Up at 7am and working solidly since. My hand is nearly back to full use hurrah! And I played the piano for the first tentative time.
The day began frustratingly when Amazon informed me that my books (distributed by Amazon) will now have their design of barcode, and that I can preview how it looks in their store previewer. I tried this and it didn't work (they repeatedly logged me out for no reason), and it then took my book off the shelf and forced me to resubmit it! There's no way to 'open' or view a book on Amazon KDP, only re-edit, so even when there are zero changes, the book is taken away for 72-hour 'approval'. So, an annoying waste of my time facilitated by idiots. So much of the internet, of computers, is bugged and administered by idiots. I sometimes feel I (and Deb!) are the only people who know what they are actually doing. In practice, I find that 99.99% of the rest of humanity get things wrong, which can easily lead to frustration and mistrust.
I've spent almost all day working on the sheet music for The Modern Game. The tracks vary hugely in the complexity of the task. All The Broken Flowers was a 'live', pseudo-improvised piano tune which required complete scoring by hand, and in the end it's only 'close' to the original. It will never be perfect, nor would want to be. The point of that music, in a way, is that it's all feeling and a step apart from the mechanics of scoring.
Masculinity Two was tricky due to the ABCBAD structure. I kept wondering if an elegant repeat system could be added, but in the end the first and second A are simply scored again, with the BCB section in the middle using some repeats and segno. I decided to include the strings for Coming Back To Earth, and indeed most tracks have some other staves.
Part of me thinks this tedious, manual work is all a waste of my intelligent time. It IS massively time consuming and hard work to score these, and (today) nobody will care and perhaps never download them at all. Perhaps one day, A.I. will do this for me, but perhaps not. There are elements of art to it, choosing what to show and share, and I appreciate the music more, and learn musical skill by scoring itself. Also, it is my aim and ambition to have all of my music scored; this is a long-term project, like art should be. One of my tenets is do what others do not, as well as do what is difficult. The very difficulty and tedium of it is part of the rationale. So I must, bit by bit, score my past (and future) life's work.
The Trees and Notes From Space are the only remaining tracks from this album. Sequenced songs are relatively quick to score, thanks to Prometheus. I suspect that The Love Symphony would be/will be a lot of work. Also, the piano music for Music Of Poetic Objects might be time consuming, but perhaps the most tricky albums (Cycles & Shadows and The Anatomy Of Emotions) are perhaps done...
I'll finish tomorrow, then start on some actual new music for a day or two. I have a lot to paint but want a clean and hand if possible... I'll probably be fit enough to paint but perhaps I shouldn't risk it for a week or so.
In other news, the SFXEngine Steam store is now live and the program itself has been tested and cleared by Valve, so all is set for release. It's also a Flatspace IIk sale day, so that needed some cursory promotion.
