Remembrance Service Finalising, Quarterly Backups, Social Media

A steady couple of days. Completed the Remembrance Service album yesterday and submitted it for digital release on May 20th. John W. came round in the afternoon with a microphone problem and I very much enjoyed our catch up. The problem was relatively easy to fix. He brought round a few recent paintings, a dream sequence. So much art to make, so little time. I'm inspired to remaster and re-record, and have a plan, well, several plans, for a future album (and albums), too.

Tomorrow is the 1st of April, so a day for quarterly backups. It marks the start of what will probably be a difficult year financially for everyone. I mused last night that benefits now are linked to savings, meaning that recipients are expected to spend and live off savings when these are sufficient, rather than receive any benefits. This is hugely wrong philosophically. Its logical conclusion is a population who have no incentive to save, and live proverbially hand-to-mouth, remaining trapped in poverty and dependency because they have no hope of growth or escape. Imagine if MPs were not paid if they has sufficient savings to live? Perhaps the population of Britain should be given a vote on that proposal?

I've spent some of today changing aspects of my website and social media to a 3rd person perspective. This makes third party management of my accounts simpler and solves a few problems. The Fall in Green website, for example, used to refer to my participation on events in first person, when our activities are an equal partnership, and some biographical aspects of a website are best written in third person. This is unusual in social media however. Even members of The Royal Family post words and items themselves. This may make them 'more accessible' and personable, but it also removes any distance, enigma, and allure. I prefer to be distant, enigmatic, alluring.

I've always been somewhat schizoid in personality. I dislike, more than ever, social media. We are now forced to give our work, our information, our creations, our biometrics, for free to the world, and these companies then sell these data for profit. In the past, people received royalties for their work. Under their regime, information and knowledge, and intelligence, have been devalued; in some cases rendered nearly worthless. Power and control over this data is what is valuable. 'Influencers' are now more important than the wise.

In a recent news story, someone was jailed for posting a defamatory comment on Twitter. It appears that no employee or executive of Twitter faced a penalty. Instead, the company benefitted from the publicity, making money from the publicity of a crime in which they were complicit.

Positive And Negative Emotions

We attach two attributes, positive and negative to feelings and actions; one good, one evil. Perhaps this dichotomy stems from Christian beliefs; the Chinese yin/yang exhibits opposites with no such attachment to good or evil, pleasure or pain. Opposites define information. The most stark example of this is in binary number systems where any number can be represented as a sequence of on or off units. All numbers, and thus all information can be broken into these most stark of terms.

Matter and antimatter too create reality in this way - well, this a bold statement, as there is currently a dearth of antimatter in the universe. This is a peculiar type of opposite. Perhaps this is worth exploring in future.

Perhaps humans have an inherent concept of positivity and negativity. We see the 'ones' in binary as positive, full of energy and life, and the 'zeroes' as hollow holes, sad nothings. In emotions we see some as good; happiness, the warmth of the sun after a cold night, as positive; and sadness, bitter tastes and things alien or harmful to life as negative.

In emotion, this can be complex. Is sadness really bad for life and happiness good for it? In art, I have observed that most of my best work is completed when unhappy; when happy I'm more likely not to take care. Perhaps happiness and contentment themselves are signs that we do not need to care, that we are being cared for - is this positive? This seems like some sort of trap, like the mythical island of joy occupied by Odysseus and his men; a feeling of something good but actually a slow death.

Isn't giving and activity the key to any success or thriving? This work can make us unhappy, life can feel like a trudge, but it can also create happiness; perhaps love itself could be described as unrestricted giving. In selfless care for others, our unhappiness perhaps gifts them happiness, their restful contentment, but this helps us grow stronger, and thrive, while the happy recipients of our work decay in blind contentment, a lazy stupor. In this case, happiness is not a sign of what is good, but a sign of what is bad for us, and vice versa.

Sex Crime

The greatest horror for a woman is to be pregnant with a bad man, and thus expend the energy, perhaps even a life of health, bringing up a child which has half of her genes and half bad genes. This is the ultimate root of why rape is a crime.

For a man, all sex is good. The more the better, as each encounter has the opportunity to share his genes. The quality of the woman's genes is less important, as it is generally trusted that she will at least attempt to raise the child. The responsibility, due to biology, is hers, and for a relatively short encounter and relatively little energy expended, the gamble is worth it.

These are inherent feelings, and probably present in all live-carrying females, and probably to a lesser extent in egg-laying species too.

Controversies

Controversies are caused by the revelation of a suppressed truth, or the revelation of lies which could be true. If something is obviously nonsense, eg. a claim that the moon is square or that the sky is green, then such claims are not worthly of commentary, debate, or attack. The same is true of something obviously true.

Commentary, debate, attack emerges from things in between, things which are true but painfully so, unpleasant truths, or lies which are uncertain and feared to be true. The controversy becomes a manifestation of suppressed fear, or the fear that others will believe, and act upon, the lies as if true.

Marius Singing, Remembrance Finalising

A night of stomach and bowel twitches and sleepless pain. Such nights feel like a 9-hour boxing match and all blows hit my abdomen. This made the morning lethargic, and for the first time since my new routine, I failed to get up at 8am.

Despite this, the day was reasonably productive, though not as much as I would like. I've decided to re-examine the Marius Fate album and experimentally look into remastering it and/or re-recording some parts, such as new vocals and new guitars where appropriate. This is my oldest album with vocals, and though it's less than 3 years old, I am a far better singer now than then; and the Burn of God re-recording indicated that the workload and cost of this is relatively small for a transformative result.

I spent today re-recording the vocals, and managed to sing almost all of the album twice, though I was somewhat foolish for doing so in the afternoon as well as morning, when rest would have been more advisable. My throat isn't sore as much as aching; the muscles on each side warm with exercise. This made me think that the advantage of a regular music performer is regular exercise and thus training.

I have new distance glasses which are instantly beneficial.

I've also finalised the music for Remembrance Service, and just about decided on the second, red/turquoise, cover. The title will generally be Remembrance Service in the charts and in official places, the full title is too long, but that full title will be on the cover and be the technically correct one.

I will soon prepare that for release, and then consider the next creative project. I have no gallery, no record company, no manager, market, fan base, or commissioner, so my goals are theoretically arbitrary, but no; I have some actual jobs. I, we, must at some point at work on the Salomé project, and could easily work on things for new festivals. For pure art, however, I must push myself further in some direction. I don't know what the theme or what that direction should be yet.

Album Finalising

A busy couple of days, finalising the work on the Remembrance Service album. These last stages take a long time, partly because these final looks, listens, checks need a clear palette to appreciate them anew... ideally I'd wait a week or few days, but I can't afford to wait, really. I've been working on the cover art too, which has take a long time. I quickly settled on several options which were the same apart from a myriad of colour choices. I showed about eight to Deb and she chose two:

She preferred the first, I prefer the second. I still haven't decided. A face is best visible on any cover, or generally, any art, as humans are attuned to faces. There is also merit in choosing another's preference. If I chose everything and toyed with it to my ideal preference, all of my covers would start to look similar, and all of my music sound similar too. I will use the second cover elsewhere in the printing, if any CD copies of this album are ever printed, which would only occur in the case of some wild future success.

Musically and creatively, this is among my best work, after a few intense years of steady improvement and hard work (including programming upgrades) on production, vocal, and guitar work. The full title Remembrance Service For Those Who Died Homeless Postponed is such a mouthful that even I keep forgetting it - but this was the phrase which I read and became inspired by, so I must retain it for reasons of artistic authenticity. This is an art album; art rock, surrealist rock, whatever, but anything unusual about the cover and title, in these circumstances, are merits. In art, what is strange now, will be mainstream in future.

I must now charge into more albums, and some more recording and use of new timbres from my MODX. I'm happy and full of energy for new music and new art.

More Album Work, Cover Art Starts, Magical Idealism

More album work today, the first draft is just about done at 31 minutes. I started by arranging the 12 vocal layers note by note so that the timing matches for each layer. The overall difference is very small, but it helps improve things that tiny bit.

I started on cover ideas:

The last one reminds me a bit of punk/Goth bands like Bauhaus. The subject of the album is somewhat post-apocalyptic, and even punk-like at times, but also orchestral-like. This look sort of matches, but I will keep experimenting with alternatives. I decided to cross two existing album covers as an experiment, so this is part Man Machine by Kraftwerk, and part Transformer by Lou Reed.

In other news, Deb has been researching Loving Lou Salome, the play and book by Italian writer, Stefano Santachiara which we aim to perform in Summer. A version has been performed in Italy and Paris, so our new and unique version will be a British premiere.

I've had stomach pain all day and felt generally very sleepy today. For me, productivity is happiness, so I must strive for this. I'm still full of ideas. I must somehow quantify my ideas on the anti-entropic nature of life, and how order and logic are the goals of life and the keys to success in nature generally. Perhaps this could be a future album. I read today about the German Romantic poet Novalis and his ideas of Magical Idealism; perhaps a surrealist rock concept album is an ideal vehicle for this.

Chester, We Liked Him Vocals, Piano Sustain Pedal

A day in Chester yesterday to see the Grosvenor Museum exhibition. Cromwell is reflective.

His malevolent shadow casts over everything.

We also met our great friend David Lawton, the number one sfumato miniaturist in Britain, and probably the world. He is, at the moment, working on a delightful portrait of me. He is only working on that and one other small painting but both will take him 2 years at least.

Today, I recorded the vocals for the "We Liked Him" song, and recorded myself playing the piano for a special, as yet secret, purpose.

I also found a way to make my sustain pedal work on both my Yamaha piano and the MODX at once, using an audio splitter cable. It works brilliantly, and now I can sustain or dampen playing on both keyboards at once, and avoid plugging the cable in/out between them. One oddly, the piano worked no matter how the polarity switch was set on the pedal, but the synth only worked set one way. Still, it now works.

I must complete this song today and the album as soon as possible. I have too many ideas and future projects.

We Liked Him Guitars, Everything For A Country Song But A Country Lyrics

Recorded the guitars for the 'We Liked Him' song today. They may need adjusting once the highly layered vocals are added. I've used four guitar layers, starting with a distorted heavy-metal mute on the bass string, then a few lovely chords which remind me just how much my Brian May guitar does indeed sound like Queen in an instant. No other guitar sounds quite like it. Thirdly I added a high wail which I actually played in one continual take for all of the song. I may have to lower parts of it when the vocals come in.

The vocal verse breaks into a D-Major 'solo' part, but it's more like a pause before two patterns of the main verse chords, this is a 'proper' solo, so I've added another later here of the same guitar in a lower string. The melody here is upbeat and full of joy and energy, it unexpectedly reminds my happier game themes, like Lightning Run.

While I remember, I thought I'd blog the lyrics to the song I sang last night. The melody is very simplistic, and the production a simple 2-time hoedown. Last night, Deb played the Jews Harp and the harmonica solo.

Everything For A Country Song But A Country

I got some jeans and a guitar.
I got some moonshine in a jar.
I got a moaning dog who's always with me.
I got a finger wagging wife.
I got a poor and tragic life.
I got everything for a country song but a country.

I left my home a long time ago
and I've been wandrin' ever since.
Floating round the planet like a lost soul.
When I'll find a place to live I don't know.

(solo)

I got a washtub for a bass.
I got a ragged dogged face.
I got a cowboy hat that's battered like me.
I got some diamonds made of glass,
and lots of grey in my moustache.
I got everything for a country song but a country.

I can't go back to where I was born.
My thirteen kids are feeling all forlorn.
Someday I'll find a place I like
and a place that likes me...

and then I'll have a country song and a country.

Ukraine Benefit

A great night last night at the Ukraine Benefit event organised by John Lindley and friends. Deb and I performed as Fall in Green, among 20 or so acts of poetry and music. About a third of the acts were musical. The night raised £1138 for the Disasters and Emegencies Special Appeal for Ukraine.

Andy Stubbs there was particularly full of rock energy. I loved playing rock organ with John Lindley's band, The Poachers. I played on tracks Grindhouse, and Bryan Ferry's Let's Stick Together - both a very easy plasy as they use the same three chords.

This was my first public outing of my new synth. A joy for me; a much lighter keyboard to carry and set up, and not needing to set up the amplifiers and mixer, which was handled by John Miller. Lovely to meet so many friends in this, still rare, performance event. This is our first of 2022 and we remain cautious about attening public events due to Covid. We were the only ones there wearing masks; Deb resolutely and professionally, and myself more intermittantly.

Arrived home hungry (I hardly ate yesterday evening) and awoke, and had a regular eye exam.

I'm still full of musical ideas, though tired of the hard work of all of it. I must work to complete this album.

We Like Him He Had Something To Say, The Album Marches On...

Lots of progress over the past couple of days. This joyous time of sunshine, little frost or mud, and no summer allergies. The album is generally complete, with finalising the vocals yesterday. For the song Remembrance Service I've used two tracks of vocals. The melody is based on D, B, then up to G, which is the main musical motif for the whole album. I can sing this in low or high octaves and gave this a try. The low voice had something of Lou Reed about it - a difficult singer to imitate because he semi-speaks and is generally out of tune. I layered this main vocal with two layers of the same melody an octave higher, almost like an angel choir in the background, and used my Choraleight effect to give it a sense of size and distance.

The last song, Photograph Of Heaven has vocals in a tinny voice, somewhat like those in Video Killed The Radio Star. The song is lots of fun. The album generally has a slow and thoughtful mood. I've assembled it all but there are a few problems to sort out. I'd like to blend tracks into each other and make sure it all links and holds together. It must fit artistically and musically, and in the narrative. There must be an overall beauty; periods of light and shade must be here and there throughout it all.

I'm on creative fire and have written 10 or 20 songs, or sketched out ideas, in the past week. Given infinite possibility, what is best to do?

Interestingly, the album so far is 29 minutes. 30 minutes or more would make it an album; less than 30, an EP. There's no artistic difference, but albums cost more to buy, are promoted more and reach different channels (there is an album chart). Both are the same amount of work, so I'd prefer an album, so must add something. Today I had the idea for a song that follows on from Photograph of Heaven called We Like Him He Had Something To Say. This can use the same (or similar) rock intro, which represent the real world vs. the world of heaven represented by the electronic sound (I even paid homage to Sparks in my lyrics, a reference to their, also-electronic, No. 1 in Heaven).

This last song is very short, and has links to the Misery's Hard To Take song from the last album in that respect. Here are the (exceedingly simple) words:

We liked him, he had something to say
We liked him, he had something to say
We didn't think we'd miss him when he died today
but we liked him, he had something to say

The production will be rock-operatic.

There are a few reasons why I'm making so much music at the moment. Firstly, I have the ability, perhaps for the first time, due to improvements in production tools, abilities, and performance skill. Secondly, painting has slowed and seems to be in a cultural nadir at the moment. I have no gallery or exhibition space, little room for new paintings, and sales of art, always low, have generally stopped. Thirdly, my music, generally, for most of the past 20 years has been melodic electronica, which doesn't represent my style, art, or music now. My ideas and direction are in the opposite domains; rock concept albums, strange linked 'sonatas', or surrealistic art-pop, and other things, perhaps all best called surrealist rock. The only option for me to be heard in those areas is to make enough new music to overwhelm the older music. Everything I do now feels better than everything I've done before, so needs priority over older work.

Life is short. On we march.

Intro, Sample Split Bug, Introducing Sparks

A nice morning, generally sticking to my new daily schedule. For most of my life I've had insomnia to some degree, due to eternal nervous excitement. Needing to wake up at a certain time adds to this anxiety and makes me less likely to sleep, so I'm ironically much more tired on the days I need to wake early for. So, recently, for a year or two, I decided to sleep for as long as my body wants or feels, let my cells take as much or as little sleep as they need. This, generally, has led to sleeping too late as well as being awake in the night for hours.

I now know the folly of my plans. Any plan that involves feelings is bound to fail. The clock and a rational logical attitude is the key to success in life - because the pure informational exchange of incorruptible data is a key force in combatting entropic decay. Eating, sleeping, working, and every activity, apart from judging other people or art - that's what emotions are for, nothing else works best without emotion. So, now I wake at 8:00, get hungry and eat at 12:30 and 18:00 (that has been the case for 30 years at least) and follow many other regular plans. My cells already love this new order. We now know what we are doing, and what to do at any specific time. Joyous.

Today I started work on the main intro, which needed a new, eerie instrument. The result is very sleepy, almost meditative. I don't really like ambient music, but variety is the spice of art, and I rarely make music with this mood, so I will use it. The result is reminiscent of the start to Synaesthesia, or the start to Genesis, my earliest teenage recordings. Synaesthesia keeps coming to mind... it's good that I'm aware of it so that I can avoid repeating myself in future.

Unfortunately, I discovered a bug in Prometheus. For long recordings, like this, over 90 seconds, I have to split samples up into 90-second seconds. I programmed a feature to do this automatically, which calculates the exact sample of the final song at any particular measure, thus, it can create a new instrument that starts on that measure and exactly trim a sample to start 1/44100th of a second after the previous one ends. This calculation gets complicated when the tempo is slid or modulated, and earlier versions of the program demanded a fixed tempo for this feature. Today I realised that it didn't work for over two sections with a wildly modulating tempo, so spent about 4 hours fixing and testing this.

In the afternoon Deb and I went for a nice wander around Dagfields. I thought, last night, that I'll probably find a rare Sparks album. I don't know why I thought that, other than I've been thinking about their early work. These antique/second hand places never have good music, but today I saw this...

Amazing. It is, I think, the only Sparks record I've ever seen. It was amazing that I should see this today, and it was rather rare. Apart from being a CBS demo, Introducing was/is perhaps their least successful. I've never heard any of the tracks, so will play it happily.

MODX Libraries, Music

A bad night of stomach pain, and overslept due to my alarm, for whatever reason, not working on Wednesdays - so fixed that. This led to a groggy and unproductive morning, struggling to find my routine.

Some jobs completed however. I set up new libraries on the MODX. These collections of sound are really useful for organising, for me as a long term storage of certain sounds which might be used in future. One can just store any 'performance' (sound) in user memory normally, but they go in any order and can't be sorted or arranged (though you could name them). Libraries make this a lot neater but you have a limit of 8 and you can buy or use bonus ones. I've created three; one of basic 'defaults' and tools that I can use to create new sounds; one of Fall in Green sounds, and one one sounds used in my albums - which might be useful if I ever perform them live. The process isn't easy. You can only (idiotically) save ALL of the current sounds to a library, so to make one you have to save everything as a backup, delete what you don't want to include, save the library, then reload the backup and delete the sounds you've just saved out - tedious.

I've also done a few more hours work on the production of these songs. The project is starting to feel tired and I've not even finished it! I need to complete the opening track, which I sketched out today for 30 minutes, then work on arranging it all... and vocal recordings... then the cover. I'm unsure how much art to create. I like to create a lot, a full 8-page CD and more, but this time I might skip this to move onto new art. I'm noticing clichés and similar ideas in my music which I want to break.

Vocals, Guitar Work

Two full days working on music. Yesterday some vocal recording for The Unremembered, a song which is (or rather has been) somewhat morose and atonal, partly because of a main riff which was off-key and evoked The Munsters. I've now changed it. Before today this song defined a new genre of zombie-rock-blues. Also did a lot of work on Photograph of Heaven, and confirmed participation in a benefit concert for Ukraine at Congleton Library next week.

Today, I recorded the guitar parts for both of those songs, a lot done. I feel more alive again after deciding on a new day routine. Routine is so important and works so well when I paint, but it can easily become too flexible when doing other jobs. Music creation is far more varied than painting and it can be easy to take a break after, say, recording a guitar part and before editing, but I feel much better sticking to daily goals and the clock for my breaks.

I've also confirmed my participation in Art Fair Cheshire in Macclesfield Town Hall in late May.

Money is tight and I fear will be for some time. Art will be my only legacy and contribution to the world so I must work and never cease. On we march.

Photograph Of Heaven

Was awake for hours in the night, but used this unique time to work and view the Remembrance music project from afar. I now work with lyrics first. My music is narrative, so the story is crucial and the music, its pace, timbre, and everything, must follow the track and drama of the words. One of my principles is that, for a good song, the listener should know what the song is about even if they don't understand the words.

A second principle is image, that the overall structure conveys a narrative as each component does; so I made a descriptive list of the path for this album. Beethoven worked out this structure first, or perhaps he did. I tend to work out a few musical pieces first as a sort of skeleton, then slightly move them about when in an early phase. I'm now working on the whole album at once, not each track at once, for this reason, to unify the whole.

This makes some activities more complex (and deeper) than they would otherwise be. The titles are changing. The first track I wrote, the one which became the musical thematic root for everything is now called An Empty Service; it was called Adagio. Another thing I did today was add some bells from the quiet synth piece, which sounds like a lost wind-chime in a maze, to The Unremembered. Its not a natural fit; the song sounds more conventional without it. Now, suddenly, after the chorus, the song jumps to silence and gentle bells for 30 seconds. This is hugely beneficial to it because it adds drama. Any contrast is generally good, and here it adds to the image, and reinforces the overall structure and links to other tracks.

All well and good.

The only structural job was to work out what came after that song. I had a hall full of ragged people in Remembrance Service, then the I Don't Get Out bells, which seems to be a jump into the past, or a memory. The Unremembered also has images of those lost or forgotten, but also elements of ghosts, trees in the mist, an ignored populace. This made me think of ghosts; this is a service for the dead, which was cancelled, so I thought that a good track would be one from the perspective of a ghost, like Watching You Without Me by Kate Bush... but most of the songs here were already sad and slow. I wanted something different to add contrast and gamut; I didn't want to change key or even melody, because that is my principle theme. I thought of the band Sparks. One of their features is using sad or disturbing lyrics in musically cheery pop songs, and making use of that contrast. It is very rare for any Sparks song to be sad and slow.

So, I decided to make a song about a ghost who had high hopes of glory and riches in life, but it all went wrong, yet now remains hopeful that, post mortem, he can still find success. To reinforce the message, I plan on a rock intro with all of the promise of musical richness, but the song itself, from the ghost's, perspective will jump into weedy electronic sounds. I wrote out the words in a flash; the song is called Photograph of Heaven.

So, I've spent today sketching out this music.

What is still remaining is the main opening track, the principle image and overture, which will, I plan, be concrète. I also need to add vocals, guitars, and still rather a lot of finishing. It's all so much hard work.

Solid Work, The Leaves Of Autumn Are Many Lyrics

A steady day crafting this music. Was awake until 11:30 or so playing on the synth, experimenting. I played a pretty tune that sounded rather like a Vangelis track from the 1980s, with a spattering of Rachmaninoff in the joyous melody. This could be expanded to become a movement in a romantic piano concerto. Oh for the time, the motivation.#

I slept badly again. I found myself listening to my favourite pop music in the night, which cheered me more than expected. Songs of bravado and happiness; You Better You Bet by The Who, Rush Hour by Jane Wiedlin, Hey Mickey, Steppin' Out, Run With Us, The Boys of Summer, Thunder In My Heart (for some reason I find Leo Sayer hilarious, but can't say why), Nobody's Diary. I slept and dreamed of having a camera with a broken zoom lens. My eyes are indeed causing problems and headaches.

These are difficult times for the world, and they seem difficult for me too. My lowest period was the cusp of the millennium, with no job, no friends, no income or savings. I had less than £200 in the world, and the hopes of finding any success with my Amiga games were fading. I reverted to a rational plan, decided to switch to an IBM-PC, a strange and generally disliked machine, and start again. The result of that plan, Arcangel, was also fruitless, again with no luck or support from publishers. I started work on the vast game The Heart of Aorkhan; my aim was to combat disappointment with vast ambition, but the game was too big, my ambitions too vast.

This led to 2002, a year of starting afresh with a decision to publish my own software online and to make lots of smaller, simpler games (such as Radioactive which, somewhat amazingly, I have sold 3 copies of this month. Perhaps the global nuclear threat is helping). I also started to record and sell game sound effects online, and in 2003 started Bytten with Andrew, to review games and form some sort of connection with the games industry. My games, and sound effects started to sell, not well, but there was growth. Every time I saw growth and tried to capitalise on it, it seemed to magically shrink away like food at the table of Tantalus. The hit of Flatspace led to the game Taskforce, which was a flop, and soon after I concluded, after years of game design and development being my joy and aim, that it was not possible to succeed in any way by making games.

This year seems to have echoes of those early years. Now, art, oil painting, and music production and performance are my passions and abilities. I have more skill and ability than ever, but perhaps, I always had more than before at every stage. The good thing about art is that is has no aim. All artists simply want enough of an income to survive and make art, but what is survival? We all survive until we die.

This music work is taking a long time, but progress is being made and each day I must battle at the rock face, working from dawn until dusk to simply do my best, completely certain, as always, completely certain of success no matter what definition that is. Even the sky is a limit to be pushed beyond.

Back to practical matters. I was unhappy with The Unremembered in its form, the verses were too drawn out, so I've chopped lots of time out (fitting in the same words with ease), and added more drama to the chorus. Tracks so far are: Adagio, Remembrance Service, I Don't Really Go Out Any More, The Unremembered, and The Leaves Of Autumn Are Many. The words in I Don't Really Go Out Any More seem to fit musically; they make the sound of the song nicer, but they are a break in the subject and theme. I improvised them spontaneously while listening to the music. The words to The Leaves Of Autumn Are Many were written but they timbre somehow harmed the epic and beautiful music, so today I've made those words vocoded, but used the music itself as the modulator, so the words are barely audible and certainly not distinguishable. This doesn't matter so much, and in fact rather suits a song about being one leaf in a pile of many.

We are bronzed leaves
bent by time
cower'd in concrete corners
carrying our lives,
loves, pains, memories
of branches, veins,
that tie us;
that tied us.

We look up
to the blanket of others, the same
we are many
we are many
we are many
we are many

Steady Music Work, 24-Bit Wav Conversion

Two steady days of music work, too slow, achingly slow to finish things, yet, this project has now accrued about 17 minutes of music.

The Unremembered song is blues, a trawl sort of song, which isn't something I usually create. It's rare for me now to include drums throughout a track; they can easily kill emotion... and the shape and structure of the song itself it rather drone-like, which I don't like, but it is good to try different things. This song does lend itself to guitar and improvisation, but that makes it time consuming to create.

I played a few variations on the main theme last night and will include these, so with the main 'adagio' this makes for three short pieces dominated by live synth performances. All were recorded live in one take, but two were recorded as a MIDI sequence, which I prefer, to have a backup and the option of editing (in these cases, no editing took place). The other track is only a 24-bit wav recording, so today I added a feature in Prometheus to import 24-bit wav files.

For my 24-bit wav to float conversion I've used this code (with the three least significant bytes of long 'sample' as the input):

    double doublesample;
// Make the 24-bit value negative
    if (sample&0x800000)
        sample|=0xff800000;
// Convert
    if (sample>=0)
        doublesample=(double)(sample)/8388607.0;
    else
        doublesample=(double)(sample)/8388608.0;
    return(float)doublesample;


A 24-bit number can vary from -8388608 to +8388607, as my code indicates, but there is some disagreement whether audio software does or should use simply use 8388607 for reasons of symmetry. The MODX, and Sony Sound Forge, seem to export waves in the full range (so does touch on -8388608). That seems more logical to me, even if it means very slightly higher resolution for negative values than positive. Sacrificing that resolution merely for neatness seems silly. I used a double just in case it led to more accuracy with these big divisions, but it is probably not necessary.

The conversion coding took longer than expected.

I had a sleepless and anxious night with many strange dreams and fevers, and awoke feeling battered and exhausted. As such, less work was done today than I had hoped. I'll fight on with The Unremembered and try to make more tracks for this project; choosing the best, the most different. I've already pushed some boundaries. I must finish, finish. I hate these slow trawls, but my music is now becoming like a painting made with tiny brushes.

Music Work, The Unremembered Begins

Two steady, if slow, days working on music. Yesterday I generally completed the production for Remembrance Service, and started work on a new song, The Unremembered. Half of yesterday involved sampling 30 or so drum sounds, and converting the classic DX7 synth sounds for playing on the MODX. These sound interesting, I generally like strange and otherworldly synth sounds. Also, in the morning, made a trip to Nantwich museum to pick to the last of the books I had on exhibition there.

Last night I dreamt of a talent contest in the hall of my old school. Someone attired in a black tie outfit was singing Putting on The Ritz. I was impressed, and said that I always struggle with the syncopation of the words to that song (in reality, I don't). This part of the dream was probably influenced by watching a documentary about Gene Wilder which featured the song in Young Frankenstein. The school fire bell went off and I asked someone to investigate. The alarm soon stopped and they said it was a false alarm. Then I noticed smoke and opened the door to find the whole school ablaze. I questioned the investigator and he admitted that he didn't bother checking for a fire and just switched the alarm off. We evacuated the school, which was fully ablaze now. A fire engine was, by chance, nearby in the field opposite and some firemen and women started to put the fire out. I felt that the dream was about missing something important due to the musical distraction; but what?

Today, some initial vocal recording for Remembrance Service and more work on The Unremembered. I added a small new feature to Prometheus to automatically scale and balance a modulator between 0 and 1 (there was already an option to scale between -1 and +1). This helped make an interesting portamento instrument where a chord easily slides from D-minor to C-Major.

Remembrance Service Lyrics

A full day of work on the production to the song 'Remembrance Service', possibly to be titled 'Remembrance Service For Those Who Died Homeless Postponed', which will be, at least, the title for this whole project. The mood is a piano ballad in the style of The Carpenters, or Ticket to the Moon by ELO, or Golden Slumbers by The Beatles. I wanted to add some mood contrast so added a sort of hip-hop break in the middle, though still using the musical themes of the rest of the song/sonata. My mind is on the image; the place, the street, a school hall with wax floors and ragged people. I also wrote some words for another song in this series today, The Unremembered. Here are the Remembrance Service words:

All the hopes.
All the tears.
All the dreams
over years.
All the worries,
wasted.
All the scrape,
and try and claw.

All the rain
poured away
from tomorrow
to yesterday.
All the rainbows.
All the sun.
All the endings
re-begun.

And through it all
we had each other,
even when
we were apart.

All the steps
we walked together.
All the wishes
of happy ever.
All those moments
in my heart
even when
we are apart.

Rest, Programming Efficiencies, Landscapes

A day of rest.

Spent the first few hours sorting and packing away artwork, then some programming. I added a stereo version of my new Proteus plug-in, then made all of the 19 sample based engines (Basic Sample, Hexo Sample, Monotone Hexo Sample, Monotone Proteus, Monotone Sample, Monotone Stereo Proteus, Monotone Stereo Sample II, Monotone Stereo Zeitraum, Monotone Zeitraum, Multisample, Proteus, Randy Monotone Sample, Randy Monotone Sample II, Randy Multisample, Randy Sample, Stereo Sample II, Vocodex Engram, Vocodex Sample, Zeitraum) more efficient with a change to the way looping samples are calculated when anti-aliased; and a change to the 'jump' for the start of a sample. Some engines can start in the middle (or wherever) of a sample, which has its uses, but I thought of a way to speed this up.

Only small, slight improvements. The new Proteus plug-in was a good pointer towards these efficiencies. None of this is really necessary, but it's nice to improve things a tiny bit, and I wanted a fairly restful day. I'm a relieved that the Neorenaissance collection is done.

A new exhibition at the Macc Art Lounge was due (is due?) to start on Thursday, but I've not had any information about it and no word about a print sale there, both of which I was promised many weeks ago. I'm not surprised at the poor communication and another promise lazily broken, but I can't help but be disappointed by it. I'll need rest and proper time and consideration, as well as to schedule (unknown) dates for any exhibition, print labels, prepare artwork; and four days notice is barely enough time.

I love the Art Lounge though, so in the absence of information I have resigned myself to doing something in April. I must rethink new art directions, and new things to create and display to the eager world. The weeks since the buying MODX have been very technical and artless. Solitary, time-consuming 'pottering'.

Painting seems to be totally out of fashion, particularly oil painting. In the recent Chainlinks newsletter of art opportunities, the only painting related opportunity (of 30 or so, if you include photography - which is barely an artform at all, even a one-armed child can do that) was for the Sky Landscape Artist of the Year. Landscapes! Landscapes are the worst art genre of all, the pretty decoration of the urban idiot. Much as I love Romantic art, and the epic nature of Albert Bierstadt, Turner, Andrew Wyeth, this quality is solidified only with extreme sensitivity and compositional genius, and emotional and mental, absolutely not visual, reality. Today, the pain and reality of nature is now erased in a decorative genre lower than that of pretty girls, weeping clowns, kittens.

Neorenaissance Ends

A generally sleepless night of anxiety and Dalinian anginas. The morning consisted of a few hours work on the Remembrance Service sequence. The initial tune is fine but I want to extend the song and add some sort of break or change of tone. I'm now working in images, like a music graphic-novel.

I worked for a few hours. Then set off on the three mile walk to Nantwich to take down the Neorenaissance exhibition. My mother joined me which was a great help as the removal process is very difficult for one person, and she helped transport some equipment (I had 4 bags and a backpack, of wrapping and tools). Deborah was to join later after a long day of work herself, with more equipment, help, and essential transport.

The official deinstallation of the exhibition was scheduled for next Tuesday, but I didn't know the time until last week, which then turned out to be an impractical 9am, with their aim to be removing the exhibition and setting up the next before 10:30, which struck me as hideously optimistic. Each of the 30 or so paintings need wrapping, four boxing in specific crates, and there are books, sculptures etc.

I requested an earlier take-down time and, thankfully, mercifully, was permitted to do this today, strictly from 3pm to 5:30. Volunteer X, who I had not met, was on duty to greet and assist, though he did not assist.

I arrived. X said "We've just been talking about you."
"Good things, I hope?", I joked.
"Wellll...." he said.

What does this mean? This immediately made me dislike X.

Then: "The only feedback we've had is that people like the poems."

I dislike X more. Then: "I like the frames." Again more casual insults; followed by "I can't do any work that involves bending, lifting, pushing, or pulling". In practice his assistance was talking while watching us work. Perhaps I am harsh about his disability. Whether a physical feebleness or laziness, both are unfortunate burdens.

Well, I remain still grateful for the chance to dismantle early, which took two and half hours with the essential help. In contrast to today's experience (and indeed, X's moans at the poor way things are apparently run), my experiences with Nantwich Museum have been very good; well organised, good and timely at communicating, flexible, supportive, and everything else needed to stage a good exhibition, and I would love and can only hope to work with them again in future.

For me, Neorenaissance was a continuation from the 21st Century Surrealism exhibition, and I'm sure would have been more popular had Covid not intervened. Of my 17 solo exhibitions, this involved the most people, and was, despite Covid one of the most seen. It's the first exhibition to have produced a book, and I hope that the creative expression benefitted from the many voices. I could repeat this, involving more poets, different media, but it already feels old, done, lacking focus. Some of the Cubby Hole exhibitions, like ESAUM, or The Seventh Circle, had an element of fun and newness, more of a thematic direction, and also involved other people.

I've been painting for 15 years or so, but this still feels very like a tiny, minuscule, beginning. Barely the start of an experiment. I want everything from now on to be different, better, bigger, but all art is a bold step into the desert with a happy song, and no water. I thought today that, for an artist, the first 40 years are the difficult ones. I have 25 difficult years to go, and at times I feel somewhat weak myself. May the gods, the fates, the muses, grant me 50 more years.

Remembrance Service, Ways Of Recording

A great morning yesterday. I threw off the shackles of programming, tied to numbers and the world of machines, and got back to art. I wanted to work on a song, Remembrance Service.

I've used a few methods of making new music, two key methods. For years I've generally sequenced most of the song. Sometimes I've added live parts; guitar solos, piano solos, as overdubs onto the base sequence. Most recorded music will have a base track, a click track, a source reference like this. This is a very powerful, but controlled system, it can lack the spontaneity of a live performance. To some extent this balance is the balance trod by every compose since Mozart's day. Bach's music was very 'written', very sequenced. There were few expression markings. Later, the scoring simply became more complex, instructing the hapless performer how to play; effectively adding more 'commands' to the sequence.

In recorded music, a composer can throw this out of the window and simply play 'live'. Some of the most expressive music works this way, perhaps live music has that spark when a band jam together, improvising passionately off the script, bending the music to the ideal as it happens. This is the most expressive way to make music, but it can lack control and direction. Solos might go on for too long, or music that's just not part of the theme might appear, and complex parts like fugues or canons probably won't appear; those are too complex to be made up on the spot.

For some of my music, starting with the Cycles & Shadows album, I started by playing live in one take, recording this (generally solo piano) piece and then adding more over the top. This was wonderfully expressive, a world apart from the flat sounding sequences. But this is difficult to compose. The music tends to be very loose and so adding layers is a looser process. The starts and ends of sections, verses, choruses or other parts, can be anywhere and it takes a long time and a lot of effort to add more. The most efficient way is to play live again, but again, that can lack control.

I still tend to favour sequencing because is is much easier to add more layers and parts, more sounds, more flexibility, but for this new song, Remembrance Service, I thought I'd try something new. I can play piano well enough, so why not play a live part as the backing and hook the tune around that - but, I wanted some ease of editing.

Fortunately I've programmed a neat little tool into Prometheus which, beat by beat, sets a unique tempo to keep the sequencer at the right speed even when the source music is varying wildly. It allows, for example, to visually keep 4 patterns to a section, and make any verses/choruses/lines appear dead flat and neat, while the actual timing isn't like that at all.

I've used this feature just once before, in Nightfood for the expressive piano solos in there. The whole sequence suddenly slows down and moves at per-note speed. This makes it realy quick and easy to add the bass or any other instruments without worrying about where to put them... if I put something one beat before the end, that's where it will sound based on where that 'beat' is played in the piano track.

So, I added this yesterday for the first time on a longer, 2+ minute, section. It sounded great, but, the timing was out, and it kept marching more and more out. So off, in fact, that the feature became useless and I fell into a panic'd frenzy that only comes from finding a bug.

So, after a joyous day until 4pm, I collapsed into seeking this bug. It was not obvious. Today I set up a full testing regime and recorded 3 MIDI tunes from different sources (Sekaiju, the P105 and Prometheus) to check the timing. These all matched. Then I set uo a long song with varying tempo to try to match and set the tempo on a per-note basis. What the computer has to effectively do is play a record and move the speed up and down like an eager conductor, so that the click of each beat hits exactly on each note, no matter when the next note will appear.

I must have tried about 50 different tweaks and changes to the formula, which, for integer values, seemed to work correctly. In the end, the answer was easy, it was about the precision of the floats vs. integers. The timing really needs to be good because errors will accumulate. The odd thing is that I tried this right at the start of testing but it didn't seem to work then; ah well! It does now.

This whole thing has caused me great stress, coldness, shivers, hook-bent schizoid fears, in these times of too much stress. The world needs saving. The world needs art! - that greater power than politics.

War in Ukraine wages on and Russia is slowly reverting to it's Stalinist roots. Countries have been conquered by empires before. Countries have been attacked indiscriminately before. But no empire has absorbed a population by attacking it indiscriminately.

Bowie Dream, Sample Auto-Loop Detector

I dream of being in a school hall or similar place. It was evening and there were stained glass windows, pot plants, and a few people. I was playing music there, with my synthesizer, or singing, or guitar, or something. A middle aged David Bowie walked in with a train of other people, including a blue man with white hair and sunglasses who looked somewhat alien. David joined me on stage and I enjoyed playing music with him. I felt honoured, awed, happy, emotional. Then I realised that it was a dream, that David was dead, and that the people were not real. I felt dreadfully sad at the realisation and wept, telling the people in the crowd that they were just dream characters. They didn't understand and tried to console me.

I spent the morning programming an automatic sample loop detector. It takes a section of the sample, then compares it with a future section, moving the second window through it, calculating how close the match it. If there is no match, it moves the first window along and keeps trying. It works amazingly well and can make either simple or complex loops depending on the size of the window and how closely the pattern has to match. This instantly speeded up my sampling of some of the MODX multisamples, and I managed to sample a few flutes and strings, and a piano. I'm unsure if these will actually be that useful... I have pretty good instruments already; but the auto-looper is a fantastic new tool.

I need to start creating. I have all day, full time, to create art, and I work non-stop and yet seem to produce so little.

Deb and I watched, somewhat appropriately given the news, The Death of Stalin. A somewhat brutal and torture-filled comedy, and probably accurate.

There are a last few days of the Neorenaissance exhibition left and I'm working on the collection details. I have too many paintings which need selling or getting rid of to make work for the greater works in my mind and ability.

Sampling

A long and tiring day. I so want to work on new music but found myself sampling some sounds from the new synthesizer. This is a mammoth task, but some waves really need transferring if I am to use them in Prometheus. I sampled almost all of those in the SY-85, but this has about 10 times more (or 50 times more), so I'll have to avoid this 'rabbit hole' of possibility, but today's samples have been worth it, and will be useful for years to come. The SY-85 sounds were and are so very well used, so a few days or even weeks of assimilating these will be worth it in the long run. I do, however, ache to be creative. I might have to program an artificially intelliget auto-loop point detector.

The take down for the Nantwich exhibition is looming but I still can't plan it, waiting for several people to get back to me with possible times, possible actions. Very frustrating. Deborah and I seem to be the only people who are reliable with basic details like dates and times. I'm getting increasingly annoyed at the rudeness and laziness of those who say they'll do something of get back to me, but don't. It seems to be almost unheard of these days to have anyone actually do as they state.