I slept badly, awake with an interminable cough and bad chest which feels like asthma or an allergy, and a nightmare about being chased through the woods by robot dogs, first K-9 from Dr Who, then anthropomorphic cyborg bulldogs, perhaps inspired by the 'Cyberdog' in the Wallace and Gromit animation. I think this dream, and my general weakness is related to stress and isolation.
A very slow but steady day, stoic and productive at the best pace I could manage. These last few check on the album, 'quality control', take a lot of time and produce few results. I made some small tweaks to The Knight, checking it about five or six times. There was the tiniest of clicks at one point, this was down to some drums which were times in beats (rather than seconds) being squished by my fancy timing changes. I also needed to add unique plug-in called simple 'Anticlick Fade' which fades out every note and fades in the next one, this can smooth out tiny, tiny digital 'pops' which might happen at the start of some notes depending on the type of instrument.
I listened to the whole album again, then tweaked Lost Friends again. Each of these changes affects the whole album timing because it's all inter-linked so every change means moving all of the other tracks about; and I have two versions of this album, 'CD' and 'Stream' versions, so even a tiny change to the length of one track seems to create a lot of work. At 4pm or so, I made a final change to Victory, removing lots of the dramatic start, bells, church-bells and all sorts of things. Those weren't in the first version of the album anyway and didn't seem to work here.
I also created a lot of artwork for it. A good way to do this is to create lots of speculative art; lots of pages not worrying about quality so much, then evolving the best looking ones. Here's an example:
I also filed my recent Prometheus plug-ins. I wish this super-rare bug would appear so that I can trap it. I expect I'm the only full time musician/artist in the world who makes music entirely using software they designed.
As the computer worked on its music I read bits of The Annotated Alice (in Wonderland), a fascinating book. Curiously, Carroll noted initial chess pieces and characters for Through the Looking-Glass but, despite many manufacturers making 'Alice' chess sets, it doesn't look like any use Carroll's actual designations.
Generally, a day obsessing over tiny details and listening to the same music over and over again to check and re-check it. These are the final finishes that my other work didn't used to have. I'm starting to want to move on now, the first amorous glances at a future project and away from this one.
The Covid-19 news is bleak and worrysome and I feel anxious about the situation; yet I remain generally positive. We're doing the best we can, and are, after all, guided by the immovable river of fate, and fate is a force I consider to be a friend. My initial prediction of things not feeling like 'normal' until 2024 or so still seems reasonable. It still amazes me that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were delayed by one year rather than four.
Enough of such wastes of thought! Next immediate project is getting back to Sisyphus, then something new... it's most efficient to work on many things at once.
