Prometheus Programming, Timing in Music

Yesterday was a slow day of feeling somewhat ill, the strange burning pain in my throat, chest, ears/nose, which slowly gyres around over a few days, never quite leading to sniffles or coughs, yet always feeling raw and sore. This comes and goes regularly and has for at least 10 years, and when it comes it knocks my energy levels. Just at the point when I feel a cold may fully emerge, it fades away and I wonder if there was anything ever there at all. As a result, I did little yesterday but rest and tweak The Jabberwocky, which is just about complete now.

Today I'm updating my music software, Prometheus. The biggest change is to the splitting of big samples. The program only supports samples of 90 seconds, so for longer samples it can auto-split these into 90-second (ish) sections and calculate, down to the exact sample, the place to start to play the next instrument to continue playing seamlessly.

This works fine, but has never worked when the tempo is toyed with because this really complicates the maths; essentially the program has to start at the start of the song and run through it all so that it can split the sample exactly correctly. I've made this change today. One downside it is that it is a lot slower to calculate than the old simple split. It can take a minute or more to split a long sample up, all due the need to go back to the start of the song and run through every change of the tempo. It can take as little as 5 seconds, or as long as 3 or 4 minutes if placed right at the end of a 200-minute long song (as IF I'd ever make a song that long! - but it is important to test the function in every extreme).

A second change is related. A similar calculation needs to take place when starting to play a sample in the middle. Normally in a sequencer, you click Play and the subsequent notes will start, but any that started earlier are not played. To be 100% accurate, the tail-ends of any prior notes should ideally play, and this can be very important, particularly when those long samples are there or when you start a long drone somewhere back at the start of a song. This is also a complex and slow calculation. The ability to do this accurately at any speed was hidden in the program options, so I've made this more overt and easier to toggle on and off.

These changes indicate that I'm using lots of long samples and am playing with the tempo a lot - in fact nowadays I rarely stick to one tempo throughout a song and try to speed up or slow down things for different moods. Regular tempo is one of the three big mood-killers in digital music, regular volume and regular pitch being the others. Early electronic music (pre-1985) sounds better than later because early synths were not pitch reliable and because digital sequencers were rare and complex to program.

One other thing I do now is craft each note rather than ever use shortcuts or copies. Even drumloops are different each time and not as perfectly accurate at they should be. Timing is crucial to emotion in music because music, like any drama, is all about anticipation and surprise - both are enabled principally by toying with time.

The Jabberwocky

Day 6 of my new Fall in Green music work. I will say now that the music I've been working on a new version of The Jabberwocky; we wanted to rework a classic poem and this seems ideal.

It's going to plan, and includes more live recordings than I've ever used in one sequence. Generally I'm using the piano for the basic mood, but not always, there are two acoustic guitar sections which work well and which will allow Deborah to play when we perform this live. The hard part is matching the two. I had thought that I'd use the piano as a guide, but the tempo there is faster than the gentle guitar wants, so the guitar section I've played over it doesn't quite fit. This makes things difficult because the piano part is one very long midi track, so inserting or extending parts isn't as easy as it could be, I have to essentially re-record it all as on giant recording and them push up all of the sequence, see if it fits, then adjust and do the same over and over until it sounds correct, quite a time consuming process. This is an essential consequence of playing the instruments myself and having no fixed tempo as a guide... matching the feeling of one play to a previous performance, and coming in at the right time.

It's a long song, about 10 minutes, but not nearly as musically diverse as a Genesis track, like Supper's Ready, for example. That is more like ten mini-songs put end to end, often varying in key, tempo and even time signature; held together by the story, but really only by the recapitulation of sections at the end - which of course works to good effect because any chaotic or dissonance has an bamboozling psychological effect that opens the mind to autosuggestion. In uncomfortable circumstances the mind grasps at straws - this is why noise followed by melody always makes the melody attractive, this is one secret of aesthetics.

I like variety and a show of depth and breadth, but I prefer more overall structure and unity than Genesis; I'm more Beethovian. I've essentially got three parts in The Jabberwocky; a marshy mysterious theme, a monster theme (repleat with monstrous instruments), and a joyous theme. I also open with an overture of all three before the poem begins. Musically I'm hardly using any notes at all, and only about four chords, but there is enough variety in drama and timbre, and this also allows more room to improvise when live without trying to memorise too much - I perform everything only from memory.

The song is sequenced in two big parts and it is largely complete, although there can't be any vocals for a while as Deb needs to record these. The strings and orchestral parts are some of my most lush and dramatic.

But I must try to do something with that guitar. There are also two long-standing bugs in Promethueus that are causing problems. They are only a problem when I modulate the tempo and combine this with importing long samples (over 90 secs). I will, again, try to fix them this week.

Live vs. Recorded

Very busy over the last two days working on the new Fall in Green track. It's been a new experience in some ways as I've used live instruments more, and added more to the basic piano track. It's also so long that I've broken it up into sections. It's the first track that features me playing live acoustic guitar, a tiny section near the start. I couldn't play this any on early tracks as I lent the guitar to a friend a year ago, before I could play, and have only recently got it back.

I've also added some rock-style drums, organs, and many more layers than normal for a Fall in Green track. Always at the back of my mind is that we are to play these live, and one of the bits I've found difficult here is coping with this. Ideally I'd forget that, and make this as good as I can, and in the end, I've done that, but with the odd caveat.

Live and recorded are two different media... the live show will always have something the recorded one doesn't and vice versa, so perhaps recorded music should always be full of bells and whistles and have no relation to any live performance. Yet, in many ways the recorded version is, especially in the recording era (ie. not classical) the definitive version, and live performances should aim to match that. Perhaps this is a little silly, and many rock and progressive bands, King Crimson for example, seem to go out of their way to add 'more' to the live version - but do they also take away?

I was reminded that the early Queen albums were musically complex, that some tracks like The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke were never performed live, and with News of the World they decided to write simpler tracks for live performance.

Of course, in the 18th century, music was only for live and a lot was left up to the performer, free improvisations were expected. In my track I've added a section for improvisation. One reason why the short guitar piece is in there is that it should permit Deb to play that, while I play the piano for a short while, leaving time to change instruments... these are some of the things I've been thinking of.

But generally I've grown to ignore any live-play concerns and aimed to make the recording as good as I can. One thing I've avoided though is too much sequencing. I hate that anyway, and I've tried to played all of the piano parts live in one smooth take and of course the guitar parts. This is important to get the feeling right... too much editing kills that and it makes is harder, slower and a less efficient was to work. Also, the result sounds less authentic.

This is so lacking is music now. I heard, by chance, the current global Spotify top ten a couple of days ago. The music is amazingly similar sounding and amazingly fake sounding, well produced and mixed, but so very sequenced sounding, all all of the vocals heavily autotuned. There seemed to be no element of actual playing skill in there, and if there was, nobody wanted to show it.

I love Beethoven, the Romantics, and progressive rock, because they aim to show their skill, that itself is part of the art, an extra layer. The writing is showing skill, the production, the playing, the performance. This also defines me as an artist; I've designed and programmed all of the music software and plug-ins I use, now the video software too, played all of the instruments, produced and engineered the music, designed the album art, founded the record company, made the music videos, and every other aspect. Even Beethoven didn't print and sell his sheet music. The point is to do everything because that makes everything unified; a total artwork that is the best in every dimension. Of course, it's also good training in a wide range of disciplines... every aspect can always be improved on.

Composing Methods

A day working on a new special and secret track for the Apocalypse of Clowns album for Fall in Green. This is a long complex piece in the mould of a Renaissance track, like Mother Russia or Ashes Are Burning. It feels difficult, and exciting, because I'm making it in a different way this time.

For years, my main way of working has been to feel the feeling and think the idea then get to work in the sequencer. Up until 2015 or so I might have focused more on making something that sounded nice there, then playing with it, crafting the edges to make it pretty. This has an analogue in the digital artwork I made before I painted. After The Anatomy of Emotions and Cycles I began to think of music as 'art' more, and changed my way of working to began with the idea and feeling first, as I tend to do with visual art. of course, I always wanted my music to have lots of feeling; it's just a matter of how this was done.

Over recent years, I've performed live a lot more, and played a lot more so my playing skills have improved, and so my live expression. Most of the Fall in Green tracks, like the Shadows tracks, were made by playing the piano live, then adding speech over the top, with a few strings too or other slight augmentation. These sound so much more emotional compared to the purely sequenced tracks, but they are limited in depth; they tend to be solo piano, or 'piano plus a bit', tracks.

For the Music of Poetic Objects tracks, these were largely sequenced rather than played live, although these two methods began to move closer. Many of the tracks had extended live piano, as did the songs on The Modern Game; and The Dusty Mirror included some live guitar and harmonica - notable because they are the first multiple live recording streams to be inserted into my sequences. So, I'm gradually merging live and sequenced.

The questions for me are where to do the writing and creating phase. Often I still sequence to create this, and make something sound nice first. Perhaps with songs I'll sketch the idea mentally, play on the piano or write the words and so know the song before I start to sequence. I don't generally 'compose live', but for this track I find myself doing that. I'm reminded than my 'piano sonatas' that I've performed in the church here were essentially improvised on a few basic themes.

Generally I have an idea of what I want in terms of ideas. Here I have three main themes for the different verses of the poem. Here I am imagining Deborah reading the verses to the bits as I play. The music of Renaissance runs through my head, the way that extended musical sections play across different instruments; they were the most classically integrated of groups.

So, this time I'm playing live piano sections, which sound much more like the sort of playing I perform live, which isn't often recorded for me... my live playing feels much better than my recordings, partly because of these composing and recording issues. I tend to simplify the recordings in some ways, and these sound more mechanical and less powerful and emotional as a result, but often have many more sound layers and a technical smoothness which make up for this.

My method this time is to work out the melody or themes, then play essentially improvised sections over and over until a roungh guide to the structure is arrived at, then record this as a guide track. I suspect that this is how Mother Russia was written, or at least recorded, because the piano there is almost constant, even when other instruments take over the lead.

Then I record this. The idea is add layers over the top, but perhaps replace the piano entirely later.

It all feels more complex and more difficult than usual. I keep reminding myself that I've done this before, particularly with the Music of Poetic Objects tracks, that this time I'm merely deciding to usurp the piano more and take over with other instruments. Essentially I'm doing it this way to add more freedom to the composition, not necessarily expression to the performance. I can compose quickly because I'm doing it by 'live feeling', being skilled enough at playing and improvising the compose on the fly and making use of that. I've done it with solo piano tracks - all of those on The Anatomy of Emotions were improvised, and others like 'Notes from Space' from The Modern Game, but now I'm making these more structured... moving things closer to my sequenced music in that way; merging these two distinct methods for creating.

In other news I'm playing guitar better than ever and have started to go through my CD collection again. It is day three of this and today I played to Space Oddity, an odd and discordant album. The long Cygnet track reminded me of mine today - a long ramble that sounded improvised and sang to live guitar, then other layers added later.

Intangible Argus

A night of awful stomach pain, some of the worst I've experienced, so little sleep. Did not eat until 1pm and have still not yet fully recovered.

I listened to an interesting podcast about music and memory. In the day, it was launch day for The Intangible Man, so promoted this in various online places, sent out a Pentangel Books newsletter and updated my websites. In the afternoon I added a feature to Argus to set any parameter to a floating point value plus the value of the current modulator, which is useful to make, for example, notes or multiple objects which start jump around in repeating patterns of any sort. I do this in Prometheus all of the time, it's so useful for complex stereo placement, for example, or of course for any pitch or amplitude changes.

I played guitar to Scott 4. Yesterday I played to the Ziggy Startdust album, and have decide to re-cycle though my CD collection, playing along to each album. I'm now focusing on knowing the notes and trying to jump from one string another. This is my next technical challenge.

I also remade a new 12000kbps edit of the Islands of Memory video because Ultramarine, at a mere 6000kbps, looked so badly compressed on YouTube when I watched it; the trees there seem to blockily grow out of the background rather than fade as they should.

The day seems to have flown by.

Argus v1.08, Bycockets, Time Dimensions

A restful night and day after a busy weekend. I've taken some new profile photos with my favourite hat, my bycocket. If I ever meet Patrick Stewart I will ask him if he realised that the bycocket he wore in the Robin Hood themed Star Trek: The Next Geneneration episode was identical to Errol Flynn's - was it the actual same hat?

I browsed Wikipedia a lot in the morning. I was taken by Itzhak Bars idea of two time dimensions, perhaps 2+4 dimensions would be represented as as 3x3 matrix thus:

1 x t y 1 z T w 1

Where T is a (probabiy imaginary) time component. 6 or 12 dimensions (and necessarily 2 of time) would be wonderfully neat, though why would z pair with an elusive w? Perhaps 12 dimensions is better, then all of the perceivable ones can be on one side.

In the afternoon I updated the coding for Argus, to add new features. I wanted a way to calcuate the exact x/y/x/angles etc. of any object at any one point so that I could insert a new object there. This would be important for complex camera movements, for example, because only one modulator/motion path can be applied at any one time, so to slightly change it, it would be necessary to interrupt it at precisely the right place.

I'm in the mood for new art.

Tomorrow is the launch day for The Intangible Man, so I'll do a little promotion on that. I'll drop off a copy, with Deb, at Nantwich Library before World Poetry Day on October the 1st (The Intangible Man isn't poetry, of course, but I'll drop off The Burning Circus too!)

Guitars, Starflight, Covid Art

A very busy day today. I started by updating my website and working on the release of The Ingangible Man, and preparing the Kindle version. This is now in review and will be released this week. Then I recorded a new video of a poetry reading for Nantwich Library and National Poetry day 2020 which is on October 1st.

Then re-stringing my Yamaha acoustic guitar, which still sounds amazing and lovely. It wasn't an expensive guitar but it's amazing how each guitar can sound so very different from each other, and I've been lucky with this one. I hardly ever play it, but it's good to have. It's a strange fact that guitarists, electric guitarists, tend to have lots of guitars. It's easy to think that another new shiny and beautiful guitar will help one play better. Of course, there are often differences in sound between guitars, but this is often very slight; at least, if you find a good one, there's generally little reason to keep an inferior one, yet there seems to be an element of wanting a new guitar every so often, that its grass is greener. Every guitarist I know has about eight guitars.

In the afternoon I listened to an Art and Ideas podcast about the Radiophonic Workshop. I'm reminded that I've programmed all opf my music software, so like those pioneers and too few artists today, I at least create my own sound from my own tools. I also compiled a new video of Radioactive for possible Chinese competitive use, and finalised the Starflight video.

It takes some segments directly from Trax but intermixes these with some footage of rockets and bacteria and Venus, overall adding something a new, and even the borrowed parts do the job of complementing the music. I'm unsure if this is sufficiently good enough, different enough, for me. I'll muse on it a while. I must, at least, analyse and list how anything can be done better next time, how it can be improved. This is an essential part of getting better at anything, and my daily painting diaries were and art essential to learning there. We must be hard on ourselves; inventive, and rigourous, but not so hard that we seize up and stop. Ultimately this is an old tune from my electronic days so the video is less important to the world than it is to me.

I'm feeling newly reborn and energised, full of ideas and the will to create, too much. I'm wrestling with anxieites and over-energy, hardly sleeping. The ressurgent Covid-19 situation is worrying too. The news is best avoided, yet I want to say something on it, surely must, as an artist, but it still feels too strong. Surrealism is certain to become popular when Covid-19 is past; I must be there for it, but people want escapism in bad times, and psychoanalysis in good times.

Onward we roll our rock. On we battle, march, sing, play, with increasing joy and optimism.

Starflight to Venus

After feeling tired for most of yesterday I decided to take a brisk walk in the evening and refocus my art mind, and returned full of new found optimism.

Quik Internet added a new security certificate to my websites, so for the first time they are 'https' friendly. This wasn't really ever a security issue, but in recent years it's become one by consensus, and browsers are increasingly warming users at the so-called lack of security from a plain 'http' connection. This is all broadly meaningless, I cynically think it's a way for the tech companies to make money rather than anything to do with actual security. In computers there is nothing completely secure, but, these standards are increasingly forced upon us. At least now sales from my website and IndieSFX should be simpler; that is people buying can feel more confident in their security (it was secure anyway, my PayPal and MyCommerce gateways were always https).

I made some plans:

1. I vowed to change my name when my passport expires and would like a dwarf dressed as the pope to confer this and to bless Deborah and I in a special ceremony.
2. A new video for Starflight, that should complete a recent pile of videos for older music.
3. A new listing for The Intangible Man. I've added this to Smashwords now. These days bnook launches are not instant or planned but gradually creep across distributors. The official launch is, will be, next week.
4. New updates to my website for licnecing artwork (yes, you can have a Mark Sheeky painting on yout album cover!)
5. A new wig liner! I have lots of wigs for theatrical use, but for the bare head these are itchy and horrid to wear. This is a solution. I have a mind to wear wigs more; inspired by seeing (of all people) Bobby Ball who would look almost like he did in 30 years ago were it not for his hair.
6. I will record a video poem for World Poetry Day.

I slept and dreamed, first, of being chased by death, a skeletal being on horseback, through a forest. I awoke. I slept again, more peacefully, and dreamed of making a strange device; a tiny electric motor powered by batteries and with long spiralling wires. For some reason, Mick Hucknell was there to witness me complete this. He touched it to his (oddly full and permed) beard and it set fire to it and his face.

I started today by beginning work on the Starflight video, which borrows a lot from the Trax video, as planned; a lot of the mood is the same. I've added elements of biological life on Venus to it.

I felt oddly downbeat in the morning and attended to my correspondance. I watched a great explaination of entropy by Dr. Brian Cox. I wondered if eating low entropy food, that is plants and animals further up the food chain; algae, herbivores vs. carniviores, fresh foods, would limit entropic growth in our bodies and therefore extend life. I mused if perhaps eating beetles and spiders, like Dracula's servant, Renfield, would indeed grant more life!

I have a big list if changes to make to Argus, but I'll do this after the Starflight video.

Music Video Musing

Have converted and uploaded the Trax video today, and finished an edit of The Enigma of the Two Heads for the Magicland Mermaid tune, but I'm not very happy with it so won't release it. I've had a sharply paintful migraine today for many hours, at my left temple, and it's sapped my strength today.

I've also released The Intangible Man on Smashwords, so on eBook across several platforms. I think I'll try this rather than make it exclusive to Kindle. It will take a week or few days to appear anywhere. I plan on releasing the print version next Friday. I expect that, like The Burning Circus, a book of which I'm pleased with and proud of, nobody will notice. This is the story of all of the art I make, but I continue to do my best to make what I do as good as I can, and to analyse and improve. I am reminded that my parents trained me to avoid and ignore the world as they ignored me.

I'm unsure what to do next. I'm pleased with the recent few videos, and wonder if I should do more for older, existing tracks like Starflight, or Pandora. These are fine tunes, but I wonder what is the motivation for making these old videos? Essentially it is to gain experience of creating new videos. The newer albums, Burn of God etc. would probably benefit from new videos purely to promote the music.

I feel very tired today, like being trapped in a library of books on the floor and in the wrong order, faced with an insurmountable Sisyphean task. I feel like a boxer at the end of a fight, that the world is an eternal match to be played until death by exhaustion. I could make new videos and sort out any current ones for weeks or months for no reason except my satisfaction.

But, isn't that the way with art anyway? The videos don't particularly feel expressive or particularly personally satisfying, but perhaps they can be, and some so indeed show off new things, things only my software and thus self can do. Also, anything made, shown and done is a contribution to the universe. The boxer who punches the very floor of the ring is doing something; alive, defiant.

At some point I must get back to music and completing the albums in progress. That would feel more like art.

Perhaps the logical course is set a reasonable limit of older videos, complete those, then move on.

Finishing Trax

I awoke before 7 and completed the Trax video today, the more I watch it, the more I like it. I also started to edit together a video for Magicland Mermaid. The day has flown by as a result. My plan was to make at least a video, ideally two, per old album and perhaps I could say I have made enough now, although there are always more to do. I can find it hard to stop. Certainly, I'm learning with each one; that never ends, so I might keep pushing until I can push no more. This is perhaps my life mantra.

I've felt tired and even weak today and had a few long periods of just doing nothing but resting, which is highly unusual for me. I realised today that I haven't painted since Cat died, and that I started shortly after we found her. I wonder if, when, I'll love painting again... of course I will. I had hoped to enter The Discerning Eye, perhaps I will with older work, or perhaps finish the one painting of 2020; I have a few in half stages anyway, even last year's Oliver Cromwell painting.

On we push. I rather like this Sisyphean mood, it is the artists' way. The artists philosophy is exactly mine, stoicism with a soupcon of Catholicism for its aesthetic and ritualistic qualities.

Trax Video

Deb is on holiday so we've spent a nice few days catching up with friends in gardens.

I've managed to start work on a new video in-between, for Trax, one of the most electronic sounding tunes of my entire musical ouvre. The video is a high speend flight through space and the sky, made by patching togethr various zooming effects. It looks pretty, and very artificial and digital, which suits the music. At times I thought it looked too much like a game of Wipeout, too pin-ball, too computerised, but then then music is too, and it's hard to really insert some real-world elements without those seeming somehow artificial.

This way of working; tinkering with effects until I make something that looks good, can work and is valid but I generally prefer to have the idea first and then create the images to fit that. The tinkering option is like a band creating music by jamming and experimenting in the studio (many great albums are made this way, like a lot of Genesis' work, for example). Why do I prefer to start with an idea? Perhaps because the instant of idea somehow feels more authentic, an instant 'genuine' reaction to the music... as though tinkering with the images first could somehow contaminate the idea... but perhaps that's wrong because a music video is also something of a dialogue with the music.

The analogue in painting though is painting without a plan, seeing how the picture evolves, vs. a detailed plan. Now, in paint, the latter often looks better but only because I'm a planned and meticulous oil painter who paints in layers... in terms of creativity, the former is often more creative, more free... odd how this feels more authentic here, yet seems less in music or film. Perhaps both are equally valid.

Apart from pretty colours, pretty lights, and effects there is not much to this video. Its pace and feeling matches the music well; the finale is more intense visually as the music is musically, and the time rockets by, it's stimulating, exciting, a rip-roaring ride. Part of me wants some intellectual content; that it is 'about something' or there there are characters or a story... but, then, some of my videos are like that already, and perhaps variety is good because it pushed us into new areas. There is room for abstract work, images that create a feeling with lights, colours, geometry. Perhaps this video is something like a digital Rothko.

It's more unified than The Dance of Summer. I'm still not quite happy with the unity of that video. I can see good parts in it, but it feels somehow disjointed and arbitrary. I keep tihnking of revisiting it and regret rushing it out.

I'll keep working on Trax. I expect this video will take the rest of the week to complete. I also hope to make another for the tune Magic Mermaidland as an edit of the surreal film The Enigma of the Two Heads. The Pandora video however can wait... with Trax I will learn and have learned a few more tricks to make any future videos easier. Here's a look at frame 666 of Trax so far:

Pandora Walls, Migraine

A slow day yesterday after a night of long sleep and a dream of making a YouTube video which exploded with popularity. I spent all day thinking about how to create a video for Pandora.

I listened to a BBC radio documentary about Jodorowski, and watched some music videos to fill my visual mind. I watched one of the recently screened Battlestar Galactica, and mused more, noting the structure of the music, working on its main feeling of growth, building, climbing, triumph. I rested in the dark to think of these things but still hadn't settled on a key idea. I went out for a walk to meet Deb and watched some more. Then I noticed that I couldn't see properly, that I had blind spots which seemed to be growing, some sort of migraine. All day I felt very tired, semi-sleepy.

I've been wrestling with a video for Pandora for years, perhaps it's the lack of narrative in the music, but also, I want to push and make something better each time, yet this stops me from making anything at all at the moment.

There's no benefit to fighting a wall and getting nowhere, I must make some small steps each day. The problem needs tackling, but a lot can happen in the background. I've spent today working on the ebook for The Intangible Man. I'll probably release the book at the end of this month.

Yesterday's migraine didn't cause a headache at first but it evolved into a mild one in a specicific location which seemed to hurt in pulses if I coughed or lay down. It is still there but very mild, it feels like eye strain or something like it. Must try to pull back and think of new areas to explore. I feel like I'm in a fog and in need of a new challenge. I've made five music videos recently, I'd like to make five more for music from older albums but they would have to be good artworks in their own right. There's no point in putting any old video to any old tune.

Delamere Forest, Lost Child

A relative day off today, a trip to Delamere Forest and I saw my first natural lizard, a Common Lizard, a tiny grey slither of a thing in a wonderful heatherland which was filled with many flying insects. A dragonfly landed on me and seemed quite at ease, they seemed so tame.

Most of the pipe work on the house is done, I've managed to move the piano back and have played guitar a little. I've also made a simple video to accomapany Lost Child from Stupid Computer Music, partly because it's a simple piece of music with a strong mood and I had an idea for a video related to the Ultramarine and Islands of Memory videos.

New Islands of Memory

Two good days. I had a full day yesterday steadily working on a new video for Islands of Memory, a lovely relaxing tune from Synaesthesia. Years ago I made a video for this, just after I made Challenger, and it was very similar to that, but that video didn't exist in high definition, and also the bright colours and technological-look didn't suit the music as well as it did for Challenger. I thought about doing a new high definition remake, so I began with the idea of memory and images looming out of a fog. The key with these videos is to consider how it makes you feel and what the feelings mean, from that a story can be made.

The video starts in a sepia mist, the mist of time, we could be in a brain. Images fade into existence and out again like shadows along a ghostly pathway. The storyboard called for silhouettes but I quickly thought that real old photographs would be much more evocative, and be much more visually interesting, so I assembled 37 or so, a timeline from my past from childhood to now. I added some sparks of light when the pizzicato strings appear, and some shapes of green light to correspond with the main lead; this is an echo of the first version.

As the colour scheme was broadly a coffee-fog sort of brown, I thought of my old digital images for palette guidance, like Sardt below; lights of green and pink which seemed to work better than blues.

The intro needed something, so I added a glowing embryo which seemed to match the angelic voices which appear.

Finally, I thought of a finishing touch. The video fades to darkness, as the music fades to peace, but I thought it would be nice to add an element of afterlife or rebirth, as this fits the next track in the album, so I added a tiny twinkling speck of a distant star, tantalising us in the distance. A few millisecs before the end it shoots forwards to emblazon the screen with pure white.

I'm really pleased with it all so far. I've made some program changes to Argus too, now on v1.07, all tweaks to make certain aspects easier. Here is a screenshot from the video. Each of the glowing objects is an instrument playing:

Ultramarine Video

Builders here have turned the house into a maze of pipes, so little can be done today, but I've managed to create a new video for the song Ultramarine and developed a few painting ideas, my first in months. This itself has been very useful, reminding me that a single complex visual image can, much of the time, capture more than a film or song.

The Ultramarine video is a gentle float through a blue mist, revealing trees as we go. It was so easy to do in Argus but would have been extremely difficult in most 3D software. It is set to go live on my music channel on the 17th at 19:15.

Pi

Awful night last night, no sleep at all, adding to two previous nights of nightmares and bad sleep.

A good day though. I've spent much of today listing 15 years worth of my music back catalogue with the PRS. I've spent 15 years diligently adding and filing records of my music work where I thought I was suppose to but have negelected the PRS because I thought it was only relevant for live performances, which itself is no excuse because I've performed my music live many times too, going back nearly 10 years.

In other news, it seems that my Pi animation will be part of the Lumen Festival here in Crewe, and as such I'll hold off on The Clockwork Harpsichord until December, so that it can be premiered there. I have made a modified version; The Clockwork Harpsichord uses different rings for the different music tracks, but the Lumen version use a different ring for a different digit of pi, when converted to base-4, so it allows one to see pi itself as an animation.

I've also bene thinking more about matrices. It appears that there are indeed a lot of matrices in particle physics, and I'm sure that the right four magical matrices can be arranged in the 24 possible ways to produce all of the data for the quarks and leptons. Other matrices can be used for the carrier particles, with empty cells used like bitmasks to allow reactions with certain particles and not others. If so then this implies that the graviton matrix must cover all used cells as it reacts with everything. I wonder if numbers that are 'unused' sort of 'leak' into what is known as dark matter or energy.

The final question is the dimensions of the matrix. Pauli matrices are 2x2, Dirac matrices are 4x4, Gell-Mann matrices are 3x3. I'd expect something in that area. I think 4x4, as 4 is a nice number, and reminds me of computer graphics. 3 seems to trivial, 5 too complex, and rectangles not pretty enough (I suspect that symmetry is important too).

The Clockwork Harpsichord Video

Working through some old tunes, making new videos for them. Today I've made a video for The Clockwork Harpsichord. I have struggled with this one for a few years as I had a clear vision of a chessboard and a toy clockwork piano, which I haven't got!

In the end today's video took only a few hours, and perhaps relates the music more closely to its fundamental concept of mathematics and the universe, as well as the artwork of the pi album. It simply uses rotating, glowing rings which appear with each note and the result is very pretty. I've updated Argus again a little, to v1.06. The software is getting easier to use, and for things like this, very 'digital' work, it is ideal.

Multi-Dimensional Matrices and the Standard Model

I've just added scale to my 3D software Argus, which involved multiplying two 4x4 matrices together. When multiplying matrices, the order matters, so a*b is not the same as b*a. I wondered how many combinations there were when matrices are in higher dimensions.

For three dimensions there are 6:
a*b*c
a*c*b
b*a*c
b*c*a
c*a*b
c*b*a

So for four dimensions, we need to multiply this up by four: the same table as above starting with a, then with b, then with c, then with d. So the formula to calculate the possible combinations is: 2*1 (=2 for 2D), 3*2*1 (=6 for 3D), 4*3*2*1 (=24 for 4D) etc. Of course this is also the number of combinations for multiple multiplications of a 2D matrix; a 2D matrix multiplied 4 times in a row, this simplifies things, although a 4D matrix could have different lengths in each dimension.

The number 6 stuck in my mind, perhaps because I'm used to even powers of two. 6 doesn't seem like a fundamental number. Also I remembered that electron shells in atoms start as 2, then 6, which I thought was interesting, and that there are 6 quarks in the standard model of particle physics.

I wondered if there were 24 particles, and that the number and variety can be explained simply by the number of dimensions in this higher-dimension matrix, and the properties explained by the order of multiplication.

It turns out that there are indeed 24 particles: 6 quarks, 6 anti-quarks, 6 leptons, 6 anti-leptons. I found this interesting partly because anti-matter can be seen as normal matter moving backwards in time, this means that, if time were a dimension in these 4D matrices, the anti-matter property of the particles could be explained by the dominance of time in the multiplication order. Also, as you can see above, the natural sorting order for similar groups of particles would be 4 groups of 6:

a*b*c*d
a*b*d*c
a*c*b*d
a*c*d*b
a*d*c*b
a*d*b*c

b*a*c*d
b*a*d*c
b*c*a*d
b*c*d*a
b*d*c*a
b*d*a*c

c*b*a*d
c*b*d*a
c*a*b*d
c*a*d*b
c*d*a*b
c*d*b*a

d*b*c*a
d*b*a*c
d*c*b*a
d*c*a*b
d*a*c*b
d*a*b*c

The mass of different particles increase with each layer, so, I thought, perhaps lower (or upper!) orders are affected by mass, as though the mass has more impact when multiplied earlier (or later).

The standard model also includes charge-carrying or other types of particles that sort of mediate or carry information about cross-interaction between particles, perhaps, I thought, akin to the multiplication itself.

The Dance of Summer

Another Argus update today, I worked out the fix to the matrix multiplication overnight and it's all working now. I spent the morning updating Argus with a few new features, deleting unused ones.

After that, progress on the video was a lot faster. Here is an image from it:

I've mixed film with this too, using some butterfly footage I filmed last summer, and some of the time-lapse clouds from this year. I've re-realised the beauty of horizontal symmetry. Too few cinema films use it! I watched a bit of Alice Through The Looking Glass today, a very beautiful and visually imaginitive film, a visual overload in many ways. The story is terrible, it's a film ideally viewed with no sound in very slow motion. Modern cinema is such a tripumph of the synergy of arts, I'm sure Wagner would be impressed; the gaps are emotional and intellectual. The C.G.I. is beautiful but still so very fake to the extent that the humanity is extracted from it.

More Argussing

A night of sleep! I fell asleep at 11pm or so and woke at 8am - the first such night in about 6 weeks. I've had less than 10 days like that this year. I felt awake and alive this morning. Praise the lord for restful sleep!

A full day's work on the Summer video, it is pretty much complete as per the script, but needs lots of tidying up. I'll not spend too long on it, I know this is primarily a learning exercise and a further test of how to animate and how best to use Argus. I'm working on techniques and ways to create new work, and I think visual themes, contrasts, are the key, as in all art. I've now updated Argus to version 1.04 but using it often feels clunky and awkward, I'm getting overwhelmed by numbers for actors, tracks and costumes, and piles of individual events.

I also discovered a major bug which caused many hours of worry. I haven't used size in my tranformation matrices before - not at least since Trax in 2000 or so, and I think the code then was also bugged. I needed to concatenate the size matrix with the rotational transformations, but I only know how to multiply size to the complete x/y/z rotational transform. I had totally forgotten about matrix multiplication and was crudely multiplying the single cells(!) so no wonder it didn't work. Now it does, but the size is applied after transformation, so, for example the x size always stretches in the x world axis. I envisaged the size to apply to the x local axis... although this can be done by scaling the object beforehand. I'm unsure which would be more useful, there are pros and cons with each, and now, almost all of my animations have used planes exclusively anyway, so it hardly matters... yet, the fact that I can't work out how to mutliply locally annoys me.

I've spent many hours this week, at least a day's worth, programming Argus; adding things, removing things. I expect this is a necessary part of new software but I find it a chore. I expect I'll finish the Summer video over the weekend.

Butterflies

Two slow days working on a video for 'Summer' from The Twelve Seasons. I've basically experimented a lot in Argus and updated the program twice to add new features to aid this experimentation but I'm still not sure if any of the experiments are good enough to consider for any end video. I suppose with new things, a first step is to try lots, keep exploring options, and only then find some to use.

I'm impatient with this though; it is an old tune and I don't like the idea of spending days or weeks on a video for it - yet, I suppose, doing so will result in learning new things, new techniques. My life is learning, trying, exploring. I never sit back and utilise my knowledge, but always push for something new instead which, a lot of the time, is a tiring and frustrating, and brilliant only by chance as I never master things this way, yet everything is interesting, and this is perhaps the true way for an artist. Picasso perhaps stopped being an artist when he got stuck on Cubism for his last (40?) years.

Deb and I went out today for the first time in months, and saw one my my paintings (well, an A4 print) in the library window as part of the local Art Trail. It was a lovely afternoon, rare in these mad times, and much needed.

I've also listened to Novella by Renaissance for the first time. I wrote a song in my youth called 'Can You Hear Me' which had a remarkably similar set of notes. Renaissance remain one of my favourite bands because they fused classical/orchestral music and pop/folk/rock music so well, but there is a lot they didn't and should have done. Their Scheherazade was one extended tone-poem-like compsition which could have easily led to a whole album themed and written like that - more unity! More symphonic! Yet, they went backwards and into shorter, more pop-type music, and introduced synthesizers which was a mistake. Progressive music is like Romantic music, it's about the huge, the spectacular, and some bold show of skill. They lost or forgot this (although, of course, this was the early 80s a time when progressive music seemed out of fashion and punk and pop were growing, remembering that even Genesis and Fleetwood Mac embraced pop). Annie Haslem still tours, I think, as Renaissance but all of the classic band are now gone except for her.

Jarre's Party v2

Video work yesterday. I decided to revisit a list of possible old music videos... a lot of my albums have hardly any music videos. Last December (I think) I worked on a whole pile of music videos and was slightly overwhelmed by the quantity and workload.

A lot of videos seem to lend themselves to Argus use, but there are so many that I'm struggling to focus on any one. I started with one of the simplest; remaking the old Jarre's Party video. This is essentially about 14 photographs set to appear at specific frames. For Argus, I simply made this full-screen sprite switch frame at the correct time and the whole process took a couple of hours, far faster than by using AviSynth, but it seems that even these 14 mere images are too slow to load. My hopes of using Argus for full-screen animation are dashed (I didn't run out of memory, but it took about 10 secs to load these large-ish files every time I wanted to preview the film).

The old video used a one-minute edit of the tune, this one uses the full album version, which is my main reason for making it. There are lots of pretty tunes on Bites of Greatness that could use videos but the music is all rather lacking in meaning and identity, it's an album of intense melodies and happy moods. For years I've wanted a video for Pandora, or Jellyfish, or Trax.

Today I've started a few video tests but found a minor bug in Argus and decided to add a few more features at the same time. Work is frustratingly slow. I barely feel like and artist and keep wanting to reset. Breaks are not in my nature, I've never had any, so perhaps some change or training in other areas will help. After months of working on music and programming it's bound to take a few days to start to think visually again. We don't have to do everything in one day, just one tiny step in the right direction. Drop by drop the bucket will fill. Time has immense power. A small but consistent change each day is worth far more than juddering leaps in short periods.

I still dislike this new Blogger, particularly the Home/End key use which now jumps to the start/end of a paragraph rather than the line, and also an auto-indent for HTML tags which can't be turned off. Facebook has also changed recently for the worse with several bugs and distractions, far more false or unwanted notifications. These technoligical changes have affected my mood to an unusual degree.