Salome, Sampling

My Covid test today matched Deb's and is very slightly positive, a barely visible line. I feel well, but will remain in my room until my test is competely clear. By chance, the O.N.S. survey will test me tomorrow with a more accurate polymerase chain-reaction test.

A full day of practising the piano music for the Salome event. Going over sheet music like this is fairly new to me. I've managed to play about 8 of the 12 pieces today, each varying in complexity. I feel the urge to play too quickly.

After that some sampling of the MODX waves. I've discovered that I've left the filter active, so the waves I've sampled so far have a low pass filter applied, although it was/is very high, which is why I didn't notice. I've sampled two violins, so many good strings on this keyboard, so much to sample.

Covid, More Samples, Prometheus

I had hoped to paint over the past week, but fate has intervened and I've been confined to my room due to Covid-19 and the risk to my parents. This has resulted in a tedious, but useful and one-day needed, job of sampling some of the MODX samples for use in Prometheus.

Yesterday I updated Prometheus to make it display a loop section as well as the main sample. This was surprisingly useful, and very good for checking whether a loop was an efficient length. There was no easy to determining the loop length otherwise; the start and end points are typed and the formula '(end-start)/44100' will give the length in seconds, but getting the computer to do it is easier!

Here's a look at a sample:

And it's loop region:

I also completed the renaming/respelling of my sample bank, and sampled all of the bass sounds (well, the ones I find useful), a choir sound, and a few others. This auto-looper is really useful. The results sound very good, and can create new and unexpected loops. That FX parameter in the images is looper sensitivity and adjusting it gives different, but always smooth, results each time.

Today I've finalised the changes to Prometheus. Then, I designed a poster for the Salome event. Here's a draft so far:

With the date confirmed for August 3rd, and printed 4 of the pieces to practice on piano. The MODX Bosendorfer piano is rather poor; it is more mellow than the tinny CFX piano the MODX comes with, but the samples seem to be a bit whiney and cheap somehow, which is really extraordinary for Yamaha. My P105 sounds better than any piano on the MODX - oh for a MODX P105 piano!

I spent a lot of today trying to get the best out of the Bosendorfer samples, and have made a piano that is much better, for me, than the preset. Due to the terrible interface on the MODX (an example: 17 samples each of which has the same volume and filter envelope, but no way to copy or paste or share data, so every parameter on every page must be manually duplicated by hand).

This evening, I've completed my quarterly backups.

I'll Lateral Flow test for Covid later, either tonight or tomorrow. Always suspicious, I know that the tests are very unreliable to the point of being nearly pointless. I feel generally okay, a little sore in the throat. I have so few LFTs that I'm reminded of the engine start scene in The Flight of the Phoenix. Only 3 remain... will it be a hit or miss? Will I have enough to fly?

Deb is unwell but recovering. One good, unexpected, thing about catching Covid is that natural immunity is apparently both stronger and better than vaccine immunity, and perhaps, over time, each encounter with Covid over the years will be less and less severe. Of course, catching a disease, especially Covid, can harm your body in long-term ways, and almost always causes some scarring or damage, so it's never 'healthy' to do so. Training your immune system to combat a pathogen is only useful if you are due to encounter the pathogen again.

So, the first half of the year has ended. It started really busily with music, then slowed a little. My computer book is nearly complete and I hope to start some painting. Generally I'm frustrated and annoyed at having good ideas and great ability, but my time seems to be wasted or thwarted by silly things! Bad luck, illnesses, public events or pointless meetings, the hopeful scrape for money, silly things. I must summon the strength to smash at creation. I must somehow summit the mountain, roll the rock over one final ridge before it can freely tumble down the other side and create the great works I know I am capable of creating.

Sample Banking

Yesterday I decided to sample more of the MODX waves, but this revealed a slight issue with my sample library. All of the music waves, 3208 samples, include a midi unity note in the SMPL chunk of the file, which indicates the note of the sample. Prometheus has 5 octaves, from C0 to C5, and Prometheus' C2 is my middle C. If I need a lower or higher sound it's easy to create a new instrument that sounds lower or higher. Protracker, if I recall, had only 3 octaves. Having more or fewer octaves isn't a limitation of playing on a sample-tracker like this.

But the ISO standard treats C4 as middle C. To be correct, I could have (and still could) set my C2 to be C4, so starting at C2 rather than C0, but that's a bit confusing because Prometheus is a sequencer, its C2 isn't always middle C, the note name is just a label. This creates a few inconsistencies when faced with my sample bank. I only use it for Prometheus, and 95% of the sounds stretch over 5 octaves at most, so it's easy to pitch the octave at whatever is convenient rather than 'exact'. For instruments with a big range, like pianos, I can use a second instrument for the lowest or highest part. But all of this means that the midi unity note in the file is really the Prometheus unity note, and limited to a 5-octave range.

It made me think that a better option would be a bank that has the correct global unity note set. This isn't hard to do, and almost all of the sounds are like that anyway, but their note is at the wrong octave. It's easy to adjust this automatically on loading, it's already an option in Prometheus, so I've decided to rename and re-calculate all of the unity notes in my sample bank, setting them to the midi standard of C4 and note 60 equalling middle C. It makes the filenames easier too, because because some notes could be below zero, which was a bit of a pain.

This has some downsides. Firstly, C4-named string sound, for example, would play at C2, so the name is misleading - hopefully this won't matter, the name isn't important or referenced really. Secondly I have from the huge job of hand-naming and converting 3208 files. Fortunately, over 2000 are sound effects or percussion sounds that don't need or use this information, but this still leaves me 1000 or so files to convert. A third problem is that my notes which were out of bounds (very few, such as the lowest piano notes) were falsely set to a Prometheus number, falsely tuned up... so I have to re-set those...

...but unfortunately I can't save out the explicit midi note number. Saving a sample only saves out the Prometheus unity note, which is limited to 5 octaves. Sigh. So I've cheated a little and re-programmed SFXEngine to save an explicit midi unity note to an SMPL chunk, and I'll make Prometheus auto-correct any out-of-range notes. This will only be needed for a few sounds.

This will enable me to sample sounds that span a keyboard much more easily, so it can be seen as part of absorbing the MODX into my music system.

In other news, I attended the virtual Sacred Realms Exhibition opening last night, my first real Zoom event - my only previous Zoom was the test event. It looks great. Deb is recovering from Covid steadily and my energy levels haven't returned to normal after last weeks busyness and drama. I'm full of ideas and plans... time is short. I must fix these thousands of files as soon as possible.

Man on the Edge of Emotion Colour Study, Descartes Tone Study

Painted the Man on the Edge of Emotion Colour study today, I felt too tired for a full day of painting. I used Dali's 'Suburbs Of A Paranoiac Critical Town' as colour inspiration, with a few changes here and there. My painting is suffused with skulls and the desert... more-so than Dali, who was already somewhat ossiphilic. The hard part for me is my face, it's a jumble of shapes in nothingness, like swirling atoms. Is this mostly background? It will be face-like and contain elements of sky and other things too, so mostly painted in situ rather than pre-planned.

The aim of the colour study is to test the overall look and colour balance and is invaluable. There are definite changes and decisions that are made here that would affect the painting detrimentally to do during underpainting itself.

Yesterday I drew out the pencil tone study for the Descartes painting too. This too is very complex, beyond 'colouring in' any lines, but this is fine when a tone guide is there. These two steps; tone study and colour study are so useful and both speed up and improve the actual painting.

Midsummer Music Picnic

Show day yesterday. I was concerned about the Covid potential, after certainly being exposed to Deb's covid before her primary symptoms developed. My sore throat from the evening before remained, but a sore throat and sniffles are consistent with hay fever. The problem with being asked how you feel is that things like sore throats and headaches can appear from nowhere and can mean nothing. I felt energetic enough. My thermometer read a nominal 36.4 consistently.

The night before I dreamed that I was a small, dark-haired, girl. I was being followed in the dark by a clone, which disturbed me. I went home, which was a church-like building on a dark and wind-blown hilltop. I entered and the clone tried to follow me, but I closed the door with a 'you're not coming in!'. I took this as rejection of Covid.

The show went to plan despite the changes due to the lack of Deb. I performed a few pieces with playing at vocals at the same time, usually simplified versions, and a few magical pieces were played to Deb's pre-recorded voice. I joined in with a few group songs but was unhappy with my performance there; there are times when playing an unheard song by ear in the air can work, but it will normally take a few takes to get things right. The bass and main chord is particularly vulnerable. All group jams or songs need a firm bass or beat as master. I used a pre-programmed beat for the blues song Let Your Line Hang Low, but it was too metronomic and the chord changes in the song, which is a sleepy and 90bpm on the 1930s recording, jumped to a jazzy 150 and the rapid changes confused the keyboard. I wish it would start a beat at the instant press of a key, then keep playing it. I can only start if I hold it. Despite a million over-complicated settings on the MODX, the one I want isn't there. Its interface is so very badly designed.

The other acts were a mix of, generally, acoustic guitar based tunes of folk, rock, blues. A school choir sang songs of predictable quality, including a predictably egregious Gary Barlow song. Cherie performed a few poems and I played music with her. An electric 8 string lap guitar added some colour, and a first time acoustic-folk performer as well as Andrew Stubbs were excellent. It was also nice to see the, now rather frail, actor Christopher Gilmore who read two poems, still in fine voice, at the end of the evening.

Mike, the library manager really worked hard on this and helped me a huge amount including with transport. I got home at 9pm, and he probably nearer 10, a long day on the longest day, for the sake of art.

I felt so tired overnight, so much gear packed, unpacked, carried. Some of my dreams are lost in ether, but I was woken by a nightmare of a bedraggled dark-haired girl leaping into my bedroom through the window.

Today my throat and upper chest remains sore but, apart from the aches from yesterday's work, I feel generally ok. I dropped off some Vitamin-K to Deb. Everything is packed away. I will probably spend today resting and perhaps starting on painting preparations.

Covid Corona Solstice

After a fine rehearsal yesterday, Deb felt a little off colour in the evening, and today had more cold-like symptoms, finally testing positive for Covid with less than 24-hours to go before our performance. Even health aisde, this is sad news as we've worked so hard on this unique event.

This led to a mad preparation for a contingency plan. I printed out all of the words for the hour-long show and worked out how much I could perform solo, with either music parts or vocal recordings to fill in. I've generally felt fine today, but this evening have a sore throat which may be hay fever or the beginnings of the virus itself. Mike from the library has kindly leapt to help, offering transport for me. Everything depends on how I feel and test tomorrow.

Covid, the molecule shaped like the sun, shows itself on the very solstice.

Descartes, and Two Rehearsals

A busy and tiring day. Started by tracing the first stage for transferring the Descartes underdrawing to the canvas, then toned the canvas. This came out uneven because the paint dried just a little too fast on this warm and dry day. I've adjusted my procedures to address this. My art procedures and lists of what to do, I don't rely on memory.

Then Deb came round to rehearse for the Midsummer Music Picnic, certainly out best show to date. Our music is becoming more melodice and regimented, but there is room for freedom too. Deb is exposed to Covid at work, which is a worry. I hope we can both remain clear to perform. After a run-through of the new tracks, a full recorded rehearsal, and then changes to make, new instruments to tweak and settings to note.

Then an attendance at my first Zoom Meeting, my first ever video-type call, months or years after thousands of people have done this during the pandemic. I bought a web-cam only a couple of months ago for a video-based application which didn't occur, so now I at least had the ability. Today's Zoom event was another rehearsal, for the virtual opening event of the 'Society for Art of Imagination' preview, which takes place next Sunday at 1pm EST.

Now past 9pm and I'm still finalising the Midsummer Music plan. We will be adding lots of fun and strange audience interactions...

Descartes

Working today on a complex 'portrait' of Rene Descartes, about time, mind, and certainty/uncertainty. I started work on this in 2009 and did extensive preparation work then, but abandoned it. My approach will be different now. Back then I built a new painting from real-world models and photographs made to mimic the things in the idea sketch, but this particular painting was very abstract and difficult to create that way. Gradually I moved more into copying the idea sketch exactly, but now I use that as the start and add more as needed to match, or enhance, the singular feeling and concept.

While drawing it out, I became aware that I've worked all day and every day on art since at least 2007, including at least some work on every Birthday and Christmas Day, and perhaps worked more before then, when I noticed holidays even less frequently, and hardly spoke or interacted with humanity. I will never stop.

Literature

Literature is the new mythology.

Summer Music Finalised

A slower day today, more music composed and completed. Wrote out a melody for a poem calked Velvet Gelt, about German hyper-inflation. The poem has a happy, carefree mood of childhood and I've made it an umpah-tune, with an accordion darting between C-Major and F-Major and a simple melody, switching to climbs in 5ths, then the same melody in A-minor for the reflective parts about the war.

The second melody to write is for parts of Richard Dadd's 'Fairy Feller's Master Stroke' poem. I was thinking about Greensleeves and old English forests, and wrote a waltz for harp with the same lilting rhythm:

Generally, this event will push my piano playing a bit due to the requirement for sight reading, and a few ever-so-slightly more complex multi-hand melodies. All good.

I've had a few painting ideas too. I find that the Jackson's stretcher bars I have are no longer made or sold (bah) so I'm stuck with them and can't enlarge or interchange them... and I'll have two spare. I had a painting idea in the night, a sort of portrait of a Tralfamadorian, an idea composed while in timeless space and observing, mentally and philosophically, several temporal selves. My biggest stretcher is a paltry 44 inches (117cm) which isn't big enough for the idea, but, it will have to do. It's been so long since I worked on a large painting I can barely remember how it's done.

I'll prepare the canvas tomorrow, but most of my time must be on music. My mind can't cope with learning all of these tunes and composing a painting.

Showtime, and Train Dream

Two very busy days, but now of music rather than painting. The one-hour performance next Tuesday for Make Music Day is a challenge that requires rehearsals and lots of new music to compose, notate and practice. I much prefer and like performing new work - partly because I and we are improving with each passing month and event. My music now is more melodic and fitting to the words, rather than setting a mood in the background. I'm also scoring much more of it, so learning to sight-read rather than memorise everything. All of this means that even older pieces need more work, typing up scores that have not been there. I've made notes (if you excuse the pun), but the live versions of oft-performed pieces, like 'Whose Apple Thou Art', are always different than the recorded versions.

So, now I want to score everything and use this as the basis for shows from now on. Plus, we've decided to do many new pieces for this summer event. We'll be performing some extant tracks live for the first time (like Humpty Dumpty's Whimsical Semantics) and performing several existing poems for the first time (even one by Richard Dadd!), that means writing music. We rehearsed yesterday, only working through the new tracks, and I roughly sketched out four new tunes for four new poems. One, 'Crumpsy Madpash: The Tale of the Short Tempered Madman' has been performed as a poem twice but never with music. 'Beetle Circus' needed a custom bass loop designing for the MODX.

Today I've scored many tracks for the first time, even if only in notated form, and finalised the score for new piece 'Effervescent'. That is a somewhat Celtic sounding waltz. Even existing works which were scored reasonably well (like Sky Robes of Celeste) didn't state where the words were. Our poems, read to music rather than sung, aren't easily added to sheet music. The software likes to automatically fit lyrics to syllables. I've also finalised complete scores for some works which were partly sketched out, like Herr Kasperle.

Several of these new works need new instruments designing on either the MODX or Microkorg, which can be a frightfully time-consuming process, but I can whizz through this and use presets as a starting point.

This, plus today I had a third piano lesson with my student Peter.

For years, I've had recurring dreams of missing trains. In last night's dream I missed one, with some other musical and artistic friends. We sat in a café and waited for the next train. They showed me some of their latest music and book releases. The next train, an old 1970s-era diesel, arrived and I and the others ran and just caught it. It stopped at the next station and the others got off to visit a café or shop, which I thought was idiotically risky, and the train sped off without them. So this time I managed to catch the train.

Hand of Destiny, White Oil Paint Comparison

Another full painting day. Started by completing the underdrawing for Man on the Edge of Emotion, then transferring that to a pre-toned canvas panel. Then, painting, and I decided to glaze Hand of Destiny, the biggest underpainted and unfinished work from 2011:

The idea seemed to lack the avaricious emotion of the older (now destroyed) painting which inspired it, 'Soul of Genius'. Here is the study:

The hand here seemed otherworldly, which was perhaps a benefit... so I made my hand that of a tree, which changed the idea. Perhaps there is an environmental dimension, or one of rebirth and the cycles of life and death. I'm still unsure if I prefer the older version, but that seemed a little too boring, too flat, originally, which is why I destroyed it.

The new version definitely has something extra.

In other news, my white oil paints arrived, so I could compare different brands:

The amazing thing is how different each look and feel. These are:

#1. Michael Harding's Titanium White #1 with Titanium and Zinc (pre-2021, no longer manufactured), in safflower oil.
#2. Blockx Titanium-Zinc White, in poppy oil.
#3. Charvin (a new brand to me) Titanium-Zinc White, in poppy oil.
#4. Blockx Zinc White, in poppy oil.
#5. Michael Harding's Titanium White #1 with Titanium only (2021), in safflower oil.
#6. Blockx Titanium Only, in poppy oil.
#7. Michael Harding's Foundation White with Lead and Titanium (old, no longer available), in linseed oil.

#1 and #2 are almost identical in hue, the Blockx very slightly more grey and indicative of slightly more zinc than Harding's. #2 was by far the heaviest tube by weight, despite having less millilitres, and the paint was thicker than Harding's. #3 had a very slightly yellowish hue, as did #6 (probably the oil), but all of #1, #2, #3 were very similar. Charvin's paint was not as thick/dense, though it is two-thirds the price of the Blockx. From this tiny 20ml sample it feels like a good paint, it had oil on top of the tube which can indicate a pure paint without oil-absorbing additives, but it is not as good as Blockx.

#4, the zinc white, is notably grey. A surprise as I'd always thought zinc to be the whitest pigment, but I was wrong; my belief was based on Dali's words, and he was used to using Lead ('Silver') White, and probably in Linseed. This zinc had a good feeling, fine ground and better than the Winsor and Newton zinc I remember (I don't have any here to compare).

#5 was dry in the top of the tube and very thick, semi-set, a problem with a few Harding whites, his tube seal is simply poor. I extracted a good lot to remove any semi-oxidised paint. The bulk of the white remained very thick and very stringy, slumpy, a horrible gluey texture.

#6 had a fine feeling, little different from #1 and #2, which was a surprise, as my experiences of pure titanium paint have been stringy and difficult. This felt easy to use. It was the whitest and brightest of all of the colours. #5 being a close second.

#7 is here mainly as a comparison, particularly with ageing. It felt dry, stringy, unpleasant, and the tube oil was very brown, the colour of old ear-wax. The texture of the applied paint was very smooth and strokeless, a fine grain pigment.

Of all, I like #2 best, although #6 is very good too. #1 looks and feels almost identical to #2, but, judging by weight and viscosity, has a slightly lower pigment load. I like #1, my standard white, and it's cheaper than Blockx by some margin, but is no longer available.

Man On The Edge Of Emotion Idea

Second day of underpainting You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend, all complete. Whenever I paint I feel this is what I was put here to do, though music can teach me lessons in art too. I'm faster at painting than ever, and want to complete lots of ideas.

At 4pm, I started a new composition from an idea from the start of 2018, circa the time of 'There Is Still Hope', called 'Man On The Edge Of Emotion':

I reworked the idea, adding more detail and clarity:

I haven't had time to transfer it to canvas yet.

I'm filled with ideas, overlwhelmed with enthusiasm. Oh for more resources and time to do this! I'm reminded that we have just 8 days to prepare an hour-long performance for Congleton next Tuesday. I'm faster than ever, painting and do more than ever in a desperate rush, but there is still too little time.

You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend

A full painting day, underpainting 'You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend'. The colours match the study, greys, greens, pinks, related to 'Half A Broken Heart' in this way. I wanted a mood of longing,

The light red and mars black colours are always colours to wrestle with, they are borderine transparent, so tricky to apply evenly. My usual medium of sallfower oil and solvent, which I hardly ever use, just a tiny tiny wetness sometimes, for any sticky colours, was too thinning, so I've made up a bottle of pure safflower. I noted that I bought that oil in 2011! I should probably buy more. I've kept it stored in small, air tight, 30ml amber glass bottles, and even filled the top air-gap with carbon dioxide using a bicycle tyre inflator capsule, so after 11 years the oil seems to be just as fresh.

How To Organise Computer Files, First Day of Painting

Two busy days. Spent yesterday finalising the next (and hopefully final) draft of How To Organise Your Computer Files. I've made quite a lot of changes since the first proof. Deborah spotted about 40 mistakes of different sorts, and her feedback on other aspects were very useful too. I've added two more pages and a few more illustrations. A second proof is on the way. I think the book will be ready by the end of the month.

Started painting today, and worked on a panel from last year called The Wheel Of Attraction And Repulsion, about the waxing and waning of feelings. The idea was that the painting could hang either way. I completed the underpainting in a few hours:

It's on a smooth panel, cut and drawn out last year. I have a circular frame ready for it. I'm pleased with the ultra-smooth quality of this first underpainting in months. Often it seems that, after an extended break, I come back better than before. The same with piano playing as with painting.

I also added a third glaze layer to a painting from last year, Self Portrait as Tripod. I wasn't happy with the sky and it needed a new layer.

Finally, a colour study for a new work, You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend:

That's a reasonably large work, but I plan to scale up all of my work so that 50cm is now my standard size. Now to prepare other compositions and drawings. I want to buy more Cobalt Blue! I need more money for paint and need to sell more of my great paintings of the present and past.

In other news, Deb and I have been confirmed as the headline act of a concert in Congleton Library for Make Music Day, on the 21st of June. I have the idea of making it a relaxed event, something of a jam. I'm reminded of the summer event that Sabine Kussmaul and I took part in, in the Iklectik Art Lab in London, a 24-hour concert in 2015.

Tonight will be my first gamer night with Hayden, Simon, and Aff since before the pandemic. Unlike piano playing and painting, I know that my gaming skills will not have improved. I care nothing for gaming.

Lyceum Afternoon Concert Cancelled, Painting

The day started with news that our, Fall in Green's, Lyceum Afternoon Concert has been cancelled as we 'do not match what the current audience are looking for'; a judgement, perhaps, of our show based on the Market Hall Event. Who can say? This frees up time to work on the Salome premiere, which is/was due to take place a week or so before this. We had hoped to perform some of Salome at this concert. This cancellation, and the lack of reply to our enquiry on the matter, confirms that approaching the theatre is as futile as it has always been, despite my optimism at our last meeting, which is the greatest sadness; but isn't hard reality always so?

Generally, today was a first day of visual art, reviewing the work from the end of the 2021 season. This was annoying at first; my new ideas are so much better than the old ones that tie me to the past years and past moods. The easiest option would be to destroy all of the old ideas, throw the canvases away, file the unfinished work - but that's brash... there are some good things here, and all prepared, so I must try to finish as many as possible as quickly as I can, then restart. I traced over the underdrawing for a painting called 'You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend', and photographed and printed the underdrawing, then used that for a pencil tone study and glued a second print to wood for an oil study.

Then an oil study for a painting called 'Mama Mia Here I Go Again'. There were many options here and I wasn't quite happy with it, the mood of it felt too strange and introspective. Then, a colour scheme of a stormy landscape, with the sun breaking though, appeared in my mind and the quote from Watership Down 'All The World Will Be Your Enemy'. This suddenly transformed the painting, in my mind, to one of a lone figure in a storm, but with melancholic remembrance, the mood of Elgar's Cello Concerto. The recollection of a lost England, somehow. At 5pm I worked on the colour study:

In other joyous news, I've had three paintings confirmed in my first online exhibition as part of the international group, The Society for Art of Imagination. 'Sacred Realms' will open on June 26th.

I've ordered some paints too; Blockx Titanium Zinc White, and the same by Charvin, who also use poppy oil (I'd prefer safflower myself, it is even more transparent). I have enough whites now to compare many brands.

Salome Refinements, Glass, Board

Spent the morning refining the Salome sheet music. I've realised that having to read the music is very limiting to a performance, it must essentially be that of the music which is always a lot more simple than my ebullient piano playing. Rough notes allow more freedom, and more brilliance, but can lack structure. This feels like a familiar balance, between playing 'correctly' and playing with 'feeling' - a balance that must be steered with care and élan. I've fitted all of the music on 2 or 3 sheets.

In the afternoon, we went around the town and I bought 4 sheets of 50x40cm glass at £5 each, the price has doubled since September.

This evening, cut a 3mm board to fit three A4 sheets side by side on my music stand, to allow me to play the music. I've stained it an even black.

Salome aside, I must get some art done. We've been confirmed to perform something at a 4-hour event in Congleton Library on Make Music Day. I fear this will get in the way of more serious painting, or Salome rehearsal, or the creation of new works... but any live performance is welcome.

Time is short. Life is short. Midsummer's Day is close and I feel I've hardly done a thing in 2022.

Salome Rehearsal

A trip to Macclesfield yesterday to retrieve the paintings from the art fair. It took most of the day to re-pack them, I designed two custom bits of foam for two of them.

Today was a run-through of the Salome music with Deb. The performance will be called "Lou Salomé: Empathy With Daisies". The music all worked fine, but it is challenging for me to play. Nothing is too fast; it's hitting the right notes that will be a challenge. For the first time today, I mostly sight-read it all, an invaluable first. With 12 complete pieces of greater complexity than I've yet played, I would struggle to remember it; it wouldn't be efficient to do so for one small performance.

Salome Composition

The Salome compositions are pretty much complete now, managed about 3-4 per day. The last was the first. The simple waltz that was the first draft was too childlike:

This became the basis for two of the other tracks, but then discarded for more of a swooping waltz which I bent slightly to make it fit with the others:

I've tried to add some variety across the range. A piece called At Freud's Lecture was, in my mind, full of dancing Spiccato cello, with a smooth and flowing melody over the top. I'll probably play this on synth like that, but I can imagine augmenting this for two or more lead lines; it would lend itself well to a fugue or something plait-like... if I ever get the change to perform this music more widely.

Give Me Your Pain and Sit With Your Ghost are about Rilke, so are variations on the same, very simple, musical ideas. Overall, this project reminds me of The Infinite Forest music, a 2 or 4 simple themes scattered across the program. The Dream Sequence is the only part no scored at all, I have in mind an improvisation on guitar to a synth loop there.

The next step is to refine these with Deborah, as she reads, then find a venue and set a date, and some practise. Oh for a budget for masks, and an orchestra, a choir, quartet of Greek Chorus.

I keep sleeping late and feeling slow. I need more projects and energy. The proof copy of How To Organise Your Computer Files has arrrived and Deborah is kindly proofreading it. Perhaps it's time to start painting something.

Salome Music

Some piano practice yesterday, tidying, backups, and a piano lesson with new student Peter.

Slept late today after a night of casual stomach pain. Oh for youth. The delicate decay of physical matters is the ultimate cause of decline in productivity and quality. More energy is needed to maintain and keep hold, leaving less to push forwards with, another reason why creative work takes longer and longer, although the need to make it better each time is a factor too.

I went to Queen's Park to see the Jubilee events. It was packed with people, and full of distorted (and, oddly, speeded-up) recorded music, plus a live George Formby tribute 'band' - I say band though all six players had only ukuleles, while the bass and all other instruments seemed to be on a recording.

Some initial revision of the Salome music. All creative problems come from unasked and unanswered questions.

Question: Do I want the music all on piano, or produced with lots of layers and instruments? Answer: Lots of instruments. This is tricky because I'd like the scope for something grand and 'full orchestral' when, in all expectation, I'll be playing all parts (one part) solo on synthesizer, or piano. I'd like a choir, with four main vocal performers plus Deborah as lead performer, but I won't have that, it will be Deb and I alone. Everything needs to have potential, but work well for a duo too.

Question: Do I make the score more complex than I can play? Answer: Yes, ideally... it should push me, but not so hard that I can't play it... this is a complex problem. I feel I can compose much better than I can play, but if I do so then I'll not be able to play it; yet, my live playing often adds a lot more than I score anyway. I think Beethoven played the 3rd Piano Concerto from memory and mnemonics; I wonder how close to his score this performance was? Or how close ANY of his scores were to his real playing, I feel certain that they were different. Either way, an ultimate solution is for me to learn to read and play sheet music better. My answer now is add something more, but not much, a slight push.

For The Anatomy of Emotions, Cycles, Music of Poetic Objects, I hardly pushed myself, with one or two well-composed pieces but, even then, very simple backing, and a few very simple ideas, hardly compositions, nothing too difficult so I had the freedom to fantasise and cadenza while playing. This time, things are more complex. I also have the added complexity that now I have 12 pieces; the others had about 6, a big difference. My aim is to use a main theme and create variations of that for a few pieces, this makes things both simple and more complex, more unified, but still each piece having a different mood. Too much difference can overwhelm any listener.

The pieces are:
0. Intro
1. Truth Seeker in a Madding Crowd
2. Entwined in Infinity
3. The Planet's Oracle
4. The Bird in Borrowed Feathers
5. Cosmic Solitude
6. Give Me Your Pain
7. Empathy With Daisies
8. At Freud's Lecture
9. Dream Sequence: Shapeshifting Counsellor
10. Sit With Your Ghost
11. Shelved

1, 2, 3, 4, 6, are just about complete. The Intro, 0, was written first but the melody is a bit light and nursery-rhyme-ish; not easy to play and doesn't sound very dramatic either. I will rewrite it, but can't much as many of the other tunes are based on it. I expect that this will be a variation of those, so its initial spark will be in the finished music only as a ghost.

Framing Complete

Tired, achey, exhausted even. I often think I go to extreme lengths to get things right, but perhaps this is necessary. I necessity extreme? Today I've framed Gynocratic Paedoparanoia and photographed the work. Here are some exclusive looks at the frame:

Here you can see to odd look to the colouration, actually a sort of stripping of the stain. I'll avoid this in future, it's uncontrollable, but it has a certain allure:

Here is the back. My frames, over the years, have got increasingly professional in finish, and one measure of the care of a framer is how the back of a painting looks. I get annoyed at any defacement of the back, marks and labels there as though the back is not important:

I also photographed the frame flat, and recorded that. This is part of why it all takes so many hours. The basic framing took about 90 minutes, and another 45 or so to photograph and process; huge amounts of time for this simple job; all excluding the days of making the frame.

The artwork image there is, as usual, Photoshopped in, as framed images like this are used on websites and for artwork submissions etc. so much be of good quality. For each of my paintings I have one 300dpi scan or image and one of the work framed.

Then, framing Bird Orbiting A Black Hole. This needed a fine sand, then a new layer of black, then two coats of varnish. Overall it's had 6 coats of varnish, two of water-based black stain; the first two layers were black-stained with tinted solvent varnish:

And flat:

The painting here, and for Masters Of The Sky needed rescanning/photographing too, as the visible area for both paintings is now about 20mm larger. Scanning this dark painting was a challenge, the colours seem much lighter in real life. This tiny painting took four, 8-hour days. The first frame probably took 16 hours, and this one at least that. To spend so many hours on one solitary and slow craft. The frame, simple though it looks, took longer and at least the skill of the painting itself, yet nobody would buy a blank frame.

Finally, a photograph, and reframing of Masters Of The Sky:

A simple frame but this looks very beautiful. I framed it, then decided that I did want and need to re-scan it after all, so removed it, photographed it, and framed it again.

A long few days doing this tiny job. I ache from so much running about, and also ache to make more actual art.