Snow Photographs

Spent the morning listening and tweaking Burn of God. The bass-cut on the reverbs have really helped my mixes in the past two years. I think the album is generally complete.

Then, work on the Heart of Snow art. I wanted a photo of myself, so decided on a black and white look and have taken a few photos.

I also investigated some strange results from powf, when using negative numbers, but I had a head-slap moment when I realised that negative square roots is the domain of imaginary numbers, so all is well. My Casio calculator simply (and incorrectly) inverted the answer, which is the cause of my confusion, I couldn't work out why it worked there but not in my code.

The sound effect rollout is done. 1st of Feb tomorrow, it will be a busy month and week, as ever.

Book Faults, God Infinity Production, Band Distortion

A long and tiring day yesterday after a night of no sleep. I spotted an error in the printing of some of the Neorenaissance books, the colour illustrations were ruined with strong yellow ink. Less visible on full colour images (though every colour image appears sickly and ugly), but on the lighter pictures, the error is clear:

It appeared to affect lots of the books. A moment of panic ensued as I had already sent out, at expense, batches of books to the poets and the British Library. I counted and found that 12 of the books I had here had the error, about half, and I would expect that 6 to 12 of those sent now need replacements, perhaps 24 of the 37 books sent to me need to be replaced.

This is really bad by Amazon. My last book order for The Burning Circus also had obvious damage to the books. It appears that every book of every order needs checking by hand and that every order has a percentage of books that instantly need to be returned and replaced; so expensive and time consuming, and of course losing money on a project that was already destined to make a loss. A job that should have taken two hours will now take a week or two due to the incompetence of Kindle Direct Publishing. I wonder how many other authors this affects.

11 books have been prepared for the slow return process and I've sent a message about the problem with the hope of resolution. I've not had a reply yet.

I spent most of yesterday working on the vocals for God Infinity. There are lots of vocal tracks; the main 'god' vocals, some more gentle ones for an 'angels' section, some vocoder parts, a separate track for the chorus with more reverb, some tracks for spoken vocals, and some for the main protagonist. In the original version, the protagonist lines were in the same tone as the main vocals sung by 'god'. I've changed this to make the god vocals a little distorted and narrower. The angelic descriptions of heaven remain vocoded, and with a different melody from the original plan. This works well, it helps paint a picture of something perfect and Elysian.

Later, I worked on a new audio effect, Band Distortion II. I never really use equalisation in my production work. I use low pass filters, usually when designing sounds, and high pass, most usually to remove the bass on certain tracks. I rarely use anything else apart from an effect called Band Distortion which is a band-pass filter with gain, to push the sound in a certain way. Over the years this has been one of my most used effects.

Yesterday I designed a new version which has a curve control to (optionally) boost the signal of lower values more than that of higher values. I also permitted negative gain, which makes the effect a band-exclude-boost. I rarely use band-exclude filters, their effect is much more subtle, a sweep can sound like a phaser; but adding the option is very easy so I did so in case it became useful.

January has been an exhausting rush; the exhibition set up, a Fall in Green website, a complete re-release and re-organising of the 54 IndieSFX sound effect packs, the Heart of Snow album, the re-recording of Burn of God and creating the Neorenaissance book. At least a few weeks of February will be finishing and filing these things. The artwork for Heart of Snow, and lyric videos for that album and all of Burn of God, and Spotify canvases, need doing.

The Tree Lyrics

I've not published The Tree's lyrics here, so here they are. The Orgonon reference is (and was originally designed as) a tribute/nod to Kate Bush's Cloudbusting, rather than her nod to William Reich, though the song is indeed about ethereal energy connections. The first version of the song, used 'Organon, but', a reference to science and Greek logic vs. religion. It's interesting how both words can work.

The Tree

I still believe in Orgonon,
for there's something here
inbetween the cells
like a weeping weed
in the velvet darkness.
There's something here,
a glitter of love,
a reaching magnetism
pervades.

It's like a tree,
connecting everything
with energy,
exchanging information
and we are part of it.

Each blink of atom
who art in heavens
reaches.
They exist by feeling
and by being felt.

It's like a tree
connecting everything
with energy,
exchanging information
and we are part of it.

Can you feel it?
It's all around us.

The Tree Vocals, Neorenaissance Books, Anthony Phillips

Recorded new vocals for The Tree today, loved this and all good in one take. I typically record two full takes now so that I have an option to choose one or the other. I layered the "and we are part of it" line using the Zeitraum plugin, which works so well on vocals, this is one key to the sound on the Otesanek chorus. The fact that nobody else in the world has the effect is something of a bonus. How blessed I feel to have command of this instrument called voice. I can say with absolute certainty that I'll never use any degree of Autotune. How awful it has always sounded. As with playing any instrument, what are considering imperfections equates to emotion. I can really see the links between piano, guitar, and voice.

I added these vocals. I may keep the digital guitars here as these sound interesting, but I'll experiment with replacements.

In the afternoon the first batch of Neorenaissance books arrived so I spent a few hours packing them up to send off to poets and to take to the museum.

Another thing which came yesterday is a new 5-CD release of Anthony Phillips' music, old work and demos, which actually sound like demos, so the music is interesting for that reason - though annoying being in cardboard sleeves. How cheap and ugly to risk delicate compact discs by needing to slide them from cereal-packet cardboard. The music has made me wish that Kate Bush release, or rather re-record, her old Phoenix Demos. If I had permission, I would happily record some.

Limnetic Limiter and God Infinity Vocals

Recorded the God Infinity vocals today, how different and how easy this is for me now compared to the first recording. I also worked on adding the vocals to the epic 'You Will Seek It Love' parts. These tracks tend to peak quite dramatically; this album has some really quiet parts and really loud parts in sharp peaks. This inspired me to design a new limiter, which I call the Limnetic Limiter, named after the topmost transparent layer of water on a lake because this effect affects only the top layer of the sound.

Most limiters try to manage their task in real time; not easy when the incoming signal could be anything, and so they involve a volume tracker, sometimes a look-ahead delay and a sort of darting, bobbing, and weaving. For me, I know or can calculate my peaks, so can use this knowledge to apply the effect at the end. Say my signal peaks at 1.1, when it should be limited 1.0. My principle is to scale everything from a certain top level, say 0.9, to the 1.1 and simply scale any data there to fit in the 0.9 to 1.0 range.

This image of a saw wave indicates the limiter in action:

You'll note that the saw wave is bent and doesn't reach the top. Here, from 0.5 (the grey line in the graph), the signal is re-scaled to limit to 0.75 rather than keep going to its natural 1.00. I have an optional curve parameter to smooth things out, which can further help limit (or utilise) any distortion artifacts. In practice it sounds very good. I'll probably never use it on extreme parameters like this, only for trimming the top-most peaks.

It changes the timbre of some sounds, like these analogue waves, rather substantially and adds some pleasing fuzz too, so it will work as a sound effect too, and without any pesky volume trackers, attack, decay and all of that nonsense.

Most of the album is now reworked, but I realised today that I'd forgotten a song called The Tree. The digital guitars in that sound rather interesting, the song almost evokes the sound of a Fairlight CMI.

I'll need to record those vocals too, and incorporate today God Infinity vocals. This album remains my best work to date. I hope I can make many more.

Kyrie, The Eternal Dogma Vocals

A full day layering and editing the Eternal Dogma and Kyrie vocals, over 100 layers each. They sound much better than the earlier draft. Then, work on the Kyrie music itself, a complex production but much more easily managed by my skills now. One key to a complex production is handling the bass, avoid lingering basses, fading bass, reverb, echoes. The bass needs to remain clear, then everything else generally with the bass cut, depending on whether the voice needs it or not.

This editing and layering of vocals took many hours, but I've also launched three more sets of sound effects and publicised today's Lunar Sale on Steam. Burn of God is broadly on track; the main job remaining for a complete first draft is recording the God Infinity vocals.

I must work on the Heart of Snow artwork too. My plan is to use images from a certain tree named 'Hail Mary'...

The Void Is Pain

So far today, chopping up the 20x vocal layers for Burn of God, each with 4 lines into separate edits.

The four lines were sung between 15 and 20 times each, and each in three notes to form a chord, so in total there are 240 or so recordings all of which will be layered into the four lines.

You will seek it, love
You will seek escape
You will not resist
The void is pain!

Next job is to do the same for the Kyrie Eleison words, which is done similarly, except that those are long lines (a minute or so each) and in 4 notes rather than 3.

The guitar work on the album, at least in a first draft, is complete now and most of the vocals have been recorded if not yet incorporated into the song.

Grandfather Vocals, Chronicles of Neorenaissance

A sleepless night due to stomach pain, sometimes my body seems to treat certain foods as enemies. Woke late and recorded the vocals to The Great Grandfather's Song, and some of the final layers to the Kyrie from Burn of God. It feels so good to repeat the same phrase over and over, this is excellent strength and technique training.

Then, I finalised the basic production for Grandfather, though I might need to add more, and finalised the basic guitars for God Infinity, this is now in the state it was with the original version, but with new guitars, all good.

I also released some more sound effects, and made a complete list of the 1000+ sequences and the plugins these use, with the aim of deleting redundant ones and updating older ones in files. Some plugins are used in 100+ songs, and these will ideally need replacing - I can work with them and replace as I use these old ones, but I prefer neatness and newness for everything. I also researched panning algorithms.

The Crewe Chronicle gave me some nice coverage regarding the Neorenaissance exhibition today:

Music remains my focus, my skills are now up to speed and I'm keen to create more art, but I have other ideas too. I've confirmed participation in Art Fair Cheshire in Macclesfield Town Hall this May/June, and may exhibit more art in the Macc Art Lounge. I'd like to write more books this year too.

The Neorenaissance book order is due at the end of the week, so next week will mean a trip to the museum to drop those off. Crewe Council, after nearly two months and three emails still haven't paid us for the Fall in Green poem and performance.

Heart of Snow is now complete musically. I need to complete the artwork and Spotify Canvases, but this won't be released until Christmas 2022. Several of these songs; Away From Her Manger, Otesanek, could be Christmas number one. They could be, they should be, but won't be unless fairies and genies intervene.

God Infinity Guitars, Beethoven, Art Life

A long and tiring day, yet the time has flown. I wanted to work on the guitars for God Infinity, and it's taken a lot of time. My fingers now hurt too much to play. Sometimes the timing varies ever-so-slightly in the song, making it difficult to accurately play and time things, especially for otherwise identical parts.

The original mix had simple digital guitars with their own timbre and sound range, the new ones need new balancing, and more guitar layers. I'm learning more about guitar production. Queen are a good band to study, as much of their early material involved almost exclusively guitars and vocals, so needed inventiveness in layering. Breaking down the layers in Def Leppard from the Hysteria era is more difficult, so very complex and multi-tracked. It's fun to pick out the parts, a game I've enjoyed playing with music for all of my life. As with sung voices, the more you layer the more it tends to mute expression because expression is, in some ways, variation in pitch and timing beyond that which is 'perfect'.

I have a main guitar layer for the melody which tracks most of the song, plus some stroked distorted chords which stab away in time to certain parts. I experimented with improvising over this and added some high-pitched single musical parts at certain points.

Then, the bass. This, back in the days of merely 2018, used to be a single instrument, but now I work at this too, so spent an hour or two running with it.

Three more sound effect sets have been released too.

Beethoven, in my beloved book, has died again. On March 24th 2029 at 17:45 I will be his exact age when he died. The 200 year anniversary of this is March 26th 2027, I feel this needs commemorating. I noted that my artistic friends, Bergman, Dali, Beethoven, all had very different relationships with women, but, generally, appeared to be somewhat isolated misanthropes. If one is social, friendly, comfortable, there is no time for an artist to make art, that is, new creations from the soul rather than the 'craft' work of fulfilling commissions and orders. All of these people, and myself, work all day every day. I have never taken a holiday and never intend to. I fear and dislike the idea of comfort or contentment; what a pointless and animal goal. My job, my passion, duty to humanity, is to make art. I can't do anything else. Death is the only alternative.

I read through the job and art opportunities in the Chainlinks art newsletter and wondered if I would ever feel that I could appropriately apply for any. Am I a 'professional' artist? Art is my life and takes everything, is this a profession? I am perhaps a hobbyist who happens to do his hobby full time to the exclusion of all else, as I have for 40 years and my first intense focus on game programming. Perhaps this itself is a definition of an artist.

Heart of Snow Admin, God Infinity Guitars

A steady, full day. The first half of the day was finalising the Heart of Snow EP. The project is one 23 minute piece which flow one into another, which I like, but when the tracks are divided up into the CD-tracks, the results start and stop at odd times, not ideal for streaming, so I'll release separate CD and stream versions.

I keep saying this but how we need a new physical medium for music! Vinyl might be experiencing a renaissance, but it's a rubbish medium. No car would have a record player, flipping a disc is annoying. They are too short; my 23 minute piece would just fit, in an ugly way one one side, comfortably on two with an awkward gap in the middle. The sound of an LP might be 'warm' and analogue, but inferior to CD by every metric; for a start, you can always hear the tap-dance of a million fleas from the surface of the disc itself.

A good format would be about CD sized. Smaller (an MP3 player, a USB stick) would be too small for artwork or liner notes, which are an important part of the medium. Larger (a 7-inch single) would be too large to post in an envelope and would take up space, assuming it has enough thickness for a 3.5mm headphone socket. My concept for a good format would have the player built in, so the CD/case/object has a headphone socket and play controls itself. Manufacturing is now cheap enough for this.

Well, the EP is complete. I spent a few hours experimenting with cover artwork. Here is a first draft:

In the afternoon I recorded guitars for God Infinity. These were fun to do, though a little tedious to other any people's ears (playing the same loop over and over - I like this because it is good training). I spent time incorporating these into this long song; I'll need to do a few more but I'm almost at the stage of only needing vocals, which will be easy and enjoyable, when I get the opportunity.

I have a few ideas for new projects, books and collaborations, but this week and perhaps next will be about Burn of God, completing the IndieSFX roll-out, possibly working on new plug-ins for Prometheus.

Sundays, Burn of God Guitars, Directions

A slow day today, as Sundays often are, a disruption to the normal flow. After yesterday's singing and productivity, I unconsciously prepared for a slower and more restful day and the awful tragedy of this occurred: a mistake! At every hour and break (I stuck at least to my regular break and mealtimes) I aimed to be reborn. This continues.

The Heart of Snow project is mentally at an end, this is one reason for slowing, like the slowing of a runner at the finish line, but, like an Olympian, I must power through the line and remind myself that there is still a lot of work to do, the artwork, the paperwork, videos, etcetera. I work best when I have many projects at once, so charge into another.

For Burn of God I have recorded the guitars for Great Grandfather's Song, which was good technical practice. I think this is the first instance of me playing a pre-written guitar solo to time rather than improvising. I also prepared the dubs for future vocals for that. Though it's less than 2 years since the first version of the album, so much has changed. I didn't know my vocal range or capabilities then, or use the correct octaves for backing tracks. I also reworked the bass, and started work on God Infinity, the most complex track. That has a lot of guitars, backing riffs, and all will need playing accurately, no room for invented solos here, so it should be good practice. I must relish this work. Life should be about growing, learning. I'm a natural philomath first, polymath second.

I feel a little directionless. I need something else. One minor project is to tidy up the old song files and plug-ins, which will make room for new ones. This doesn't matter to the world now, but, of course, the results will ultimately be new and better music.

It is a time of reflections and directions.

Recording Artistry, Burn of God Choirs

A long day of working on the Heart of Snow song, these final tweaks can take so long. I've kept in the quiet part, it definitely adds more drama, but needed some changes to the pacing. Prometheus can directly include a segment from another song, such a useful feature. I've also changed some small aspects of the intro piano and made the strings in the verses staccato rather than continuous.

How I love recorded music. I really want to make this a serious art medium. I think these are unique times for the medium. Money from sales is near zero, I hardly sell or make a thing from recordings, most music artists make money from performing. I don't particularly like performing. I seem to be unusual in this; the 'acclaim', applause, glory etc. this doesn't matter to me as much as the quality of my performance, and, of course, for me at the moment the act of live performance is a lot of heavy and tiring work of carrying and setting up delicate equipment for many hours. Perhaps if my only job was to perform it would be enjoyable. As an artform, performance is fleeting. A happiness like eating. Part of me shudders at this slight death, this transient pleasure that makes no mark on the universe.

I would love to make music as powerful as a Bergman or Kurosawa film. All I can do is my best; try, aim.

I've recorded lots of vocals for the Burn of God re-recording today, many of the overdubs for the great choruses. Each of these involves 40 vocal layers at 3 different pitches, and at least 50 vocal layers for the great Kyrie Eleison, maybe more as it would be nice to include some female vocals. This may seem excessive but all of those voices really do sound very powerful. I've recorded about half of them, a good 90 minutes of constant 'choral' work which felt wonderful. I'll work on the backing tracks for the other songs next.

I seem to be making music like van Gogh made painting, a compulsion for its own sake. For scraping a living in the short term, this is rarely good, but for art itself and for ultimate success, it is necessary and vital.

Heart Of Snow Lyrics

The first draft of the song is complete. I'm wondering whether to add a section from 'Won't be a Silent Night' to it. It would add a little more drama and variety, and unity to the whole project, but this song is already rather long and it might be odd and out of place to insert it. I've created two variations and will listen to both. Generally speaking though, this project is complete and I'm pleased with it. Here are the words to the song:

Heart Of Snow

See here this winter'd blanket
in this forgotten field,
crows of ink surround me
with their kin.

The splintered bones of reed
reach up towards their maker,
their broken prayer
sings to the wind.

My heart of snow
holds love and longing.
Captures a memory.
Captures a dream.

My eyes of coal
glow pink at sun set;
see silver'd moon
as from my childhood room.

I stand at the farmhouse window,
my wooden fingers stroke the glass
to tune to the feeling
of the people inside.

Their fire dances
in happy sighs.
Blades of flame set free
from its ancient eyes.

My heart of snow
holds love and longing.
Captures a memory.
Captures a dream;
and in the dream I am a boy,
the frozen fields are melted into spring
and we're making a toy man
in the field
of cherished memory.

Heart of Snow EP First Draft

Final work on Heart of Snow today, after a careful listen yesterday. These final tweaks can take a long time. Today I experimented with changing the chords from F-minor to F-Major as in the original plan but this sounded just awful now, so I switched them back, then added a little more drama to the solo part by increasing the ebb and flow of the strings there, and cutting them off completely before the next verse. I lowered the volume of the 'snow' tinkles in the intro and added more bass there, all very subtle, but really audible when it's not there.

I did many more changes to the part before Otesanek, now called Bleak Forest. This was a very simple guitar improvisation to strings, but needed more to it, so I've added a few bird cries from the end and the main 'snow wail' - a blast of an instrument called The Pain of Cello, and strings it is, though it sounds something like that famous 'blaaaam' brass sound that fills most film trailers.

I also worked on some of Burn of God and recorded new vocal parts for a song called Lullaby From Your Cells To Your Mind. These were originally sung an octave lower but sound better higher up and layered because these are tiny cells, tiny creatures. I also updated a few very simple Burn of God tracks that barely needed anything new. The main tracks that do are the 'big' layered vocals; 10 or 20 layers in each pitch to make a triad.

I've also released more sound effects on the new itch channel.

Generally I feel I'm struggling forwards, but making good progress artistically. So many artists scrape forwards, doing the best they can, hopeful of enough of a success somewhere to scrape a little more. Deb is reading Moby-Dick, and Herman Melville appears to be a case in point.

For me, the key is self-improvement, and art itself is like an yoga of the soul, a system of improving every aspect of ones-self, mental, physical, spiritual.

My next job will be completing the Burn of God re-recording, starting with new backing tracks and work on the guitars. This process, if I had space, could take a day, but it will probably take a week or more of snatched moments to record. After this, more music and a new EP, perhaps the bulb sonata, based on a series of three recent poems which are artistically linked. These are different from the Christmas songs, which is good. Of course, I need to work on the Heart of Snow artwork too.

I must push to be better. Life is short. Time is short. These fleeting fuses, embers, wicks of life-breath.

Onwards.

More Heart of Snow Production

A full day of work on Heart of Snow, starting with the vocal recording. This went to plan but the song itself needs more work. There are few layered vocals here and the song structure itself is generally rather long and less staccato in mood, so I need to combat this and inject drama. Emotion is contrast. Music should be surprising.

I am perhaps too harsh. Listening to parts of Kate Bush's beloved Hounds of Love album, this compared well immediately afterwards. This is certainly the last track of the project which will be about 23 minutes long and have 4 main songs and 2 other joining parts: a meandering guitar solo after Away in Her Manger, and a piano epilogue set to some (actual) seabirds recorded live yesterday evening.

I will keep working. At least this has been a first full day of music work, and most of the vocals on the album/EP are now complete.

The Neorenaissance book is also published today, registered, and 45 copies ordered, my biggest book order since Songs of Life. All a success in that almost all of these copies are pre-sold or pre-allocated, but as the sale price was the print-cost, I've lost money overall. This was as intended, the aim was to make something to benefit the museum, and the poets and my art, of course.

Heart of Snow

First, work on Heart of Snow today. Some inspirations for the music are Under Ice by Kate Bush for the general mood, All In One Day by Ultravox for the epic quality, and Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd for the drifting, introspective quality. Wish You Were Here has hardly any melody in the lead vocal (as is often the case with Floyd), the melody is in the guitar sub-lead. I've made the 'reeds' in the song lead and follow the main vocal melody so that they interact, and there is a viola following up like a companion who wants to join in the conversation.

In other news, the Neorenaissance book is ready for publishing. This made me think that books today, particularly print-to-order books such as those printed by Amazon, are more rare and valulable than any books before because they are so few in number. Before this, 50 or 100 books was probably the bare minimum quantity in existence, but even poor performing books would have numbered in the several hundred. Now, books that have quantities in single digits are probably very common, almost like the hand printed books of William Blake's day. I've considered that after the initial order for the poets and museum I withdraw the book to make it truly a rare art book.

Heart of Snow Production

A day of working on Heart of Snow, the opening (and last to create!) track of my Christmas sonata. This is something of a transition project. Secret Electric Sorcery was/is perhaps my most commercial pop-like work, partly written to gain experience and push into new areas, but it's not pushing any artistic boundaries. This project has conventionality, but creativity too.

I'm struggling with moving into creative mode after the intense work of the book and sound effects. These hours are more subtle, hammering away. Identifying problems on a rational level, listening to precedents by other artists, noting and calculating the mood and trying to enhance it.

This track is tricky because it's very image based; a snowman in a field, clawing at a farmhouse window; but the mood and tempo is rather slow and sad, plodding, which can harm the drama. I've removed the heart-beat rhythm at times, but this can leave things rather loose. There are more free, time-loose improvisations here. Today I played two key piano parts, an intro fantasy, the first thing heard of this EP/album, and a finale, which I'm unsure where to put, perhaps at the very end of the project.

The chords were deliberately strange, I seem to include all 24 major and minor chords. I'll have to keep coming back to this over the next few days. So far the song is about 7 minutes, which is far longer than expected.

In other news, I'm ready to order the Neorenaissance books but am having difficulty in contacting the museum to ask how many copies they might like. I will try again tomorrow.

At lunch, I'm watching Sorry on DVD, having been gifted this for my birthday. Series 3, Episode 6 complete today. During 2020 I watched all of Cheers, missing just two episodes from the rubbish Kirstie Alley era, plus all of Twin Peaks, and Tales of the Unexpected.

Music Production Teams

I look at the credits for an album like The Hounds of Love, that album itself certainly the result of an individual artist, and am reminded that I have to do everything, from musing and writing, to designing all of the software and algorithms for every digital instrument and audio effect, and building the studio environment, to playing and performing all of the instruments, and every piece of production, recording, engineering, album artwork, video recording, editing, camera work, marketing. I have programmed some A.I. assistants, like an Eldon Tyrell. Perhaps the days of large teams are still here, but I suspect those days are waning. For me, at times, one assistant would be a luxury.

Now, back to Heart of Snow.

Away From Her Manger Lyrics

Back to work on my Christmas music today. Here are the words to the second song.

Away From Her Manger

Coloured lights in the front room,
she sits wrapping gifts
for the mystical people
that live on the list
of love,
and loss
the lies and the broken
chains that fell,
away from her manger
bed.

Red light.
Yellow light.
Green light.
Blue light.
Green light.
Yellow light.
Blue light.
Red light.

Eats her turkey with ghosts now,
and cards for those sent
to the mystical people
that died on the list
of love,
and loss
the Polaroid memories now
blue and grey,
away like her baby
bed.

More Sound Work, Neorenaissance Proof

A very busy couple of days finalising the new listings and website for the IndieSFX sounds. The 54 items in the back-catalogue are now listed and prepared.

The Neorenaissance book proof has arrived and had two very minor errors. These are corrected so the book is ready to go. I've contacted the poets and will contact the museum when it next opens about some copies for the shop. I'll donate one to their archives.

It's been a busy January, and a very busy week. Now I'm slowly moving back into creative mode, actually, I'm aching to work on the important job of art, and must complete the Christmas sonata, and the Burn of God re-recording. I've got a few new audio effect ideas too, and must tidy up the existing sequence files, remove any unused effects to make room for new ones.

IndieSFX Game Sound Effects

A full day working on new graphical assets for IndieSFX, all 53 packs now have some artwork. I'll have to check and tweak these. When faced with an intense creative project like this, the need to create a large number of things, the trick is to race through them all with an unconscious time limit, not spend too long and prioritise speed over quality. At the end, everything should be glanced at, as best as possible in one view, then things can be worked on again in 'parallel' to improve and unify the quality.

There are 54 official codes to the sound packs, but there is no pack 6; that was an early code for a bundle of sets 1,2,3,4 and 5, so I don't need graphics for that. Three packs are 'macro packs' - special large bundles of sounds I put together for a special deal. Two sets are also instruments, but I can't recall if I ever offered them to anyone. Lots of sounds are reused. Some packs replaced and improved upon earlier ones, but now I'll just upload them all to the new itch page. Even the early sets have a few unique sounds which someone might find useful.

One other job was working through the text files, sound lists. I'll convert these to pdf tomorrow. I expect the conversion and checking process will take at least a day, then a lot of time uploading all of these.

In other news, the proof of the Neorenaissance book arrived too and it looks fantastic.

Now, for the benefit of future history, here is the complete list of IndieSFX sound sets. Codes ending in A were the early sets. Ending in B meant dry mono recordings (marketed as 'Pure Grey'). Ending in C meant full sets (marketed as 'Chromatic'), generally wet mono and stereo. Wet means they could have some sort of reverb or additional effects added, but not always. The later sets, from S045C onwards, had both dry and wet effects as by that stage everything was rendered in SFXEngine and I could switch on or off global effects for an entire set relatively easily.

Loops:

K001A-Moods
K002A-Nature
K003A-Places
K004A-Waiting

Sound Effect Sets:

S001A-ExplosionsAndArcadia
S002A-SquadLevelMechanics
S003A-Robotnik
S004A-FirstPersonShooter
S005A-FantasyReality
S007B-Glass
S008C-Gunfire
S009C-Controls
S010B-Water
S011C-Atmosphere
S012C-Footsteps
S013C-Hits
S014C-SpaceShooter
S015C-SokobanSounds
S016C-Knightlore
S017C-CarSounds
S018C-BackgroundLoops
S019C-Aircraft
S020C-CasualSounds
S021C-Doors
S022B-Clicks
S023C-SpaceWeapons
S024C-Sports
S025C-CardsAndCasino
S026C-Pickups1
S027C-8BitArcade
S028C-Creatures
S029C-MeleeWeapons
S030C-Pickups2
S031C-MobileTones
S032B-Motors
S033C-Animals
S034C-FutureWeapons
S035C-Fanfares
S036B-GlassAndWater
S037D-MacroPack1
S038D-MacroPack2
S039D-MacroPack3
S040E-InstrumentArchiveAlpha
S041E-InstrumentArchiveBeta
S042C-CuteCreatures
S043C-ClocksAlarmsSwitches
S044C-AppsAndMinigames
S045C-ExplosionsAndImpacts
S046C-WeaponsConstructionKit
S047C-PickupsConstructionKit
S048C-BladedWeapons
S049C-Adventure
S050C-ArcadeShooter
S051C-Doors
S052C-Monsters
S053C-CasualGames
S054C-Footsteps

Neorenaissance Proof, IndieSFX Revamp

A busy couple of days. I completed the first draft of the Neorenaissance book yesterday and have ordered a printed proof. Here is the cover:

I need to consider the text for the back, though I expect few people will be browsing for this in a bookshop; it will be purchased by knowing art and poetry aficionados.

Today I've started to revisit my IndieSFX sound effects library. Back in 2002 this was one of the first of my online enterprises I set-up, along with Cornutopia Software, and the review website Bytten. For years I've sold sound effects there, but the website hasn't had any sound effects on sale for months. I've been meaning to do something about this, but with over 50 sound packs and between 10,000 and 20,000 sound files, the workload of processing these and preparing them for any new outlet is huge.

Today though, I started, and have put my first few sounds on a new itch.io page for IndieSFX. The first sounds are free to download (with optional donation) and consist of the IndieSFX Loops, which were seamless 8-second sound loops, both musical and environmental covering everything from rain and wind, to factory sounds, to little jingles. These are merely a start and my next job is to work on new artwork and text for the main library; the 50+ sound sets need images like this:

This may take weeks, and I'm unsure at the moment if I'll do it all now or merely do some, but it feels good to charge into a project of neating, sorting and making efficient. Ideally all of my work should be 'out there' somewhere, art, games, sounds, music... so this is one of these occasions.

Neorenaissance Setup

A busy day yesterday after a needlessly anxious night. It was installation day for Neorenaissance at Nantwich Museum and, despite being one of my larger exhibitions, it very really well thanks to an excellent and efficient hanging team. It is a best-of-times and worst-of-times, as my first exhibition at a public museum takes place at the height of a pandemic. All live events are cancelled and visitor numbers will be, one way or another, limited, but it is better, of course, to stage an exhibition now than not, and the museum are wonderfully supportive. So much in Britain remains curtailed.

Despite this good event, I feel slightly battered by life at the moment. The computer had some hiccups a few months ago and now aspects of my life and body are hiccupping too. Fate weaves its river and we must accept its course.

I'm continuing to work on the book and have other things that I'd like to get finished in January. These months must be a time of Neorenaisance; new rebirth.

Neorenaissance

A full day working on the book formatting, including writing an introduction. I've drawn over the title pages a little to 'organic' them up, this is one thing that a graphics tablet can do better than a pen, live interaction with a digital image already there.

I toyed with doing this to the paintings, but those really need to remain clean. The book is nearly ready for a proof, but first, the exhibition itself needs setting up.

Neorenaissance Book

A full day of work on the Neorenaissance book. Here is the cover so far...

This is closer to the poster image, after I thought it would be a good idea to put all of the contributing poets on the cover. I wasn't going to add my name, although technically I have written one poem in there, but my name fitted better. I might divide the lines up and format each separately.

I also realised that I'd forgotten to include The Monstrance of Life, so did this in the book, but oddly there is no poem for this even though there is one for Three Evil Forms, which will be exhibited in the cabinet next to it! There are two sculptures in the exhibition, originally there to indicate the creation process... but, oddly, the paintings which use those sculptures are not in the exhibition. I can't recall why this is, although most of the models used for the paintings on show were made from plasticine, so don't exist. At least I'm including a few photos of the Penalties model.

All day has been spent formatting the book. Some of the captions needed two lines, so I needed to resize all of the images again, and I reformatted Sue's stills from The Spiral Staircase. I added a new appendix, a list of works - this just fits on two pages. Next, I'd like to include more drawings or some sort of creativity to the images themselves, and perhaps more text. There are a few blank pages.

Castle Park Collection, Neorenaissance Book

Went to collect paintings from Castle Park Arts Centre in the morning in the dazzling winter sunlight, the roads were amazingly empty for a Friday, probably due to Omicron, the working-from-home directive.

Then a full day of working on the Neorenaissance book. The current plan is for if to be divided into three sections, one of poetry and images, some information on the poets, then a list of my art exhibitions to date. As well as all of the art and poems, I'll include some stills from Sue's Spiral Staircase video, and I'm toying with whether to include music or anything else.

The start of each section will have a header image, so I've been working on those, as well as formatting and finalising the images. Here's an example of a header:

Most of the poets now have returned signed agreements of permission to use their work, only 4 of the 14 poets remain.

Last night I dreamt I was at a gathering with Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Salvador Dali, and a few other famous guests. It took place in something like a school sports hall, and everyone was standing in relative quiet, holding drinks, like a Sartrean existentialist party. Later, Deb and I went to the top of a steep hill with these people for a mass or religious event. We lay on the terraces on the side of the hill, lying on our backs to face the sky, all side by side. I was next to a female artist, a character like Suzanne Vega but more of an amalgam of a respected artist. We couldn't see the priest or ceremony, which had echoes of an event from The Holy Mountain.

Yellow-Violet Sky Alien Invasion Dream

I dream I'm in a tower block with my mother, there are a large windows on both sides of the bedroom. One looks out to a blue sky, and I've taken a photograph of it on a tablet device. The other, on the tablet screen, has a misty, mars-violet-yellow ochre sky and the photograph I took is 3D or some sort of moving image. I look out of the window to the violet sky, white clouds are gently moving. There is a huge image of scorpion in the sky, stylised like my old Scorpius Software logo, casting its arms over the world.

I look down to the muddied ground, a few trees, roads. There are a few people, seemingly in distress, some like zombie automatons. The country seems to have been invaded by aliens or a malevolent force. A humanoid robot, something like Robbie from Forbidden Planet but more human in proportions, moves towards the front door of our tower block. He raises a claw to bash at the door, eager to come in and capture us.

Neorenaissance: The Book

Last night I thought that it is now time to put together a book of the paintings and poems for the Neorenaissance exhibition. One inspiration for this was the artistic potential of adding some new art perhaps, trying to create something with a new unity and beauty.

I initially thought of using the same format, 5x8 inches, as The Burning Circus, but I've slightly increased this to 5.5 by 8.5, then started the document and copied over the poems, including some which were/are not included in the exhibition for various reasons; sometimes more than one poem was written for a painting. Helen Kay also wrote a poem for the Cromwell portrait, which will be in the Chester Museum for a few months, so that will be in the book too.

Of course, the participation of the poets is needed for this so I drew up an agreement and I've started the process of contacting each one, then started work on the cover, which will be a modification of the poster image, and resizing and formatting the paintings. I expect that this will be a colour book. This will double the printing price but for an art book the images really need colour, so I may add more colour here and there, if this is free. I remember with the Blurb book, 365 Universes, all pages of a colour book were priced as colour, even if actually black and white - most printers only charge for colour prices for pages which had colour images. This made colour the same price as black and white, so I added colour to every page.

This will be a lot of work, but hopefully a good artwork in itself. I will offer copies at cost to Nantwich Museum, effectively making the book a donation to them which seems the fairest way when distributing the work by the volunteer poets, and I plan to set a launch date of 28th January, little time for completing and proofing it all, but I'll work on it totally until it is complete; perhaps a first draft will be ready by this time next week. I may also add more text; a story? more poems? new images? It must be a good artwork in itself, not a mere catalogue.

Barnacle Sound Proofing

I had this idea for a method of sound-proofing in November; time to file it and share it.

Sound proofing is difficult because the energy of the wave needs to be dissipated, and almost every surface will absorb, and so transmit sound, normally filtering this into a low frequency wave. The key to sound proofing is to reflect the sound cleanly and absorb as little as possible, such as a ceramic chamber with hard and heavy walls, which should transmit very little, but of course, this would create a lot of internal echoes.

The current methods for soundproofing a room or areas involve solid wooden boards with air gaps, often several layers, and the thicker and heavier, and more layers, as well as more isolated from anything else (as the sound will travel along anything these boards touch), the better. This can be a huge disruption to a space, perhaps 30 or 50cm deep of extra wall. I wondered if a better system could be designed.

My concept here is to use ceramic or metal tiles to reflect as much of the sound as possible. These would be small, perhaps 2cm, and angular rather than flat so that the sound is defected sideways to some degree. After considering this shape, I thought that a randomly grooved, and randomly shaped, star-cone would break up the sound best, in the way that the small and random marks in a gong or cymbal break up the sound frequencies. A wall of these would look something like a wall of barnacles.

A solid surface of these would be mounted on a sheet of rubber, ideally a very bouncy material like zectron, the substance used to make super-balls. The tiles should be able to very slightly angle upon touch; it is this loss of energy which will ultimately dissipate the sound energy. The rubber sheet would be mounted on a solid board.

It might be that the rubber is not needed and that the random geometry alone would produce better results, as the rubber would inevitably absorb some sound and therefore transmit low frequencies. A barnacle material of piezo-electric crystals on a solid wall may dissipate the energy by converting it into electricity, and a material that converts vibrations into light or other energies would be also be good to experiment with.

Two boards like this would face each other with an air gap. Any sound would inter-reflect inside this air gap, being trapped until it dissipates.

The result would look like a strange opposite to the 'egg box' echo protection found in recording studios; here the aim is maximum inter-reflection.

The shapes, thickness of the possible rubber, thickness of the board (a solid board, even metal, to aid reflection the sound should work best), and thickness of the air gap can be experimented with. It may be that the outer-facing surface, should perhaps absorb more than the 'back' surface designed to reflect it back. The principle is something like trapping light between two facing mirrors with one being semi-reflective.

Otesanek Finalised, Heart of Snow, Rules for Life

Completed the production on Otesanek today. Last things added included some eating noises which were recorded in one go as I noisily ate some crisps in the messy style of The Cookie Monster, a somewhat unusual performance which may be great fun to perform live.

After that, started production on the last of these winter songs, Heart of Snow. I'm reminded how much work all of this is. After this song I'll probably spend a few weeks tying them all together, adding some sort of unity to the project and perhaps extending all of the music. I'm keen to move on, as always, I have so many new and better ideas and life is short, but at the same time this work, like all of my art, must be the best I can manage.

Two fundamental rules for life:

First, the rule of order. The purpose of life is to create order. Life defies entropy by converting the chaos of the universe into an ordered structure. A tree, for example, converts the chaotic molecules of water and nitrogen into a solid and complex crystalline structure of beauty called a tree. All life does this, and humans are its paragon because we also order our thoughts, philosophies, and our environment as a whole, and can store and preserve information accurately - the evolution of speech, writing, and electronic storage for example are universally important, as well as inevitable, evolutionary traits. Thus, if two paths present themselves, the correct one is the one which creates the most order. The most noble professions and activities are those which create order: cleaners, archivists, and reliable people. People or things which create chaos or destroy are the antithesis of life.

Digital computers store information and create order more efficiently than biological life, so I expect it is the destiny of these to supplant biological life, and that if extra terrestrials are ever discovered, they will likely be machines. Even if not machines, these beings, like all life, will be principally interested in learning, ordering, and storing information carefully.

Second, the rule of tit-for-tat. The correct reply in a situation is the equivalent back. The correct punishment for a crime is to do to the criminal what the criminal did to society, and the correct reward for an endeavour is also its equivalent. The rule of order takes precedent however, as the defiance of entropy is of such fundamental importance to the operation of the universe; so perhaps killing a murderer, for example, should be curtailed because death is an entropic act, but perhaps killing a creator of chaos (such as a virus, or destroying a molecule that causes cancer, for example) can be justified.

Otesanek Lyrics, Lighthouse Case

A nice full day today. Started by recording most of the vocals to Otesanek. This is a complex song vocally, there are different bits in different voices. The delicate lines: "All I ever wanted to be was a Christmas tree with its pretty bows and bells, and its flashy blinky lights of joy but the forest told me no!" are high but delicate, which is always a challenge. I've sung these in falsetto. Most of the words to this huge song are complete, as in the production. Here are the full words:

Mud and straggled hair,
eyes crazed in the moonlight
of the woods.
Hacking at the soil
just like the witch had told her.
Just like the witch had told her!

All she ever wanted was a baby
but her body told her no!
What is a woman to do?
What is a woman to do?

A glint of golden root
to drag back home behind her
like a dog.
Seems it has a taste for meat,
just like the witch had told her
Just like the witch had told her!

Otesanek
Eating up larder
Otesanek
Eating up the house
Otesanek
Eating up the street
Otesanek

All I ever wanted to be was a Christmas tree
with its pretty bows and bells,
and its flashy blinky lights of joy
but the forest told me no!

There goes the cat!
There goes the teacher!
There goes the policeman!
There goes his mother!
Mother! Mother! Mother!

A flash of silver
in the hands of the stern
old woman.
Hacking at the tree
just like the book had told her
Just like the book had told her!

Otesanek
Out comes the cat
Otesanek
Out comes the teacher
Otesanek
Out comes the policeman
Otesanek
Out comes the mother
Otesanek

I'm in the forest,
I'm a tiny shoot
of shivering green.

I also completed the box/crate for 'An Octopus Finally Killing A Lighthouse Which Is Assumpted Into An Angel' - here it is:

These are quite simple to make with 3mm HDF (or MDF), but pretty sturdy. After this, foam and a lid are screwed down.

After that, work on the vocals and putting them in the song. The first results sound just fine. I'll add a few more layers. This album/sonata won't be released, appropriately, until around November.

Otesanek, The Wandering

A generally sleepless night due to my regular stomach pain, by body at times treats food like an enemy. As a result I awoke with a headache which grew as the day wore on.

Despite this I continued work on the Otesanek production. The verses were causing me problems. The simple guitar riff did add melody, but it seemed to simple or not quite right. I recorded a dub track with the vocal melody in place, to play along with that, and improvised some new guitar parts along to this and these worked much better, perhaps because there were more notes so more room for actual expression. I also added some strums which add some depth to the sound. The song is mostly complete now, the vocals are the main thing left but I'll start the final track, Heart of Snow, first. Vocal recording time must be snatched when the opportunities arrive.

I also split the intro to Otesanek into a new song, as I expected I would. The strings from 'Away in Her Manger' march on into this, and I added an element of a storm, the woods. I decided to use entirely synth instruments for the weather this time, despite having lots of real storm recordings, just for the sake of variety. I then improvised a moody guitar lead over the top in the style of Pink Floyd, aiming for a feeling of loss, emptiness, like the woman in the song. I'll add some vocals too, but this is an intro, not a song in itself.

One new element was a sound using some of my newly designed modulators. Nothing special in it, a filtered string/saw wave, but it slows down slowly then reverses. The recent Rick Wakeman concert inspired this too.

I'll try to get this music complete quickly, then the Burn of God remaster. I've also ordered a few new books for my stock; some copies of Deep Dark Light (this has never sold one copy, yet it's a good book, a truly Blake-like artwork) and some of The Burning Circus. They probably won't arrive in time for Neorenaissance, but I do have one or two to be put on sale at the museum.

Packing for Neorenaissance, Tablet Sketches

A very busy day packing, mirror plating, checking and wrapping the 30+ artworks for the Neorenaissance exhibition. Three works needed special attention and one really needs reframing because the mirror plates are about 40mm away from the wall. My solution was to use long screws and cut, drill and paint some wooden segments to fit behind them.

I also missed a painting! This was obscured in my 3D plan because of the angle of the view, the shape of it blended in with the floor, so now, The Death of Man will be in the exhibition. This distressed me because everything has long been prepared and the final list, all of the printing, poems etc. were sent to the museum weeks ago, so this last minute error was a panic moment, but at least there more than a week to go.

The last step is to make a box/crate for the Octopus Lighthouse painting. For my complex works, ones with delicate frames, I prefer to make custom packing, a simple crate of a wooden backing board, and wooden blocks to hold it. Then a lid with foam which can be screwed down. This really helps when transporting work. It's amazing to think that this painting took just 3 days to paint, but the preparation took longer, and the frame took even longer, and now the crate. Overall I started this one on February 23rd 2012, and finished 19th December (so actually 11 months overall), but later, in 2014, I made a new panel for it with some cubic zirconia and gold. People often ask how long a painting takes. You could say this one has taken 9 years so far.

Other works here will include 31st Century Crucifixion, the biggest painting on show, and Penalties, which was highlighted on the BBC website back in 2007 when it appeared in the Lowry.

Finally, I assembled the sculptures and printed material. The Octopus case will take a few days yet.

After that I made a few more changes to Prometheus, and some experiments with my graphics tablet.

I love it. I think I'll be using this a lot for future graphic art, but real media, oil paint in particular, will always by my first love. Pen and ink still has much more expressive power.

Prometheus 2.76, Rick Wakeman's Wives

After completing annual backups a day early, I had a theoretically free day but slept badly and had idea of how to neaten and improve Prometheus.

I have a few plug-in ideas, and over the years old plug-ins get replaced or superseded. I've got a system to auto-upgrade them when songs with old plug-ins are loaded. By now (after 10 years use) I'm used to a system of trialling effects and then using or updating them if they prove useful, but including just one in a song means I have to keep it. I thought it would be useful to see which songs (1000+ sequences) had which plug-ins so that I could manually update the files to keep them all up to date, so today I programmed a batch-analyser which loads (or rather looks at) a folder of song files and saves out a list of text files with song information. This should help me upgrade the plug-ins in a permanent way.

Now, I have 13 obsolete ones which are upgraded; all of these but one can be upgraded with 100% accuracy (the replacement does the same and more). The only one that can't can 'sort of' but uses a different method of tuning. I'm sure I have one or two that are hardly ever used, or have never been used. They take up memory so will be discarded if unused. Sometimes upgrading means deleting.

While adding this feature I also made it possible to change, in the program options, the sizes of the windows. This should make the program suit other displays better. I still use my ancient 17-inch square monitor, but one day will probably have to upgrade to a widescreen one.

In between working I've watched a TV concert of Rick Wakeman's The Six Wives of Henry VIII. It made me laugh. In all of his music career he poses questions and the answer is always jazz-rock. Nobody would connect this music with any wife of King Henry if they heard it first, but this humour is part of his personality as much as his music.

I'm reminded how much I'd love to, and should, perform The Spiral Staircase in a spectacular outdoor concert with fireworks, ideally at Queen's Park here.

Tomorrow I'll assemble the art for Nantwich.