Out Of Date Production, Reverbs

No, not a comment on historical music, the title of this post refers to my song Out Of Date, which I've been working on today. I re-wrote the music today. It was/is one of the more complex song on here, the first verse blends into a second (so its more like an 8-chord verse), then a chorus in new chords, back to a solo in verse chords, then a strange interlude. The lyrics originally read:

Strange
How right and wrong change - don't you think?
Remember when black was white?
Remember when dark was light?
How sad today feels.

For this, I need to move from then final resolving C-Major to the chorus, which starts A-minor, but there is solo after this, the 'sad' part - so there is a lot of flexibility. I decided to be radical and explore the words; light and dark, and a fall to sadness, so I used A-minor, A-Major, G-Major, G-minor, F-minor, F-Major, E-Major, E-minor for those words, sort a downward staircase of light and dark. The end falls into D-minor and the chords of the second verse, so leading into the chorus very like the first time around.

I was unsure about the 'Remember when black was white?' line. There is no escaping racial imagery, which is not at all intended; I meant the colours, I want a clash of opposites, like squares on a chessboard, the absurdity of black being white and white black. So I re-wrote the lines:

Strange
How right and wrong change - don't you think?
Remember when dark was light?
Remember when good was bad?
How today feels so sad.

This makes me think about intepretation. Is it the artist's job to think of how an audience might recieve it? Or should the artist make what he/she wants, and know that other people like him/her would understand, ignoring those who misinterpret as simply wrong? I'm unsure. I tend to prefer the latter option and write what I know and believe. In this case, I think the good versus bad line is better anyway because of the more dramatic clash, though the rhyme is worse.

The production has taken all day, but has gone remarkably well for the complexity of this song. There is a piano, octave strings, some lower, sforzando, strings, wide horn-like brass, and even a flute, as well as drums and bass, but it all worked so easily and quickly, flowing like a dreamy waltz. The last step was the crucial pacing.

I briefly watched a YouTube video comparing some fancy digital reverbs today - I saw that one unit costs a ridiculous amount, £3600 or so. I wondered how my self-designed Oxyverb or Nitroverb might hold up, and presume better. At least I can claim that no other musician in the world uses them. You can hear Nitroverb during the intro to Flatspace. My reverbs don't use real world units, it's bizarre to me that settings like 'hall' or 'cavern' or 'room' are applied to these totally artificial algorithms. I simply set the mathematical parameters. My reverbs can be tuned to last forever (infinite tail) which is useful for some effects, creating a constant 'breath'. I've mainly used this for extending snares.

Secret Electric Sorcery Music Continues

A steady music day. Finalised Be My Jesus, a simple song with growing layers, and drama in the production. I also finally completed the writing for Eyes of Pity. I had thought of some sort of diversion for the middle part. The music feels so natural here that I'm unsure if a musical change would help, but I have added one distraction, a second sample from The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, which, in its odd way, unifies the album a bit more. I also added some electric guitar parts and a kazoo solo at the end, which sounds so morose that it works remarkably well. It is hard to control, perhaps if it were easier to control the kazoo could be a blues instrument par-excellence.

Then I worked out the music for Out of Date, which has a lot of chords; 8 different ones in the first two verses. Currently the last verse leads into the same chords as the second verse but continues an upward climb and the first D-Major chord of the song, to resolve in a comfortable sounding, yet oddly surprising G, considering most of the song resolves to C-Major or A-minor. This song needs some carving before I work on its epic production, which will be in the style of a French ballad, Edith Piaf, or one of Scott Walker's Brel epics.

I also resurrected an old song called Incomplete Version of the Writer. I've recorded it once before but since deleted it. The key was not right for my voice, so I will respell it, and refine everything. I've changed as a producer and performer so much since the first version that everything will need to be re-done. I thought of this because one of my principles is to put things on here that it would be tragic to lose; songs that should be heard.

Perhaps 60% of the album is complete now. By this rate, I should finish by 2022, which is too slow for my liking, but each artwork needs its proper time.

Sendy, Hackney Post Story, Kwaidan and Earth Destruction Dream

A day of recovery yesterday. I still feel overly tired and probably need more of a break after the intense 4 or 5 weeks of music work, but a lot more is to be done, and I remain filled with enthusiasm and joy about it.

I spent the morning trying to get my email program Sendy to work. I had to upgrade it in the end, and this led to a slight change to the newsletter sign-up pages on my websites as these used the old http rather than https protocol. The difference meant a (nonsensical) 'not secure' message in Chrome. Well, all fixed now. I then prepared a message about the Halloween Steam Sale and sent a few messages out.

In the evening, I was happily notified about a great story in the Hackney Post about the Galleria Balmain exhibition, and my participation in it, by journalist Carla Abreu:

Deb and I had salad for tea, and three desserts: organic raspberries and Chambord, tiramisu, and some hugely sweet and fluffy glucose blobs called Kisses. We started to watch a 1960s Japanese film called Kwaidan, a gentle and beautiful anthology of ghost stories.

I went to bed, feeling generally exhausted, and dreamt of meeting Prince William and Kate. I was invited to a meal with them. I felt naturally honoured, and the three of us ate and I talked about which foods were the most environmentally stable. I said pasta, then potatoes and probably other staples.

Then, I heard about some impending global crisis, and I saw, from the window in our palatial (and slightly sci-fi) dining room, that the futuristic-looking Earth was being attacked by an enemy planet. It appeared though that the huge city buildings were being destroyed by Earth aircraft, blown to pieces with missiles. In the blue sky, the crescent of a new planet was visible, being built or appearing. At first I thought this was the planet Mongo, the antagonist attacking Earth and I felt that I, the Flash Gordon, was set to board a rocket-ship with Zarkov and Dale Arden and fly there to save the Earth; then it appeared to me that this planet was a new Earth, a replacement for the one being destroyed. I went into the street, and my companions, including a woman like Dale Arden or April O'Neil (Prince William and Duchess Catherine were still in the dream too, somewhere).

Dale had an important message to broadcast about how the Earth could be saved and asked me to unlock an antenna which was like a box kite, a black structure on a huge cable. I released this and it unfurled, shooting me really high in the sky. I gripped to the object in terror as the wind made it sway. There the dream ended.

Some of the imagery in Kwaidan, the eyes in the sky in the Snow Queen story, certainly influenced the dream, and the meal perhaps related to the meal I had earlier too.

Meet The Artist

A long but happy day visiting the Galleria Balmain shop yesterday. People seem hesitant to enter shops, and the footfall, even in the normally very busy high street, is subdued. Less than 10 people per day enter the shop - would have expected nearer 100, but the gallery, in this first exhibition, has sold more work than online so far, which vindicates the shop format. My work is getting lots of attention, the Philosopher painting is a hit and is certain to sell sooner or later, and the quality of the artists and work on show is generally really high. Everything is right and good here. I can feel this magic combination of artists and management, this 'X factor'. It's a secret waiting to be discovered, which itself is exciting, and the key here is persistence. The exhibition will continue for another week or so yet.

It was nice to to be visited by Andrew, who by chance was on a London break, and I managed to speak with a few nice visitors, all enthused and enthusiastic, and the day was generally full of positive moments.

We left at 6pm to so and walked slowly back to the station along the night streets and pretty lights, every class of person mixing with every other class. Even in trendy Brick Lane my hat had a few glances and compliments. I played the public piano in Euston Station, just improvising.

I always think of these old pianos like people. Abused by time and never in good tuning, left in the cold to jangle and jar, yet the upper tones were fresh and clean and would ring out across the hall. This is so much better than piped in electric music. Wouldn't it be amazing if all shops had their own piano? Or asked other players to bring instruments? A Marks & Spencer's chamber orchestra in every shop...

It was a late train and my aching limbs reached my bed at nearly midnight. Today, lots of admin work. Mel Woodend has got back to me with a list of possible poets for Neorenaissance, and she's given up her writing place to make way for another poet, and agreed to come to the reading event (or events). This is so kind of her. I'm reminded of Sue's words from last weekend about how brilliant Stoke people are. We must count our blessings.

I now have two dates: 29th Jan and 5th Feb for poetry reading events, with a maximum (so far) of a paltry 12 people in the museum at once. Two events are better than one anyway, the more the better, but really, I'd prefer more people as well as two events. The few poems I've received from the Write Out Loud poets, some are really beautiful works. Sometimes several poems have been written about the same painting, which always irks me; I want one per painting, but for the sake of art I can't exclude any of these poems or poets. I still have a few poets to confirm, and have received only a few poems of the 30 or so I need... a long way to go and only 4 weeks until this deadline.

I'm still aching all over from yesterday's exertion. How much work art is... I am climbing this mountain with great effort. Surely all effort is worth something, in the end? Rest exists only relative to effort. There can be no victory without a battle.

I want to paint more, write more, do more, but right now feel exhausted. Soon (I can't say when, it is a contractual secret) the Steam Halloween Sale 2021 will start. I need to prepare for that. More e-paperwork, but important work, this may be my only income this month. So, in 48 hours I go from music production and singing, to a painting event, to organising two poetry events, and now computer game promotion.

Music, London Preparation

Feeling somewhat exhausted, but a full day of music production. Lots of recording for be My Jesus and completed the vocals for Confidence in Kindness - which is a simple Dylan-esque folk song, so easy on production complexity. The key there is to make the words audible.

London tomorrow for the Galleria Balmain artists day, a long day. By coincidence, Andrew and my brother will both be there too. Will will wear a dark suit and bycocket.

Song Production, Be My Jesus Vocals, Mastery of an Instrument

A full day of music work, incorporating the vocals recorded yesterday and slowly carving the existing tracks. The Always in the Morning vocals are strong and epic, but perhaps too much - perhaps this song will benefit from less of this and more feeling. In vocal recordings, feeling is often noise, gravel, mess... what might be called inaccuracies. Of course, I will never use auto-tune - apart from the fact that my software is incapable of using it (blessed be this!) - I loathe the sound. This kills emotion with each notch; I'm too romantic for this. I avoid tuning instruments too much to any degree.

I've finished Passive Aggressive, I think. I've added a quick stab of a guitar chord (a stab of insult). And added some deep boom. Part of the unity in this album will be using similar sounds like a motif, and here the gravelly booms from Hitler in High Heels will appear here and there like signatures.

So, complete so far are Hitler in High Heels, Boring Ceefax Lift Music, Passive Aggressive, The Ones We Love. The latter track is more like something from Cycles & Shadows. It's a rather beautiful track inspired by an improvised synth piece played and recorded in one go at a certain sunset, using the super-expressive Reface DX. I was trying to capture the slightly melancholic mood, and to brought mind a festival that Sabine and I took part in during the solstice, and a piece on theremin which captured something of the midnight so very evocatively.

Teenage Dreams has a lot done, as has the very complex Always in the Morning - this could be called finished now at a pinch. I played a new guitar solo for this today, and a new piano solo, as well as adding a new intro about dreams and loving sleep from the film The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. I also recorded all of the vocoder parts - now there is a vocal sound I love - vocoders sound like electronics brought to life, autotune sounds like human voices defiled and killed.

Be My Jesus is in its infancy but the vocals are complete and good in one take. There are stages of learning and performance. I'm so pleased that I learned piano by simply expressing and enjoying the feeling, rather than anything like formal lessons, even playing live this way without any thought to details like technique or 'accuracy'. When in doubt, I enter this mode, this 'raptus', and it works when playing any instrument; guitar and vocals - though for any instrument there is also the intellectual learning, accuracy, technical parts which involve the right muscles (or hand position etc.), knowledge of notation and scales, etc. The path of learning is first fumbling, learning and mastering technical skills, then learning to control this, to forget it or recall it at will. The latter is vital. Performance of an instrument, like painting or any art is not about repeated practice and repeating that practice, it is about technical mastery of an instrument and choosing whether to use that or not; choosing this automatically by feeling, on an emotional level, live, as needed.

Simon Films, Always, Teenage and Jesus Vocals

A visit to Simon to drop off his birthday present yesterday. We talked mostly about films. He recently watched Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, having hardly seen any David Lynch films, somewhat jumping in at the deep end with those. He said that with Inland Empire it's like he was trying deliberately to make a terrible film, which made me laugh, but I agree that its one of the worst films I've seen, despite my love and admiration for the director and his other films. Lynch is a rare film maker in that his films can be radically different from each other; Eraserhead, Straight Story, Elephant Man, Dune, Blue Velvet - most people could watch all five and not suspect that they are by the same director.

I spent the early afternoon singing the main vocals for Always in the Morning, Teenage Dream, and Be My Jesus - I'd not even recorded the backing for the last track, so a rare example of recording the vocals early in production. I had a few scant hours alone to sing - bliss! How it pains me not to have the space and time to sing or practice as I would like, these rare moments snatched here and there. I am continue to improve at singing, but its doubly, triply, difficult when the time to sing is so rare and stochastically intermittent. All skills, I firmly believe, are available to all of us, and we simply get better at something as we do more of it. Singing, piano playing, rock climbing, tennis playing... we get better the more we do. Self (or trainer) analysis is important, we must target and work on weak points rationally; never too proud, never too critical. Of course, tennis requires height - which we are born with, and there might be a few examples like that, but even then, there are people who defy these apparent doctrines - Usain Bolt, for example, is very tall which, before him, was considered a disadvantage for a sprinter.

I recorded four full takes of Always in the Morning, with casual and brief listens to each. I was convinced, as I often am, that the last take was the best. Today, with fresh ears, this isn't the case. A day of pause to relisten anew is important.

Be My Jesus is a very simple song, almost all A, with an FM and GM climactic chorus, with suitably catholic organs. It's practically identical musically to my song Conan, which I haven't finished or recorded the vocals to yet. The first chorus will be the first climax but the energy will, I hope, continue to drive the song to a bigger climax at the end.

Tired Production

Worked until past 9pm, mostly on Teenage Dream, which sounds good. I found it hard to switch off, and stomach pain and nervous energy kept me awake until about 6am, so a day of a semi-wakeful state. Hard to remain motivated in such circumstances, but made a rational list of jobs and worked though them irrespective of my temperament. The difference between a professional and an amateur is that a professional must work whether he or she feels like it or not.

Recorded guitar solos for Always in the Morning and Teenage Dream. It seems a lot of these songs have guitar solos, perhaps the joy of using this relatively new instrument, but of course I work on what is new to learn playing, learn live recording, and other things. Perhaps I need more piano or synth solos for musical variety.

I added a lot more to Teenage Dreams. The ending is somewhat morose, I broke it up into something slow and strange and today added a bluesy solo. I'm unsure about the general musicality because it is somewhat discordant. I used the factor to break into a pleasant recapitulation of the chorus, which I faded by low-pass filter to silence, an indication of memory. I've changed some words too... from:

...is she one of those dreams
I will hold
for the next forty years

to

...is she one of those dreams
I will hold
in the cold
when I'm cold

Which is more timeless. The song appears to be complete apart from vocals. The production is somewhat like Tony Visconti's work on Breaking Glass, there's an energetic new-wave power to it. The guitars ache to add more feeling to the synths; this is so difficult. Everything I play is really expressive, and so little ends up being captured or recorded. I must keep trying.

I also added the new, slower, vocals to Passive Aggressive, these work well now, but I'm unsure of the music in the verses. Originally I had just bass, but this was a little thin. New electric pianos add weight, but the odd melody of major and minor, with its jaunty rhythm like the old Odd Couple theme, is oddly ugly sounding... or is it simply new and interesting? One of my rules is if I find myself remembering it or humming it, it must be good, but can't we also remember and hum ugly sounds?

Tonight I've started production on a new song called Be My Jesus. Today's tiredness is making me doubt the whole project, but it remains, certainly, better than my previous music. Even if only as training, this is worth doing. I'm improving in production, singing and guitar playing with each passing week and each new project. It's been a transformative two years for my music skills.

My brother is staying overnight before he goes to London, so we'll both be there next Tuesday. I don't know if we will meet up.

Onwards I roll my eternal rock. I must work until this is complete. Each song seems to take 4 days or so. 40-days and 40-nights. A biblical album.

Passive Vocals, Always Production

I'm constantly amazed how long this music is taking, but, brush stroke by brush stroke, I'm making progress. Recorded new vocals for Passive Aggressive today with slower, more bluesy, tempo which speeds up for the chorus.

Spent most of the day working on Always in the Morning. This song with lots of narrative and scene changes needs a lot of work around these changes to paint an emotional and psychological picture of what is going on. The pianos need a lot of work and I've worked on new piano sounds for greater depth and these sound a lot better. There are a few things to add: the guitar solo, piano solo, and the crucial vocals. Then I can add the extra touches.

Spent most of yesterday with guitars for Teenage Dream before a welcome trip out with Deb for some essential supplies.

I must remember to promote my art in Galleria Balmain. It appears that we will almost certainly be touring art to New York and Italy (Rome, Milan, Capri, this is uncertain yet), and as an artist and painter I am still marching forward. People should, with all sincerity, buy my paintings now while they are affordable.

Passive Aggressive Production

Wrestling with the Passive Aggressive production. I've decided to slow down the verses and make them more like Hound Dog than Jailhouse Rock. The backing was too sparse with just bass, so I've added a weird electric piano which played arpeggios is alternating minor and major chords for 'passive' and 'aggressive' - major then minor might be more culturally appropriate with minor generally feeling darker, but the chord is minor, so measures need to start on that. Discordant or strange passages serve as the chaos before the relief of something better. Here Come The Sun works so well because it follows the chaos of She's So Heavy.

Graphics Card Woes, Slow Music Progress

Spent all day yesterday working on the details for Neorenaissance; I need a full artwork list, all events dates, all people participating. I now must wait for the interested parties to get back to me.

Had a bad night of terrible anxiety due to computer problems - always my greatest source of angst. My screen went black a few times in the day, unexpected graphics driver crashes, then in the evening an awful grinding noise (from the graphics card fan) and a black screen. These are signs of a graphics card with electronic dementia. I ordered a new one from Amazon. Overnight, I vowed to install my emergency cheap space card, a GeForce 210 which is about 10 years old. It seems to work.

Too little work done today, perhaps due to the lack of sleep and the busy few days. I had a regular Covid-19 test as part of the O.N.S. study I'm participating in. I wrapped my father's birthday present and card.

I also revisited my music a little. The pianos in Always in the Morning are not my usual ones and sound a little dull and 'woody' - but they will do, and its good to have some variety. My pianos and strings are so distinctive now that it will probably help my overall timbre to have some variation. I've also worked on the Passive Aggressive vocals, but I dislike the production there.

Finally, work on Teenage Dream. This needs guitars, that would be a good thing to do on Thursday or perhaps tomorrow (though I'm going out in the day, so have reduced hours). This song ends with a few lines as a coda, a reminiscence; the whole song is about reminiscence, so a switch from youthful energy. Today I added this part and made it radically different in pace. I made the rhythm a sort of bossa-nova and added lots of strange instruments almost at random, even a recording of a tropical bird. I may use these as a basis for some live instruments... the album will benefit from more liveness. This section, musically is the same melody as appears just before the chorus, but there it was full of energy and vigour and now sounds morose and sad. I must enhance this effect while keeping the thematic link.

It's taking too long, too long, but it must be good. I've divided the tracks by theme and mood... I may possibly link them to unite the album, but grouping them all my mood is too easy and musically boring. Perhaps I can now write new work which combines or re-uses existing themes.

Galleria Balmain

A busy day yesterday on our first big art trip to the Galleria Balmain exhibition and shop in Shoreditch.

Really nice to meet some actual artists in person for the first time in over a year, and nice to see the gallery space in person. Impressed with the quality and imaginative quality of most of the art too, it is clear that many of the artists have been artists for many years or decades, the art on show had a great depth of imagination and power (not all, but most). Some of these are great works and clearly going to be worth a lot more one day. This is a slow start though, and the gallery has big and long term plans including the international exhibitions. I have a positive feeling about all of it. I gave a quick phone interview with a journalist about the exhibition today, too.

Have spent today working furiously on admin work for my Neorenaissance exhibition in Nantwich, creating a final list of works with sizes, prices, images, and contacting various people involved - over 10 others, which is quite a lot for a solo exhibition. This is all, again, a good sign.

I've also heard of a new music event in Congleton, developed as a showcase for Deb and I, what an honour! We're already looking forward to it and will create new work for it... I really need a new digital piano or synth. My piano is great, but rather heavy and a little delicate, with its fancy hammer action. I'd prefer something lighter and easier to carry for live performance. For actual playing I sometimes prefer light and springy keys. The Reface DX keyboard is amazingly good. I can't say why its better than the Microkorg and every other little keyboard but it certainly is. I need £1200 for this.

I'm still reading, as I do constantly in cycle, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph and have now bought Thayer's Life of Beethoven too, for its reproductions of some full letters. I need a prince to request some florins from. How fortunate we are not to have to spend a fortune to create art... though of course, digitally. Things in the real world are far more valuable, partly because they cost more to create. I will certainly press my music onto CD when I can. Big record companies really need to get together and develop either a new music format, or persuade the world of the value of CDs or records again (cars need CD players, houses need CD players, or both need something new and standardised). The tech giants may hammer these formats due to self-interest, but I am sure that music's interest is, partly but certainly, in physical media.

Always Pianos, London

A full day. Started by adding some of yesterday's vocal recordings to Boring Ceefax Lift Music, these sounded good from the start. How I wish I had more freedom and space to sing! Then preparing the vocals for Passive Aggressive - this will be a tricky track. I also did some essential music admin work.

Then, Always in the Morning, this epic track. I realised that my plan of adding live piano is doomed because I want to control the pacing very exactly; the mood arcs and flows, and this would mean finalising this timing and everything first. This is possible, and for some applications like vocals or a lead solo, also essential, but for this song-length backing track it would really complicate things because any future editing is just about impossible. So, I decided to work on sequenced pianos. This has some positive points; like my strings, my pianos sound pretty sophisticated now. Prometheus good enough that it sounds more like instructing a player than sequencing something. Usefully, this permits more complex composition work which can match melodies in other tracks. I feel more Beethovian this way, working on the notation, the composition rather than the sound as such.

Music is about the dialogue between the parts. This music is the most sophisticated I've ever done, and it shows; the bass lines in particular are strong here, and on my recent work like the Nightfood album, partly because of this new Wire Compression algorithm, which unlike a compressor applied to a real bass in a studio, can be applied before the volume envelope, giving great stability across the pitch range.

The piano work today has taken six or more hours of note-by-note editing. This also involved the song timing, the ebb and flow between sections; there are many points of drama here. The vocals will be difficult, the climax in high F. I may need to change the melody or key, but I'd prefer not to. I still forget to consider the vocal range early enough. The high D# in Ceefax really makes it work.

I'm off to London tomorrow for the first day at the Galleria Balmain shop. Quite a nerve-racking trip, my first train trip and major public event since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic 18-months ago. Now about 1% of people have Covid-19, the highest in Europe by far - all thanks to our lazy (primarily) and incompetent (secondly) government. I want this and the second trip on the 26th to be over. Blessed be Deborah for coming with me, what a joy this is, what a joy she is.

On we march!

Always in the Morning Production, Platinum Selling Fame in India and Italy

A good day today. Started with new vocals for Passive Aggressive - which I haven't processed or examined yet, and some more for the chorus of Hilter in High Heels. Layering is very useful at times but there are limits to how effective it can be. I layered about 20 vocals for parts of Burn of God, but after about four layers, the effect diminishes, new voices work better then. I think Mike Oldfield layered tens or hundreds guitars in Hergest Ridge, and it sounds a bit odd, muted and squidged somehow, like a river where the interesting flows of water are lost. Some of Phil Spector's music has this, it can sound epic, so big it sounds distant and blurry.

I had a surprise payment from the PRS, my first ever, perhaps in part due to the fact that I had neglected to register my catalogue there correctly until recently. I was surprised to find that Loneliness and Divine Love from The Love Symphony has had 2,962,526 plays on YouTube India; nearly 3 million, and 636,969 plays in Italy. This amounts to only a few pounds in royalties. This, for me, indicates the haphazard and stochastic nature of the internet. Loneliness and Divine Love is one of my favourite parts of the The Love Symphony, one of my best albums, my second 'symphonic' album after The Spiral Staircase. Oh for more time and resources to write more such works! The Death Symphony has been in my mind for years.

So, with more urgency I attacked this album. I got to work on the complex Always in the Morning. It has piano, with epic drums, plus strings, a viola, then I added a synth part. The structure is verse, verse, chorus, solo, interlude, chorus, verse. The solo breaks into a quiet picture-scene of night, a graveyard. I added a tolling bell and some strange night sounds (a backwards song thrush, tuned down), and a funerary organ. This then explodes into the second chorus which end with some dream lyrics...

I've bought your favourite thing for tea
but I'll cook it for myself
and when I click the nightlight, see your x's on the phone
I'll close my eyes and see you
back in our home.

... so we enter a dreamscape. Then wake up to the sad morning. There is a great emotional dimension to the words, so I'll have to work hard to wrestle this into the cold sequencer. Timing and tempo is crucial. The piano has echoes of the similar ballad Calling Mister Wilson, but those fake pianos, pretty though they can be, and controlled as they are, don't sound nearly as good as my playing.

I'll also have an epic electric guitar solo, and perhaps acoustic strums. Overall, this is a giant production. I must try to keep it minimal and efficient.

Steady Music Work, Art as Spiritual Conduit

The balance in art is between getting work out there, and doing the best you can. Not too rushed to be poor, not so slow that it takes time from new work.

After programming updates to the compressors, work on The Misery's Hard To Take, which in production terms is like a hoe-down. And some slow work on Always In The Morning. This needs a middle section, as does Eyes Of Pity, I want a change of mood and scene which demands the eye of a film-maker. I also did some work on Boring Ceefax Lift Music, a masterpiece of irony. The end is bluesy without any blues at all, electronic-blues, something different, so I will reference classical blues there.

I read: "Philosophy is a precipitate of the mind's electrical essence; its needs which seek a basis in primeval principle are elevated by it ... Thus every real creation of art is independent, more powerful than the artist himself and returns to the divine through its manifestation. It is one with man only in this, that it bears testimony of the mediation of the divine in him" - So true! The words of Beethoven as written by Bettina Brentano (though he later disbelieved he said it). It is no surprise to me that Beethoven, Picasso and myself feel this same belief that art is a psycho-spiritual conduit between man and the universe. Art is beyond a communication method between humans; though it can be this manifestation of love and understanding between people. Art can be genuinely loved and appreciated when alone, so it can be a form of love and understanding, and every other emotion and form of information, between one and the universe.

A poem by Jane Harland, sent to me today about my painting Now That's What I Call Blue, had a prayerful tone; perhaps an indication that all paintings are icons. An icon is a conduit between man and 'god', perhaps the only useful or true aspect of Christian spiritualism is its art. The non-Catholic denominations, the anti-art factions, are wholly devoid of love and humanity. No child could see a puritan and be impressed.

Wire Compression

I spent a lot of time yesterday working on my audio compression - that is audio dynamics, the use of the word compression that a record producer would assume, not digital data compression. My Wire Compression algorithm is unique and uses a volume tracer to compress rather than doing it purely mathematically. I wanted to experiment with settings. Here is my raw signal:

And here with 3.0:1 compression using SoundForge, a well established standard. This roughly means that anything over a threshold is squished by 3 times the 'height'. The result is then volume boosted so it gives a bit of a false impression of getting louder. It is really getting 'flatter' and more even:

Wire Compression doesn't really do that. When above a threshold it attenuates the signal by the inverse of a volume trace, so it has the effect of levelling off, but in a different way. I have some parameters for the volume tracer and the gate power. Here are some. This is 200,200 Gate 200; 400,200 Gate 200; 800,200 Gate 200:

The 800 (quick 'attack') squashed things well. Here are 400,400 Gate 200; 600,600 Gate 200; 800,800 Gate 200:

These look similar because the faster tail off means it will hug the signal as closely when leaving as it when it hits a peak.

As a result, I decided to add another parameter and separate the gate on and gate off slopes, so I can have a gate which activates quickly but more gradually turns off. I'm unsure if this is useful, but the parameter is easy to add and doesn't take up and more space or time.

In sound, Wire Compression sounds like the original wave, like all compressors tend to, but at extremes there can be a sort of fuzzy and almost analogue distortion which is quite pleasant. I concluded though that for general use, I'll use SoundForge for studio basics like vocals, but use mine for other things.

I rarely use compression, mainly for vocals because it's important that they are heard at about the same level and not drowned out, and for bass sounds because these will vary in loudness a lot depending on pitch. Just playing a note or two lower or higher can radically change the volume of a bass (because it is heavily filtered), and the volume of the bass can really change the overall balance in a song, so compression is useful here.

This took all morning. I produced a song in the afternoon, a funny like country-style stomp called The Misery's Hard To Take. I can only see flaws in it, but it's not too bad. The programming on the new compressors is done, so I can get back to the hard work of music.

HH Production

Finished the Hitler in High Heels production today and recorded new guitar parts for it. Progress very slow, but I'm certainly better and vocal and guitar work than before, even if, today, everything seemed rather bleak and pointless. We roll our rock, do our best. Fate chooses a path, we are puppets. Every so often it can make us feel better to tug our own strings and try to fight.

I wrote a few songs and fragments today too.

Prometheus 2.73, Hitler in High Heels Vocals

A frustrating day yesterday working on Prometheus. Decided to go through lots of the code to optimise it, when all I really needed to do was address this long-term, very rare and annoying bug. The crash seemed to occur in the area indicated in my previous post, but it's odd that it happens on stop(), not when normally playing (when 99% of the thread is being used). Crash reports don't seem to show any part of the thread running. My current guess is that the very check for the 'inplaythread' variable can cause a crash when the concurrent thread is independently accessing that variable - one clue to this is that the a longer waiting delay seems to reduce the instances of the crashes. One option is to ignore inplaythread, so I've stopped that check entirely and use WaitForSingleObject() to wait for the end of the thread, which is the correct way to do things and something I'd not been aware of.

The annoying thing is I spent most of yesterday and today making other tweaks and changes to the program when there wasn't much wrong, and generally this introduces more problems than it fixes. At about 12pm today, I deleted everything and restored the former version, spending just 10 mins making a few small updates including the fix above.

Brian May made his own instrument, and I have made mine. The instrument of today is software. It's unfortunate that it takes so much technical capability and care to keep it working, but it gives me unique power.

One other thing I did yesterday was to record the Hitler in High Heels vocals, and today the guitar solo. I'm becoming more careful at this, making sure its good enough to be heard time and time again forever. I'm listening back critically to everything.

I tend to avoid vocal processing; I prefer a high pass filter and nothing more except some reverb, but sometimes some mid-high EQ can help with clarity. Remember those Beatles songs with almost distorted mid ranges like Lady Madonna? This one seems to sound better with some of this crunch. For the 'Is that why you whip?' line I've added a whip-lash effect.

So, I'm spending a lot of time an energy in the medium of recorded music, which is generally unpopular and unprofitable for anyone who isn't signed to a major record label, and I have no plans to either promote or perform the music; but it will be published and I aim it to be as good as possible, push myself another notch, and after that, more music to push more notches. My primary goal is to strive to create the best. Artists on major labels probably don't have the time or the luxury of this motivation.

Talking of The Beatles, I had the idea that the children of the fab four should get together and form a band called The Fetals. Of course, they're rather old now themselves.

Artists Don't Die, Prometheus Bug Hunting

Watched the Concert for George (Harrison) on Television. Reminded that artists don't die, they just change medium.

Prometheus crashed for the first time in over a week yesterday, this rare bug is so annoying. I've added a tracker. It

// Error trap: S0
    reportadd("S0");
// This will tell the playing/recording/rendering thread to stop as they operate while(playing)
    playing=0;
    globalerrorinstop=-1;
// Error trap: S1
    reportadd("S1");
// Wait for thread to finish
    if (waitforthreadtofinish)
        while (inplaythread)
            waitforafewmillisecs();
// Error trap: S2
    reportadd("S2");


Oddly, there are times when S0 appears in the report, followed by S2, but not S1. The thread is running at this point, so perhaps priorities in the file saving mean that internal thread called of reportadd are stopping it. The crash occurs between S1 and S2, so it must be in the thread, but oddly almost nothing in the thread seems to be running. My best guess is that the deallocation of the thread itself is causing the crash, so perhaps a memory leak or overrun elsewhere. Lack of stack? That shouldn't ever cause a crash as Windows handles allocation here. The crash only occurs when stopping, never playing, so the internal parts of the thread should be stable.

Recorded some vocals for Hitler in High Heels. Accidentally saved over the take when I clicked on a 'Save Changes?' dialogue. So annoying. SoundForge is great but has some really annoying parts. It creates stereo or mono blank files irrespective of the contents of the copy buffer. It also never remembers the filename of a new, pasted wave, even when saved, always keeps it as unsaved new, so any closing of the files askes for confirmation when they HAVE been saved. This is why accidents occur. Endlessly clicking on unwanted pop-ups.

Always In The Morning, Passive Aggressive Guitars

Awake for most of the night with stomach pain. Started to sequence Always In The Morning, this has a complex staircase of chords which end on the minor version of the major starting point, rather interesting. This will be a long haul. I seem to spend many hours just getting the feeling and notation of the bass-line right. Each part should be a voice, like a person, given generously to and expressing their moment. I will also add more; the music must be bigger, more ambitious, more varied, more personal; clearly and overtly better than before.

I also recorded some guitar parts for Passive Aggressive. So much recording (apart from vocals) is relatively new; I've come a huge way since Burn of God, a mere 18 months ago. I think I need to plan everything in advance and name the parts, this will make the record keeping easier. Of course, it takes time and experience to know what is wanted before experiments. To some extent, experiments do drive creativity, happy accidents, new and exciting things, and this necessarily takes time and is inefficient. In all great artworks a lot is thrown away.

I saw Simon in the afternoon.

I'm tired and feel weak after being unable to eat. May complete watching Cinema Paradiso with Deb tonight.

Emotion in the Creative Process

You need to switch your emotions on very sensitively to analyse your artwork, tell you what is right and wrong. At other times emotions are not useful. Most of the job of making art should be mechanical and based on practicality. The creative process should be broken down into rational steps of what needs doing.

Di-Bla-Oh

Exhausted today, headachey and burning inside with tiredness after a full day working at my sequencer. Have been working on a song called Di-Bla-Oh Di-Bla-Eh, trying to inject feeling and mood into it; this is very time consuming and difficult, but good progress has been made. The days are flying by, my path is measured in bytes accumulated by a careful and difficult crawl.

Passive Aggressive Production, Aesthetic Mana

The days and hours are flying by as I work non-stop on music production and song writing. My songs are taking as much time and work as a painting now, many days each, but they sound better than ever as a result. Recorded music is a strange medium for me to focus on, unprofitable in this epoch of humanity and I have no plans of performing these live (though I could). Still, I'm very pleased with the results and am growing. I wrote a new song in the night, a very simple rock song called Be My Jesus, and today finalised the words to a second song which moved me deeply as I wrote it, called Always In The Morning. At some point I'll have to stop writing new songs and focus on producing the existing ones.

I've spent today transcribing the recent compositions (I typically write words by hand late at night, and record vocal melody snippets, then type these up in the day), then working on the production of Passive Aggressive, which is a fast swung song, but has a very gentle part in the middle on strings (the essential contrast). The timing here is very important. The enemy of feeling is the regularity of the metronome and the sequencer, but everything is a balance. Prometheus gives me a lot of control over timing now, even so much as permitting a manual regular 'tap' throughout the song to set the meter, if I need to do this.

In the night I had an insight into the purpose and goals of art. I considered when art was used in pre-history, by humans untainted by behavioural rules. Costume, dance, body painting, wall painting... making masks and sculptures... all of these were made for magical or spiritual ritualistic reasons. These objects were magical things, special items that connected mankind with the gods and the deeper, hidden, universe. I connected this insight with my feelings about good art having a special and powerful feeling, like the music I mentioned in my last post. It made me think that this certain property, ethereal in description but completely tangible when experienced, was a measure of something like magical power. I assigned the variable of mana for this power, the statistic used for magical energy in Dungeons and Dragons.

Artworks that have this property, that are high in mana, whether a painting, a piece of music or poem, are like rivets in the fabric of the universe, special artefacts that attract attention in an almost magical way. In a way, this can identify masterpieces, things we feel are instantly 'good'. We instrinsically know what is good or bad artistically; the good art moves us... due to it's authenticity, or beauty, or something else... it emits a special energy and this is my concept of aesthetic mana.

This idea also made me aware of the importance of dance as an artform, which is often relegated now. Of course, to ancient peoples, even animals like birds, dance is a very important art. The same with costume, vital to ancient peoples, but now a secondary art to visual arts, music, literature.

My concepts are worthy of a book. It will have to wait.

Song Fire, Passive Aggressive

I'm on creative fire at the moment and writing and producing lots of songs. My goal in all art is to be better than I've done before, and work at things until I manage this. With these songs this is already the case, but they will take many weeks. I work a lot, make a lot, for this reason. The speed of improvement is proportional to the quantity made. I won't compromise and rush things out, unless an urgent deadline demands it.

I've spent a lot of today on the production of the 'Stay Inside Got To Hide' song (it probably won't be called this, there is no hook line despite many good lyrics). The songs uses acoustic guitar so I've played a few more loops and worked on the sound. The panning caused consternation; I decided to pan the guitar quite hard right but have an echo on the far left, but this still sounded a little too strong on the right ear. No vocals recorded for any song so far, but the production on all of them is marching on.

I started the production of a new song called Passive Aggressive which is swung and very bluesy and jazzy. At first the drums were all jazz 3/4 time, but I pulled them back to rock and roll. The general sound of the song is something like Queen's Crazy Little Thing Called Love, with nods to Jailhouse Rock, All Shook Up and that sort of song, but my melody is more minor and sinister. I have an idea of using an acoustic chord on the word 'Passive', and electric chord on 'Aggressive'.

I must remember the dramatic tension and key feeling - this is always the vital element in any artwork: painting, music, poetry. When you experience it, it should move you instantly - you must think 'wow'. Of course, this is every artists' goal. Listening to George Harrison's 'Something' today reminded me that this song has exactly this. Beethoven's 5th Symphony or Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D-minor has it too.

This evening I've written another song, a tribute to Paul McCartney. Perhaps the watching a recent John Lennon documentary of Sky Arts has done this but The Beatles keep coming into my head.

Stay Inside Got To Hide

Very inspured and filled with idas for this music. A sleepless night last night resulted in a few more lyrics - I find the early hours in bed the best time to write these, which are later edited and typed up. I've revived two songs from last year and finished the writing.

I've been working on the full production to one today, a Dylan-esque folk song about the fear of social-media backlash/cancel culture/self-censorship. There are some nods to early Bowie, the Kinks during their Village Green Preservation Society era, and more, but it wasn't directly inspired by any one song. I wrote most of the words last August, but it had no chorus as such, it was largely a long poem with a lot of internal rhyme, like something Edgar Allen Poe might write if he felt like writing a light-hearted folk song. The words will remain enigmatic for now because they need to be seen in full and heard with the music, the working title is Stay Inside Got To Hide.

The production is simple, but wasn't easy because the words were written first and the music expanded to fit, so the overall structure is complex, despite only three chords. The backing consisted of saw waves, but today I recorded acoustic guitar for this as I'd always planned. I much prefer to use my beloved Yamaha F-310 guitar and a plain mic, rather than my electro acoustic. The latter is easier to play and record, but just doesn't sound as good. Most of the song is a simple loop in D-Major and I've banded and compressed it so it sounds modern, more like 90s Bowie than 60s Dylan. At times I was reminded of Telephone and Rubber Band by Penguin Café Orchestra.

The beat is a steady thump at 90 beat-per-minute, a recording of me pounding my desk with my fist.

Music, Competition Results

A steady day yesterday, writing many songs a piece at a time and working on production. Slower progress than I'd like.

I heard that I've not been selected for the Crewe Heritage Wall. I think much of this will come down to expectations and taste of the selectors, or even random chance, sometimes, as my experience as a judge informs me.

I heard today that I've not been selected for the Discerning Eye either, this is more disappointing, but I feel is due to not seeing the works in person, which is important for my work. Digital judgement of art is increasingly common and always a mistake; photography artificially favours acrylics and artificially penalises oils. This decision frees up these paintings to enter elsewhere.

Today, quarterly computer backups and more music work. Have had the first few poems from Write Out Loud for the Nantwich exhibition.