Sun, Nightfood

Two unusually sunny days, glimpses of summer. I felt so tired yesterday that I hardly did anything, this is in part due to the end of March, I'm awaiting my main quarterly backup. I did complete and file some new work, three tracks remastered, on Tree of Keys.

Today I've worked on music. I find this so slow now, far slower than painting, when before I could race through tunes, one in a few hours. Now I'm aiming for more complexity in composition and production. Before I'd choose some chords, almost always the same chords, and make any old melody, add a variation, perhaps change the key, then end. Now I'm thinking more in images and moods, and these esoteric and uncertain concepts take a lot of experimentation and crafting to even appear, never mind finalise.

My song 'Nightfood' started with four descending chords. We all like A-minor to G-major, F-major, E-minor don't we? I thought I'd pick a demonic variation of A-minor, G-minor, F-minor and D#-minor to continue the slide. Then, for a chorus E-Major, D-major, C-major and Bb-major, all good fun. These might be ambitious and interesting but they're all strange keys and the result is/was so atonal that it makes for a tune that nobody would really like. I was reminded, for some reason, of my old music for my (bad) game Antz, which, for me, was different. Nobody liked it, not even me. Its only merit was that it was weird.

My initial A-minor and G-minor part caught on though. The music of Rush came to mind and I could really imagine them playing this, so I changed things to A-min, G-min, A-min, E-min, then moving to an easy F-Maj for the next section. Of course, this all sounds a lot prettier, less different though. This reminded me that Rush were never that unconventional musically, at least in the very few albums of theirs I have. Many songs are some-rotating-chords verse, some-rotating-chords chorus and generally tempos and images etc. staying the same in a song, in contrast to the more epic Genesis or early Queen.

I find realising music ideas so much harder than painting ideas, when both, in the end, have great similarities. I create them in totally different ways. All creation is method; hard, rational, method. I must explore methods.

Cheers and Tripods

I woke late, rising at 10:30, but aware that the clocks going forward this Sunday made this actually 09:30. I hate the resetting of the clocks. It takes me weeks of jet-lag to adjust because I eat, sleep and work so much by the clock rather than feeling.

I started to glaze my Self Portrait As Tripod. Here is the underpainting on panel. This is painted with opaque earth colours: mars black, titanium/zinc white, naples yellow (actually titanium antimony chromium oxide, PBr24, which is like yellow ochre but always better), chromium oxide for the grass, earth reds for the flesh:

It's on a very smooth panel. It's rather simple and achromatic. I perhaps could have worked more on the colouration... but the idea is conceptual rather than a 'real' image, so I mentally divided the image into a wintery sky over a bleak field, and the flesh, and painted each part in its colours.

I started late today, much later that I would normally. The sky was glazed in raw umber and ultramarine greys, with some yellow too. For the distant hills I thought turquoise, to complement the flesh but this looked a little too odd, so later cut them down with the atmospheric yellows, and added more colour and warmth to the sky. The grasses, sage greens in the underpainting, needed lots of yellows (barely any green) and still they looked very green. The flesh used transparent violety reds made from ochres and manganese and transparent yellow ochre; all very permanent and not 'organic' pigments. The only real organic pigment I tend to use is benzimidazolone - both yellow and maroon, both lovely. Most brighter reds look awful.

At noon I prepared to watch the finale of Cheers. Seven or eight months ago, I had never seen an episode of Cheers. Channel 4 have them on continual loop so when Season 1, Episode 1, appeared, Deb suggested that we both (in our distant places) watch them all, and for the past seven or eight months, I've watched all 11 series, 20 or show shows per series, until today, until the grand 3-part finale, the finale I have been waiting for and counting down to for at least two months. And... as you might expect from such drama...

The clocks went forward so the recorder didn't record the episodes! Instead I recorded an hour of Countdown - a show I despise because it always gets recorded when the stupid set-top-box records the wrong thing. I felt unusually gutted and upset by this.

I continued to paint in the afternoon, and managed to finish the tiny panel by 18:15.

The painting is drying, so images of the final work must wait.

Keyboard Stand and Framing The God Being Killed Print

A steady day, finishing off the two 'phyiscal' projects.

First, removing the two box things which will form my keyboard stand. I got the drum sander out, horizontally mounted (sadly these foam cushion drum sanders are no longer made - Black & Decker made them 15 years ago but now nobody does - boohoo). So, I sanded the sides of these smooth. Here they are after this, one with a bar fitted so you can see what the intention is...

Then painting them black and sticking them to the back of my MDF piano stand/table (which I made myself too). These needed to be 900mm apart, but they also needed to be parallel. How do you ensure that they are exactly parallel? Fit the bars in and measure as you go. I stuck one down, exactly 145mm from one edge, then moved and measured the other, and yep, 145mm from the other edge was straight enough. I applied wood glue and micro moved them while measuring to keep the bars parallel.

Then, clamping them down, drilling, and screwing to fix them. Now I have two vertical rods like upside down vampire's teeth behind my piano, all ready for the second (heavy!) synth.

The other job was framing up the God Being Killed print.

It uses Perspex/acrylic which is a nightmare to use because of static electricity and dust. Peel off the backing plastic and this creates and intense static field which attracts dust. Tips I've learned are:

1. Before peeling of the backing, stick lots of tape to the rim, the newly cut rim, and peel it off to remove every flake of plastic. There are lots of tiny flakes which will cause problems. So, use sticky tape to remove and trap as much dust and bits from everything first.
2. Peel off the backing. Lay the work on a black background to see the dust particles.
3. Never brush or touch or wipe it! It scratches so easily, even a brush will leave permanent marks, even most cloths. Basically never touch it.
4. Remove dust particles one particle at a time using either blu-tak, or better still a torn strip of gentle masking tape which can be brushed, wafted, with the sticky side, very gently over the surface.
5. But also be quick because dust from the air will be falling on to it.
6. Prefer glass! I use acrylic plastic only when strength (when posting the work, or for something too big), or weight is an issue.

The print was framed successfully. Here it is:

The colours are very slightly brighter than in the original oil. Of course, the oil looks more beautiful, it has the radiant colours and depth than only multiple layers can create, but side by side, most people wouldn't tell the difference. This frame is on par with the second (very gold) frame in beauty; I'm not sure which I prefer, but this one is less physically strong - it's made from Plaster of Paris, and rather thin pine, and this was the key reason for a second frame rather than anything aesthetic.

Imprimatura, God Being Killed Print #1, To Kill a King

A full day. Woke late and started work on by cutting 4 lengths of wood for the second tier keyboard stand, these need to be an exact length. The 16mm will (should!) fit twin-slot shelving supports which will slide between them, and those shelving supports will be the main verticals of my rack.

Then I traced over the final 'Gynocratic' painting. This took a while, perhaps because the surface was toned with Burnt Sienna, which is a good choice for fleshy tones. In my years of painting, I find it best to use an imprimatura that matches the predominant colour in the work. The imprimatura undoubtedly tints the whole work, adding a unique glow. One of my earliest was my first self-portrait which has a green cast all over it due to the phthalo green imprimatura, but my experiments in these contrasts didn't produce many great works. Generally, when the imprimatura matches the hue of the painting (such as orange for a fleshy painting) the results look smoother and better with less effort. Sometimes contrasts can help a bit (eg. flesh on blue) but they also make the results less smooth, certainly that.

Dali recommended Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue for imprimaturae and I concur: there are few alternatives. I also use Raw Sienna (or other earth yellows) to give a yellow base, as Leonardo da Vinci used. I sometimes, rarely but sometimes, use green or violet, or even red. Violet is difficult because the violets are very delicate in oil, but I could (now I use acrylic toning) use something like dioxazine - but I don't trust these evil organic pigments! The staining ones (dioxazine and the phthalo blues and greens) are too strong, not pretty, and probably not stable - their strength would be masked by their power in any purely-vision (vs. chemistry theory) based test. The imprimatura, being the most base level, must be the most stable so should be an earth pigment.

Anyway, the tracing needed lot of hand drawing to bring out the lines. It is done.

Then I cut some MDF: 6mm for the new God Being Killed print. I needed a backing board to stick the print on to. I also cut two supports for the keyboard stand. Then I placed the wood down, the twin-slot rack, and the two pieces of wood either side like sentinels - thus exactly getting the spacing right. Then I glued these and applied weights:

Then I had to cut the print so size, which I did. I had to decide how to fix it to the 6mm panel. Once before I've glued a full print to a panel, but that is a little excessive, so I simply stuck the top 10mm of the paper (well, cotton rag) to the MDF, using water soluble PVA - a good safe glue to use. I applied a strip of wood there and leaned a weight over it, so the image above shows lots of things drying overnight.

See how Dali again helps! It's odd that his heavy books have perhaps been more use to me as weights than as books - but no, all books are useful in many ways. People have always compared my work with Dali's - since well before I knew anything about Dali or about art at all. Unlike my heroes in art of Beethoven, Ingmar Bergman, and countless others, there are other artists like Dali, David Bowie, Kenny Everett(!), who are not at all influences when others assume they are, and/or compare with my work with those artists as though I know of their work and have been influenced by or imitate them - which is, naturally, an annoyance if not insult. Most of my Dali books were bought for me as gifts, though of course now, I know lots about his life. 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship is an essential resource for any painter.

I also cut the Perspex for the print - the frame is too delicate to handle the weight of 6mm MDF with glass, this is one reason why I decided to make a new frame.

I also restored the frame a little, filling in the holes which were once there for mirror plates, and generally painting any damaged areas. The frame is now ready, apart from the spacer.

It's now nearly 8pm and has been another full day.

In brief breaks I've watched most of To Kill a King, a film about the great time of the Civil War. Nobody who knows anything about the English Civil War or the French Revolution could even think of revolution as a good thing. The Russians, the Chinese - they learned nothing. How I despise Oliver Cromwell. It is interesting to compare the film with the older Cromwell, the character of both Cromwells as an obstinate, egotistical firebrand is about the same. Few actors could compete with Richard Harris or Alec Guinness and the new performances are not nearly as good as those great actors, but then the new film is more about Thomas Fairfax and his wife. Not a bad film at all.

Painting Mania

A super busy day but I've not got nearly as much done as the effort should have.

I started by cutting and preparing the panels, canvas boards, a super-convenient surface, for Gynocratic Paedoparanoia and The Ficticious Secret History of Aspartame, which I found the sketch of! I know that in Jan 2018 I traced and prepared the Aspartame painting, but I've lost the panel so I've retraced it to a new surface, this painting is worth it. Then, I applied the toning layers to each surface.

Then an order for Aspic Oil, Spike Lavender. I use a few drops when painting as this can dissolve the precious amber I use, and the last 25ml I ordered was 2011. I'm nearly out, and it's probably best to keep it relatively fresh, so I ordered another lot. This little endeavour took 45 minute or so - such is the waste of time and inefficiency of the internet.

Then I did some singing training, my first in too long. I was rusty in some techniques and strength. I really need to keep this up. In some areas, I'm better than ever here, but in others, I can see a long way to go, that can be gone. I sang the words to a song called Conan which predates I, Sisyphus and is similar in sound and structure.

I then traced over the Aspartame painting, and started on the Gynocratic one, then a trip to B&Q during this lockdown for some essential wood for a second tier of keyboard stand so that I can fit my old SY-85 synth over the top of my piano. Not vital at all, I've had the synth for 25 years or so after all, but generally it's been in storage, and, if I ever get a new one I will need it to hand. I would like a new one that is less heavy and more portable than my digital piano so I can gig and leave the piano here.

The wood is annoyingly in the wrong sizes, I needed 16mm. They sold some as 11mm which, on the website, says 10.5mm - it is actually 10mm exactly (some were 9.5mm). I've stuck it to some 6mm wood.

I've had a request for art donations for a charity that has inspired me to revisit my old God Being Killed frame. This one:

I made a second frame a few years later, so this frame of wood and plaster is empty. I've been meaning to put a print into it for months, so today started the process by restoring the frame and cutting an MDF surface for a print... I will stick the print to a wood surface for greater stability.

Painting Designs

A full day working on three painting designs. I can waiver between too much perfectionism, which stops all work, and just doing everything, which can risk repetition or low quality work - though generally trying everything tends to produce the best work anyway. Now I'm working on many painting designs but will only finally settle on and trace over the ones I'm happy with. If in doubt and without any to compete with, I can do them all, but a painting is a big investment in time, effort and resources.

My method now is to expand the idea sketch to life size, print out sections on A4 sheets then trace the enlarged (very rough) idea to paper of the final size. Then this is worked over, keeping the layout and composition, but adding more detail or refining objects and textures for realism.

The key thing is the feeling from the original idea, which is sometimes so strong. The technique evolved because some ideas had a much stronger feeling than the final painting, yet, the increased detail often improves them too. Perhaps an ultimate solution is to paint the idea directly not use sketches at all, but the downside here is beauty and finish of the image because an idea may require changes (which would easily muddy up paint) or sometimes radical changes - at first, there no knowing what colour anything is supposed to be, so how can it be painted from the outset?

Still, I like this method. The 'Toad' series was painted in this way. When I tried it for the 'Fly in Amber' painting, I ended up duplicating that painting as an idea, so it became a full colour, full size, idea sketch - which is a bit heavy in time and resources.

I can see that Picasso essentially adopted this second method, but his paintings became solid, rather thick and rather crude in finish as a result. If, for example, he later copied his own work, it certianly would have looked more beautiful - but would that beauty retain the same feeling? Generally, I think it probably would - but the best way to be sure is plan it all in detail first...

Today I drew out 'Mama Mia Here I Go Again' and 'Spree Killer', these are largely complete in design now, but I'll need a few days to be sure, days during which I'll work on others. I've sized the paper and prepared the surface for 'Moon Over Shakespeare' too.

I've listened to Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project, a great album, much better than the other one of theirs I have (Turn of a Friendly Card). I've probably said this already. I played electric guitar to the Doctor Tarr track. I must finish the Nightfood album. I wrote a new song last night, Only The Lonelier, but I might save that for a new album. Nightfood needs one track, no more, and something specific.

Intangible Launch, The Ones We Love

A steady day. I spent the first couple of hours listing and launching the Chinese version of The Intangible Man on Smashwords. It will launch officially on Friday, Beethoven's deathday.

Then time escaped me for a while. In the afternoon I started work on the Gynocratic drawing. I'm feeling inspired again in visual art.

Every so often I've listened to music and am working out what to do next there. Ideally I need some sort of new track for Nightfood to extend it to an album. Last night I thought of my parents, noticing with great sadness how they have aged. I wrote these words with the possible idea of making some music about this:

The ones we love
We leave behind
By not giving enough
By not showing enough
To their fading light
The red glow
Our hope
Of something else and more
When there is nothing else and more

We are what we were given
Only that
We are the ones we love
That we leave behind
We are nothing
Without them

A first draft of course. I drew a few painting ideas this evening, one of a clifftop shaped like an hour-glass and one of a mouth, not unlike, now I think of it, The Taking Of Excalibur painting, so a flesh-monolith, one of my favoured forms. I seem to paint a lot of screaming/crying or roaring mouths. Is this due to the vicinity of the mouth to the eyes and mind? I think so, as though direct expression must emit from the mouth.

The Intangible Man, Gynocratic Paedoparanoia, Rain in D

Have spent most of today working on the Chinese translation of The Intangible Man, copying over a corrected story, then doing the same again a few hours later, these final changes. I also designed the cover:

I thought it would be fun to include the English lettering on there ('intangible' can just be seen behind the Chinese).

Then, after 6 weeks, I had a reply from the PRS so could register my music correctly with more confidence, so registered the Myth of Sisyphus tracks. I noticed a stupid typing error in the title of one track, so have requested a correction of this.

Then I started to trace over a new painting idea 'Gynocratic Paedoparanoia'. It's a monolith with repeating thematic elements, with an ethereal face, somewhat like my old idea for an unrealised painting called The Fictitious Secret History of Aspartame, which I've tried to paint 3 times, but failed because the expressive idea sketch is hard to capture.

I then paused, and in my rest of dark had an idea for a piece of music about rain. This requires a recording of rain, and each drop becomes a random note in the D-major scale. A hum or chord of D-major plays, ebbing and flowing with the volume of the rain recording. I put this together using a live recording from Norfolk. The result sounds rather random, like a wind chime. Not unrelaxing, but not beautiful as such, not really musical. Ideally, every aspect would be or could be driven by the natural sounds.

No Good Ideas Sawing, Monster Framing, Lachesis Tracing

A less busy day than yesterday but still non-stop.

I started by sawing down the panel for No Good Ideas, then painted the fringes there because the frame has only a small recess, so the painting needs to be painted to the edge. I love the colour matching and the meticulous work of this, but I must be careful not to waste too much time on it. Life is short!

This took me up to lunch time. Then I did a lot of art admin; updating my artworks spreadsheet with new works. Every painting and drawing is listed there (not digital works) with dimensions, framed dimensions, hours taken, price, framing status etc. I added the drawings from my recent books and several other artworks made since 2019.

Then I framed up Monsters of Spring, then traced the Lachesis underdrawing. I applied an ultramarine toning layer. I trace over the underdrawing using a 0.05mm pen, then a watercolour pencil, then a metal scribe - each stage is there to preserve the maximum accuracy. Sometimes I use oil paint, for difficult surfaces like glass, plastic, or polyester which resist pencil. I still use the pen and scribe though. Dali, as I'm sure you know, advocated a method using cellophane and a needle, but this method is better. I used to apply an oil imprimatura after this, but now I usually apply an acrylic tone first, before tracing, as the result is more even.

My last job was the balance some of the new Nightfood music a little. I have new text for The Chinese Intangible Man so will work on that next. I need to design a cover for that book too.

This pandemic is a drain but I am now fully prepared for 6 or 9 months of work. I still suspect that things won't be back to 'normal' until 2024. I can only hope that by this time next year, I can meet Deb. The long-term lack of physical contact with another human being must have some sort of physical, as well as a psychological, effect but of course I am used to this.

In art, I am enthused, excited, inspired, and my health and general state is good. On we march.

Fake Professional Art

I was reminded today, while listening to the New Music Show on Radio 3, that art now is a professional job; that people, normally wealthy, middle-class people, go to an art school, to study a course often headed by a failed artist (that is, someone who needed a job in teaching because they could not 'survive' as an artist without one) to gain a generally meaningless qualification, because anyone can pass an art course as long as they turn up, then leave to create cultural content to specific briefs for architecture, businesses, local government, festivals etc. with the same élan and motivation as say a builder or interior designer. Not to belittle those jobs; builders, with genuinely honed skills and academic knowledge, may feel miffed at being lumped in the same category as artists, who may qualify with no actual knowledge or skills apart from the random anything that they did during the two years of art school, but artists do necessarily learn how to explain the meaning of their work in the context of history and contemporary practice.

Explaining the meaning of art in the context of history and contemporary practice usually kills it as an artwork, because explanation kills emotion; the enigma of art is one of its lures. The professionalisation of art filled gaps in society; when architecture, businesses, local government, festivals etc. needed lots of reliable people to create 'pretty things' for their ugly functional things. They needed the 'artist' to tell everyone how these pretty things were 'good art', and the colleges saw a demand for people who wanted to be artists.

But all of that isn't really what art is. All of that is a sort of fake art, for commerce. Academic fake artists wouldn't make art for no money. For a real artist, art is a life or death matter, there must be a creation from the soul, in a very much romantic way. Even being asked to create something for someone else is a sort of pollution of this unseen, almost divine, 'sublime', drive.

It annoys me that the academic fake artists get any sort of attention from the arts media; but part of the ploy of the professional is to prove that their art is valid, prove by merit of their fake qualifications and their ability to explain the meaning of their work 'in the context of history and contemporary practice'. Also, the 'arts media' is a broad church and there's room to critique and highlight everything. One could make a valid arts magazine only about book covers, or snack taglines, or bath-tile patterns, anything. In the arts media, things are at their worst when other academic artists critique others, fake on fake, most often done for the very commercial reasons that professional art exists for; and both for reasons at odds with the motivation and soul of real art.

The essence of art, perhaps even the central purpose of art, is to create something for nothing except itself. Real art has no purpose except human to human communication: art is the expression of love in new terms. This is the opposite to professional art, where the aim is to create anything for a specific function/place/time, then justify it as 'art' by explaination, academic rigour, and essay. Those things will never be necessary in art, and, even if attempted, would serve only to harm it.

Many Jobs, and Apocalypse of Clowns

A busy if not exhausting day today.

I started with determination to fix the horribly varnished frame, which was once near perfect. I decided to sand it down, but oh how nightmarish this process was! I wrecked two sanding sheets on my drum sander - after years of using the same two, I decided it was time for some clean ones, and as fate often chooses, this very first job with these virgin sheets utterly ruined them, clogging them up with molten varnish and lumps of wood. My drill didn't fare well either - my beloved drill which I couldn't have made my Eden Iris without! So I switched to a more powerful mains drill and vowed to attack the frame all the stronger. The problem, apart from the sticky plastic varnish, was the depth of the stain too. I had to sand down about 3mm over the whole frame and the result was naturally very uneven. I persevered, though noted that I'd probably breathed in a lifetime of perhaps toxic dust and nearly wrecked my ears too, so quickly grabbed some ear defenders. At least my eyes were protected well enough. I felt rotten that this small and pathetic frame had led me to destruction. The frame had become my Moby Dick!

After an hour of sanding it was generally clean, so I then took to it with a wire brush to texturise it. Overall, the whole process was one of the worst woodwork ordeals I've faced, but the fact that this was my last wood, my last lockdown wood, and last frame that I had to use, spurred me on. I stained the mashed and scarred frame and, actually, it looked rather nice in the end. This took me up to 11am.

Then work on the Chinese translation of The Intangible Man. This was a matter of hand copying over each paragraph. There are a lot of paragraphs in the book, so I became adept at clicking and using Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, darting between source and destination programs. Then updating the Table of Contents, and trying to verify it - difficult when I don't speak Chinese (in case you didn't know). This was done by 1pm.

Then a lunch of fried eggs and fried tomatoes on toasted olive-oil bread, then varnishing the now dry stained frame. It was so very rough that many splinters needed to be carefully removed with tweezers at this point. I had on my jobs list the tracing of the new Lachesis painting, so that was always on my mind.

Also at this point, I dismantled the No Good Ideas painting, and cut the backing board and glass to fit the new frame. The backing board was a template for the glass and main painting itself, these have to be cut to fit the frame exactly so I could use it as a future guide. No frame is perfectly rectangular, and no size exact, so boards like this are useful.

In addition to all of this, throughout the day I've been promoting Apocalypse of Clowns, our new Fall in Green release which came out today. Deb has done a great job across social media spreading the word. This is all we can really do. Interviews, newspapers etc. might help (but are very limited in these locked-down, socially distant times), but ultimately, it's live performances and appearances which will spread the word, and these are impossible nowadays. I'm very pleased with the music though. Listening this evening, Herr Kasperle remains a favourite, in fact the music, as well as Clown Face, often brings me to the brink of tears even now, which must be a good sign. I love it so.

After the frame jobs, I put up some racking on the garage outside for my mum who wanted to install some shelves for horizontal planters. This took another hour or so. A fire engine paused outside to attend a house fire in the street. Curious neighbours stood outside staring. I was too busy working.

By this point I was too tired to do much. I've noticed that I've lost 2-3kg in weight over the past couple of months. I must try to put it back. I ate, then started to trace Lachesis while listening to the New Music Show on Radio 3. It remains inspiring due to its eclecticism.

Tomorrow I must complete the Lachesis tracing and, at some point, saw the No Good Ideas panel and frame both that and Monsters of Spring (the troublesome frame of today is for that, I'm sure you remember). I like this extreme busyness, it inspires me to do yet more. I have at least two painting ideas to finalise this week, and of course the new album (or E.P. whatever it will be). I would also like to remaster all of my old PC games. I had mentally thought of doing it this week, but of course, that's impossible, I'd have to set everything else aside for that.

One final job I did, or jobs I did, last night before midnight - I added a page for 2021 oil paintings to my website and listed the first two. I also removed Google Analytics from all of my websites. It was generally useless - I don't really care how many or how few people visit my websites, but crucially, the 'tracking cookie' that Google insists upon is a rude annoyance that I don't want to force upon my visitors.

Dreams and Oliver Cromwell

A relatively slow day yesterday, but I always seem to think that. The key is to move on. I'm at times struck with a melancholy of transience, that the good times of now, however good they actually are, will one day go. We only have so much life, skill, energy, so must work when we can, as best we can. Sometimes I feel days away from calamity - this feeling is a good incentive.

Yesterday I finalised the production to Dreams Of You. It's an odd song and I'm growing to like it. The second half of this E.P. is so different from the first. The six planned tracks are now complete. I'm toying with a central 'interlude' type track and wrote some words last night that might work for it, a sonnet about being visited by demons. I also played a little synth, practising MIDI recording from the Reface, which I hadn't done before (I've played a few solos but always live takes).

Today I decided to paint and completed the painting of Oliver Cromwell that I started in 2019. It's an odd painting for me because of its simplicity, yet this matches the original vision; simply a shadowed and scary face looming from the mist. It's a very difficult portrait because the only real source image of Cromwell is the miniature by Samuel Cooper, and I wanted to paint it with totally different lighting from a Rembrandt painting, and with far more detail than the miniature had. I decided, at the very end, to paint the 'ghost' of King Charles I in the fog. I dislike and fear Cromwell and have always associated more with King Charles. Perhaps Cromwell represents my father, or madness, and this personal resonance struck me when working on it - but other viewers won't see that. There is always a political dimension to Cromwell the Puritan dictator.

Remember a few days ago when I said that the wooden frame I made was perhaps my finest? Well there was a tiny dark spot on it, so I got some acetone out to try to fix it and it utterly ruined the frame... how often have obsessive perfectionists done this! I'm now faced with totally refinishing and remaking the frame... I could sand it all down to nothing and start again, and indeed this might be the only viable option.

In other news, the Chinese translation of The Intangible Man was flawed so I've been resent a new manuscript and the day's work converting this into an epub file is wasted and I have to spend another day doing it all again. The Chinese version of 21st Century Surrealism has sold one copy on Smashwords despite its success in English. These translations might be worth it in the long term but might be worth less than even a day's work at the moment. We shall see.

The End of an Era

Sigh, a good day overall, but at times it didn't feel like it. I started by working on the e-book conversion for the Chinese translation to The Intangible Man & Other Stories. This is generally a matter of copying and pasting. Many aspects of Chinese writing fascinate me. I like how the symbol for 'door' looks like a door. I'm also reminded of the insight this eastern writing has given me into the origin of Space Invaders.

Then I was notified that, after 19 years of using their services, my Share-It account has been spontaneously terminated due to the lack of any sales in the past year. This was a sad moment. In 2002, after my large breakdown and considerations of suicide I decided to restart and charge forth with a host of new ideas. I founded IndieSFX to sell sound effects, I started Bytten to review games and engage with the gaming community, and I started Cornutopia Software to finally publish my own games and stop chasing rip-off game publishers, after a decade of chasing them and being disappointed, even abused and threatened by those sharks.

I used Share-It (later known as MyCommerce, Digital River) to sell my sound effects and games, and have sold thousands of pounds worth over the past 19 years, it was really my first taste of a way out, my first period of growth, at the age of 30 having never had any sort of job other than the single-minded pursuit of game development, receiving nothing in return but dashed hopes and theft from fly-by-night publishers. I was programming games as a child, though my first years were experiments in BASIC. Perhaps one could say that from the age of 15 to 30 I did nothing but make games and chase publishers unsuccessfully.

Then in 2002 I published myself online and started to sell games for the first time. My production rate exploded: Breakout Velocity, Fallout, Bool, Yinyang, Outliner and the first version of my music software Prometheus were all developed in 2002. I also founded IndieSFX, the start of my huge sound effect library, bought a £400 microphone and some good recording equipment, and started to review games along with Andrew Williams and other regular reviewers; Steve Blanch, David Simpkins, and Hayden Yale. My biggest hit of a game, Flatspace, was made in 2003, and my last game, Gunstorm II was 2006; so in those 4 years I made a lifetime of PC games.

The games were regularly updated for many years but gradually stopped being supported until 2017 when I was reluctantly persuaded to update Flatspace for Steam. This was ultimately a good thing and I've updated and re-released about half of my games so far, but the older ones remained for sale via Share-It.

My sound effects too sold well. At first on CD because downloads of that huge size were unthinkable back then. I remember posting sets of CDs to Canada, hoping that they would all arrive safely. Gradually the sound effect sales slowed down, but I continue to sell sound effects on third party websites.

But today, without warning or recourse for appeal, my Share-It account was closed and all of my games and sound effect products were deleted. The royalty free music there was itself rather interesting artistically as it represented some of the first A.I. composed music on sale commercially. Of course, I have copies of everything, but where can I upload this? The world isn't interested, however much I feel that it should be.

So today, IndieSFX, a prong of a dream that changed my life, is over, and the day is sad. My games are for sale only on Steam, and about half, including Gunstorm and Outliner, are not available anywhere. At least I updated Taskforce last year, that game at least deserves to be seen.

Of course, I can continue somewhere, but I'll have to work out how. For my games, the logical option is to remaster these for Steam, but that's expensive and time consuming. I probably will, eventually. The sound effects are more difficult to sell as I have no vending platform now.

In work news, I stained a new frame today, the one I cut yesterday for No Good Ideas. I used blue, brown then red stain to create a strongly red-brown hue, then I varnished it. This took me up to 4pm. Then I refined the album art for my new E.P., Nightfood. Here it is so far:

Then I recorded a new take of vocals for Dreams Of You, feeling somewhat pained and anguished by the day, and these came out rather well. I will certainly use them. I've added a few more vocoder parts. This E.P. is about 27 minutes so far. It has a very different feeling to The Myth of Sisyphus. The second, electronic, half jars with the more raw and art-rock first half. I much prefer the first half because it's more unusual and emotional, but the second pop-half might have more instant appeal. The existing Burnout and Plastic Superman songs are worth putting 'out there' at least.

I'm aware that I'm only 3 minutes away from an album-length work, and am toying with a middle interlude - if so I'd like this to be raw and experimental... rocky, fast or slow, I don't know.

New Frame, SY-85, Cover Art

A slow day. I keep feeling I'm hardly producing anything or anything worthwhile, perhaps this is common. I know I can produce so much so quickly at times.

Today I cut and glued a new frame of the old painting No Good Ideas, the old frame was one of my 'first generation' ones with visible screws and generally not as well finished as I can make now. This uses the last of my wood.

Then, some cover art for the new E.P. which I had the new title idea of 'nightfood' for. Here's one draft cover design:

I also spent some time looking for my original data disks for my Yamaha SY-85 synthesizer, I would like to sell it and get a replacement with more octaves and less weight, for future performances.

Then vocal recording for Dreams Of You. The melody is so slow that the vocals sound rather operatic. I need to get used to them.

The Chinese translation for The Intangible Man & Other Stories has arrived so I'll spend a few days working on that. I also have these painting ideas to draw out.

Bad news about Covid-19 in that the Astra Zeneca vaccine appears to be almost useless against the so-called new variants. This must inevitably mean that the new variants will become dominant, perhaps quickly, and with a population without vaccination, the pandemic will be the same this year as last year, lockdowns will continue for perhaps another 12-months, and that plans for 'opening up' this summer are forlorn. We shall see.

How I miss Deborah.

My Nantwich Museum Exhibition has provisional dates for November to January, all Covid-19 dependent.

I need to make ambitious plans for the coming days, if not months.

Finalising Tree of Keys Edits, Lachesis Composition

A slower day. I started by working on 'I, Spider' again, checking the important climax part, but it was good enough, then mastered the final waves, filed the album and made a new video. I'm not totally committed to replacing the album as yet as the changes are relatively minor. In the afternoon I worked more on the album art, oddly I didn't complete this, partly because I've since changed my standards so that every album has an 8-page 600dpi booklet. If (when) I make a CD version it would be unthinkable to use the old/existing audio rather than these new ones.

Then drew out the papers for two new paintings and continued composition work on the Lachesis painting. The latter had a snake's tail on the left which improved the cyclic composition, but it didn't fit with the theme of trapped by fate; there are no starts or ends because each apparent start or end must be false, the whole painting must be like an endless puzzle. So I blended the snake into the sea, as I have elsewhere. The look is something of a syphony of snakes or drips.

I toyed with the idea of writing a book about my unique oil painting technique. After years of painting essentially in three coloured layers I've evolved an efficient and pretty technique. Having seen a few 7-ish-layer 'Mische Technique' paintings on the lovely evening I met Brigid Marlin, I was somewhat disappointed with their finish, my work looks as good or better with fewer layers (but of course I have a few other secrets and years technical refinements and experiments). I think three layers is optimal. There are three primary colours. More layers might make things smoother but each one has less and less effect on the chromatic glow, and makes the painting take a lot longer for less and less effect.

One of the new pages is for an old idea called Spree Killer, but it's a very simplistic idea. I will have to add and create more for it. I also need to complete the vocals for the Dream song.

Lots to do, I'm feeling inspired and busy.

I, Spider v2.00

I listened to the Radio 3 improvisation programme 'Freeness' on Saturday which inspired me to look back at some of my Tree of Keys music. 'I, Spider' in particular sounded very rough in parts, both the vocals and particularly the electronic guitars which didn't remotely bother or concern me at the time, but now of course, I use real guitars. So today I thought I'd re-record the vocals and guitars, and in an instant these sound much better than in the original version. But now, what to do with it?

The music isn't on CD so in technical terms pulling the digital album and replacing some tracks with new ones isn't difficult - aside from a certain amount of admin for publishing new work. I guess this sort of updating of old work, or the desire for it, is relatively common for an artist; perhaps expected as one improves. Many classical composers revised work. I never really feel the urge to paint 'corrections' to oil paintings; I much prefer to make a new version. I made nearly two identical versions of The God-King Albion painting for example, and have the first version here (it's almost identical but the Roman soldiers are much more simply painted, more like inky outlines).

I also re-recorded the vocals for Dream of the Tao. The rest of the album will do. I'm aware that new work might feel better but permanently destroying old work isn't something to be taken lightly, sometimes there are nuances and nice things in old work that aren't appreciated at the time.

Well, I'll consider what to do with these and do nothing for now. The timing of 'I, Spider' is very slightly different due to the important timing of the climax, so a slight change to the video would be needed too (fortunately the video is not lip-synced so it will still work).

This week I'll try to complete the Dreams of You song and a continue with a few painting plans, then perhaps more music. Tree of Keys has reminded me about some of the nice things in these experiments. Dream of the Tao is an interesting and unusual song.

Lachesis

Drew out the composition for a painting idea about fate and determinism, a painting of the goddess Lachesis. By conicidence, the idea had a snake which, in my imagination, happened to be patterned like the genus Lachesis. Until tonioght I didn't know that Lachesis was a genus of snake.

Control and Cause and Effect

People either feel controlled and oppressed or feel in control and are oppressors. As an absolute determinist, I know that control is illusory.

Cause and effect reflects this. A red snooker ball may feel controlled and oppressed by the cue ball which strikes it, the cue ball may feel in control. If time were reversed, the red would appear to be in control. When these impact events occur, is there a cause, an effect, or any control by any party?

Einstein's General Relatively showed that time is a dimension, and that the future, like the past, must necessarily be laid out. This proves determinism, yet a century later the world still barely accepts this despite its overt and very rigorous proof.

Dreams Of You Production, Covid Fear

Lots of work on Dreams Of You today. I started by recording a piano solo for the second solo part. The song structure is verse (Amin), verse (Dmin), chorus, quiet solo, verse (Amin), verse (Dmin), summer solo, winter solo (in chorus chords), verse (Dmin) then final chorus. The summer solo is the same melody and chords as the quiet solo but more energetic; the mood here is happy memories, a summer field and childhood which is dramatically dashed with the 'winter solo', a distorted guitar solo.

My new software feature was so useful with this as both piano solos now sync with the sequence perfectly and allowed me to add accompaniment with much more ease. The tempo is so dramatically uneven that any drums with either solo sounds very odd; no bad thing. I've removed the drums there. I recorded four different guitar solos with different timbres and one with a chorus effect created by my amp, but I think I prefer a dry solo. Then some guitar strums which were made difficult as the chords are odd and fingersome (F major, B flat major, etc. meh!)

The vocals are still to do. This song seems to have taken ages, but I'm reminded that most of my songs of this style take about a week each. I remember when 10 days to composed and record the whole Spiral Staircase album seemed like forever.

There are a lot of anti-male protests occurring. In the street yesterday evening while I was walking to meet Deborah outdoors I passed a woman who said some strange comment as I passed, something "don't look at me then" or something. I wasn't really sure if she did say it to me. The street was otherwise empty but so many people speak on the phone these days, apparently to themselves, and the phrase did seem a bit odd.

These are odd times. The general atmosphere of fear and necessary compliance created by Covid and its restrictions seems to have driven a percentage, a majority, of the population insane. I suspect that the Black Lives Matter movement and similar are primarily due to these psychological pressures. These are unique and extraordinary times. Perhaps the atmosphere of fear in the 1940s, or the nuclear paranoia of the 1950s was similar. Times; thoughts, actions, feel restricted, not free. Perhaps in a few years a new era of peace and love, as occurred in the late 1960s, will appear if free thought, free action, free love is rediscovered by a section of society. Freedom is always appealing and desired, at least art is, can be, must be, free. Like comedy, anything must be acceptable in art. Art is and should be separate from personal, social and political limits. Art is not ever the artist; is is higher, it contains more.

Painting Plans, Dreams Of You, Selves

Lots of new painting plans made today. Transferred the underdrawing to the new Volcanism painting (I will change the title of this) and looked at a few older ideas, some from a few years ago, and three new ones from last night. It takes a flash to think of them, a day to draw them out but can takes weeks to paint them so it can be tempting to rush in with 'any old thing' rather than carefully considering, yet, any old thing is better than nothing and it's quite amazing how unpredictable the good paintings will turn out to be, sometimes even years after painting something, a painting that seemed minor or flawed at the time tends to be one that grows to be loved. I love a few of my oldest and, from a technical point of view, crudest paintings. Opposite my bed is a portait of film star Claire Luce which I painted in my first years as a painter. I looks amateruish in many ways, yet I've grown to love it and the expression is quite unique, its mood reflects mine when I look at it, so I can use it as a mirror. Perhaps I should repaint it.

In the evening I worked on the Dreams Of You song and changed the chords. I used the new time-import feature but it had a few teething problems so I've updated the program too.

It's been a week of extreme anxiety, mainly fear of anxiety because of the pain this causes me. Of course this a self-created cycle and it is this knowledge that can dissipate it. We are all composite beings, made of many cells, and many personalities and opinions. When we talk or think to ourselves then one self is communicating with another, and even which self is 'us', the dominant one, changes. In a dream, each character is another self. So health and happiness come down to handling relationships, they are matters of diplomacy; understanding, care, friendship, empathy with our different selves, all there with different hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions. We are teams, fellowships of friends shambling through the world together.

Will

I made the sun rise today, I willed it. Nobody can prove that I didn't, or that I did. If I choose to raise my left arm, the same applies. Such is will.

Frame Staining, Underdrawing Volcanism and Social Media

A slower day today, less anxious than yesterday. I'm starting to reorganise and plan several larger ideas. Tip: if a job isn't getting done, then make its steps smaller and smaller until the first one is very easy.

I stained the frame I cut and glued yesterday. The best stain is Morrell's solvent based wood stain, as good as the old Colron stain used to be before it became water based and very poor. One problem with solvent based stain is that it shows up PVA wood glue. The glue is normally transparent but even the tiniest speck appears as very dark spots when stained, almost always near the corners or gluey bits, but impossible to prevent because the glue is completely invisible until stained and even the most ardent wiping won't remove it all. Today I decided to try to fix this by removing the glue after staining using a 1:1 mix of isopropyl alcohol and water and cotton buds, taking time. This worked fastastically, far better than I could have hoped. The stain was removed too, of course, but when some stain was repainted, rubbed, over the lighter areas they covered so well that the patches were fixed perfectly.

I've made a lot of these plain wood stained frames over the years. Later on I started to distress the wood or add other decoration, but for years this plain brown ('Jacobean Dark Oak' - like a raw umber pigment) was my main style of frame. Of all of those frames, this one I've made today is probably my best. If only I can keep improving.

All of this took far too many hours, but its absorbing activity made the day restful if not very productive. After this I drew out the underdraing to Volcanism and Social Media, a complex painting in the mould of my 'Wax Cataclysm' or 'The Bully' paintings. I've not made a digital mockup; I used to do that but now I often just hand draw it and use photo references as inexact guides to forms and textures while I paint, this way I can paint a mountain or body in a shape that I haven't got an exact photo of... I realised that I didn't need an exact object to copy from. This one will take a few days to paint, when I begin.

I'll finish the drawing and transfer it over tomorrow, then back to music perhaps.

Absolute Determinism, Reframing, Synths

I made a breakthrough in the compatibility of free will and absolute determinism today. Fundamentally, it's a matter of prediction. Even if every event in the universe was completely predictable, no entity could have the resources to predict it completely, as these resources would need to be the same size as the universe (plus a little for its own awareness), so all predictions of the future, and knowledge about the universe, must necessarily be incomplete.

'One commonly sited problem with absolute determinism is that if a person's life were pre-destined then there could be no morality or judgement; an evil dictator would have always been destined to be bad, and a saint always destined to be good. Today I realised that nobody could know this destiny, even if it were set in stone because the act of predicting a person's life would take as much effort as living it, so only partial and incomplete predictions can ever be possible. It is this fact that allows absolute determinism while permitting feelings of control, or belief in the power to change the future; this belief emerges due to the gaps left by necessarily imperfect prediction. Free will, to some extent, is about predications either made or thwarted - after all, active will is about changing the future. One could say that will, a different aspect of will, can also be about attributing one's actions to past events: 'I made this happen'. Even so, that case or belief is a matter of information about the event, and as with knowledge of the future, total knowledge of an event is also impossible - one event cannot be separated from the universe as a whole, and the whole universe is unknowable.

The fact that no prediction can be perfect would give rise to these feelings of control or belief. When we act, we know for certain that we did something but did not, and cannot, know for certain how the universe would behave or what other things would happen, so our ego attributes the future to our actions, despite the inevitability of them. Which things are considered ours, willed by us, or not can be anything, arbitrary, random. That would not diminish our will or feeling of it.

Well, of course, will is a complex subject. I've written about it before and must one day collate all of this. For me, my belief in absolute determinism is a comfort, like stoicism. No matter what happens, what we did, or what the universe did to us, it was always inevitable. Had we gone back to any moment in our lives, all of the information and knowledge would be the same as it was then, so we would make the same choices, and the same is true of every atom and object; even the falling of the grains of sand would occur the same, it is this very fact that makes the universe one finite object; the only possible alternative is an infinity of all possible universes which, for me, is ridiculous - there is no evidence of infinite anything in the universe, and were there so, all things would spiral to infinity, all things would be equal and therefore also nothing. In an infinite universe there can be no such thing as information because all knowledge would be equal.

In other jobs, I sawed the panel for Monsters of Spring, and cut and made the frame. This is a matter of eight exact 'ninja' cuts - each by hand and done to a very fine degree of accuracy. The fringes of the painting needed painting over too, as the frame has a slightly larger aperture. Overall I've worked for 10.25 8-hour days on this painting - a massive amount for a 30x40cm painting. These days I could probably paint something like this in four days at most.

I also continued work on the Volcanism painting design. In a moment of whimsy I recorded a bagpipe version of the Super Mario Theme using cheap Yahama keyboard bagpipe samples. I also researched Yamaha keyboards, possibly to replace my old, beloved but rather heavy, SY-85 synthesizer. My favoured replacement is the Yamaha MODX7 which is half the weight yet has more keys and more capabilities. It's also half the weight of my so-called portable stage piano, so might be useful for live performances. It's only downside is the fact that it costs £1100 or so.

Generally today I've been extremely anxious and now have a headache. How I miss seeing Deborah. When will this lockdown end? I expect October. The phrase 'when all this is over' is the phrase of our times.

Tracing, Reframing Monsters of Spring, Plans for Volcanism and Social Media

I'm trying to keep busy and have made a long list. There are always things to do, I've got so many paintings which could be reframed, filing to do, hundreds of painting ideas, but new ideas are better. My health suffers if I have too little to do, I must always be busy, and ideally pushed or challenged. I need new inspirations, new goals. I don't watch television and rarely read so the other option to work is self-absorbtion which leads to anxiety - my energy must go into my work.

Today I traced out one of the new paintings called Cock of the Woke. I also re-recorded some vocals for an older song (unsure whether to ever use them) and did basic vocal practice. Then sawed an old frame, for Monsters of Spring. Many of my old paintings (maybe 100!) have frames with visible screws in the side. I used to make them to a specific design which was simple and easy to construct, but they had visible screws in the side which held batons behind for mirror plates and the string. After a few years, the screws bothered me; at first I didn't think the look of the side of a picture frame was important. So now I need to reframe a lot of paintings, and for the past few years have done a lot of that.

I'm limited in what I can do with the screw holes... they can't be filled and painted over unless the frame itself is painted in thick paint. I can't easily cover them up except with extreme distress or some thick and obvious filler, so the easiest solution is make a new frame. I only have enough wood for one frame now. Today I thought of sawing the frame down to chop the screw holes off, so I marked the frame and sawed around the edge with a jigsaw, but alas, it was a mess. So, new frame it must be.

I started to draw out a new composition, Volcanism and Social Media. This, in the plan, will use my figure from Penalties, one of my early paintings, and largest at the time. I remember using a big house brush for the sky, and sanding it smooth later (it was cobalt paint, perhaps not healthy to do this in my bedroom!) This was a bit of a breakthough painting for me, it was exhibited in the Lowry Gallery in Manchester and I met Catherine and Peter from my first art club there, so a few months later decided to join it and leave my many years, 15 years, of isolation, my 'hikikomori' period.

In the late afternoon I transcribed the lyrics to several songs which didn't have them typed out, mostly Tim Watson's words for The Anatomy of Emotions tracks. These are long and very wordy, so I used an online auto-converter then edited by hand. The whole process took just over two hours.

I'm still anxious. I prefer depression on the whole but have very rarely felt this relaxation. Like Dali, I am an engine which never stops running, such is training of a terrifiying childhood.

A Few Painting Ideas

My stomach continues to cause troubles. Even the smallest meal seems to take many hours to digest. I think its a transient phase rather than a chronic problem. I've found that ignoring it and focusing my energy on something else can help.

I made a few changes to my music programming yesterday, primarily about the copy buffer. I can copy a selection of notes across several tracks. Now, some data is track specific, I might change a parameter of a track effect (say reverb strength) with track events, so pasting that in another track will cause problems, so I need all sorts of checks to prevent things like that. When I insert a track, for example, I also need to insert one in the invisible copy buffer as appropriate. Well, those are the sorts of things I programmed.

Last night I revised and simplified the music (on paper) for the Dreams Of You song and I came up with a few painting ideas, and today drew them out, a first set of new painting ideas: one a strange landscape about the Covid pandemic, and two about social media. Perhaps painting will help settle my stomach, although the long hours of sitting and concentration tend not to. One incentive is the reminder of mortality that any health problem creates. My mood is surprisingly positive and I'm full of ideas. I can but hope that tomorrow will be better.

Squaring the Circle

There's a big problem in music which I solved today. It started when I was awake in the night listening to Yesterday Once More by The Carpenters. I became acutely aware of the power of the subtleties of rhythm, despite the fact that it was supposed to be regular.

There are two forces in recording music now: live played parts, generally recorded all in one go and layered, just as has been done since the time of the Beatles and before; and sequenced parts which are generally tied to a grid of timing, a fixed metronome. Playing live is far more expressive and efficient but there is less control; once it's done the only real option is to retake it. You have ultimate control over sequences but they sound cold and mechanical almost all of the time. I spend most of my time trying to inject feeling into them; the crunch point is the timing.

Now I mix both methods, but this has problems. When playing live I can easily hear when the beats are and where the rhythm is, and I can pick these out in my sequencer BUT they won't be neatly lined up on the screen, the grid of time - yes, in a way this is the point - the live music has feeling exactly because it is not exact, but this makes editing slow and awkward. My music, since I started to play long live piano parts, is a hybrid: some parts sequenced to the machine, sometimes loose and free, with extra parts added off-grid to match some sound-track, typically a piano recording (it would probably be a drum track for musicians that use drums).

But today I worked out how to combine both. It's by essentially squishing the grid, changing the tempo every beat, so that it looks all lined up but is in fact organic and live. I did this by programming Prometheus to look at a midi sequence of notes which I will play by hand like a tick-track. The software calculates the speed between notes, then continually changes the tempo to this ebb and flow of time. This way the organic timing of the hand played piano is exactly replicated in the digital sequence, while lining it all up so that the beats look like beats.

Musically, I could have done everything this way by ignoring the grid, and of course I toy with the sequenced tempo in lots of ways too, but it makes editing so much faster and easier to see where the beats and measures are, laid out in the proper place, and more efficient to play the song once with feeling rather than painstakingly hand-program every nuance of mood. Now I can simply, for example, use 'live' timing but have every other instrument programmed. The timing, beat, groove of a song is so strongly the driver of the feeling in a song that it's bound to change the result. With this change I needed to add a suite of tools for processing the timing data - of course it can all be tweaked, adjusted, copied, flipped and abused, etc., but that's done too now... all I need to do it try it out.

For the moment I think I'll pause for a day or two to regain some musical energy and passion. I've worked solidly for months on music. A year ago at this time I was working on Burn of God. I'd not sang a trained note or played guitar then - beyond the tinny strums in Palace of Skeletons (one of my favourite tracks on that album). So much has changed since.

Dreams Of You, Albedo 0.39

Awake at 5am with excruciating stomach pain. Largely too ill to work today but managed to finalise the chords and programmed some string arrangements for Dreams Of You, and worked out some basic tempo and drums. The drums control the feeling so strongly, I'm unsure of how it should all sound, the exact feeling, although the melody and general structure is now finalised. At the moment it sounds more slow than epic, perhaps I need to add the guitars, but I need to finalise the tempo before any live recording. Perhaps I need a different song altogether for this final track. Tomorrow I will stop and do other things for a few days.

I'm now sitting in darkness and listening to Vangelis' Albedo 0.39, my favourite album of the, well, only three of his that I have heard. The others are a bit rubbish. One problem I have with a lot of Vangelis' music is that the balancing booms out the bass and hissy frequencies, cutting out the mid-range so much that it sounds too quiet at any volume. The album Direct is a prime example, I can barely listen to it (also there is so little concept to the disconnected tunes there, beyond having a mild jazzy-ambience, that it comes across as 'testcard music'). Albedo though is strongly space themed, loaded with mystery and imagery and far more interesting on many levels.

Dreams Of You Structure

A slow day, feeling tired and lacklustre. I worked on the new song. The words were initially:

As the snow falls soft in the rainbow lights
you will laugh with friends.

I will stand outside with the dying plants
and watch, pretend,

and I'll see and I'll be
with you in my dreams,
my dreams of you.

Yes I know I'm dead in your happy heart
that door is closed

and I'm left alone to love the parts
of broken rose

and I'll see and I'll be
with you in my dreams,
my dreams of you.

But the song was a little too short and too repetitive. So I decided to add two instrumental breaks, after the first chorus, and after the 'rose' verse, then adding a final verse:

You can't shut me out, it's not over,
the stories of my sadness will not be true

for I'll see and I'll be
with you in my dreams
my dreams of you.

Which creates a nice mood too, the lyrics read like a last love letter. I wanted a bit more inventiveness in the chords. As I said last night the verses are A-minor then D-minor but the chorus ends on an off G-minor, so the 'Yes I know' verse uses that, turning the whole song two semitones lower, but I can't carry on like that (I don't think...) so it jumps back to D-minor for the next verse. Then the first instrumental part. I thought of using the 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' chords, but starting on G-minor rather than A-minor, so: G-min, F-Maj, E-min, D#-Maj to D-Maj, but later, for the last verse, needed to use same chords in another key that would lead to the final chorus (the D-Maj wouldn't easily do that), so I picked a simpler G-min, D-Maj, D#-Maj, C-min.

Not 100% sure on any of it yet but I've sequenced up a basic arrangement. The whole song so far is quite long even before I work out the instrumental parts and I'm not sure if I like the melody. If the chords and general tune sound okay then I'll next work on the pace and feeling before I add too much. The song must start gently, in the snow, in the fog of winter, but end in epic dramatic territory.

More Physically Fit Changes, New Song Beginnings

Well, the song still wasn't quite right so I spent last evening re-recording and changing that crucial focus part again. The gentle wah-type synth sound in there created a nice restful section, but it seemed to jump too quickly into the climactic chorus, so I decided to make a mini-transformation. I added new words "So, what do you say?" in the main voice, then a pause where the whole song stops for a few beats, followed by a "Yes!" in the chord voice - the final chorus is sung in chords so this works far better. I think the song is complete. It's a simple, plastic little pop-song, but fits perfectly well in this, well, plastic-pop part of this mini album.

The final track is the theme from my old Amiga game Burnout. At some point I made a long (7 minute) remix of it on my SY-85. Back then (late 1990s) I used to record all of my music on Sony Minidiscs (I still have the player and use it, rarely but sometimes, to record snippets from the radio - how retro of me). I've remade a new edit of this song based exactly on that version, it's almost the same musically but I've changed the odd instrument to fit. This is 100% sequenced which sounds a bit too dead and flat for my tastes now, so I've spent today adding expression to that.

Then, the last song of these six. This is the central song of the 'death' section (actually sort of a gothic star-crossed romance). The first is the Dream of Wasps song, then this one about being rejected, gazing in through a window at a lost love. There's instant image here due to the lyrics:

As the snow falls soft
in the rainbow lights
you will laugh
with friends.

I will stand outside
with the dying plants
and watch,
pretend.

The music is simple, A-minor, almost like Walking in the Air from The Snowman. I thought it needed more interest so I shifted it to D-minor (this shift always makes me think of Beethoven's 5th symphony, but I was reminded today that these keys are the main part of Visage's Fade to Grey too). The chorus cycles though a lot of chords and ends on the interesting G-minor so I'll probably continue there. At the moment the song will be short and pretty but I'd like to build it up.

Young Attractive And Physically Fit Tweaks

So pleased not to be in pain today. In the night I considered the song lyrics. Here they all are:

Hello
Nice party isn't it?
I've seen you around
There's something I've been meaning to say...

I'm young, attractive, and I'm physically fit (x8)

I've seen you here before
I've seen you look at me, you know?
Want to dance?

You're young, attractive, and you're physically fit (x8)

Want to get on down?
Let's do it!

We're young, attractive, and we're physically fit (x8)

The 'Let's do it!' line became something of an unexpected focus, the song paused there before the final chorus, but it didn't seem right for the song, and was also a bit long in timing so I thought of lots of options... even 'Let's boogie', which might have been fine if the phrase hadn't been used since the 1970s, but the film Boogie Nights has somewhat tainted the word. In the end I simply used 'Let's dance' - the two short syllables fitted the pause too.

The pause was a bit too dramatic. The lead to it was a quite relaxing wander of notes played on the Reface using a sound I designed called Kojak. It's a lovely mellow electric piano sound that reminded me really strongly of the a sound in the theme tune to ancient sit-com Sorry (with Ronnie Corbett). If a sound is this distinctive, it must be good. That part was so mellow that the pause was a bit odd, so I added a bit more to the run up. Actually, it's this part that reminds me a bit of Video Killed The Radio Star, the wah sound in the first few seconds of the song.

I went for a walk in the sun to see Deb outside briefly, and put up a blind in the kitchen. I also changed the Burnout theme several times, before setting it back to how it was. The pianos are very bright and tinny, almost too much in solo, but this is needed for the highly complex mix of this 90s-era tune... I've got bassdrums, bass, a filter sweeping semi-bass, sforzando strings, and long chords, and high bleeps, and the piano all playing at once! I'm reminded of the tune Sunchyme, which had bright pianos too and for similar mix reasons.

I also tweaked Plastic Superman a bit. I barely stopped but the day feels unproductive.

Ironic Song Production

A somehwat ironic day of song production on 'Young Attractive and Physically Fit' because I've been gripped by disabling stomach agony for most of the day, but now I know that I must avoid fructo-oligosaccharides. Maybe I could make a song about that. At times the pain was quite unbearable, but what would be the point of doing nothing vs. doing something in such circumstances? Rest is the same as work without anything to show at the end of it.

I had a dream of wandering in, I think, a science facility (this biosphere-like setting may have been inspired by an evening listen to Jarre's Teo & Tea - one of Jarre's worst albums). I was due to leave after spending a specific time there, and had to climb a ladder and exit via the skylight. I climbed the ladder and smashed the dome of glass there, but strange animals which were outside on the roof: goats, pigs, ducks, all sort of things. Before I could exit, these creatures climbed down en masse and tried to eat me. I became afraid that the facility was being flooded by these unwanted enemy invaders.

I listed the final Myth of Sisyphus artwork for sale on RedBubble (I put all of my album art on there). I then got back to work on the song. The vocoder vocals from yesterday were adequate, but needed a bit more depth in their vocalisations, so I recorded some more. The last required part was the solo, I wanted a live solo, this is so important. Piano and guitar has taught me how expressive live performance is and how dead sequencing is. I spend most of my hours in Prometheus adding expression to each note; it's far more efficient to play it live.

I listened, yesterday evening, to La Roux's first album for some production inspiration but was reminded how regular timing, over-loudness, and everything crunched to a steady volume kills emotion. The feeling must, in such circumstances, come from the vocals and lyrics, and the melody (but even J.S. Bach with his organ music struggled to add much feeling to his genius compositions). With La Roux there is hardly any melody. The only note I took was how distortion was used extensively to break up the 'order' of the fixed timing, fixed volume, fixed timbre.

I recorded the solo on the Reface DX, this is such a great instrument, far more expressive and better sounding than the Microkorg.

Then I needed to add more... the song needed image and location. I started by adding a 'party' sound at the start (actually a recording of a noisy street party here I made years ago). I also needed to add more drama and impact, and focused on making the quiet parts quieter and the loud parts louder, and added a (yes, Commodore 64 inspired) pair of white-noise 'snap' sounds. One of my favourite tricks.

That's the state of the song so far. It sounds like a hit, like Da Da Da, like The Model, like Video Killed The Radio Star, yet with a tune that is basically one note and one chord most of the time.

This song will definitely replace Style Guru on this Velvet project; so one track remains...