Friday, February 14, 2020

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.