Listened to the New Music Show on Radio 3 last night. The piece that inspired me most was a piece for two snare drums and ensemble which involved playing the drums as though reading out phone numbers. While listening to the two hour show I worked on my Zeitraum programming, programming at an unusually late hour. It's an effect of four waves so I thought it might be fun to make each of those settable separately with individual tuning and speed... but in practice it was complex and slow to do that.
So today I merely added four independent tunings to the 'tuned' version of the effect. I've created a demo of it on my SoundCloud account but it's probably out of date and deleted by the time you read this (beyond the year 2100, I expect, how are your robot butlers performing these days?). Comparing the wave from the tuned and untuned version I saw a slight difference when they should have been identical (at a reference pitch). I spent over an hour comparing the effects, checking that everything was in tune and that even my basic sample processing algorithms were in tune, comparing the wave to a reference sine wave.
I tracked the error down to adding 99 twice. My effects are based on cents (100ths of a semitone) so my look-up tables are in 100s and that makes indices 49, 149, 249 etc. in tune. So notes tend to end in 9. I added 9 twice so it ended in 8, and so was one cent flat. I fixed that then found a few other silly bugs based on typing errors. This took me up to lunch or so. I then started to work on the music.
I recorded the vocals to The Problem of Suicide and The Invisible Man, both in one take and with ease. What a joy this is! For the first time today I feel I am starting to sing and know what my natural and relaxed voice should sound like, confident in an instant instrumental performance in the way I am with piano and guitar. I know I could go back now I re-record my older songs and improve them - but I also know that such feelings are part of any creation process. Oddly, I rarely feel like going back and 'improving' my old paintings. The trick is to look to the future. It's better to create new things than rework old things. An artist should really only be doing new things. The lustful ache for the new must always be stronger than the angst to tidy up and perfect the past.
The Problem of Suicide is fun because it starts quietly then explodes into a distant cry of long notes, like a soaring eagle. It then ends with the third verse back in quiet vocals and in the same melody. This was something I decided on and improvised today. The older version has this vocoded in one note, borrowing from the Flatspace theme, but real vocals sound much better.
January is complete and in the month I've made the Jabberwocky video, re-recorded and released The Infinite Forest, queued up Apocalypse of Clowns, largely completed The Myth of Sisyphus, but also substantially upgraded my music software and capabilities. I must push on and make the most of February. I feel like the door to a new renaissance is starting to open, but must take care to create the best work... structural unity... beauty and newness... everything must be startling and be the best it can.
