A nice birthday. I tend to ignore and under-rate birthdays but, thanks almost entirely to Deb, these are always happy and nice occasions.
One gift was a Otamatone, an odd musical instrument that's a bit like a Stylophone but with a ribbon controller which gives it much more expression, but makes it much harder to play, something like a single string fretless guitar. There is also no visible scale - which I remedied by putting some dots on there. The gaps between semitones get increasingly smaller, down to a few millimetres, and the octave range is small and there is no output jack, but it is surprisingly alluring for a toy. I wish they had added a few more professional features... I think a ribbon controller like this but with some pressure sense for volume could be an idela input device for a synth. It would also need tactile notches for the notes - one thing the Otamatone (and Theremin) lack are visual and tactile clues to the notes - they rely only on sound. When playing most instruments, the eyes and touch and ears all assist playing... playing a guitar or piano blindfolded is much more difficult for non-experts.
Most of the day was spent outside in these pandemic times.
Last night I finalised the structure for I, Sisyphus. The key for me is images. The purity of the album was hampered a little by the need to include a few songs which were written before, so I've tweaked these and reused some aspects. The image flow from indoors to outdoors, but I hope I can link the concept together in a visually unified way. There will be repetition of musical ideas in different areas to help unify the music - most of the keys will be similar. There isn't so much a story as a flow of images and scenes, and an overall theme of isolation, or struggle in silence. All I need to do is add a couple more tracks and re-record the vocals.
I've done a few simple vocal exercises today and tried steam breathing with a steam inhaler machine, which feels very good, far better than the old remedy of a bowl of hot water where the steam is far too hot at first then inadequate within about two minutes. The process seems to dry my throat afterwards however, so I am a little wary of using it. I'll start again with exercises tomorrow, and sequence the new tracks.
My main goal for the month should be, is, the Jabberwocky video but I do not feel inspired or remotely like the idea of video at the moment.
