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.
