's main jobs was organising court entertainments. This time, I am looking forward to it. We have ten acts of 10 minutes, some of which feature first time performers, and everything on the billing is very eclectic. Doors open to the public tomorrow at 18:30.

Bugs and the Madness of Perfectionism

I remained unhappy today, due to Burn of God, I just wasn't quite happy with the quality of the music, specifically the balancing of some of the tracks. At 3pm or so, I pulled the release and instantly felt much better. Perhaps I made the mistake of discovering a new fancy audio effect, tweaking my sounds with it and instantly accepting the results.

I've also discovered some bugs in my recent audio plugins. This is actually an old bug, but one that rarely appears. The volume of the signal is tracked by a floating point value, multiplying it by a fraction to reduce it, or by the inverse of a fraction to increase it. The thing is, sooner or later this will reach a limit of infinitesimality which causes the vales metaphorically explode and ruin the audio (and program generally). I merely needed to add limits to the value (curiously, this speeded up the algorithms rather than slowed them). This only occurs after about a minute of silent audio or so, but would apply to any of my plugins that use volume trackers, including noise gates. It feels good to find a bug like this, even if I'm the only one who would ever notice or appreciate it. This is the eternal sadness of the programmer; the reason I wanted to become an artist instead.

I surmise that nature will have the problem of infinitesimal amounts too. You can only divide so many times before a limit is reached, thus quantum mechanics. Nothing in the universe is actually infinite, even in maths its only a theoretical idea; we can never count to infinity for example, or, for that matter experience zero.

I've developed a few new plugins; a new noise gate, and an "Engram Input Attenuator". Engrams are ways of passing track data to another track, like a parallel data feed. In this case, I can use that data to 'duck out' a track. It's rarely useful, but can be used for some interesting effects. If I use the drums as an input, and apply it to a steady bass then the bass will hop and jump in the gaps between the drum sounds, very groovy for fans of nineties bands like 'Sash'.

I've also ordered the War is Over CDs today. I still, however, feel unproductive today, and anxious about this bug. These plugins, with their 6-tracks and lots of complex variables, all seen and monitored by hand, are easy to accidentally spook. I'll have to check the others in case any other use volume trackers. I don't think any do...

Admin and Noise Gates

A couple of days of music admin. First, tada! Burn of God is complete. I've had enough of tweaks this way and that. I have mixed feelings about it today, at times liking everything and seeing it, for the most part, as the artwork I envisaged, an exploration of a subject in a way rare for music, something Bergmanian, dramatic, and different. At other times I dislike it, but then see it as a transition album. It has many firsts; it's my first album where almost all of the tracks include sung vocals. The majority of my music has been instrumental to date, but now, I can't imagine going back to that, or to something easy.

It's also my first album which includes live guitar, though I can barely play a note on the instrument. This month I've started to practice guitar, though. Learning any instrument is a matter of commitment, to learn it or die! No grey areas or limp ideals! All artists should be learning new skills as well as showcasing existing ones.

I've heard today that War is Over is also complete and has started to appear on platforms like Google Play, and we have some important Fall in Green performances booked for this year. I'd like to do something special with the Apocalypse of Clowns album, and create something rounded and complete, with a psychological dimension, like my Burning Circus collection. I wonder if we could create something fantastical, like a classic Genesis or Marillion album. The challenge with fantasy is making something that people feel is about them, but that's the challenge of realism too.

Another thing I've done today is work on a new noise gate algorithm based on my compressor code. My existing gate uses a volume tracker of fixed intensity, and when this goes below the threshold, fades the sound out by a certain 'decay' slope, and when above, fades it up by a certain 'attack' slope. My new one uses separate attack and decay slopes for the volume tracker, but a fixed 'bite' for the gate. One difference is that I can adjust the relative volume of the gated and ungated bits, even amplifying or inverting the signal of either to create odd effects. It's an experiment. I'm unsure if this new 'Hypergate' will be useful at all. I hardly ever use noise gates, only really for special effects (gated reverbs perhaps, and I can put them in parallel with a second track, to so-called 'duck' a mix, even then, very rarely, the need for a duck is a sign of bad composition).

Here's the final Burn of God cover. It will be out on March 20th.

Band Wire Compression

Compression victory! I've fixed up my new compression algorithm and it's instantly improved things. I rarely use any E.Q. or compression; for me, these are attempts to repair composition problems (what I mean is, I design instruments to fill those gaps rather than use the wrong instrument and then try to adjust it).

But sometimes these things can be vital, particularly for bass and vocals. Bass because changes in the note itself can audibly change the volume, anything filtered will make the higher notes literally quieter, and electronic bass sounds in particular often use low pass filters, and all mics have variable frequency peaks.

What I wanted to try was a tool to compress a specific frequency range, like a band-pass filter and compressor, remixed into the original signal, so I've programmed that today and it's produced good results already. It also creates some interesting soft and fuzzy distortion effects if desired. This weird analogue sounding compression doesn't seem to be like other compressors; changes in the tracking parameters (attack, release) transform the output level dramatically because its directly related, rather than merely using this tracker as a gate sensor. This is a good thing, it can produce interesting sound effects, and all parameters can be controlled to pull anything back (or push it forward) as needed anyway.

In the end I've used two volume tracers; one plain one which gradually (you can adjust the sluggishness) follows the sound wave. A second one will dip to zero when below the threshold value and climb to one when above it. That is used to feed through the compressed signal, and (inversely) feed through the dry data when below the threshold. The original signal is simply divided by the inverse of the first volume tracer. Everything can be phase inverted if desired, although that's probably not useful. The strength of the total effect faded away too, if you wanted just a touch of it.

The new effect which I call Band Wire Compression is a compressor, noise gate (you can switch off compression and just have the gate if you wanted staccato effects), distortion pedal, and a band-pass or peaking filter (as desired).

This work made me think that some music practices are outdated now. Compression can be used to even out a drum kit, or even out the loud/soft bits of a performance but for electronic instruments, digital music is often too even and needs roughening up, if anything. The Marius Fate album was my first to benefit from deliberate variations in intensity so that no note was the same twice, making it sound more human. The compress such things would be a backwards step.

Now, to move on. Already a busy day. Nick Mee came to visit, and tonight it's poetry night in Nantwich, although I'm unsure if I can make it there. I might find or write a poem on the subject anyway.

Compression and Yes

More work on my audio compression algorithm today. It appears I'm using a unique algorithm, as I'm using volume tracers and the inversion of those rather than a basic logarithmic boost; I simply trace the volume and boost the signal by the inverse of this trace. A more conventional compressor (indeed, the old version I used to have) simply uses this volume trace to enable or disable the gate, and boosts the signal by a fixed inverse proportion based on what power you want to give it.

This version gives a more analogue sort of feeling, a bit more unpredictable and can be wildly sensitive to the various slope settings for the attack, decay, bite. I might create both anyway, to add more options. The value of being able to code your own audio algorithms is immense!

I worked out that the blips that were plaguing yesterday's version were the harsh digital gate, easy to smooth out.

I've spent most of today tweaking thus. I rarely use compression, but now I'm thinking that it might be useful for bass sounds, for a more consistent mix. I'm growing happier with Burn of God, but the music still isn't balanced how I would like.

God bless my Samson Resolv monitors! These are as good as my Sony MDR-5706 headphones at monitoring. I've had them for years (they don't make them now) so I know how music should sound on them. I've bought a few new (1970s!) albums to listen to today: Genesis' Nursery Cryme, the last of the nice 'prog' era ones for me, and The Story of I by Patrick Moraz, which I've not heard more than two minutes of and look forward to. It seems eccentric. Yes were an amazingly bad band considering the wealth of talent of every one of its many hundreds of members. I can barely think of a good song by them, even their only hit of consequence Only of a Lonely Heart was an awful tuneless song made to sound good by brilliant production. Perhaps this is a harsh judgement given that I've only heard four of their countless albums.

God Infinity, Compression, Karaoke

Had a somewhat torrid night, awoke almost feverish, although I managed to breathe a little more easily than the previous two nights and am less congested. I think I've had some sort of minor virus, which explains the headaches. I hardly slept, then had amazing dreams, at one point the sky was rotating through a circular window and it was filled with strange shapes.

I rose late and started to rework on God Infinity, the most complex track from Burn of God. I'm in the phase of not liking the music again. I've realised that I love a project and work hard on it, then, at its moment of completion, I'm ready to abandon it. I invariably dislike it, and start to become exciting about the next one, which I hope will be better (and generally is). This fact stops me promoting the new work. I'm tired of it, not proud of it, compared to the amazing next project it's always second best, although I may grow to be pleased with it some months or years later. I explained this to Deborah tonight and she suggested that I follow a set of logical rules, a promotion schedule or plan. I've realised that, with our Fall in Green work I'm much more motivated in this regard, perhaps because it's a team and I'm helping her and others. Perhaps this is one reason why solo artists do less well than bands. Isn't it strange that visual artists are rarely bands or teams? The Chapman Brothers and Gilbert and George are notable exceptions.

I arranged the CD artwork for both albums for printing in the day, and started to work on a new compression D.S.P. effect, that is dynamic compression. I rarely use compression, only ever for vocals that demand a certain rigidity, aware that it always, always, harms emotional expression, but it can make lyrics audible that might be inaudible. Lyrics need to be heard and comprehended (unless you're really going for something unusual).

My compression effect in my software, Prometheus, has never been used because it never really worked. I had the idea for a second audio effect based on it today, so was inspired to work on it. The principle is simple; a volume tracer on the wave to compress, then boosting the volume by the inverse of the volume trace.

In the evening I went to a party in a large club. The deejay offered karaoke to everyone but only I, Deb, and Deb's sister sang anything. Nobody else danced either apart from the small children. One lesson of the evening is that The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Tight Fit is inordinately difficult to sing, demanding both a falsetto voice and a bass voice.

I want to feel inspired and well and full of jobs and purpose tomorrow.

War Is Out and Yellow Glasses

A full day, amazing how we can think a project is ended when it's far from it! Started by listing War Is Over on the major music platforms, so this is coming soon. This inspired me to take another listen to Burn of God, my final ear-check and I found a few issues, so have spent a lot of the day working on this, mainly changes to the largest and most complex track, the rock epic God Infinity.

I've also listed both albums on my website and Cornutopia Music, and did a lot of lyric checking. All of the lyrics for War Is Over will be online, and videos or sites that support synchronised lyrics (bouncing ball, anyone?) will be able to use that too.

In other more important news, I'm now wearing yellow safety glasses. I've had headaches since having my eye test last week and I suspect it is the psychological effect of temporarily experiencing clarity during the test, and generally worrying about the potential for headaches. I wondered if any deterioration in my eyes is down to my daylight light bulb, which is lovely and bright, and especially energising in the winter months, but is perhaps too powerful and too white. Perhaps white lights like this, blue phone lights (I don't have a smartphone or tablet or modern screen thing, thankfully), and LEDs, are harming people's eyes. I already mourn the loss of yellow sodium street lights, those wonderful symbols of loving evening. We must preserve and restore them!

I could switch to a 'normal', yellow tinted bulb, but I haven't got one, and at times I like the idea of white light, so I'll keep my light on, but wear yellow tinted safety glasses as a filter. This has the advantage of filtering the computer screen, and protecting me from potential flying debris.

I would now benefit from having glasses and must consider options. I've often wanted them even though I didn't need them. Now I need them, I am unsure if I want them.

Zell

Have finalised the first draft of War is Over, and remain happy with it. Now to try it one other systems. I went to a meeting this morning about a new festival in Crewe this summer, more details coming at some point.

I've spent an hour or two working on my board game idea, which evolved into something like Go, crossed with a cellular automaton. One problem is that, on a triangular board, the centre square, and thus the first turn, is too powerful. Avoiding that wouldn't solve the problem (say, by blocking the centre) because I suspect that the first turn would remain too powerful. Ideally, the game mechanic itself would make up for this. I will explore a few options.

Here is an image of the test board. The solid triangles are power-cells, like food for the cellular growth.

The other cells can be placed, or move, or capture; but movement and capture are, in practice, rarely part of the game. The game turns into one of territory blocking. I can sense an intelligence and strategy when playing, but I suspect that the initial placements determine the outcome to a great degree. I'm working on rule variations now and will share full details when it is ready. I call the game Zell at the moment.

This is a temporary distraction. War is Over is as good as complete. We will order some CD copies, which are expensive and might remain unsold, yet, it is more important now than ever to make music physical and real, special. Digital music is somewhat valueless. I want to make art, and that means something people can hold that is rare and precious due to its rarity; its physical, as well as musical, beauty.

Next; the Apocalypse of Clowns music, but I'm very tired of music and have had a headache every day for the past several days. I must rest, and will change direction for a few days. I might revisit my old short stories to assemble. I'm a better writer now than I was when I wrote them, but we all improve, and many of those stories are not published or published in many different collections. Several of them have won prizes in competitions. Thinking about it, they're some of the most successful things I've done, but I need to check them through, have them properly proofread and then get them out there.

War is Over Finalé

I'd hoped to finish the War is Over album today, and it is largely done. This has been a lot of hard work for a mere 18 minutes of music. Each track has been extended and augmented somehow, usually with some sort of lead in to blend it with the others. I love adding sounds that evoke images, a scene, a world. This is my aim and my way of working; vision vision! This craft takes essential time and lots of listening, as well as recording. I've used a huge soundscape of special effects and live recordings from all of the place. My experience as a sound effect recordist (not to mention my 2000+ strong library of self-made sound effects) is incredibly useful.

The remaining track today was the finalé to the album, and I added some rock guitars to it, reflecting the dramatic Viking opening. These lead into an extended piano solo with improvised variations on the main theme. This is a little scrappy from a technical piano playing point of view, and part of me would like something more perfect or ideal, yet, this reflects the sort of playing I love and play often; it's about live expression, the expression of instant emotion, embodying the piano in a sort of love-symbiosis. I've decided to let this music run raw without edits or changes. I've recorded a lot of my piano music over the years, since Cycles & Shadows, but I tend to pull back to make it as neat as I could, but at the expense of the drama and expressiveness that fills my live playing when I'm at my most energetic and at the limits of control.

This track, the finalé at the end of Struck Lucifers, will be one of the first recordings of this sort of playing. A few other tracks have been raw takes like this; One Sided Duet, The Love Reliquary tunes, Notes from Space, are all examples, but those pieces are relatively slow and full of a certain Romantic feeling. It must be my destiny to play more complex work of power. In piano I must work on timing, the accuracy of different finger pressures and timings when playing chords, and large spatial movements.

In guitar, I am just beginning to learn scales. War is Over, along with Burn of God, will be my first albums to include live guitar.

War is Over Artwork

Exhausted and with a headache, something of a regular occurance for the past week. I must have done two day's work today. I remembered at 4pm that I had a copy of a newspaper from V-J Day and used some of the imagery for the War is Over artwork. I now have 8 pages and inside and outside tray artwork in draft.

I also designed a board game last night, a simple strategy game inspired by the look of the Star Trek game Kadis-kot. I've made a board and the rules, I'll post them at some point.

Now to rest with part two of The Birthday Party, the Harold Pinter play. It's remarkable that I find myself watching it, a few days after dreaming of the Northern Irish actor in it (having not thought of either thing in over a decade); he was in my dream of the chef and the doves.

More War is Over

I've spent two full days working on the War is Over music. It's amazing that it's taking me so long considering the music is written, mostly recorded, and mostly produced. One problem is that the music isn't very long, our poems are not the length of ordinary songs; consider the lyrical content of songs, how sparse it is, how repetitive. If the lyrics of a song were merely spoken, most songs would be under a minute long. Our tracks are about two minutes. The length isn't that material, but an EP demands six tracks at most, so this has created problems because I don't want a really short album. We must be showcasing our work; there is some pressure of quality. I don't really want two full albums.

This has led to some extraordinary measures; a lot more music in between, and complex arrangements to segue these together into a coherent scene, a journey, as I prefer. All six (well seven, I'm merging two) tracks are done, but there is space at the end for more; I want to re-emphasise the main theme. I must do my best, but not obsess so long as to harm the creation of future work.

I've had enough of music today, so I'll stop now and work on the the album art.

Struck Lucifers

A trip to the Macc Art Lounge on Saturday, but largely it was 'a day off' to pull back and rethink recent music work. This was a necessary restorative. My mind and body had been packed together too densely, feeling exactly like plasticine, when the athlete is more like a sponge made from a light fluid, something like Galliano, a light alcohol with a hint of vanilla. I needed to refluidify and find again the spark essence of art. I am now keen to get this music complete and move on.

Yesterday I continued work on the music for Struck Lucifers. A complex poem which is about post war Britain, the V.E. Day clean-up and more. I find it difficult due to the cerebral mood. The track must end with something great and extraordinary. As an artist, I am only as useful to the world as the work I produce (aren't we all?) I must prove my current state of ability and utility. We've also decided to press some CDs with an 8-page booklet, so more visual art is needed for this project. I want it done by the 8th.