Another sleepless night, full of energy and loose electricity. Stanley Spencer's electrical aura fills the room, the ghost of an artist struggling in life, to realise great success after death, like most artists. People like dead heroes, they've beaten them, so are free to praise them without fear of competition for worldly resources, and their increasingly rare work is now increasingly valuable. The British way, as Elizabeth Garrett Anderson knows, is to obfuscate, criticise, block, and shout down anyone good at anything, then after 30 years of their toil, swap, and make their former victim a 'national treasure', piling on praise and acclaim for every act no matter how trivial. Nobody can win by aiming to please, we must please ourselves, and artists doubly so. Stanley Spencer electrically fizzes into a dark corner, a self-made shrine of static electrical design.
I dragged myself up and started work with glee on Prometheus, finishing the spectrum analysis coding, refining it and making the settings saveable and loadable. I then programmed two audio effects, a stereo version of my now-famous band distortion effect, and a phaser. I've wanted to make a phaser for some years but thought this was simply a different chorus effect; in a way it is, but only recently has Wikipedia revealed that its a chorus which uses an all-pass filter.
The algorithm for an all-pass filter is:
output[i] = old + power * input[i];
old = input[i] - power * output[i];
And old is put into a buffer with a variable delay, typically a triangle or sine wave to make it sweep. The effect sound brilliant. My algorithm is:
1. old = buffer[delayedbyafewmillisecs];
2. output = (old + power * input) * -feedback;
3. buffer[now] = input - power * output;
Vary the delay, and loop forever. The feedback parameter should be between 0 and 1 (don't make it 1 or it will feedback infinitely and howl; zero will turn the effect off).
I've rebalanced Heart of Snow. The EQ tool isn't perfect but it does help.
I've also had an apologetic email from Amazon who, after a week of ne response, have informed me that they will send 7 replacement books for the defective ones - hurray! So, although later, I will have all of the books.
Now, I must try to relax. I am concerned that my copy of Visual Studio will not register - probably a fault of Microsoft. Jobs for the week include making the Spotify Canvases for Heart of Snow and Burn of God, and mastering Burn of God.
