Sit With Your Ghost Solo

Awake in the night, I listened to a Bach Partita; a transcendental experience, an emotional cathedral ceiling. The hardest emotion to represent in art is transcendence.

A slow morning. In the afternoon I wrote a little tune with 'Bach like' parts which darted between C-minor and F-minor, using the climbing themes in Sit With Your Ghost. I fed the composition through to the RefaceDX, and it sounded really natural, this synth is so expressive. I still love the sound - Yamaha would have, had have, a sure-fire hit synth if they had given it more presets and the ability to save them externally (excluding the utterly impractical Soundmondo).

I also researched the Rilke pieces we had aimed to perform. It looks like I'll have to translate them, I had hoped that Deborah would. I'm so tired of this album. I'm off to Ty Pawb tomorrow to deliver my painting to the open.

Limiters, Stockport, Airwolf, and Crashes

More experiments with the Cathedral Limiter, all trying to get a 'better' trace, here are some experiment results:

But they don't work and the whole process was too complex, I just couldn't get it to work. No matter, as a complex trace like that would create a complex result in audio too... the trace is ultimately used like a gate or switch, so the more complex it is, the more obvious (and strange) that change may become in the result.

At 11:30 I gave up and decided to stick with the Cathedral Limiter as it is and file everything. Then, a trip to Stockport to collect my paintings from the art gallery. This is an adventure and fitness challenge. The train arrives in Stockport station at 44 minutes past the hour, and the return train departs at 04 minutes past, giving me exactly 20 minutes to get to the gallery, collect, pack, and get back to the train station. Fortunately the gallery is nearby. I noted the exact time when pressing the train door open button, and 4 minutes later, I entered the gallery. I was alone, no queue, and quickly found and packed both paintings. I was back on the station platform, hot after a near-run, when the hour hit. Quite an adventure.

After that, I watched an episode of 80s series 'Airwolf'. I remember it, as a child, being quite good but it appears I was wrong. This episode was so bad it was hilarious. The enemies were 'draft-dodging hippies' who wanted to create world peace and/or a new society of mind-controlled love-children. They decided to achieve this by using computer hacking to hijack a top-secret, nuclear armed, drone aircraft, and then asking the US Government for $20 million in ransom money. After giving them just 15 minutes to think this over (during which time the government did nothing), they decided to fire the missiles anyway to destroy the evil war-mongering politicians. If this sounds a lot to cram into 25 minutes, it's just the start. Jan Michael Vincent (an actor who is/was exactly like Richard Dean Anderson, but with no acting ability) was friends with the army-hero brother of the evil hippie draft-dodger mastermind - a villain who fled a war due to cowardice, and avoids violence so effectively that he uses pistols and an army of gun-toting children to battle it.

Now, I must rest. The news of the past week has been hideous due to massive government incompetence. We are now enduring the first self-inflicted financial crash of my life, or perhaps the first ever, as I can't recall one that wasn't caused accidentally. From the government that punched itself repeatedly in the economic face with a glove called 'Brexit' we have an idiot prime minister doing the same for, apparently, no reason but the desire to self-harm and to punish others.

Onward!

Peak Tracking and Cathedral Limiting

At last! After a week of tests and failed attempts at an automatic limiter which detects peaks and fades smoothly between the raw output and a gently limited output I have succeeded! The tricky part was the peak tracker. I needed a way to look ahead for peaks and grow slowly towards them, and sometimes, eventually, fall slowly away too, but not head down without reason... in a wave that wobbles up and down constantly, I could not ever have my trace under the actual peak AND needed to keep everything flowing very smoothly.

The algorithm was very complex to work out, looking towards distant peaks and calculating slopes, which should ideally be linear and take place over a long period for maximum smoothness. Last night I had a few ideas, and it worked! See the trace and the wave, here:

The wave below is set to a limit of 0.5 (the grey line) so anything about that should be tracked above. The trace above should track all peaks above 0.5. Here's the wave overlaid with the trace so you can see more clearly that the wave is constrained by it:

There are some opportunities for the trace to move closer, but it's hard to know those without our advance knowledge of what is coming next, and everything must move gently. This, as it is, is fine, and there is a time setting to control how far ahead to check.

Overall it works fine, amazingly good, actually. The end result is that I can now maximise the volume of a track in an interesting and neat way, without clipping it. Here is the Gothic Limiter, my basic limiter until today, limited to the space between the grey lines:

And below it there is the new 'Cathedral Limiter' which fits more in the same space with more dynamic range too.

One irony is that after this week or so of work on it, I'll probably never use it. This is one of those complex obsessive problems that I couldn't help but solve, but phew, now I have. I can now relax and get back to the Salome music...

16-Bit Dithering and Quantum Mechanics

The strange thing about dithering audio when converting to 16-bit from a higher-resolution format, such as 32-bit floating point, is that it's the first case I’ve encountered of a random process, adding noise, improving quality and accuracy rather than destroying it.

The theory is easy to understand. You have a smooth set of data, a smooth wave, and need to fit this into a fixed number of boxes. A crude algorithm would just shove it in the nearest box, but this is not accurate. Sometimes the data might be perfect, lined up for the dead middle of a box, but almost always it will be just a bit up or just a bit down. Say our datum ball was half-way up in a box; for greater accuracy you would put it in this box 66% of the time and put it in the box above 33% of the time. If the datum was on the border between two boxes, you'd want to put it in the lower box 50% of the time, the upper 50% of the time. Dithering randomises the data by a box-width to easily accomplish this probability scattering.

When I learned of this I realised that the universe itself has to do this, convert a smooth and ideal flow of data into 'real' lumps. Particles are themselves, physics tells us, solid pieces of data quantised from an ideal wave. Every circle in existence from the orbit of electrons to the surface of a proton’s ball is an imperfect approximation of an ideal circle or sphere; so the problem of audio dithering exactly explains when a random process can improve accuracy rather than damaging it. It explains the need for a random function when quantising anything.

An odd thing is that, once quantised, it's impossible to retrieve the original 'pure' data again, whether you dither or not. I was considering the option of rendering a 16-bit wave without dithering... but even then, some information would be lost, as the 'nearest box' option is still imperfect. Dithering is, however, random noise so repeated conversion will cause data to drift and degrade.

This problem must too also exist in physics and the real world, so we have two options here: that the raw/un-quantised data exists at the same time as the quantised data, that our particles are mere representations of an underlying flow of data (a 'Platonic' option); or that these are indeed converted to and from sole particle and wave formats, and thus would lose some integrity, as when converting to from floating-point format to 16-bit and back.

I wonder if an experiment could work out which of these is the case? The former sounds the most 'ideal' having a 'copy' of the pure data, but, as in computing, there is an overhead. It would mean that all particles have a 'soul' of their pure wave-like counterpart shadowing them at all times. But when a particle 'vanishes' and only the wave is there, where does it go, and why? Are these quantised units only here as a display for us, or can they achieve things that their wave-like 'soul' cannot? If the latter is so, then some conversion back would be necessary.

The conversion option, however, would lose integrity over time. This seems to have some analogue in the laws of entropy.

One interesting note is that if Einstein knew about 16-bit dithering he may have been less dismissive with his 'God playing dice' quote, as it shows that random factor can, in some circumstances, increase accuracy.

Float Limits

Aaargh! To IEEE FLOAT limits! I've spent a lot of time this morning working on my volume trackers. I use a few in Prometheus, but realised (I probably knew this once but had forgotten) that these don't track volumes over 1... as these climb and fall equally/exponentially, rather than grow slowly (value=value/climb) and fall quickly (value=value*climb). An equal rise/fall is most useful.

I couldn't get the inverse of "value=value/climb" to work today; this is: "value=1-(1-value)/climb" - but at values near to 1, (like 0.9999) it did nothing at all because of float resolution. Low numbers (0.0001) are much better represented. This probably means that many of my volume tracking plugins are bugged.

Pain, Heart of Snow, and Glass Limiter Problems

A night of agonising stomach pain, unable to lie down, even sitting was painful and didn't aid my blocked digestion. I expect I simply ate too much, though this wasn't evident while eating... I have to guess how much to eat rather than rely on appetite as my digestion is generally very slow and filled with twitches and swellings. I didn't sleep until 6am, exhausted after a night of mostly pacing.

Despite this, I started the day well, if late. I revisited my Heart of Snow album as planned, with plans to re-work the title track. I've changed the chords and key, from C-minor for the verses to A-minor, which sounds a lot better. The high notes of the C were both shrill to sing and didn't fit the feeling of the song, which should start low and listless, like a voice in the fog. There was a lot of work to do, as there are many sub-melodies and some choirs tuned for the complex chords, but all went well. The chorus and other parts remain in C-minor and generally fit better than before. The intro solo meanders in C-minor before emerging into an unexpected A. I then re-sang the song and it all worked better than in the original, all done in a day.

Then some problems began, as I discovered a bug in my new and fantastic Glass Limiter. It was supposed to interpolate between a limited/crunched signal and a 'pure' scaled one, but for some reason it kept peaking over the ceiling (or is that peeking!) when this should not be possible. After a lot of work I realised that the pure signal was not limited as it should have been, and when I did this and finally got it working as it should, the result was unexpectedly awful! Disaster!

It worked far better before but it brought back the horror of the Organic limiter, as the key ceiling limit was violated in unexpected ways. After much optimism, I may have to abandon my limitations altogether.

One good part of the night was that, during my pain, and tedious pacing in the cold and dark, I listened to Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World album, the 2015 remaster. This is an example of a great remaster, none of the excessive distortion, but a lovely listen all round. The music itself isn't very good, the era of Bowies seeking and striving towards something new, making slow progress in small steps.

Rebirth, and Dithering

25th September, my 'day of rebrith'. In 2008 on this day I woke up with a different personality, changed instantly overnight. My early childhood was as 'normal' as any, but at around the age of 10 I withdraw from social life, became silent, emotionless and focused on my internal intellectual tasks, and my new computer obsession. I had friends at shcool, but these were more like colleagues and I felt less and less connection with anyone, except my machine, my programming, my solemn work. I attended college for 2 years and interacted with no-one except the only friend I knew from school, Paul Challinor, who was as equally quiet as I.

From 18 to 36 I didn't speak, had no social contact, and felt almost no emotions; no happiness or sadness, but my Spock-like existence ended on the 25th September 2008, when, thanks to art and the new social experiences of my first art club, everything flooded back in an instant; a quantum leap which had been slowly growing in the preceding weeks. On that day I felt only joy, colours glowed brighter than ever, and it was the start of a new learning, a huge change to my personality. Even the slightest thing could affect me hugely deeply; I found myself crying in front of advertisements, or simply overwhelmed by the slightest thing. Films or music were too much, even mild horror films completely terrifying.

As I emerged from my years of silence, ancient memories of childhood returned. I found 'new' parents, a second set of beloved parents in contrast to the cold automatons of my 'actual' parents. As a child, I used to think that my parents were androids, aliens controlled by malevolent forces. These robots looked like my parents, but they weren't, they were evil minions of a greater power who had kidnapped my real parents and imprisoned them behind the walls of the house. I could see them tied to chairs, gagged and pleading for my help. I had to do the right things or the androids would harm them. I had forgotten all of this until 2008, when those memories, and many more returned.

This at least proved to me that emotions exist only for social interaction, for gaining instant knowledge of others' motivations, but 'others' can also include inanimate objects; thus emotions are ultimately a complex form of parallel processing. A feeling can convey a lot of logical information in an instant, but they evolved and primarily exist for judging others and situations, for reasons of survival.

I've completed some backups this morning. I normally do this every three months, but wanted an early start as I'm nearing the end of the Salome project and have upgraded Prometheus a lot recently. I've stopped feeling like an artist, my genius is stifled, frustrated. I must do more! Life is short.

I've read today about dithering in regard to digital audio bit conversion and realised that I really need to add some to Prometheus. This, like the Spectrum Analysis options added in February and the new Limiter, continues my exploration of mastering. In practice, my music has been dithered for some time anyway, as I export in float format now (the option was added in April 2017) and use Sony CD Architect for mastering, which has dithering built-in.

I did wonder if dithering could be beneficial in time/frequency as well as amplitude. It seems logical that a sample between two others could be chosen at a random point; eg. given 15, 70, 80 then the 70 sample could be anywhere on the lines drawn between 15 to 70, and 70 to 80; perhaps centred halfway to favour numbers near 70. This might not be needed or useful, however.

I need to set these time consuming researches aside and create, but this is easier said than done. Tomorrow I will, however, revisit Heart of Snow.

Limiters, Limitations, and Pink Noise

Sigh, a rather difficult and horrid day. I've spent a lot of it programming, which I dislike; programming is the antithesis of art - but, I programmed to help me with my music, as I kept repeating to myself today. Yesterday I thought that my new 'organic' limiter was fine and spectacular, especially on sine waves. It turned out to only be fine and spectacular on sine waves.

It worked by tracing any volume levels over the 'floor' then constraining these to between 'floor' and 'ceiling' based on 'sky' (sky is the ultimate high). My only reason for doing it at all was an idea to auto-calculate 'sky' on the fly, but I abandoned that idea and aimed to smooth out the results instead by interpolating the constrained results (which can sound buzzy and distorted) with an undistorted signal. Unfortunately the undistorted signal could be all over the place. I added a second volume tracer to the result, a 'second pass' and clipped the peaks. This did something, but the results were still a little to organic.

The result reminded me of the meaty tentacle monsters in Akira, and I toyed with calling it an Akira Limiter because of the way the waves bent and curled all over the place, never quite staying put. I gave up. The very least a limiter should do, the very least, is stay within its limits.

I took a break and studied Pink Noise. I realised that this sounds rather like 'Rock White' which is a white noise wave that I've filtered over the past year or more with the results of spectrum analysis of commercial rock music. Rock White is, therefore, like a tuning fork for balancing audio tracks to studio quality. It's not quite like Pink Noise, but it is close, so I wondered about making a Pink Noise Generator. It turned out to be easy. It's a mix of white noise waves, each halving in frequency, so you can generate a white noise wave every frame, another a second every other frame, a third every 4th frame etc. Then add them up. It makes a pattern like this:

This is the The Voss-McCartney algorithm, as detailed here: https://www.firstpr.com.au/dsp/pink-noise/ (in the vast course of history, this will be a dead link, so I won't link to it).

But, it's flawed. The pattern looks symmetrical but the x in the middle shows that there are an ODD number of intervals to the pattern, so how can you have a regular degree of switching? Consider a wave every frame, then every 2, 4, 8... 1+2+4+8=15 not 16... if you repeat the 15 then some events will be closer than others. The implementations on that page seem to ignore this and use 16 steps, yet this means that the slowest step must repeat twice...

Anyway. I made the generator. Here is my code:

lword offsets[16]={2,3,2,4,2,3,2,5,2,3,2,4,2,3,2,6};
float out;
// Generate one sample of noise...
// Counter, cycle zero to 15
longutility[0]++;
longutility[0]&=15;
// Generate a random number -1 to 1
seed=seed*196314165+907633515;
// floatutility[1] changes every time.
floatutility[1]=0.00002f*(seed%100000)-1;
// Generate alternative noise
seed=seed*196314165+907633515;
floatutility[offsets[longutility[0]]]=0.00002f*(seed%100000)-1;
out=(floatutility[1]+floatutility[2]+floatutility[3]+floatutility[4]+floatutility[5]+floatutility[6])/6;
// Result
dataleft+=out*parm[0];
dataright+=out*parm[0];


parm[0] is the volume, the 'utility' variables should be obvious. I cheated by using the lookup table, but the list of offsets there illustrate the problem above - '5' and '6' are repeated just once each.

Anyway, I realised that my 'Grey Wave' plugin can do this anyway! So I didn't use this at all, but it was a distraction from my limiting.

Then I tried limiting again, I used my normal 'Gothic' Limiter, which does nothing to any signal until it gets over 'ceiling' then chops it short:

Even for this extreme wave, it works ok. It sounds a bit buzzy, but not that bad. Audio engineers with headphones would hear it, but 90% of listeners wouldn't even notice. It's certainly better than hard limiting, but it wasn't designed for harsh conditions like this anyway. This is a test.

I thought that I'd try to smooth it by interpolating it with a smoother result, and it worked! Here's the new version, my 'Glass Limiter'. Sounds as good as the original... nearly... the very fact that it's this loud makes it sound a bit odd...

One odd thing is that line at the bottom, dangling in the middle like a thread. I noticed this phenomenon on a Björk track, which as you can see is hyper-squashed:

Maybe I'm on the right track then. The Björk track is too loud and too squashed, which is so very sad. What should be gentle and lovely music is ear-wobbling noise, even when the melodies and instruments are actually soft. It sounds distorted in a different way. The very lack of dynamic range, the ear-blast of constancy, has harmed the musical quality. All modern music seems to suffer from this, it makes my cry, as well as inducing a headache.

My experiments are done. I must rest, pause, forget about programming.

Limiting

I was awake last night, thinking about algorithms. One difference between my music and a lot of the music I listen to is volume, the loudness of these tracks. I don't at all like the idea of these squashed tracks, a solid block of wave, because it is the variations in dynamic power that IS emotion. The difference between art music and advertising is 'in your face' volume - but perhaps this shows that pop music is as much advertising as art, perhaps more advertising than art. For listening I like the sound of 1980s and 1990s CDs that had a 'dry' dynamic range; my Kate Bush albums, the classic Queen albums, ranging from a whisper to a hurricane. This aside, one can't have too many tools, and Listening to the loudness of Bowie's Heathen made me think about creating something of a heavy duty limiter.

The key is to make everything louder and avoid any distortion from clipping. I have a limiter in Prometheus which simply scales and clips the tops of waves, and for small infringements over the maximum it can stop distortion and limit the wave perfectly. I wondered if I could make something on another level by looking ahead to find the peak of a signal and scaling everything in that range.

I spent hours on this today, and in the end my efforts were futile and frustrating! In the end I did something else, and adapted my limiter to float between clipped/limited and unclipped, like a volume trace, and the result is scaled by this floating amount. The results are very good, I can double the volume of wave into super-distortion territory, with barely any distortion, and I have a few parameters to play with.

Here's the raw output of my current limiter with some extreme parameters set. The wave is limited over 50%, clamped to 75%. You can see the top of the wave has been flattened:

Compare with this new one:

The peak goes higher, over 75% but still under 100%, but it's a lot smoother. The input wave is a 100% sine wave.

Well, the results sound better, but are not perfect. They are a little unpredictable because they can still go over the limit... this is merely a start for a day's work. I'm not sure if this will be useful at all - I've hardly ever used my old limiter, but perhaps anything new is worth pursuing. The compressors in my other software like Sound Forge are not nearly as good though, and I'd much prefer to develop my own algorithm, as I have with everything else.

Fairy Feller's

A sleepless night due to bowel pain despite a rather light tea of chicken and salad. I keep connecting my stomach and throat/ear pain, given this strange rawness and irritant cough, not particularly like a cold, and no sneezes, but certainly like an infection of some sort. Whatever it is, I can do nothing about it but wish my cells well. I feel particularly Beethovian: stomach pains and sore throats, a failing economy with skyrocketing inflation, and threats of war by a megalomaniac, and a scrape for money with eyes and ears on making the best art; all of which he put up with.

Despite my painfully slow digestion, yesterday evening remained pleasant. We watched Phase IV, a remarkable film for a very limited script and hardly any characters, and made watchable by the artiness of the photography and use of imagery. We saw many scenes which could be Pink Floyd album covers. The ending was a revelation, that the ant-fiends were ant-friends, or unexpected heroes, or rather gods to a new Adam and Eve (this part was a tad silly - a lot could have been done better).

My lack of sleep, persistent breathing difficult and a dull headache until 6pm meant that I've struggled to work. However, I dragged myself to the sequencer and spent many hours working on the dance version of Dream Sequence, and this evening on the Fairy Feller's Master Stroke. For the latter, the harpsichord sounded really good when flat, that I've left it like that and added some stroked chords for different moments in the music, then the most gentle of bells. Tinkle bells, harp, harpsichord, angel choirs - all very Victorian and fairy-like. For the intro I used a clip of the intermission speech from Salome (which has become a thema on this album). I sped it up to make the voices sound elfen.

So, another track done.The basic tracks begun are now complete, but we thought we'd record some new tracks too, some new poems by Rilke and Lou Salomé letters set to music. Those are out of copyright but the translations probably aren't, so we'll have to re-translate them, which can be a good thing; we might improve upon history.

A Flatspace sale starts tomorrow, and the Kindle version of How To Organise Your Computer Files is now live. I've tweeted my old Hello Earth oil painting to NASA and they replied, how nice. I love space science, of course, and am keenly checking on the Artemis progress, the James Webb Telescope and everything else in this exciting time. If I were prime minister I'd certainly commit a good percentage of GDP to science and space science.

Arnie, Computer Files Ebook, and Fairies

A long and very tiring day, but satisfying in its trawl. I started the day by watching a motivational speech video on YouTube, an edit of a talk by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's conclusion was to have a vision, and to keep at it. Good advice for certain, I've always had a fixed vision of and for my life, and each day I've kept at it, yet, any 'success' as such can be elusive. For over a decade, perhaps 20 years and for all of my youth, I worked on my dream of making computer games, and at the end of it had made almost no progress. I should, if anything, have given up far earlier, but if so, would I have become the artist I am now destined to be? Art became my new vision.

Arnie said that 75% of people do a job they dislike. What fools most humans are for tolerating such a situation. Why work to extend an unpleasant life? I was reminded of the joke 'the food here is awful, and such small portions'. The 75% should quit immediately, but most people are too cowardly. The rat race is named after the rat-like humans who live like animals and by instincts; the unfortunate majority.

I've sold another copy of How to Organise Your Computer Files and this motivated me into working on an e-book version. This is quite a laborious and exacting process. There are tools to 'automatically' convert a book, but it is best done manually, to format and link everything correctly so that it is as beautiful and as functional as the real book.

So I started the conversion process in Calibre, reducing the pages to a neat HTML page per chapter, renaming the pages, sizing and placing the artwork, optimising the CSS tags. This process was complete by about 4pm.

The submission and checking process took until 5pm, then I started work on The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, our musical version of the original Richard Dadd poem, which will be a bonus track on the Salome album. I seem to have done quite a lot of work on this Victorian artwork over the years! My own painted response, a song all about it, and now, a musical adaptation of the poem. My new musical production is for harp and has some angelic female choirs, very much gentle Victorian fairy stuff. I've only worked on the most vague of outlines, dividing up the chord changes in the sequence.

The day is done.

My throat and mouth is sore, the result of consistent and annoying blood blisters which keep forming in my mouth and throat for no reason. I also still have this recurring virus or infection or whatever it is, which I've had since March 2010. It says hello regularly with a sore throat/ears/chest, and this change to a colder season is its invitation.

The equinox is coming. How September has flown. Oh for more days, more life, more security and time to create; yet each day I devote each hour to creating, to doing and living my best. Some jobs, like this Salome music, simply take a long time, and are completed in tiny and exacting pieces.

Now I must away to Deb for wine (in truth, I hardly ever drink, a 15ml is a large measure of anything alcoholic for me) and a mix of relaxation and stimulation.

Farewell to you, ear of history, echo of digital eternity. Much love for this night.

Salome Recording First Draft Complete

More music today, the initial backing to Sit With Your Ghost, relatively simple, but I've given a flute something to do. After lunch Deb and I went around town for a mental refreshment, then completed the Sit With Your Ghost vocals and some new sounds to build the scene, recorded from a walk near Queen's Park a few days ago. This means that the first draft of the basic twelve Salome tracks is now complete! It's taken 5 weeks or so to get this far.

Music on Funeral Day

The day of The Queen's funeral. Perhaps normally I'd be gripped by this spectacle of art (and the comedy of religion - as if anyone, even the Archbishop of Canterbury, believes that there's a magical society of dead people all living and partying away somewhere; the whole Christian idea of life after death is ludicrous), but today I was enthused and ready for normal work, as I'm sure Her Majesty would have been too, so work it was.

I listened to some tracks from Bowie's Heathen last night, one of my favourite Bowie albums. I thought that my mixes could benefit from a 24dB high pass filter, and resolved to check the algorithmic differences between high and low pass filters - my two low pass filters (one 'digital' sounding, one an 'analogue' style emulation called Moog VCF) are 24dB. I noted that the only difference between high and low pass were a few sign switches in the coefficients, so I flipped them and made a new 'High Pass 24D' filter, with a Q factor, which instantly came in handy. When mixing, generally, you need ONE bass sound. Intermittent bass sounds, thuds like the bass drum are fine, or untuned ones, providing you don't mind the wobble/rumble of those, but a tuned bass will interfere with any other tuned bass and sound ugly. Even if the note is identical it will interfere and be unpredictable. So, a general rule is apply a high pass filter to everything but that one bass sound, and pay particular attention to long, drawn-out sounds like chords, strings, low pianos with lots of decay etc.

With each album I seem to learn something and I always regret not knowing it earlier. This is good.

After the programming I got to work on Empathy With Daisies and added a looping vocal using my 'Proteus' plugin, which is a sample player with programmable loop points. This made it easy to loop specific words of Deb's vocal, which Bowie/Visconti also did with the Blackstar vocals. I added this, and added more depth to the solo. I've mixed and heard most of this album on speakers, but this meant it sounded too sparse on headphones, so I've gone back to headphones. The panning for the guitar solo is the main bit that needs refinement.

After that, I added the vocals to Cosmic Solitude, which was fairly easy, then did some work on the dance remix of Dream Sequence. I have the backing and know the tune, but I need to think of more structure... I need a point of tension, something new. I've used some of Deb's vocals, not all, but some are ideal for a club track. I think I'll listen to a few classic trance tracks tonight, like Saltwater, Lizard, Children etc.

The Queen Poem

Awake in the night, I wrote a poem about the queen.

The Queen

HRH RIP.
Elizabeth two, Charles three.
Filling up the BBC;
not caught dead on ITV.

Still on duty, still on call.
On parade Westminster Hall.
A million hopes along the mall.
God has saved her after all.

Mask Photography

A slow day. I started by finally photographing the Salome masks, which, so far, have been a huge waste of time and resources; though I've learned one or two new techniques while working on these unused objects.

I've also learned a bit about good ways to pose and photograph complex objects like these, and spent the morning finalsing the wooden frame I made to hold them on top of a camera tripod. I added the images to my website.

After that, the only notable work was a final guitar solo for Empathy With Daisies, and the start of adding the vocals, but they seem to clash with the piano and strings a little. I've felt very cold, like a living icicle, and full of a persistent cough after a feverish night of sore throat and ears - this dratted change of seasons and my eternal 'latent' virus!

My father bought me two scratchcards (one pre-scratched), I think as a thankyou for internet services rendered, but this is also the product of one of his many addictions; a strange gift, like a junkie offering drugs.

The Planet's Oracle Vocals, and More

A good night and a full day of work on the Salome music. I started by editing the vocals for The Planet's Oracle, Give Me Your Pain, and Empathy With Daisies. I then added the Give Me Your Pain vocals, and remain unsure about them. They sound fine, but plain vocals almost seem too easy... I'll think about this.

Then I added the vocals to The Planet's Oracle. I decided to try filtering and distorting them using my favourite Band Distortion effect and I liked the results. The sound fitted, and it matches the deranged and angry mood of this track. I added a second layer of deeper (Zeitraum'd) vocals for the 'voice of Nietzsche' that rapidly dart from left to right ear; Kate Bush used this in Waking the Witch, and so did Tony Visconti for a Bowie track... I think on the Scary Monsters album (it might have been the Scary Monsters chorus come to think of it); still, it's the memory of Bowie that came to mind as I layered these vocals.

Then some work on Shelved, which is a simple piano track. I had the idea of layering the vocals with a backwards version of the same vocals at the same time. This vocal also darts in extreme ears, and is heavily filtered in the lovely 'grey' 'telephone' range, so gives the sound a breathy, ghostly feeling. I had the idea that these words are the books, the written words being burned and destroyed in the piece. The line 'ash' is one word, clearly audible as the same word backwards, which gives the listener a clue. Even if the audio effect is strange, the symbolic effect works, so I'd like to keep it.

Then, a guitar solo or four for Empathy With Daisies but I'm not sure what I need there yet.

I need to do Cosmic Solitude, and add the vocals to and complete Empathy, as well as work on Sit With Your Ghost, which has no work done on it apart from the basic piano track. This album is truly Sisyphean.

Stefano asked for some stills from our videos so I put some together and sent them off.

The philosophy of the physalis plant keeps inspiring me, the goals and purposes of life as survival. One lesson is the importance of diversity, so that what can thrive and survive can be discovered.

Pain and Philosophy

Too stomach pained to work today, but today's piano lesson was good and I managed to complete an hour or so of work on Empathy With Daisies. I think my stomach pain is due to getting too cold yesterday, sitting outside for over an hour, perhaps a change of blood pressure, this slow digestion; or countless other things. I'm still in horrible pain but have eaten relatively normally.

I've read about a few things; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Jorge Luis Borges' "The Secret Miracle", and other (always wonderful) Borges stories. I watched a few episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

We have a physalis plant. It's fruiting now, having grown from the discarded seed of one fruit I was given by Deb. I wondered whether the plant was 'weaker' than its parent, grown from a discarded supermarket fruit. I marvelled at the anti-entropic properties of life. Some tiny aspect of life can overcome entropy; the aspects which succumb die and fade, but some aspects defy this universal force and, after 4.5 billion years, from parent cell to child cell, continue to survive. In life we hope for something better, for a 'breakthrough', success, a windfall, some hope of thing, but life in reality is a succession of being battered, smashed, attacked, by others, by fate, by elements of decay, and our survival despite this. We don't thrive, but elements can survive - these are our victories. Our hopes are not in growth, but in a lack of death, in survival. The best life can do is survive, fleeing with panic'd eyes a torrent of hell-hounds called death; a storm of information collapse always at our heels, the acid of entropic rot.

Votes, Love and Wi-Fi Frame, Salome Progress

This morning I've been thinking how un-democractic the Brexit process was. A single vote with an inconclusive consensus is not democracy; a yes/no question is a very poor expression of the 'will of the people'. Such questions are as valid, and as invalid and nonsensical as online multiple-choice surveys ('How much do you like our product?: A: I like it. B: I love it!'). Consistent national agreement and emotional consent is stronger, and it is in this character that the monarch and all non-elected leaders hold their power.

A very busy day yesterday. I awoke feeling tired, but decided to push myself on, and this was the case for each pause and break. I started by completing the frame for Love and Wi-Fi:

Then Deb arrived for more vocal recording, a new take for Freud's Lecture and for The Bird in Borrowed Feathers, which has changed in tempo. I incorporated the Freud vocals. Then Sue arrived for a visit, then I worked on the Bird in Borrowed Feathers vocals. The music sounds good so far, but will need more listens and gentle adjustment. Deb listened to the music in the evening and our work was done by 10pm.

I hardly slept, my stomach in knots, as though I'd eaten a lump of clay. I've been coughing a lot, a usual result of this change of the seasons. In the past two weeks it seems that summer has become winter.

About half of the twelve Salome tracks are at last complete, a great leap from the one which was done two weeks ago. Perhaps in two weeks it will be all done - I can't wait! The painting season for 2022 is lost and all I have is a pile of ugly canvases, an insult to the talents I know I now possess! Oh for more time, resources, security.

My father brought back a catalogue of up-and-coming house sales. I could buy one tomorrow - if I should win the national lottery tonight.

Peter's lesson today, we'll cover scales. I'll try to rest a little, but my energy to work on the music is growing. On we charge. God save the King!

Salome Vocals

A happy and full day today. Started by fine-sanding and varnishing another coat to the Love and Wi-Fi frame, this is ready for the spacer and backing board. I'll not be putting glass in this. It's too large for glass for safety reasons, and Perspex is troublesome, expensive, scratchy and can easily look a mess. The cheap Perspex on the Cromwell painting did it no favours in the Grosvenor exhibition, so I'll show and store this great painting without glazing (how I still miss painting! How I feel I can paint much better than ever before - but alas! Too little time, too little incentive).

The rest of the day was taken up with editing and including the vocals into the Salome tracks. These generally need very little processing; certain compression, and snipping into verse/chorus sections to include at the right points. My default is a high-pass filter and some reverb, little else, the rest depends on the context of the song. I've started with the most difficult and complex tracks - I always do the most difficult or unpleasant jobs first, this has been part of my personality since childhood. Doing it this way I can learn anything most quickly.

I started with Truth Seeker, then Entwined in Infinity. The epic orchestral nature of the latter clashes a little with Deb's dreamy, romantic vocals. A live performance with an orchestra would need a powerful singer or voice, almost shouted, but the mood of the track itself is romantic, gentle in speech, but this word itself implies an epic, swelling, loud nature in classical music. I didn't do much to limit things, but cut the bass on the piano a little. This is often done in recordings, pianos are often pushed up into a more twinkly and tinny register, but I've only shaved off a little. I really dislike excessive processing, and hardly ever use equalisation or dynamic compression.

The other tracks were Freud's Lecture and Dream Sequence, the latter a very dreamy and drifty piece. Freud generally worked without many changes, I did make use of my unique Zeitraum effect for some lines. I've added some expansive, hypnotic 3-tap echoes to the vocals of Dream Sequence. I'm used to gentle vocals in Fall in Green tracks, like Who Is Afraid/She Floats, or Mandalino. These hardly need any backing. Things are unusual here with an already very filtered piano.

I'll continue on the music tomorrow. I still need to finish production on Empathy With Daisies, and do all of the work on the last piece; Sit With Your Ghost.

Freud's Lecture sounds amazing, however. I'm aware now how new, how special, unique this music is, though also aware that the world will probably not notice it; yet I remain hopeful and have certain faith that it will be noticed one day. I can see in music how groups stumble into new and amazing areas, then retreat, not finding success or popularity there, only to, years later, find acclaim and regret their retreat. I know our music is special and I (and we) will keep pushing to new areas with greater aplomb. We submit tracks to BBC Introducing every so often, which are heard by BBC Radio Stoke, perhaps the least appropriate radio station in the country for our avant-garde, poetic work. Radio 3 would be far better, but such is bureaucracy.

Framing, Smoking, Recording

Another busy day. Deb visited to record the vocals for the album, exactly a month since the Crewe Library performance and the start of the recording process - an amazingly long time for me! But, it had to be done correctly. I started the day, however, with another step on the Love and Wi-Fi frame. Here is a look:

I stained this before and after sawing, and before assembly. For purely stained (rather than painted) frames, this is the best way to do things. When painting, it's good to paint before and after assembly, with framer's gesso, that is. The frame has take 4 days work so far, but only about an hour each day. It will take a few more days; I need to cut mounts, varnish it, cut backing boards etc.

Deb arrived at 11 and we started on the vocals, all went well. Bird in Borrowed Feathers raced through, however, so I've slowed it all down. I've also made a few more changes to Prometheus again; now on revision 2.90. Version 2.89 had too many changes! Usually I make changes in one two days, then move on, but this update has lasted a month, due to the size of the upgrade, so I've decided to draw a line in the virtual sand and upgrade the number.

15 years or so ago my father gave up smoking for health reasons. He was a chain smoker and my breathing is still badly affected by my childhood of smoke-filled rooms and burning throats. His smoking was certainly one reason why I could not occupy the same room as he during my younger life, insane outbursts aside. Yesterday, at the age of 73, he's astoundingly taken up smoking again.

I feel tired and somewhat weak myself but my spirit is as strong as ever. Tomorrow I must charge ahead on the music. Stefano has now asked me twice to work on his film soundtrack. I would like to do something like this yes, but someone else is already working on it; I think it's vital for a large work like a soundtrack, album, opera or anything of that sort, to have one voice, for reasons of unity at least. I would at least need artistic control.

Life, Death, Framing, and Sandbach

When I feel suicidal, I feel at my best. These times, the cusp between existence and non-existence, reaffirm the importance and value of life. A fragment of life is infinitely better than death. One of the worst aspects of the despicable religions such as Christianity is a glorification of death, disguised as some sort of reward, perhaps to 'encourage' the weak, downtrodden and hopeless, that everything will 'be alright in the end'. Alas, the cruel and corrupt can often enjoy life without penalty, and a life of pain and servitude will have no rewards; though these sins and virtues are often forgotten by time relatively quickly. Prescient though they are to us sufferers, they are generally immaterial to society and the universe.

Death is an infinite end with no merits beyond this; though, of course, the dead can still affect out lives and contribute to the world and its people, as many people do today, from Socrates and Descartes, to Isaac Newton, William Blake, Beethoven, Vincent van Gogh, Freddie Mercury, John Hurt... and countless millions of others.

My brother visited today, briefly, on a trip to check on his house. He was released from prison, I think without a penalty other than curfew, his crime being conspiracy to cause a public nuisance; not so much a punishment for protesting, but for planned acts of public disruption, which to me seems reasonable. I love my brother dearly, we've always got on well, but I despise politics and avoid it. Politics is a logical extension of gossip, a social, rather than intellectual or informational, melee. Politics will drive any sensible person to senselessness and drive any humanitarian to egotism, to greed and self-interest. When he visits, my mother only ever talks about politics and the news, thus I can say and do nothing, and so spent the time working on the new frame for Love and Wi-Fi. I laid out the wood flat, back-side up, both lengths side by side, then power-planed it. This produced excellent results, my best use of this type of 'sandwiched' plain wood and skirting-type wood. This is definitely a tiny advancement. Like all of my work, things grow in tiny, tiny advancements.

Deb arrived, and I spoke about one sentence to Paul before we went out. My stomach was bad in the night again, but I felt better as we wandered around Sandbach, and I picked up a few gifts for birthdays and Christmas. Of course, I wish I could make more art, do more, but I will keep hammering as best I can. The rock of Sisyphus must be rolled slowly, pushed a grain each day, slowly forwards towards a summit, with rest and contemplation about the best angle of the roll, the best placement on the ultimate summit to catch the sun optimally.

Shelved

Recorded the piano part for Shelved today, took lots of takes to get it right, one key part was trying to imagine Deb reading along, to match the mood and timing. I hope that these are all the right pace and length. Shelved has minimal backing, just a very delicate pink noise like sound, like rain, the evocation of memory.

This is the last piano track. All tracks are now done to a first draft apart from Empathy With Daisies (which is in progress) and Sit With Your Ghost which only has the barest skeleton mapped out. At last the project is moving towards an end.

Empathy With Daisies Piano, and the King

My programming changes were completed yesterday, and I managed to complete and import the new Empathy With Daisies piano, a new combination of live and sequenced data. It'll be interesting to use this, something new.

Later, I spotted a few more minor bugs; for some reason I could copy and paste to and from normal tracks and the global (song) track, and today realised that an End event isn't the end of a MIDI sequence when exported, so I've fixed that too, and added a new style guide for all messages in the program... there are hundreds. Some items, like the names of events (Note, Tone, etc.) are perhaps best capitalised, and I now use 'plugin' rather than plug-in or plug in. Small things.

I've spent most of today out with Deb. Our break to Bristol was called off, so we've had some smaller days out. We were due to see John Lindley read a new poem to commemorate an important Congleton anniversary, but, like many events this weekend, the event was cancelled.

In my music, I have piano basic tracks for Sit With Your Ghost (the most complex track, there is room to expand this), and now Empathy With Daisies. The last track, Shelved, has nothing yet, but the other 9 tracks are just about complete apart from the vocals.

Again, I must make haste. I can't afford the time, these weeks, to expend on this one project, whatever its artistic merits. I have to complete Heart of Snow for Christmas, and perhaps work on new Fall in Green Christmas music too! And paint! And do so much more. I'm full of ideas and, usually, energy too, I just need a few more hours in each day. We are all on a fuse of limited length. Oh for more resources; but I'm building the best I can.

Onward; and God save the new King Charles III! I've always been a fan of the kings Charles, and remain convinced of the ideal of the British constitution and its combination of non-elected (whether hereditary or appointed) and elected government. Those who are democratically elected devote most of their time to doing what is popular rather than what is right. Those with no democratic accountability alone, however, become dictators. We have the best of both worlds.

Final Initial Tracks, Dadd and The Queen

A busy day yesterday. After 4 (or 6?) weeks of constant work, I feel I'm finally making progress on the music.

First, in the morning yesterday I glued up the second 2M length of wood for framing Love and Wifi, more on this can wait, then started on music. The first thing to do was tidy up Entwined in Infinity, at last, this long and complex track which was the cause of perhaps 2 weeks alone of difficulty, ultimately due to a clash between the expression and expressive timing of live play, and direct sequencing because, I thought, at first, of making the music strings-based rather than involving piano. The more piano I added, however, the better it sounded. This was partly due to the timing and expression, not just the timbre of the piano, so many of my programming changes were about capturing and preserving that.

At some point in the past I added a feature to import the timing of a MIDI sequence (that is the timing of each note in a performance, nothing to do with tempo) and match this to sequencer timing: timing! That most expressive of qualities in music. So, the timing of a live performance could effectively be separated from everything else and reproduced. My recent changes have allowed control over the volume (even each note) separately again, and controls over the other MIDI controllers, which I never had.

One of the ideas for Entwined in Infinity was to use flutes and high strings in left/right ears like a dialogue between two philosophers voices (this is the meaning of the music). I thought it would be nice to make it possible to record those in MIDI rather than my sequencing, so this is now possible. I've had a MIDI export for some time, but using it to actually play and record things is another matter, a lot of data needs to be controlled, and best done live unless you want something to sound like an ancient Nintendo console.

Most of yesterday's changes were minor; changes to instruments and balancing, and adding new, more electronic, timbres. I also did some scant work on Freud's Lecture, I think that's complete.

Much of the day was spent recording the music from 'A Midsummer Day's Dream' - our homage to Richard Dadd's The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke poem, which I performed at the Midsummer's Day event in Congleton. I'll probably rename this to The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, which makes sense.

A lot of the day then was subsumed with infinite tiredness, and I could barely move after 3pm. Deb and I were due to head to Bristol today for a long weekend, but this has been cancelled. We'll have some hours this weekend as some sort of holiday.

It was only in the evening that I heard that the queen had died, a sudden shock to the nation despite her advanced years. It made me recall the dream I had a few days ago where I murdered King Charles I with a knife, then went on the run as the 'new king' Louis, but I felt that the police would surround and catch me sooner or later, and not fall for the 'he who kills the king becomes the king' defence.

Today, so far, some more and hopefully final programming changes. I've added the option to export a sequence of data (velocities, or any parameter data) as a list, but across several tracks and in time-order; and import that too. This will hopefully help with Empathy With Daisies. There are two key differences between the live version and the sequenced version: the notes in the live overlap a little, and the hugely important and variable velocity from live playing. Now I should have the tools to control those elements and apply them to a sequence... so I can import the emotion from one live performance and apply it, note-by-note, to a pre-typed sequence.

This isn't very efficient; it's better to play it live, but it gives me more options and control if I need it.

Freud's Complete, Give Me Your Pain

Completed Freud's Lecture yesterday. Started the day by slowing sown some sections, then extending the middle 'childhood' part with a large piano solo of an explosive, surrealistic and improvised nature. I've not really included something like this in a song very often, so I thought I'd add it, and this key track deserves and needs to be longer than 2:15. I then opened the piece with an extract from the interval recording, looping and getting faster; a few words about the lights going off as we enter the unconscious; then some ticks for knitting needles. It was hard to find things that sounded like knitting needles, they have a very specific sound, not wooden, not plastic, and metal can sound ringing. I found some aluminium tent pegs which did the job and 'played' these live for the intro.

Then, I recorded and split the piano for Give Me Your Pain. My procedure for all of these tracks now is to start with the piano and use its pacing and emotion as the main guide, then split this into sections based on the track structure. I then import those and making each part start at the start of a new measure, using tempo controls to skip to them. This makes the songs easier to navigate and easier to change a middle section without disrupting the whole song. Nothing here ever stick to sequencer tempo or any regular tempo. Controls like quantisation, beats-per-minutes, beats-measures-sections are meaningless. My notes float as free in digital space as on a tape recording. This is excellent, but will make editing take longer.

Finally, I recorded and split the piano for Sit With Your Ghost, but nothing but the bare start on that.

Today, I've glued the first wood for the Love And Wi-Fi frame. I'll have to do a second piece tomorrow, then all will be set for our weekend away, ready for cutting the frame early next week.

Julie Andrews, Freud's Lecture, Cosmic Solitude

I had a disturbing dream. Julie Andrews was in the house and she, myself and others here sang in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, something 'light' like My Fair Lady. Afterwards, I forgot what the musical was, though one or two songs remained in my mind, and gradually I started to forget any one song too. I asked Julie what music we had just performed and she was about to say when, like me, she realised that she had forgotten, and then everyone else in the house had also forgotten, though it seemed so fresh, just at the edge of memory. We were amazed, frustrated and worried that we couldn't recall this basic fact. I awoke with a headache, one of trying to remember something. It was quite a horrible experience.

For the first hour of the morning I listened to the entirety of Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert.

I started work on music and completed Freud's Lecture to a first draft, I tuned up the cello an octave and it worked better with the piano. At lunch I switched on the television and it was showing an hour-long special programme about the life of Julie Andrews, quite a coincidence.

In the afternoon I worked on Cosmic Solitude, simple strings complementing the piano, nothing more. Then I started work on the Empathy With Daisies main piano part, which I had hoped to sequence rather than play because I'd like it to sound fairly regular, but I might end up playing it anyway.

MIDI Epics, Freud's Lecture

Another full day. I've been thinking that I've been programming too much and not making music enough, but today I remembered that these new features are a means to an end. I started by adding a feature to limit the number of MIDI events per time-index/tick. It's quite valid to have several events per tick, but I try to prevent this. Two notes, for example, are useless; they would technically play but the former would be instantly wiped out by the latter. I reasoned that MIDI files with lots of resolution (these often use 480 ticks per quarter-note - a ridiculously high resolution) may cause imports on the same Prometheus tick.

Then I realised that the same note or event at the same tick was legal and useful anyway, MIDI files can play chords quite legitimately for example. All I needed to do was limit instances of the same controller event at the same tick, the last one should be preferred.

I then got to work on Freud's Lecture and sketched out some backing for the main piano track, which is my guide. There's not much complexity here, I'd prefer more length to it all. This was raced through, all done apart from the solo cello intro. I played this on the MODX, recorded as a MIDI sequence with lots of Super-Knob motions and saved it, the imported it into Prometheus...

It worked!

But it was a bit confusing for two reasons. First, I loaded only strict Note-Off events, when I really needed to add another Note-Off (KILL in Prometheus) to stop an old note whenever starting a new note of the same pitch. This is because it's legal and possible in MIDI to start a new note while another instance of the same note is playing... and in fact the MODX does this by default; it generates a separate note sequence for each voice/part not just the whole instrument. Most instruments have more than one part, a 4-layer one generates 4 identical note patterns all on top of each other. Only the first track contains any controller events.

These events are also crowded visually (see above... all of these twiddles of the knob make a new event every few millisecs) so I added another feature to separate out the controller events into a new track. This made it possible to put the controllers in one track and notes any others, which works well. I still need Sekaiju to re-jig things correctly for the MODX. I realised that plain notes will play (again) only in one voice, which is most odd, but fortunately I can move and duplicate events to other MIDI tracks.

I've had to do a lot of programming today, but the upshot is that I can record a MIDI file, then rearrange it in Prometheus to match my timing, then export it for recording in super-quality on the instrument. It might all be too much control-freakery to be practical, 90% of the time I can play it live in one go and do it better anyway, but it is nice to have the option.

So, now, the first draft of Freud's Lecture is done, with a short length of 2:15. In other news I also painted and fitted the fan-box!

I'm now ready to attack the other tracks at good pace. Once I have the basics done I can consider extensions and other fine details.

The next big job will be Deb's vocal recording.

Prometheus MIDI Events, Fan Box, Ron Mael Dream

Two incredibly busy and tiring days, but scant progress made directly on art.

First, overnight at 4am, I thought out a possible extension to Freud's Lecture, I really need some sort of solo or more to this interesting piece. I had the idea of using the main 4-note climbing melody twice, gently and high for a child voice and booming and low for an adult. Experimentation at the piano is needed.

Then, yesterday, I decided to implement the abstract MIDI events in Prometheus. I found a couple of other bugs on the way, there are always incidental benefits to this sort or work, it's a hobby-like tidying which can be really useful but can be time consuming, something like a day spent organising and tidying a room. It feels like procrastination to me, I don't like such drifting, but it can improve results.

Here's a glimpse of the software:

The vertical lines in the Sequencer are events, the black lines with red dots are notes (the red dots get higher with pitch, so it gives a quick visual reference to the melody). The black and yellow striped line in the top (song/global) track is and End (of song) event. The blue events are Set Parameter events. Any parameter of a currently-playing instrument or a track can be set in this way, allowing for complex settings that can be changed as a song plays. You could, for example, set the track pan hard right, then left later. The green line is 'Bend To' which bends a parameter value over time. In this case it's bending the tempo (set at the start of the song), slowing everything down. Any parameter can be bent, and a modulator can be attached or detached to/from any parameter too; so things are very flexible and there are many ways of doing the same thing, each more appropriate at different times.

Yesterday I added some MIDI Set Parameter events. See, there, M1 Sust (the Sustain Pedal) is the current event, with a value of 0.250 (25%, a rather awkward number when scaled to 127 as per the MIDI standard, I use floats).

Unlike in my software, MIDI is about individual events, not things that can change at every tick. These new events allow one of 12 custom MIDI Controller events so be set. Events of this sort cover things like the Sustain Pedal situation, the Modulation Wheel, Breath Controllers, Ribbon Controllers, and lots more. The MODX supports many (more than 12) including the 'Super Knob', 8 other real-time knobs which can be programmed, two switches... far more than a human can control (I would argue, far more than necessary, the synth is overloaded).

These events do nothing in my sequencer, but they will export to and import from a MIDI file, so I can create a sequence here and get the synth to play it externally. This is useful because here I have a set of controls for creating and manipulating these events, rows of them can be created and made to vary in complex ways, calculated rather than typed one number at a time. Most of these controls are best manipulated live when playing, with foot pedals, wheels etc. but as I've said, we only have two hands and anything beyond live really needs a way to create and manipulate these lists of numbers, so I've programmed this feature.

It was a lot more work than expected, partly because these events are used all over the place. In particular I noticed that I'd not taken care about limits to the some of the parameters. Some parameters can have units like seconds, milliseconds, as well as beat, tick, measure, and the latter change based on tempo; eg. if a delay has a 500ms maximum limit, then this is 1 beat max. at 120BPM, but 2 beats at 240BPM... this is hard to limit in a concrete way because the song tempo itself can be wobbling about even when the song isn't actually playing (the song and track engines are constantly running so that I can hear the instruments as I press the keys).

Anyway. All of this programming was tiring and felt frustratingly unproductive, I should be making the music, I know this. My computer work was interrupted by completing the box for the fan in the kitchen. I foolishly sanded off the box using the hammer-drill without ear-defenders, I just forgot and didn't notice - I must be more careful in future. Drilling the walls was easier, into breeze-blocks.

The box didn't fit the wall too well because the wall is bent, like most house walls... but a bit of adjustment to the box fixed things. Two of the six hinges were really stiff and squeaky - I've stolen those for sound effects! It should be noted that my IndieSFX sound for the 'guillotine trap' consists of the creak of my record player lid, sliding rock on my desk, and hitting my old metal fire. Creaks and squeaks can be useful.

Last night I dreamt of meeting and spending time with Ron Mael from Sparks, which was a really nice experience. I was interviewing him, spending a day or two with him, and asking about his way of working. I distinctly remember eating a meal involving rice which he made, though the rice was cold and in fragments on the floor of a large Perspex box and I had to scoop it up.

Today I completed the program changes and finished the box, sanding it and filling in any gaps, ready for painting.

I also started on Freud's Lecture. The initial melody was always a cello in my head, a thread of a melody pulled like wool. I recently wondered if a Theremin would be better... but I may stick with the cello. In the live show it was a piano. I've spent some time creating a solo cello lead on the MODX, and it sounds good enough. I'd prefer a real cello and I'm confident I could play one for this simple melody, even though I've never tried or held one in real life. Perhaps I'm overly optimistic in this regard.

This has been a suitable distraction from the woes of the world and Britain's anticipation of coming hardship. I will anticipate success and glory, though much may come after my death. I must do my best and make the best art I can. Every hour and grain of health and life remains precious.

Social Thursday, Freud's Lecture Begins

A busy day yesterday, started with my monthly backups, then listened to a BBC Front Row episode extract about pianist Riopy. Then recorded the basic piano part for Freud's Lecture and started work on some final program upgrades for Prometheus; I want to add MIDI events to the program.

Then, a whir of social activity. Peter arrived for his piano lesson. This has inspired me to write down the fingering for each scale, which will be useful myself, I don't practice these enough and I must master them. As he left, Sue arrived and she chatted with mum then me for a long time. Then food and a trip to see Deb and Simon.

I feel I've done too little in August, but I did set my targets very high, to work on or complete three paintings, when, in effect, the Crewe performance and the more complex Salomé musical arrangements in the recordings have made this impossible. Pushing to something new and better always takes time because there is a lot of experimentation, variations, reaching for new destinations, and most of those are discarded.

Last night I wondered about adding more to Freud's Lecture, it's one of the three more complex, bigger, Salomé works; Truth Seeker, Freud's Lecture and Sit With Your Ghost; yet it's only 2 minutes long. I wondered if I can extend the 'What was your childhood like' part into some variations on the main 4-note melody and a conversation between child and adult notes.

Today I'll mostly be finishing the Prometheus programming. I also have the kitchen box to finish this month, the frame for Love and Wi-Fi to make, a final look and fix up of the Heart of Snow album in preparation for Christmas, as well as this album to finish.