Yamaha SY-85, Mechanical Tartrazine List

A busy day, but a sad day too. Busy because I've finally finished recording my old SY-85 music from 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 or so. After 2002 I started to use my software NosieStation, which, at the time, I thought was better - it ultimately became so, but the music of the SY-85 was really good quality in tone. It was the lack of finesse, fine control, that made it less expressive when sequenced using MED, but still, the sound of this synthesizer was, at times, lovely.

Today I recorded the last 22 tracks. These all used a mix of samples and synth, so needed to be fed through a mixer. I put the Zoom H4 recorder on a camera tripod to make it hover, neatly, in space while the many cables gently plugged into it. The overall sound quality was exceptional. I started with Overlander, the theme to my PC game, which was only used on the Xing Interactive CD version of the game, a bonus game which was bundled with Trax and Roton. The two Roton themes were also recorded today. Everything went well except for a track called Bullet, which has a similar feeling to 'Refuge' from Synaesthesia. The synth file was corrupt, so I had to re-create the instruments. In the end, the result was very similar to my Minidisc reference copy - not all tracks were recorded to Minidisc, so I'm lucky to have that reference copy.

Now, all 51 tracks from those days are recorded in superb quality: 2 hours 49 mins of music. They include The Arcangel Soundtrack plus one or two extra tracks, similar in style or others which were written for the game but unused. They also include all of the first Synaesthesia album, including two alternative, early versions, of tracks. There are game themes here, and other pretty tunes in the style of Jean-Michel Jarre; and other 90s fare, like my club remix of the Mission Impossible theme.

I bought the Yamaha SY-85 new in 1998 and it became a music workhorse for a few years, driven by OctaMED on Amiga, then MED on PC too. I recorded those two full albums on it, and I've sampled just about every sound it has; and its sound has partly become my sound over the years. I'm sad that I've now recorded everything I made with it and, today, restored the Factory Set. It's taken a lot of work and money to fit a new drive and get it refurbished, make it as good as new; ready to sell.

I think it's fair to say that this instrument has changed my life, not necessarily transformed me as a musician; that was a very slow, very steady growth. Before I sat at a real piano in 2008 or 2009, I could barely play a note live, but the keyboard has given me so much of its sound and colour over the years, and even now, the bulk of the sounds I use originate with it. I've taken this keyboard to Macclesfield many times for the Mash art performance nights, to the ArtSwarm live events, and perhaps most memorably to the Electric Picture House to perform The Spiral Staircase live with it.

I need a new synthesizer and haven't room to keep a second of this size, and for live performance would prefer something longer, and lighter, and newer, so I'll soon say goodbye and thank you to this great electric friend, Serial No. LM01014. It seems that many of these were not looked after as well as mine, which remains almost as good as new after 23 years, and I've certainly proved that, even today, MED Soundstudio can still make use of it. I hope its new owner gets even a fragment of what it's given me over the years.

For reference, here are all of the tracks I've recorded:

Adagio, Archetypes Theme, Bort, Bort Extended, Bort Samples, Boulderdash, Bullet, Burnout, Burnout Extended, Castaway, Castles, Epitaph, Gabbro, Haunted, Helix, Helix Edit, Innerlimits, Inside Messiah, Interference, Islands Of Memory, Lepton, Lonely Infinity, Lost In Space, Lotus, Metropolis 1999, Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible Edit, Mnemonic, O5, Office Life, Opiad, Orchestral, Overlander, Overlander Ingame, Overlander Level Start, Pioneer, Popcorn, Refuge, Requiem For A Scorpoid, Resurrection, Roton Jungle, Safe House, Space Infinity, SPDF, Termination, The Abyssal Plain, The Abyssal Plain Edit, The Chase, The Runner, Vektor3, White Planet.

Rehearsals

A full day of planning for the new Fall in Green show, which is 17 tracks/poems/songs long. I've decided to use the electric guitar and both small synths, so all of the existing poems, most of which used the piano, need to be redesigned. This is good, it will push me in new directions. Some of them sound really good as electronic works, though of course very different. It's difficult to get used to playing one hand above the other, with the bass level horizontally with the treble.

Playing guitar at the same time is tricky for reasons of balance, obviously I can't play guitar and synth at the same time (I pause to change key on a looping synth, but this is not easy). I did manage to experimentally hold AND pluck with the left hand using my index finger to pluck the string just after the fret - I dreamed of a new plastic adaptor to accomplish this, but in truth it would be too uncomfortable to play anything but a single note in this way. I can imagine an 'auto-strum' guitar, that should be quite possible, using a foot, or mouth or some other method; the strumming requires far less skill, for most applications, compared to the fret management. With this, we can play a bass guitar in the left hand, and a normal in the right. Easy.

Deb came round later and we ran though the tracks, just the barest of outlines with the new instruments, then played though the Sky Robes of Celeste for Friday. A long and exhausting day but, I feel, little done.

The stock market has bounced back, so they think that the Omicron variant is not severe. Even if it is, we are better off than last year when we were facing a certainly severe disease with zero vaccination and very few treatments. The government is now opening up booster, third, vaccinations to all adults after a mere 3 months. My 6-monthly appointment is due next month and apparently that is the earliest I can access it.

Tomorrow, I'll try to record the rest of the SY-85 tracks, leaving Wednesday for our only one of two rehearsal days for Monday's show. We're in the Macc Art Lounge on Thursday, and performing at the Tree of Light on Friday. I can't wait until next Tuesday when I, and we, can rest a little.

Mechanical Tartrazine, Descent Into The Maelstrom

A full day. Started by gluing my two remaining frames, the stain needed hair drying in these damp and freezing conditions. Then, the start of the music admin for Secret Electric Sorcery.

Then I decided to record more of the SY-85 tunes. One, a remake of an ancient Amiga mod called Vektor3, was compressed and could only be decompressed on an Amiga. This was a surprise. I loaded up Amiga Forever Workbench and, after realising that I needed a new library, which I placed into Workbench/Libs, the old Octamed Soundstudio loaded the file, allowing me to save it out for re-loading into the PC. I've probably not heard this tune since 1998, as I'm sure I didn't emulate the Amiga back then, and I didn't have an Amiga and PC at the same time.

So, a steady day of recording the tunes. The quality is excellent, I'm really pleased I'm recording these. One, O5, I can't remember at all, so it was nice to hear - I've probably never recorded it before. There are also two versions of The Chase (aka. The Runner), one of the tracks from the earliest version of Synaesthesia, so it was nice to hear the differences.

I've now recorded 29 tracks, all of the tracks which don't involve samples. About 15-20 tracks remain which will need a mixer.

In between I've watched a film of Philip Glass' A Descent Into The Maelström. The music, from the 1980s, sounds very like Koyaanisqatsi. The director opened the film by saying that the original reason for recording and discovering the music was Brexit - yet there were absolutely no Brexit references, and then talked about the Edgar Allen Poe tale which inspired the music... but again there were few references to that or its story apart from an opening reading and the landscape with occasional whirls of water. The film is mostly local people going about their daily lives in the snow. The director explained that he didn't want to emulate Koyaanisqatsi, but in the end he did, to the extent that clips from one could be cut into the other and nobody would notice. I think I'd have used actors, models, animation and tried to tell the Poe story, or the spirit of it, more directly.

Of course the music is very pretty and full of swirls. It made me think that Philip Glass isn't a minimalist. His music isn't about repetition and the differences between iterations. Instead, his music is chord-based rather than melody-based, and uses fast or slow arpeggios to convey urgency or relaxation.

I mention this because my old music to Arcangel, which I recorded today, was compared to Philip Glass at the time. I knew nothing of his music then. I'm unsure if my music is like his, but at the same time, there is something of it in there, mainly the doom-laden bass notes in descending chords.

Storms, Framing

With a violent wind storm, a stock market mini-crash, due to a new potentially vaccine resistant strain of Coronavirus which threatens us all, and the frenetic sales day of 'Black Friday' - I expect no creature slept well last night.

I was reminded that every animal spends every night homeless. A freezing day today. How many nests and shelters were lost to wildlife? I'm increasingly reminded how anthropocentric humanity is. Good or bad, this is the cause of climate change.

Today was spent busy, making new frames. I had three frames for 400x300mm panels to cut, but just ran out of my two wood lengths, so had one long side to cut, therefore needed one new wood length. Cutting this 300mm length from the end of a 2400mm length is not easy for reasons of space and balance, so it was easier to make a fourth frame, so I decided to make a new frame for an existing work, and chose Alien Nativity (many of these older works need new frames). That too meant de-framing and sawing the panel to size.

After that, I could cut my four wood lengths:

I've always used, since my first frame, a floorboard veneer saw for cutting - partly because it fits my 1960s mitre, a Marples Ridgway MR6807. It gives a super fine finish, as good as a 'Morso' guillotine (on plain wood, a Morso would be better for plastered or decorative mouldings - but I decorate mine after cutting).

After this, some simple painting, stain (after painting this time to create a weathered look) and assembly. Two are now glued with my band clamps, two remain for tomorrow.

Heard that I sold a painting too, Monument to Love, my third sale at the Macc Art Lounge in as many days.

Pleased to make good progress on the frames. Tomorrow I must work on essential album admin work, that will free up the week for music rehearsals and development; the two shows in December will be a lot of work. I feel I'm making progress on all fronts.

Selection Box Images, Macc Art Lounge

Staged and took some photos last night to promote the new Congleton performance of Fall in Green. It will be called Selection Box, or Winter Selection Box, and we have ambitious plans for it ranging from a new space-poetry-musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol, to games involving Christmas cards.

This one looks suitably Christmassy, too, though doesn't really convey poetry and avant-garde music.

Today, a day in the Macc Art Lounge, two painting sales. Collected 12 lengths of 2.4M wood first, to frame the English Triptych in December. Lots of admin, sorting out the poetry order of play for Neorenaissance when I returned.

Created a new profile image too, for Secret Electric Sorcery, but in the end went for a more radical crop of the front page:

Videos, Admin, Busyness

24 videos done this week. A few needed several re-takes, which in the end didn't take me that long, but even a short delay with this number of videos can lead to a long delay. This is probably the most I can efficiently create in a week. The first batch, from The Dusty Mirror, are now set up for daily release on my music channel. I'll set to making some for the Sisyphus album and Nightfood too.

Things are very hectic. We have a new, 90-minute (though casual, experimental, relaxed) performance of Fall in Green songs/poems, confirmed for December 6th in Congleton Library... very short notice, but we will rise to the occasion and produce new work, if not a new show in these 10 days. I'll use two synths and electric guitar - no piano for the first time for a Fall gig, so that will give it a modern feeling - perhaps we need to clash this with classical work... Dickens?

The music for Sky Robes of Celeste at Crewe Tree of Light is complete, I just need to rehearse it a bit more, well, actually memorise it. These two shows alone could take all of next week. I must not let myself become complacent.

I've ordered wood for framing the English Triptych in Nantwich Museum, and must collect this early tomorrow before a trip to Macclesfield to staff the Macc Art Lounge all day. This will be a key sales day, may the Gods of Ferenginar smile upon me.

I must also work on filing the album now, the essential music admin which typically takes a day, and I need the Nantwich Museum printing ready next week too, so I don't think I'll have time for more lyric videos until after the 6th. I have, joyously, also received some floppy discs which should contain SY-85 data, so I have these 40 or 50 songs to record too. That should take a week. I need to find a December with 7 weeks.

Things are a little too busy for my comfort, though I feel very inspired. Deb and I watched Wim Wenders' The Wings of Desire and it filled me with ideas, my first desire to actually make a feature film.

When daily troubles or stresses disturb me, I remind myself how utterly unimportant those things are in the long span of things. The things that are important seem to be ignored by 99.99% of humanity.

Onwards with joy and to glory.

Videos

A solid day of work on the lyric videos. I was unhappy with a tiny element of yesterday's recordings, so I decided to re-film all of the videos for The Dusty Mirror. The room was so cold that my sunglasses kept misting up due to condensation. I also needed to re-film one of the Secret Electric Sorcery videos. These are now complete and fine.

Now, the long work of assembling the ones for The Dusty Mirror, these are very lyric heavy, which makes the subtitles tedious and slow. I seemed to read these more slowly too, perhaps due to the cold room, cooling my mood towards dour seriousness. I noted that these are different art forms from either written poetry or the songs themselves.

Secret Electric Sorcery has been confirmed for release on the 18th Feb 2022.

Deb and I have also been offered a performance slot as Fall in Green in Congleton Library, a special winter-themed show on 6th December, so yes, we'll do that.

More video work tomorrow, but I, and we, have other things to do so I can't devote the time to these videos. I expect I'll finish this set of two album's worth by the end of the week. It's very hard and intense work.

More Lyric Videos

A full day of work on the new lyric videos. It will be impossible to create four album's worth in a week, each video takes took long, but I can do, at least one. The addition of subtitles adds a new focus on the words and, the visual quality is certainly better too, so I've decided to remake The Dusty Mirror videos too, and have filmed these today in the outfit of that album.

I will put these together, and the Secret Electric Sorcery videos, this week. These will eventually appear on my music channel.

Hitlerian Lyrics Videos

A very full day but a good one, generally I think.

I had a panicky night, wondering whether a song with the title of Hitler in High Heels would somehow be banned or problematical. Would the title offend Hiterlians with the insinuation of transvestitism, and at the same time invent a completely new song!? Of course the word hitler here is used as a noun not a proper noun, which made me I wonder if nouns which stem from the name of a historical character should be capitalised. I toyed with alternative words, but the very sentence Hitler in High Heels has a lot of alliterative and visual power. It would be a shame to lose it.

I decided to submit the album for release as it is.

I wanted to work on some song lyric videos so I set up my filming room, the famous ArtSwarm studio, and did some tests with my new camera. My old Canon 1100D could only film in HD, 720p. How times have changed. Once 640x480 was cutting edge, then 1280x720 - how short lived that seemed to be. Now 1920x1080 is perhaps most common and far better visually. 4k (or 8k or higher) seem just excessively silly, especially as screens are getting smaller.

Anyway, my new camera can cope with 1080p (I say cope, this is the lowest setting, it can record 4k - sillyness! I can't afford those wasteful bytes), and has a built-in mic socket so I spent the first few hours just testing different audio options. Plugging in via headphone extension cable produced weird digital noise. I then used an XLR cable and an adaptor for the last section, which was better. Then I tried by using the camera on battery and this was better still - so perhaps the noise is coming from the PSU. But, all of this was still noisier and worse quality than my old system of recording audio separately on my Zoom H4. So, after a few hours, I decided to do that. For a first test of new equipment, it's important to try every option. As before the audio is a different length (0.04% longer) than the film - as though time itself is different for each machine. This too took a test to measure and verify.

Then I toyed with the camera settings themselves. This one has manual settings so I can actually set the f-stop, ISO, and shutter speed for camera filming, amazing. So I've done this, which stops the annoying fade up and down of glare in different circumstances. This testing also took some time.

Then, I recorded the lyrics videos for Secret Electric Sorcery. The recording took hardly any time, most of the work was preparation (printing lyrics etc.) and later file conversion, which is achingly slow. I became anxious about not getting things quite right. Every word needs to be perfect.

I also worried about whether these were necessary or just a distraction from the other videos on my site, but, then, they don't take long, and are perhaps better than no video. Lyrics are important to me, and they can be missed in the song. I also need, I've decided, to add subtitles, which is an extra step. These are done 'manually' making the text and mask images in Photoshop and noting down the frame numbers for typing into AviSynth. It's all very time consuming.

But the quality is very good. I'm now thinking, in my mad perfectionism, that I should delete the existing Dusty Mirror videos and remake those in 1080p with subtitles too. I should, might, be able to do this for both albums, AND The Myth of Sisyphus, AND Nightfood, in one week. I will need to be superhuman (a humanist one, not a Hitlerian or Nietzschean one) to manage this.

Onwards we roll our heavy rock.

Macc Opening, Workloads

A busy day, the launch day of the Macc Art Lounge exhibition:

We arrived at 1pm, and I got to work drilling for D-rings and fitting string to one painting, I'd forgotten to check before delivering it. I met Ingrid Karlsson-Kemp for the first time, Bruce Lyons again, and several other artists, some also for the first time, but didn't speak much if at all to many people. I felt a little on edge, perhaps overwhelmed by the situation and certainly somewhat awkward with a face mask. It was lovely to speak with Peter though.

In the morning I re-did a vocal for Eyes Of Pity, and I finalised the album artwork. I think the album is now complete musically, and in cover art terms, but I need to make Spotify Canvases for each track now, and lyrics videos with subtitles for each track, and ideally a few actual music videos. I also need to make lyric videos for The Myth of Sisyphus, and Nightfood, and perhaps re-make the ones for The Dusty Mirror, adding subtitles, and I have almost no music videos for any of these three recent albums; only the older Lego video for Nightfood, and that not from the good first half. I need a team a dwarf or elfen homunculi.

The SY-85 music will take about 2 weeks to record alone, though that thankfully won't artwork as I won't be releasing it, and I need to prepare the printing and event plans for the Neorenaissance exhibition, and practice and refine the piano piece for the Tree of Light performance in two weeks; The Sky Robes of Celeste.

I've also worked out the best options for the new audio effect. I'll keep the pointers as a float, but check it for limits when converted to long, which is a good solution.

I'm feeling exhausted and overwhelmed with work, and most of it seems a little pointless to some extent, as only the Tree of Light event is paid or public to some extent, yet every bit, fragment, iota, of this work is an atom of art, so I must think of these in those vital terms, and never in any other terms. I must make each thing the best I can, and this includes such things as lyrics videos.

New Audio Effect and Strange Bug

I had an idea for a new audio effect inspired by Def Leppard's middle section in Rocket. The effect takes a sample and has a speed-jog control; 1.0 for normal forward speed, 0.5 for half speed (octave down) 2.0 for double speed (octave up), but the number can go negative too; -1.0 for backwards and -2.0 for double speed backwards. All samples loop fully. It results in many odd loops, particularly interesting when the forward/backward play is flipped regularly. Not sure if it's efficient to even create it - every new plug in uses resources. If I do create it, should it be mono, stereo, hexio and tuned or monotone? For my last slew of sample effects, Zeitraum, I made normal, monotone, and stereo.

Anyway, the effect is very complex in how it anti-aliases samples, so it's not finished yet, but, I encountered a weird bug connected with backwards looping. Look at this code, a and b are floats:

if (a<0)
    a+=b;


After this, a can sometimes =>b, when logically a should always be >=0 and <b. This took a while to track down. It happens when a is just a tiny bit below zero (around -0.0000001), so the precision limits of float are accidentally pushing the result over b, which is a pain. If it a>=b then the routine will infringe on memory beyond the end of the sample.

This caused a bit of a panic, that memory leaks were occurring in my sample playback because I use this for looping. When I reach the end of a sample, I subtract the size of the loop from the pointer. Fortunately, -0.001 and +0.001 (or even -0.999 or +0.999) are converted to zero when floats are converted to a long pointer, so it would appear to only be a problem for backwards loops. I'm not sure what the best solution is. When a==b I want to set a to 'just below' b, - not b-1. I'd prefer to avoid a check. I could limit loops to full size -0.001 of a sample, though my perfectionism doesn't like the idea.

Mechanical Tartrazine

Felt so exhausted and zapped of energy this morning. I wrote a rock song about smashing at an iron wall, which is how life feels at the moment. I will remain productive. The iron wall must give!

Have recorded a few more SY-85 tracks - the completed project will be called Mechanical Tartrazine. Here is the list so far:

The volume levels vary for each which is taking time. Helix, a very simple track in the Arcangel incidental music mould, a little like Vangelis' Alpha, kept pausing part way through, so after three attempts, I let it run, then later played just the parts that skipped and edited them painstakingly into the correct place.

Islands of Memory had some silences at the end which made the high pitched whine from my sound card painfully evident, so I decided to try using my trusty Zoom H4 to record and the results were instantly excellent, so I then decided to re-record about 7 tracks using that. It's better to use an external recorder anyway, to minimise strain on the PC, which may lead to those skips during playback. The quality of these recordings is certainly better than those made for The Arcangel Soundtrack, but they were rather good for that album anyway. Still, these make a fancy re-release possible. I could add some bonus tracks, like Archetypes Theme, which were not used in the game. Actually, I really need to remaster the game itself, which hasn't been available in years. I have no time and less incentive for such fancies. I never made a penny from the game, an unfinished copy of which was sold to pound-shops across the land by the so-called publishers. A hard part of recording this old music is revisiting those sad years, so perhaps this explains my recent malaise.

This is all of the synth-only tracks I can record so far. Four others have a mix of samples and synth, which will take a dedicated day to record. The other tracks, 5 discs worth, perhaps 40 tracks, will have to wait until I can get at those files.

I'll pause now until I get those discs. I still feel exhausted yet have so much to do, so many ideas, commitments, and options. Smash! Thump! Scrape! Wall, I defy you. Wall, I will conquer you.

Prometheus 2.74, SY-85 Start

A full and exhausting day. Started by testing the DD discs sent to me by Bruce, these worked in the synth - an amazingly uplifting moment, after trying for months to get this working. I need 7 discs, but only have two, this amounts to data for 14 tracks. I have 44 to record (plus alternative edits). I recorded a test track, Haunted, which is a dark and simple track, very like the incidental music to Arcangel. It might even be in the Arcangel soundtrack, I can't remember; a few tracks have been renamed.

After this test, I transmitted the System Exclusive data to OctaMED, but sending it back didn't work, it wouldn't send. I paused things and got to work programming an update to my workstation Prometheus. The first main job was to upgrade the rendering window. It used to look like this:

It now looks like this:

Samples have to be checked for clipping (exceeding 1.0 or -1.0) anyway, so it's not a loss of speed to count these (because 99% of samples don't) so I thought I'd add some stats about clipped samples. I've also added the song length in samples, and the date/time of the render, which might be useful. You'll note that there are 6 channels (left, right, front, back, up, down).

I also added a few minor checks and efficiencies here and there. My updates now are typically bug fixes or ideas to make existing things better, rather than adding features.

Then, back to the SY-85. I downloaded a program called MIDI-OX and used that to capture the System Exclusive messages, this worked for sending too, so this is a genuine replacement for the disc drive (though I'll keep the discs anyway, and will probably never need them or compose anything for this synth again).

I recorded 6 more tracks but everything took longer than hoped. The volume levels vary on each one, and MED can sometimes pause for half a second, forcing me to stop, delete, and replay the track from the start. My Lexicon sound card also has a fault which makes it whine when anything is plugged into the USB ports - well, maybe not anything, but certainly when a MIDI cable is. I've traced this to its USB connection; actually wobbling it makes the whine louder or quieter. Removing the MIDI from the USB stops it completely, but that's not an option here.

There are several tracks which mix samples and synth. These will be more difficult than expected to record because the synth's volume levels appear to be different for each track, so will mean manual mixing by ear - not difficult, I'll use a mixer, but time consuming.

I'll probably not release this music for years, if at all. It consists of The Arcangel Soundtrack (ok, that IS released), the first version of Synaesthesia, some game music which was never used like the Archetypes theme from Arcangel, some music for a Bouderdash clone I never made, the music to two early PC games Roton (I wrote two very different Roton themes) and Martian Rover Patrol, plus a Mission Impossible remix, and (many) more, including some remakes of even earlier music as used on the Genesis album.

Album Filing, Mailing Lists

A full day of computer admin, after deciding on a new filing system for albums. Filing is, I think, very important. A good system can really make creativity easy, and not being organised in how things are arranged or stored can stop creativity. An empty bookshelf, for example, makes you want to add books. A messy shelf will making losing books easier.

Today I've gone though my albums and started to delete the raw recordings used. The parts that are used are already stored in the sequencer files, so those can be saved out at any time anyway, but many albums have a lot of extra bits: outtakes, raw recordings, unused sections. I've tended to keep these too, but today I've deleted most of them.

For my instrumental music this was hardly an issue. Nothing was recorded live, so hardly any unique samples were used. I didn't keep backups of Tor's Gunstorm lyrics, and I didn't keep the vocal recordings for Cycles & Shadows, but when I started to record songs, with the experimental Harlequin Kings album in 2015, I started to keep everything, partly because Prometheus back then couldn't save out samples, so if I needed to edit or change anything I had to edit the sample externally and reload it. Secondly, I found myself doing several takes for the first time, so when the album was done, I simply deleted the unused takes and kept the used ones.

The Myth of Sisyphus, released this year, was my first album to feature a lot of instrument recordings as well as vocals, mainly guitar, and this increased with Nightfood, with live synth, and moreso with the new album which has some kazoo, harmonica and other oddities, so I've started to amass quite a lot of source recordings by now, over 500Mb, per album.

So after considering filing options, I've decided to list what files were used for each album, a list of the filenames, but delete most of the recordings. I'll keep special ones; alternative takes which might have future cultural or personal interest, full edits which were edited for the album, and other things which I generally like of love but aren't in the final music for some reason; but generally about 95%, perhaps 4Gb, of data has been deleted today from 13 albums.

4Gb is quite a lot, but the size isn't important; it's the philosophy of what to keep. Optimal efficiency is always my key principle. Those source recordings are a bit like training wheels. I don't need them, so it's confidence-boosting to delete them, and it evens up the playing field with unpublished songs, like the ones I made for ArtSwarm, that don't have any such storage. So, I can now feel free to create music and use my recordings folders as scaffolding to be deleted when the final music is complete.

Well, this has taken all day.

I also sent out a newsletter email about the Macc Art Lounge exhibition, which opens on Saturday. I have a double-opt-in mailing list, from an email address you can reply to me from, and always have unsubscribe and update links, so was annoyed today when 'Crewe Nub News' automatically signed me up to a mailing list without my consent, from a donotreply address, without an unsubscribe option. Each of these things is illegal under GDPR regulations.

In other news I've received some exciting double density floppy discs to try in my synth. God bless friends with older PC hardware!

Macc Lounge, Archiving

Hanging day at the Macc Art Lounge today, but the job was more of a very much hands-off role of helping with general curating, no actual hanging took place.

In music work, I'm considering filing methods. For the Gunstorm E.P. and The End and The Beginning, I didn't file any recordings, because Tor's vocals were sent to me on a disc, so I had those, and I only retained what I used - but I kept the audio CD he sent me. For more recent song albums, I started to keep everything, all vocals used, but delete unused takes. Now I have vocals, and lots of live music recordings, extended guitar parts for example, of which I only use a part. What do I keep? Is it valuable to keep everything? Is it valuable to keep anything?

The samples I actually use can be saved out from my software, so those can be accessed. In the past I've kept long samples (1:35 or more) because these are split in the software, but even those are identical when I save them out and chain them end to end. My previous albums have all of the vocals and clips saved, but I'm now erring towards deleting them all. These amount to 100-200Mb per album, a large amount, but irrespective of size it also seems inefficient to keep them.

My principle idea is simple: keep any unique recordings, used or unused, which might have a future use or future historical or cultural value (eg. unused alternative takes); delete everything else. Efficiency here can have an impact on future production. If Frank Zappa kept all of his out-takes (he probably did), it would be a vast library, but one so monstrous to manage that it would sap time best used to create, as well as expensive to store.

Musical Scales and the Universe

I had an insight about the connection between scales and the universe. Take a note as a string. An octave up is half the length, and octave lower, double.

A pretty interval, or any integer interval (say one fifth of the length of our original string) will make a harmonious division, but, if this need to move up an octave, double or half that fifth, it will not fit with the other doubling or halving. This is why scales stop working and the equal temperament, which, today, divides the string into 12 equal parts is used, but it is imperfect.

I realised that in the universe and atomic vibrations, only classical, whole intervals can be possible which would limit harmonious vibrations. String theory and its relatives might be about vibrations, but in music, problems and interesting properties only arise in chords, for example, quantity of fifths, rather than individual notes or vibrational patterns.

Secret Electric Cover Art

Long day working on cover art for Secret Electric Sorcery. These days I tend to design an 8-page 12cm sized 'booklet' for CD, even though hardly anyone uses CDs anymore - I still like a physical format, so will remain persistent.

I took some photos a few weeks ago, and wanted an orange/black/white colour sceme, so that was easy. The hard part is making things look a little organic. I've not drawn on these (unlike with Sisyphus) but have designed 8 pages and a front and back, which is good going for one day. Things will tweak and change. Here is the cover so far:

The swirl effect on the cover was generated using Genetica, a great tool which is a bit like a graphical version of my music software. This page looks particularly interesting, somewhat electronic:

One concern is that the work is starting to look similar to past album covers - of course, this will happen anyway, and, of course, nothing will be identical. Enya's albums all look similar, as do Enigma's. I've used orange and white in Music of Poetic Objects, and have used the scribbly face parts in the internal covers of Tree of Keys. For a technological looking cover, the music is perhaps my least electronic, but the inspiration for the cover comes from Bowie's Low, and my music does have a similar feeling to that.

To make things more organic I've added some tree images from Queen's Park. This page is interesting because it has the same look as Greek pottery:

I've also managed to fit all of the song lyrics in the booklet for the first time. Any text is difficult because I must use bitmaps, not PDF files with embedded text, so the resolution and print quality is limited. Looking at Pink Floyd's The Wall artwork today reminded me that their lyrics are also images (though very clean, perhaps they are also splines).

Sunday, DD Drive Woes, Final Track List

Slept badly and woke late, at 10am.

Started formatting the A4 and A5 poems and labels for Nantwich, but only got so far. I realised that four paintings I've just delivered to Macclesfield are set to be included in Nantwich (sigh). At least two need taking back because poems have been written for them, so I can't swap them.

Then I tried, again, to read or write some files to DD discs using the drives I have. I went to see Simon and asked to test the drives on his Windows 7 machine, but alas, this didn't work either. What an amazing collection of music he has, almost every album by every prog band, so it seems to me. He has an incredible knowledge and memory of all of it.

My plan for the drive now is to find an old computer (or someone with one) that might be able to copy over the files. I just need 7 discs worth. I've spent over £100 on the SY-85 project so far.

Tonight I've burned a test version of Secret Electric Sorcery and have listened to it carefully. It seems fine. Have made the final track list and assigned ISRC codes, the start of the long music admin process. The tracks are:

1. Hitler in High Heels
2. Teenage Dreams
3. Eyes of Pity
4. Be My Jesus
5. Passive Aggressive
6. Boring Ceefax Lift Music
7. Confidence in Kindness
8. The Misery's Hard to Take
9. Out of Date
10. Back When It All Began
11. Always in the Morning
12. The Ones We Love

Print Preparation, Music Tweaks, Disc Woes, Cloak of Celeste Start

Oh for a resful day, but, instead I fill my days with work and triumphs. There can be no victory without struggle.

Spent a busy morning compiling small watercolours, ink drawings and smaller works from years past. I cut mounts for these, 10x8in for the large ones and 5x7in for the small (bah! how I hate inches, if I were king of the world I would remind the so-called 'metric martyrs' that martyrs need to die for their cause, and invite them to do so). But photographers are victims to metric standards, even if builders and scientists are now fully metric. A glimpse of the work:

After the mounts, I cut card backs, wrapped everything in cellophane bags, documented the work and designed and printed price labels, which, for me, will hang over the top corner. These will be £20 and £10, ideal gifts, which was my remit.

This took until 12:30. Then, music work. I needed to make small adjustments to the album. I added a new F-major strum to Eyes of Pity - trying and recording about 20 until I got the right speed and loudness; this is always difficult as every chord, stroke and strum can be remarkably different. Then, some new speech for the intro to Always In The Morning, taken from Public Domain film Danger Lights, which had a nice section about the beauty of the night, with a little warning too, rather good actually, even if the sound and speech quality was rather poor. I also added new backing vocals to the Hitler in High Heels chorus, using the slow-down trick that Sparks used on Equator, the same effect that Frank Zappa's son mentioned a few days ago.

Then, my new DD discs arrived. A new and sealed box from 20 years ago. These discs didn't work in either drive. So I've tried two drives and three batches of discs. I'm convinced that the Windows driver won't permit using Double Density discs. My next plan is to locate an old PC.

Five new Burning Circus books arrived from Amazon, one was ruined with sticky tape on the cover, so I wasted time and money returning this.

Then, this evening, I started work on Sky Robes of Celeste for the Tree of Light event and have written a simple tune in C-minor filled with glitter and starlight, reminiscent of my old Starscape tune, which was its root. I've based it on a simple rhythm x-x-x-x-x-x-xxxx. If I had more piano skill I could be more complex with my melodies. Maybe I need to be more bold, but this tune needs to be simple and appealing. It may already be too much to play alongside words.

So, a full day and many tasks are complete. I feel tired and need some time off to generally muse. I still have a lot to do, however. I'm too full of ideas, dreams, ambitions. How curious the artist life is. How short life is generally.

The COP26 conference about climate change ends with a decision to do nothing and our utterly leaderless government have acted according to their principles of laziness and inaction. We have three new worlds; a West of free speech, a totalitarian East of repression, and a poor third which is a mix of mismanagement and a lack of power. The only problem with the climate is human overpopulation. Global warming, ecological damage, carbon dioxide levels, and Covid-19, are symptoms of that.

Sea Green Dream, Macc Lounge Dropoff

Another night of stomach pain - this thing which unites me with Beethoven and Ingmar Bergman. I had many dreams. In one, President Biden was seen eating some medical herbs, sea greens, he called them. They were small plants, like watercress with ivy-shaped leaves in green with violet veins. I tasted them, they were similar to watercress though not as strong, very pleasant. I told him about spirulina and chlorophyll (I couldn't recall the name of chlorella).

In a second dream my parents were about to leave for a holiday. For some reason we lived in a grand Victorian house. My father bought me some sort of gift which involved a ritual of sorts, a special coffee drink, another drink. Things to be done or enjoyed in a sequence. I wanted to avoid this until later, but he insisted I did it all with him. I had the impression that I wouldn't see him again, that their holiday was permanent. A kitten was present. It jumped from the roof of the house to land on the floor outside, as did someone else, perhaps my mother. I took it inside and it sipped some red wine from a glass, lifting it with a paw to drink. This dream perhaps relates to many aspects of the day, Deb's remembrance of her relatives. Viewing old Crewe houses, and symbolism of her poem for the Tree of Light ceremony.

Today I had my blood pressure check, my first visit to the doctor in over 10 years. It was 127/76, heart rate 62.

Before today's Macc trip, I was keen to fix the ending of The Ones We Love. The chords at the end were a little too long, but, alas, I have lost the DX preset, which, it seems, was made on the day by modifying another. The music for this track was played once in one take in the fading sunlight. The DX is a fantastic instrument but massively let down by poor preset management and the lack of a custom editing app. This is really bad, unusually so, by Yamaha. I spend a while trying to match the instrument and in the end, created a new chord, so this song in now 10 seconds shorter but better.

Then the trip to Macclesfield for delivery to the new Macc Art Lounge display. I helped with sanding and painting the walls, ready for the installation.

I have a lot of retrieved artwork here now, waiting to unpack, inspect, wrap, and pack for storage, then preparing labels and other material. Lots to do. I will cut new mounts for some of my ink drawings as low priced, unframed gifts to browse, this will take a couple of days, so no time for music or other things. I must also find time to compose and practice the Tree of Light music.

The official opening is Saturday 13th November at 1pm. I heard that the Macc Lounge is now also open on Wednesdays now, as well as Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Treacle Market Sundays. I'll attend as many days as I can, but am still hesitant about using public transport.

Triumph Dreams, Macc Lounge Preparation

I have two dreams. First, a boxing match between a huge muscular man and a small dwarf woman, staged for some sort of strange entertainment. I, who was largely playing the part of the man, was worried about the mismatch, and for the sake of sport I let the dwarf woman punch my knees, unsure if I should actually fight properly. In the end, I thought that I should simply fight, and gave one powerful upper-cut to her face, sending her flying backwards into the air and out of the ring with ease.

In a second dream I was a knight in silvery armour. A Japanese knight, also in silver, challenged me to fight, and he had an array of weapons. Again I thought I could easily beat him, yet avoided this, parrying his bladed blows with patience. At some point I got annoyed with this persistent attacker, so I hit him on the top of his head, plunging him into the ground up to his waist, then hit him again to totally bury him. I covered him up with soil, then poured water on to drown him.

Today has bene a frenzy of work preparing the art for a new display Macc Lounge. I can't go in next week, so have to do this today for delivery tomorrow, having only heard of this opportunity last evening. I'm going to include some paintings that I've never showed before, Fat Ugly Tree Forever Coughing In A Radioactive Wasteland, and have framed up The Lens Of Reminiscence, the original pencil drawing I drew for The Myth of Sisyphus.

Busyness and Mastering

After a few weeks of focus on this music, the art world seems to be opening up with greater rapidity each day. I must write the piano music for the Crewe Tree of Light commission, only 3 weeks to go, then prepare for the possible Congleton performance; this is 40 minutes, so a lot of work may be needed, and this too is but 3 weeks away. I have had an enquiry about a possible, monumental scale public art commission too, which is interesting but I'm unsure of the details or what I can do, or how, yet.

Plans for Neorenaissance are also marching on. The Castle Park exhibition opens on Friday, and it looks like I'll part of the Macc Art Lounge exhibition this December too, which I always love being part of. It was amazing that one of the other Balmain artists said that he organises one exhibition every two years due to the work involved, and I seem to take part in two every month - or that is how it seems. Unfortunately a lot of my books are with Galleria Balmain, so I've ordered more stock. I'm also awaiting the results from The Royal Cambrian Academy of Art, and will be entering the Grosvenor Competition in January. In 2022, I will start some sort of ArtSwarm or other performance event too, but that can wait for a while.

Meanwhile, I'm working on the new music, which is now complete. Today, 'mastering' which is a bit of a meaningless term in the digital age, but for me involves the overall structural planning of an album; segueing one track into another (this album will, unusually for me, not do this) and balancing the general volume levels. I dislike the concept, and even more the result, of applying compression (or EQ) to a song, or applying any effect at all to a whole track unless its for specific artistic reasons. Crunshing music until it sounds like a noise is a crime - but a common offence these days.

In this case, the mastering was some of my easiest. All of the tracks seem to sound fine, but I'll need to pause for a few days/weeks and relisten.

I need to work on the cover art, and then Spotify Canvases, and format the labels for Nantwich, write and practice the piano piece and prepare the art for Macc. I think that this must be done tomorrow. I want longer days, 44 hours each would be preferable.

Slowing/Speeding Up A Sample To Pitch

I just watched a documentary about Frank Zappa. One of his children said that there was no way to slow down or speed up playback of digital audio in the way analogue tape can. Of course, this is wrong. Although a audio workstation software tends to limit the sample rate to a fixed value, eg. 44100hz for 'CD quality' or 48000hz, 96k etc., you can often set the playback speed in sample editors, like SoundForge, to slowdown or speed up a sample. I thought I'd draw up a frequency table of playback speeds to retune a wave.

Sample playback speeds to retune a wave, with frequencies based on 44100hz. Ratio formula = pow(2, note/12).

Note	Ratio	Freq
-12	0.5	22050
-11	0.5297	23361
-10	0.5612	24750
-9	0.5946	26222
-8	0.6300	27781
-7	0.6674	29433
-6	0.7071	31183
-5	0.7491	33038
-4	0.7937	35002
-3	0.8409	37083
-2	0.8909	39289
-1	0.9439	41625
0	1	44100
+1	1.0595	46722
+2	1.1225	49501
+3	1.1892	52444
+4	1.2599	55563
+5	1.3348	58866
+6	1.4142	62367
+7	1.4983	66075
+8	1.5874	70004
+9	1.6818	74167
+10	1.7818	78577
+11	1.8877	83250
+12	2	88200

Full Day

A full and good day. Have recorded most of the lyrics to Back When It All Began, and the final full take for Always In The Morning, this is now complete.

Deb has written the words for the Tree of Light ceremony and I've sketched out two ideas for the piano music. There is also the possibility of another performance in Congleton Library at a similar time. I started work on another new music project (secret for now), too.

Next, the album artwork, but more things are in the pipeline, I can't afford to pause for breath. These past 4 or 5 weeks of solid music creation have been wonderful, a luxury, but I think that the tumult of work will soon start.

In other news, a new double density drive arrived and this too fails to read the disks. It is possible the media is at fault, but I increasingly think that the Windows driver, which is automatically installed and cannot be revoked, is the problem. One disk DID work for a time, but, after a few weeks, plugging in the drive made Windows auto-install a new driver and this might be inferior to the old one. I can't remove or replace this. How I hate the terrible design of Microsoft Windows.

I may need an ancient PC to solve this problem. It is possible that the 3 disks I have are corrupted, or have been damaged by my attempts to use them. I have a plan, and have ordered more disks.

My music and performance and production skills are better than ever, and I'm full of inspiration and artistic zest. I've had some exciting visual art news, and the Castle Park exhibition opens on Friday too. Onwards we charge.

Always In The Morning, Back When It All Began

Finalised the writing to Back When It All Began today. The vocals remain. The timing and generaly melody and mood is all over the place so it will need a bit of rehearsal and playing back to work out where the words fit.

Then I finalised the production to Always In The Morning. The vocals are epic, going from quiet a reflective to power-ballad. I wanted the effect of an 'ordinary person' sitting on his bed, the curtains closed but glowing with sun, and the words seem to have this effect. I may try another take, but these will do. The single takes of Out of Date and Be My Jesus always sound better than songs that have lots of takes - I think the very process of comparison of two nearly-identical things lends itself to a sort of craziness. I'm always aware that time spent perfecting, polishing, finalising anything steals time from other projects, and is often self-deceptive because the factor that gains our attention can sometimes stop us noticing glaring errors elsewhere.

The album is nearly done. Then, its artwork, recording the old SY-85 music (I will probably never release this publicly, but I would, at least, like a recording of it for the future rather than have it lost forever).

Music and the Neorenassiance exhibition will probably be my main focus until March when Neorenassiance ends. I must do my best, work my hardest and fastest to make to most of this precious time. Today, I feel that my artistic life from now on will be music and not at all painting.

Back When It All Began

A very full, exhausting but exhilarating day of work on Back When It All Began. Here are the words, which, is generally my start for a song now. Once, the music was the crucial thing and even songs without words were preferable, but now, the words are my absolute focus; all link directly to images which I try to paint with sound.

Back When It All Began

Black rain, struggling dandelions
Yellow neon lights blink
like our bedroom
used to

back when it all began,
when plastic was wood,
back when the news was good.

We held hands and we ran
in the trees
your red skirt my blue van
of young rust

How young and pretty we are
I got a lithium powered car
I stole some money from the jar
Let's go and blow it!

Today's coffee
tastes of teflon dust
but your smile is still soft
like it was

back when it all began.

Now, some words evoke the music while I'm writing them, so the last verse was a deliberate link to the first.

The music is very complex because the words vary as much as an contemporary poem; this is my aim. I started with two chords stroked on the electric guitar; an A-Major, then I shifted up a fret for a cheap Bb-Major. These made an unusual pair, so I stuck with those and made these alternate in a slow trawl. It kept feeling like the start of a Bowie song from the Ziggy Stardust era; dark, urban. Then the chords shift up for the bedroom line, everything turns from this sad exterior to a warm memory; warm and pink. A stroked C-Major welcomes us to this warmth, and we are joined by the smooth hum of an organ. This shifts to D-Major for the 'back when it all began' chorus, so we already have an unusual, but pleasing progression. At this point I decided to try and make the whole song from major chords only.

For that chorus, I speeded things up; the start was a slow trawl. I then speeded things up more for the 'We held hands part' and a shift into G-Major, a happy run through the fields in summer. In fact the tempo constantly grows into a sort of joy. For the 'young and pretty' line I wanted to evoke the 1950s, so toyed with the idea of a C-Maj, A-min, F-Maj, G-Maj progression, the classic 'Crocodile Rock' sound, but this was too cheesy, and for one loop it would not really fit, so I switched to D-Maj and A-Maj, then ending in E-Maj - again, sticking to my rule about only major chords. For the drums, I added a double snare hit, like The Munster's theme; which gives it an early 1960s sound, sufficiently retro for my imagery.

I picked E so it could leap into a surprise A-minor for a solo part. The A-minor is there to dramatically switch from this image of recollection to A-Major and jump right back to the start of the song, back to the dark, rain-soaked streets, back to the present reality.

Melodically, the vocal line generally hovers around the chords, and this lack of melody, complete with shifting tempo and strange chords makes the song uneasy listening. Chords repeat, so it's not totally like a progressive song, but I thought it needed more structure, so I've used the words of 'Back When It All Began' as a rhythmic hook, and the rhythm of these words (x........xxx.x.x.x) is ever-present somewhere.

The inital instrumentation was simply stroked guitars and a sort of synth-string hum, but this can't continue, so I experimented with lots of other instruments. I tried my electro-acoustic guitar for some chords but the thing (Yamaha APX700) sounded rubbish. In fact, this guitar has always sounded rubbish in every situation I can recall. I played around with some Reface chords, and used a great organ sound from there. Generally, the electric guitar dominated and I decided to use a rarely used high-gain option and this created a sound rather like the famous wailing guitar lead in Bowie's Heroes. I used this sound (with the 'back') rhythm for a sub-melody, and some choppy chords for the 'young and pretty' part and the subsequent solo. I know it should, but this Brian May guitar really does sound like early Queen.

This work always takes a while because there's a lot of experimentation and a certain percentage of the recordings will never be used. I think I'm about halfway through this song now. The epic solo and ending remains.

In other news, the London exhibition is now over, so I updated the website with links etc. I've bought a new drive to possibly, hopefully, record the SY-85 music. I'll need to start work on the new Fall in Green piano piece for Crewe's Tree of Light event, too. I really need Deb's words for this. I hope to compose something melodic.

Out Of Date Words, The End of Ticka-Oh

A full day of music work today. Recorded the vocals for Out Of Date which were great fun. As a song it's an epic ballad in the style of Perfect Day by Lou Reed, or Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien by Edith Piaf, a full fireworks orchestral piece which grows. I love these sorts of songs, full or drama and a sheer joy to sing because the emotion is so easily conveyed.

That wonderful song was easy, but for most of the day, as with many weeks, I've been wrestling with the much more mediocre song Ticka-Oh Ticka-Eh, a light and fun song inspired by ObLaDi ObLaDa, but it just sounds weak, false, somehow silly and light. Not only the weakest song on the album from a mood perspective but also from a production perspective, and it doesn't really fit the general mood or feeling of the rest of the album, which is high-romance, longing, and other things.

So, I've decided to file Ticka-Oh Ticka-Eh for possible future use - perhaps with the old Style Guru Song, or something very different. Both of those are rather pop-like, rather electric-like and not really like the sort of music I'm moving towards or interested in. I could, at the very least, put these on YouTube or something like that.

So, to fill the gap I've resurrected a song that I'd started for this album but abandoned due to lack of room; this is called Back When It All Began, a strangely sad and dark trawl through an urban landscape.

Here are the full lyrics to Out Of Date:

Out Of Date

Strange
How things change
For me it's still the past
Still the old days - remember those?

Strange
How those days feel right
Nobody knows now, do they?
These young people with their young clothes.

Out of date
We're out of date - did you know that?
You and I
are out of date.

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.

Out of date
We're out of date - did you know that?
You and I
are out of date.

But we still have each other
and as we change
we will caress the past together
and our grave will trap the zeitgeist,
be eternal, like Mary Shelley's,
and we will last
forever.

The Mary Shelley reference recalls a memory that she, apparently, made love on her mother's grave.

Vocal Quagmires, Eyes Of Pity

One of the worst aspects of vocal recording is getting trapped in a quagmire. You make a take that's nearly right, just one or two lines not quite right, somehow, so you decide to retake just those bits, but they seem to jar, somehow, and then you retake another little bit to try and fix that, but, gradually, entropy takes over and the whole things feels and sounds like a mess. This can absolutely happen in oil painting too. Some painters like to fix this up or that up, a dab here, a dab there, but I've always hated the whole idea of these patchworks and, I tend to throw the whole painting away and start from scratch. For the Roman Legionaries painting, I painted three copies, which are almost identical to the eye of a casual observer, but I know that only the last version was right 'from the start'.

Yesterday I became trapped in a quagmire like this with the Eyes Of Pity vocals, partly because the song sounds so simple, when it's actually rather complex due to lines that don't scan and which can have long pauses between, or hardly any, and are filled with jumbles of words.

After a few days of practice and adding lots of little background effects to the song, I today recorded the whole song in one take; which is the ideal so that it maps the emotional flow of the performance exactly. I've added some backing harmonies, then erased a lot of the background parts that I added - it was all fine as it is. Most of the songs in this album are based on other songs and this one has 'I Only Have Eyes For You' by The Flamingos as inspiration.

In other news, I took some photos and started on the cover artwork yesterday. Here is the draft so far, but it is certain to change:

This morning Deb and I went to Frodsham to drop off artwork to Castle Park Arts Centre for the open too, the first local live art exhibition in over a year. The luthier there showed me a nice electro-acoustic guitar. If I didn't have one, I'd have thought about buying it, but I won't. It seems that every guitar player seems to own about 10 guitars. For me, one (caveat: of each sort...) is enough.

I've had a few low days and hours, but at the same time, I know with certainty that success is inevitable and that my work is better than ever, and still growing. On we march.

The Misery's Hard To Take

I feel like I've hardly done anything today, but I have worked on finishing the production to a song called The Misery's Hard To Take, which, musically and lyrically, came to me in one go one night. It was little more than one-and-a-bit verses and it had an odd folk sort of arrangement (in my head). Here are the words:

The Misery's Hard To Take

The misery's hard to take,
keeps creeping up on me.
Every good choice feels like a mistake
my head is like lead and my ribs are a rake
every little shiver feels like an earthquake
The misery's hard to take.

Whale! White whale!
Heart I stab at thee
You'll not get the better of god or me
Death to you and my misery!

I put together the song a few weeks ago using acoustic guitar strums and a regular thumping beat, adding some odd, arpeggiated saw waves, but it wasn't complete. Today I re-did the guitar chords with my APX700II guitar, but they didn't sound nearly as good as Ernie, my name for my old and inexpensive F-310 guitar. This is superlative for sound quality, although as with any acoustic guitar there is a bit of awkwardness in recording due to using a mic and needing headphones.

So, then I went back to the original chords and added a few more tweaks to those. The sound is pretty much the raw guitar, but I've cut the bass and added some sparkle to the top. Then I recorded a couple of melodic solos on it for the intro, and ending. These are a bit bluesy because the notes are sad and slightly wrong. I also bent them so make them weep a little.

Then came the vocals. I decided to picture myself as some toothless old cowboy or something for these. Then I added some extra vocals for the held notes on 'earthquaaake' and 'god or meee'. I used my Choroleight effect which multiplies one voice up to sound like eight for these to make them sound wide. Listening back I thought that I needed more and found myself improvising some ranty cockney-like vocals over the top, so added those.

The ending though sounded gentle, not remotely ranty or angry like the words, so I added a mad electric guitar solo over the top, playing any old note in a rough response to the smooth sound of the bluesy acoustic, something like the ranty response of the vocals.

So, it's done.

Music Charges On, Tracks List Finalised

A frustrating day yesterday, unable to sing and practice due to the vice-like atmosphere, simply lack of my own space, yet, there is a lot I can do in relative silence. I made a list of the remaining things to record and refine, and worked on new tracks, trying to refine and complete the album structure. In the evening, I managed to record new vocals for a reflective song with tinge of sadness called 'Joey Deacon: The Best Spastic in the World', originally written in November 2013. I thought of putting this on YouTube or something, but for now it can simply be a spare song.

I also worked on the production to a new track called Back Where It All Began, a slow 1950s-style, lazy, late-night dancehall song, which would have tied together the New Wave 'Hitler in High Heels' and Teenage Dream.

Today began with monthly backups, then I totted up the time of the album so far and was amazed to find that the 12 tracks amount to 40 minutes, so, after all of the effort of building extra structure and preparing new tracks, I don't need them. The track list is finalised. I had written a nice song last night called In Love By Message, a song for the electronic-inspired mid section which would have linked to the literary song Incomplete Version Of The Writer, but I won't need either song, or Back Where It All Began, or any more tracks.

So the tracks are:

1. Hitler In High Heels
2. Teenage Dream
3. Eyes Of Pity
4. Be My Jesus
5. Passive Aggressive

6. Boring Ceefax Lift Music

7. The Misery's Hard To Take
8. Confidence In Kindness
9. Out Of Date
10. Ticka-Oh Ticka-E
h 11. Always In The Morning
12. The Ones We Love

I've divided them up there because the first five have a sort of linked narrative, and the last six do too. There is an element of reminiscence and changing times to the whole album. The Boring Ceefax song is, for me, is a tribute to Jean-Michel Jarre because it keeps reminding me of Magnetic Fields Pt. 5 - though, to be clear, it's not a critique of it. Indeed Magnetic Fields is perhaps Jarre's best album. I'm sure that his track itself is an ironic self-parody, a mirror, like my track. Another Jarre link is my use of a coffee percolator at the start. I don't know why that should be a link, perhaps the Frenchness, but for some reason the sound of this machine in a piece of music really made me think of Jarre's music. I can't say more than that; in all good art there must be an element of the enigma.

Today I recorded the piano solo for Out Of Date, deliberately all over the place, and the 'epic' guitar solo (how I love this Yamaha Amp, and my BMG guitar!), plus a gentle acoustic guitar solo for Eyes Of Pity.

I also recorded the vocals for Teenage Dream, which are simple enough.

I wondered about making a soundproof booth. The trick with soundproofing is not absorption - that would merely collect and re-send the waves, but reflection or deflection. I wonder if two steel or ceramic plates facing each other would eternally reflect and dissipate sound?