Prometheus Updates Continue, A.I. And Celebrity

More updates to Prometheus today, added a new 'Random Pan II' effect which uses a 'Shell' component. The sum of the left/right channels are multiplied by a factor as the sound moves from the centre. Typically this is +3dB or +6dB in many panning units. I can specify this (or set it negative) for various effects. I took the opportunity to update many plugins, changing default units, no time for special effects.

The work was to supplement 'A.I. and Celebrity'. I changed the melody slightly, from an initial EEFG-CC to GGABb-CC, which made it sound darker all round. I changed the bass slightly to add more of rock (tango-like) rhythm and this basic feeling was used with an oscillator-synchronisation instrument, on the initial verse, which now has almost a Gary Numan feeling. Tiny changes; but sounds a lot better than yesterday, ready for more layers. I'll add guitars and perhaps orchestral instruments to a grand chorus. The words have changed a little too.

At 1:30 Deb and I went to visit John, a pleasant social distraction. Despite taking a tablet, and the cool weather, my hayfever is now making my eyes itch and burn furiously.

Tomorrow I must work on SFXEngine promotion and Steam and IndieSFX sale admin.

A.I. And Celebrity, Prometheus v3.11

A slow and unsatisfying day. I wrote the melody for 'A.I. And Celebrity', an odd song musically. I started with some descending and ascending chords, then added more melody than my initial sketches, trying to add more, making it the best I can. Musically, it reminded me of the Kate Bush piano songs from the Phoenix years, melodic in an odd and surrealistic way. I'm not entirely sure if  I like it; so, if not, I need to identify why and keep working. I spent hours sequencing the basic melody with a simple bass, choosing an electronic saw-wave bass for a change.

Frustrated by the interminable progress and insecurity over the music, I went out to get some fittings for my art-light design, using the opportunity to take a walk. When I got back, I did some programming; two little changes to Prometheus. One stopped the keyboard being active when the program was in the background. This has been a long term problem, dating right back to the first version in 2002 (it also affects SFXEngine and Argus), and has at last been fixed thanks to a simple WM_ACTIVATEAPP check, all down to help from Rod my SFXEngine tester.

Then, more work on the song. I added some 'chorus' to the bass and doubled the beat, and it now sounds like the intro to Kim Wilde's Kids in America. I'm unsure what I want from the song regarding production; electronic, naturalistic, surrealistic...

Overall, the day has felt slow, tired, lacklustre; but then I always feel that. I must remember that I only need to move one tiny step forwards each day. I seem to work constantly for nothing except fatigue, perhaps even slipping backwards, who can say? I must, at least, keep working every day. The rock needs to roll.

Mothmoon

As somewhat sad and tired day. I added the acoustic guitar parts to Fake Plastic Lies and recorded some rock-organ. The washing machine has broken down, our milk was stolen by out affluent neighbours (not for the first time), my father is having great trouble finding anyone who is able to endorse his identity for his passport application.

My computer had trouble today too, which was and is a cause of anxity. The sound during playback (in any software) started to crackle, then slowed down (and lowered in pitch) with increasing crackle, before collapsing entirely in a distorted hiss then silence; the whole collapse taking place during playback over 30-secs or so. A Windows restart seem to fix the problem. Today is the first cool day after two weeks of 25-degree temperatures. Such climate changes have a worrying potential for hardware errors. My hope is that the problem was caused by a loose USB cable. The connection on the Studio 26c is typically very badly designed, as delicate as a house of playing cards, a very slight breath-brush will loosen it. I wish USB cables on 'professional' level equipment were screwed-in or fixed very firmly.

Most of the music on this computer emotion album is complete, but most of the year is gone too, and it feels like an empty year despite my constant work. I've spent at least a full-time month of work on SFXEngine; this is good and needed doing. We have a few interesting performance opportunities, good; but everything is very spartan. Why am I working on this music at all? I must do so, at least, to improve upon something consciously, and do something better than before; do my best.

I've written a new song, or some new words, for a part sketched as 'Entering the Machine': 'Mothmoon'. I still need to write the music for 'AI and Celebrity', work on the production for Where Is Love (and finalise the composition), and all of part 3... should I paint? What to do, and why?

Here are the words to Mothmoon:

Mothmoon

I'm tired, in the day
but can't sleep.
I lie awake all night
and can't sleep.

Perhaps it's time to retire,
to retreat
from this wood-soaked
smoke into light
electronic;

switch off emotions,
transcend the meat,
shed the moth-skin
for a moon
electronic.

My Baby's Non Binary, Fake Plastic Lies

Back to music with a charge, but progress is slow even when working non-stop.

More production work yesterday on My Baby's Non Binary, which is just about finished and is an excellent song (if I say so myself). I added some final vocoder harmony vocals today. Have also started work on 'Fake Plastic Lies', which is an old-style rock song, complete with bouncy Latin-rhythms like many classic rock songs have. Most of yesterday and much of today was crafting the sequenced parts, the bass, drums, hi-hats, cowbells and other parts 'sing' along to the main melody. This is extremely exacting and time consuming but makes all of the difference to the fundamental drive and sonority of the song.

Also today I recorded a ukulele string by string and note by note. This can now, if I wanted, be added to Someone Else's A.I. using sequencing, albeit meticulously and very slowly and inefficiently. It does, though, sound very like a live player thanks to some of the intelligence in Prometheus. Still, playing live would be easiest, so I'll hold off on this track until later. All it takes is a bit of practice.

Also made today, a new track. A one-minute filler called 'Joy From A Machine Code Perspective', which will follow the end of We Are The Damaged (which I completed yesterday) and run into Robot. Damages is as good as I had hoped, but it was hugely hard work with many blind alleys and work made and discarded. Nothing worthwhile is easy.

Just now I've recorded a few acoustic guitar sounds for Fake Plastic Lies. I'll not play these strums in one go, the inaccuracy of the timing would annoy me. It's a hard switch between C-Maj to D-Maj to G-Mag at 150 beats a minute so I've recorded a few strums and chords and will magic them all together.

People and Places, SFXEngine, Argus

A couple of busy and hot days. Set out early to see my father's exhibition at Nantwich Museum:

Some of the paintings I can't recall seeing before. A few were (are!) regularly hanging on our walls, but some are stored in the garage, or under beds and various other hidden places. The dates tended to state 1980s, though I think many are from the 1990s, at around the time of my father's Art A-Level studies at South Cheshire College.

After that, we had a tea break in the bookshop and met John and his mother there, always a nice encounter.

At home I worked furiously on both Argus and SFXEngine. I've been updating both to use the same Options system, the same start-up and shut-down order and way of working, and the same text processing system. This was a lot of work. Both started the same, but Argus drifted away, using strings primarily to make it easier to program, but that made it harder to change external text. The way it started/ended was better than SFXEngine, so this meant a lot of changes to SFXEngine too. One change, for example, was detecting an [ENDTEXT] bracket in the text file because until yesterday, the end was considered any use of a square bracket, '[', which may cause problems in future.

The process was/is extremely stressful, taking up many hours of exacting work with little to show for it except software which hopefully works just as before.

John asked me what I do all day. I wondered what too. I seem to work non-stop all day and achieve little, but no! I do manage to create things, bit by crawling bit.

Still, there was some good performance news: Fall in Green is now set to appear in this year's Nantwich Words & Music Festival in October. More on this later as I'm not sure how much I can say and when.

As well as preparing for the SFXEngine release, I'm busy at home helping my parents today. Mum wants a spare part for the washing machine but it seems that they are out of stock everywhere except in one German stockist (it's a Miele machine), and dad wants to apply for a passport. When he can prove his identity, my brother (and then myself) can apply for an Irish Passport to which we are entitled. As E.U. Citizens we would be granted far more travel rights than mere British ones. Though I was born here and have always lived here, I've never felt British or at home here. I like the idea of living in Ireland - or indeed anywhere else.

Congleton Solstice Show

Another busy day. Up at 7am for the Midsummer Frolic in Congleton:

Our performances went to plan, but the sing/play-along songs I'd not rehearsed didn't go as well as I'd like. I'm unused to playing chords, accompaniment, or playing with anyone generally. Many of the songs were sight-read on-the-fly from lyrics with chords. Perhaps I'd have done better playing by ear, or choosing melodies rather than chords. The Urban Spaceman sounded best, mainly due to practising this yesterday; this was a melodic lead rather than chords. The sad news is that Mike is now retiring, well, sad for us, and perhaps this merely means more time to devote to creative acts. His contribution to local culture, and to Fall in Green's humble origins, is huge. It was lovely to catch up with him and John after the show.

We returned home at 3pm or so, and I've spent the rest of the day finalising the changes to Argus. It's one of those frustrating series of changes, with tons of work, huge potential for accidental errors, with very little visible result. I've changed all of the program text to be accessed externally, and added a most-recent-files list to the file opening. Ultimately, changes (improvements!) here can spread across SFXEngine and Prometheus. There are a few differences between all three which I could seek to unify.

I'll file this tomorrow, then visit my father's exhibition in Nantwich Museum.

Solstice Preparations, Fence Sawing, Argus Text

Another exhausting day. Started by recording the vocals for My Baby's Non-Binary, and We Are The Damaged (or whatever it will be called), then lots of physical work sawing up six old fences into small pieces for throwing away. I found this remarkably tiring, but the heat and allergies of the season are probably contributing factors.

Then work on Argus, updating the system to accept text from a file rather than it being hard-coded. This involves changes to just about every icon, text-box, and label, although the code can be taken from Prometheus and SFXEngine, which both use that system. One of the joyous aspects of Argus is that it didn't! It became a real pain to use an external text file for a program that only I use and that will only ever be in English - but, alas, in preparation for a future Steam release (which may one day be multi-lingual), and the need for unity between these shared programs means that it's better to do this tedious and exacting work at some point.

My 4pm I had a raging headache and couldn't go on any longer, but most of the text conversion work is now complete.

Just in time for rehearsal of four songs that I was sent this afternoon. These will be performed tomorrow morning, so not much time to look at them. I'd like to do a better job than I can manage. This evening I must pack the equipment for a 7am start tomorrow.

I feel like Batman during the first act of Knightfall.

On we crawl.

FIG Rehearsal, Easel Head, Fences, and an SFXEngine Update

A super-busy day today. I was due, at 13:30 for a Fall in Green rehearsal for the Midsummer event in Congleton Library on Wednesday, so my main jobs of the morning were to print the sheet music, prepare the synth programs and the script, and perhaps practice, but upon checking my email I had a report about SFXEngine from my brilliant tester Rodrigo; a few (minor) bugs and some suggestions for changes.

One of the changes was to add some way to arrange the Modulator List, and this feature is already in Prometheus, and flagged off in SFXEngine, so that was relatively easy to add, plus a "Recently Opened" option in the menu (I've never made anything like that before) and a great suggestion to stop the update problems when the manual was open. I also took the opportunity to add the code for 'Genus Decals', so that's all set for a first update (this feature won't be active on launch day because it changes the look of the screenshots and video too much). I also added the option to automatically detect an ".spj" and ".spg" file extension (for sound project, sound program) when opening, so now a double click on a project OR file in Windows will (should!) open it.

All of this took all morning, and every change creates work elsewhere. The manual needed updating too, as now all of the Modulator List screenshots are out of date.

At the same time, I had to work on the house fences, which mum has been working hard on for the last week. Several needed moving, and later, a new block of wood making to fit to an edge, but this needed screwing in, as well as some carving for the shape.

It was soon 12:30 and time to eat. Then I had to prepare the Fall in Green show. The rehearsal went well, and lasted until 15:30 or so. Then it was a matter of carrying down the amps, and other things for the performance. This is quite a small one, but still requires two amps, mic and keyboard stand, synth, some CDs for possible sale, props, two music stands and the sheet music itself. Plus costumes and signs.

Then the knob and inserts for the easel head arrived, so before finalising the SFXEngine manual, much less preparing the builds, I decided to drill out the main holder and assemble it. All went reasonably well and the new bolts worked brilliantly. Here is the head so far:

The only flaw is that overtightening the main friction knob will pull out the hex nut you can see in the first image. I can add a piece of wood there to both hold it and improve the aesthetics. I can now design alterative surface holders at whim. Overall this saves about two minutes of work each morning as I find and clamp the right piece of wood for the back of my painting surface, but it is perhaps more than that, as that wood can sometimes slip. This head should be better (caveat: it is untested).

After that, fixing up the fence and fitting it outside, then dashing back to the computer to compile new version of SFXEngine (now v1.27), and uploading to Steam.

A manically busy day then, and one that remains too hot and too filled with grass pollen for my comfort. Every summer makes my head, eyes, ears and throat feel swollen. I normally hide inside in the dark with windows closed, but I couldn't do this today. Onwards we march.

Music Work

My dreams are of anxiety, at one point missing a bus, and unable to contact or find Deb.

A tedious, long day of intimate and time-consuming work on My Baby's Non Binary and We Are The Damaged. Many takes and guitar experiments with the former, perhaps I need a set of recordings of the guitar with different settings so I can pick the one that fits the timbre best. Then some vocoder recording. This desperately needs vocals but I can't sing here, especially not on a Sunday when surrounded by enemies!

Then work on We Are The Damaged, a surprise Microkorg solo rather than a blues guitar. It was recorded live in one take as audio rather than MIDI, and in stereo with delays, so no hope of editing, but it is expressive and perhaps this method is best for this track anyway.

It's too hot, too humid. The thunder is now coming.

A rehearsal day tomorrow for our Midsummer Frolic at Congleton Library:

Prometheus, and Easel Head

Started the day with some slight changes to yesterday's Prometheus code. I now code best when I work on something one day until it works, then overnight think how it can be made more efficient, and make those changes. There were a few 'near bugs' that I fixed. When compressing time on notes, say a sequence CDE, squashed so that notes are on top of each other, the last note should be the one that remains, the others automatically deleted. There is also a lot of complexity regarding parameter changes, but all should now work.

Then, back to the easel head, lots of wood work. Here you can see the nearly finished article:

That is a test bolt, it will have a plastic handle on (when the one I've ordered arrives).

Those holes are for 6mm bolts to hold the head.

Here you can see the sloping scalene grip, so that it will fit a variety of painting surface sizes but still resist when pushed. The old head had no back at all. It did have a slot for 3mm board, but even that would wobble as it was a fixed rectangular slot, and it would grip and hide at least 5mm of the top, marking the surface and making the slot liable to become dirty. I may be able to make a specific head for miniatures, which might be useful.

Moods, Easel Heads, Prometheus v3.10

I've felt listless and lost today, a day of too much heat, a constant 26 degrees. Art is my life, a vocation I have been forced in to, my only option of doing something for the world. I work every day all day, and receive little in return. My life feels like one of constant toil for nothing but bare survival, but such are most lives. If, one day I should feel rewarded, perhaps I'd stop. Perhaps the whip and the fear of extinction is as good a motivation as any, and it has always been my only motivation. Like Beethoven, I had my Heiligenstadt moment and chose to live only because I can make some contribution to the world and I feel duty bound to do this, to do my best, every day. As Jan Swafford said, the reality of life for most artists is art or death; and an existence of struggle the only reality, with all of its cons and transcendent pros.

Mood aside, I stuck steadfastly to and worked efficiently at my jobs. First, the task of making a new head for my easel, a tiny improvement to the efficiency of my painting. I was faced with the job of making a wide groove like the base of a triangle, which in the original head was cut by something like a router. I thought that it would be easier to cut some wood to a 45-degree slope, then glue it in layers, thus:

Cutting the 10mm wood at 45-degrees was a difficult prospect. I decided to lean 4 pieces of wood sideways at 45-degrees, like dominoes mid-topple, then held them in that position in a vice and used a plane to shave the tops down until flat. This was an accurate way to cut a slope at a specific angle. I've ordered some extra parts for this: screw sockets, a bolt with a knob, and some hex-headed bolts, so that I can interchange the main canvas holder. The above will dry overnight, then I can cut a recess into it for the main holder part. I need those components to arrived before I can do more.

Then, filing mine, our, memories from 2021, the year of the Wonderland performance as part of Knutsford Music Festival, perhaps our biggest gig to date, and mid-pandemic, and all due to the marvel of Mike Drew. I also promoted our solstice show, Midsummer Frolic, which is a low-key event, a mere 5 pieces as part of the free weekly sing-along in the library. It is our first gig of the year. Still, I've been creative enough.

Then I decided to udpate Prometheus with a new feature I want to add to SFXEngine in future. It colour codes plugins by genre, like this:

It does it by layering icons, adding a 'decal' on top, so saves some graphics space, but it means a second pass when printing. I also added the feature to expand or compress notes, shift them in time, by a specific interval. Until now I could double or half the spacing, but it is sometimes useful to expand or contract by more subtle gradations.

So, the day closes. I must try to seize tomorrow. The cuts on my hand are largely healed, but I have some nerve damage to the thumb, which causes intense pain if I stretch too far (though this diminishes week by week). The trouble now comes from my damaged nails, which are growing out and may split vertically. At times I feel like Seth Brundle.

Onwards we buzz.

John Glazing, and Easel Head Design

Finished glazing 'John' in the morning. These glazes are so thin and fine that tiny amounts of paint are smudged onto the surface, rather than painted as such, but the effect is still really pronounced.

Then design work on a new head for the easel. I typically prop up the back with a wooden block to stop the canvas or board slipping back as I lean on the surface, but I thought that a new head could be designed specifically for the surfaces I use; 3mm, 6mm or 20mm... the latter might be tricky. I've created an experimental head but it may benefit from updating to fit the 20mm. I've also thought of a system where the head can be swapped/bolted in, for specific surfaces or needs.

Glazing We're Very Worried About John

A strange mix of a day. I started by filing our memory photos from 2020, an exacting process. I didn't feel like doing much, a little lost and unguided, but as with every day, worked constantly anyway. I was reminded that the mood of Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, or Beethoven on any particular day did not matter to the world, nor did their thoughts on any particular day: only their actions.

I tinkered with music, adding more to My Baby's Non-Binary; a good song, as much hit material as anything I write. Of course, it won't be a hit any more than any of my other song were hits, but I like it as a song.

In the afternoon I painted a little more of We're Very Worried About John, a glazing layer to the sky:

The glaze is very transparent and delicate, as is the whole work. I'm increasingly disappointed with Michael Harding oil paints. They are advertised as 'buttery' but are more like olive oil, and the oil is badly yellowing. Still, for some colours I prefer his to alternatives. The only colours of his I use are Raw Umber, Naples Yellow (titanium antimony chromium oxide, that is (not genuine 'Naples'), called Naples Yellow Deep by Winsor and Newton), and Venetian Red, but even that latter is now so very runny and poor that I may switch.

Robot Music Work

I spent the first 90 minutes of the day filing photographs from 2019. Then more work on 'I Think You Love Me', with recording of some extra vocoder parts, and more work on 'P-L-Astic'. The hot and tiring day has gone quickly.

I Think You Love Me Vocals, Fan Fix

Almost too uncomfortably hot to work today, and a day punctuated by a first visit to the dentist in some years.

I spent a lot of time on 'I Think You Love Me', recording and adding the vocals. I had sketches for some sub-vocals (backing, harmonies etc.) but the results were mixed, so I added some with the vocoder instead and it sounded amazing, so I stuck with that. It's rather a difficult song to produce because the words and vowels are very long, 'I' stretched over 4 beats for example. The initial song (in my head? I can't recall if I've ever added vocals) had very robot-sounding (synthesized) vocals, but I wanted to keep the human vocals because of the emotion, and there is a surprising amount of emotion in there.

I need to add some more vocoder I think. The sound is clean and clinical, it reminds be of Yazoo, which is no bad thing.

The trip to the dentist went fine. The contemporary music on the radio sounded like Black Box from the 1990s. Not so long ago, the 1980s was the decade of choice to emulate, now things have moved on (and down!) a notch.

I stopped off at Dunelm Mill to buy a new desk fan, and while in the shop the heavens opened with tropical rain, summer hail and lightning. I walked home with my umbrella, but was still soaked through, then enjoyed nature's show. The fan made an annoying hammering buzz because the fan shaft had 0.5mm of play. I dismantled it, first trying to hold the shaft in place, but it seems that the play is necessary for the fan to turn, so I added a small compression spring of the sort that click-pens have, and this did the trick. It's now silent.

Paint Box, Father's Art Exhibition, Coding

A busy day today, making a new paint storage box for new paints. These are best stored vertically. For important colours, I like to have a spare in stock, but I'm a few short. This was made from 34mm MDF, 30x30mm holes, with 3mm slots. All jigsawed, but I cheated and sawed the slots in one go. All in all, 70 slots were cut - it would have taken me far longer otherwise. The results are rather poor quality, but functional, it works as planned:

I've also updated the skin maps for Prometheus, Argus and SFXEngine. All share a common skin, but the way it's worked is not efficient, and I needed to update it for a future 'genre' flag for each plug-in. I'll not code these in just yet, but this arrangement work is a big part of it.

Generally, it's too hot to work. The sawing work on making the box was exhausting and I feel more tired than inspired, though it's good to work. I've also practiced the piano pieces for the forthcoming Fall in Green performance on the 21st (solstice) at Congleton Library, an event all thanks to the marvellous Mike Drew.

My father's art exhibition is now up and running in Nantwich Museum. I've yet to see it:

This is a somewhat moving event for me. I can only ever remember going to one of his exhibitions, in the old Crewe Library as a young child, probably then in the late 1970s or early 1980s. My first memory of painting was him showing me oil paints, and this certianly dispelled my fear of that medium, though I didn't start painting until he had stopped. I still use his studio easel today. At times I hate my father, at times pity him as he nears the end of his life, and feel that my lifetime of emotions are false.

Onwards we roll the eternal rock.

SFXEngine Update

My list of jobs grew as I painted, and today I've updated SFXEngine with some more changes prior to launch. The biggest changes concern the G.U.I. and initial layout for different screen sizes, so it should now more intelligently choose a layout. There were a few things in the manual that needed changing too, new keyboard keys... lots of little things.

The most time consuming part was replacing all of the icon, label, and text-box types with defines. This has already been done with Prometheus and Argus, but not here. Defines make it easier to add new boxes (or types of icon for example), which I hope to do for a future update. Well, the changes, on this hottest day of the year so far, took until 6pm.

My brother is visiting and a thunderstorm is brewing. Time to rest and plan for another busy tomorrow.

Descartes Underpainting Complete

Third and final day of the Descartes underpainting. All hard work. Before each session I must will myself on. The hot weather made the paint dry quickly, I had to mix some colours fresh at each session. Blending into dry is problematical. I remain amazed that Bouguereau used dryers and blended so well.

For me, such painting is a race. Paint works best when wet, so I want to complete everything quickly. A painter must dart between fast, bold, large; and intimate, tiny, fearful and precise, never confusing the two. This is one of my most colourful paintings, and it will get more colourful when glazed, which can be a more sedate experience. I'm already dreading the work.

Now I have a huge list of jobs. I want to make a new paint box for new paints (I have one for paints in use). Two new sets of lights for art photography, which I will design, and a spring loaded 'push box' for the behind the painting as I paint, to push it away from the easel towards me. At the moment I use wooden blocks for this, but I need different ones for different canvases or supports, and they can still slip. I need a rubberised spring loaded version.

That, plus SFXEngine programming and several days of other accumulated jobs.

Descartes Underpainting

Second day of Descartes underpainting. Long and tiring. The painting so far:

Rene Descartes Underpainting

First day of painting "Time Independent Portrait Of Rene Descartes Suddenly Realising That Every Thought Stems From A Prior Thought Or Memory Experience". I came up with the idea perhaps as early as 2009, and started work on it in at least as early as 2011, with a clay model, but the sheer complexity of the work made me pause this until last year. A new underdrawing was drawn out (the blog probably records that!) and a tone and colour study made, and today the first day of underpainting.

A long and tiring day. My thoughts were full of Vermeer. I remain certain that three layers; imprimatura, one opaque, one transparent is optimal for any painting. Some deep jewel-like hues can only be done with many repeat layers of the same transparent pigment, and violets are hard to achieve as there are no opaque ones (see the violet iris? It's actually mars-violet and grey, an iron oxide red, the exact colour (and pigment!) of dried blood. It looks violet due to the yellows and greens around it).

Non-Binary Production, Portrait Glaze

A sleepless night, struggling to breathe due to mucus, ah the joys of being allergic to summer!

I started the day with an update to SFXEngine which will better prepare it for various screen sizes, then a bit of work on the 'Non-Binary' production, then some painting, my first since my hand injury. I touched up one of the small Bickerton portraits, and added a glaze layer to the second. These were intended as fast and cheap works, training, as well as things people may want to buy as this rare exhibition and sale opportunity.

The source image is rather flat for this one, and small and blurry which didn't help painting. Still, this used ultramarine rose, a very delicate pigment, and one that lends itself to a particular type of glazing. Glazes over black-like or grey like hues tend to naturally create a compliment. The shadows on the face look blueish, though they are pink over grey. Much of this work is rougher than usual, the hair almost impressionistic, Rembrantesque. I can imagine repainting this better one day.

I watched a Vermeer documentary, what a craftsman. It's clear that he spent a lot meticulous time on each work, more an obsessive hobby than a commercial enterprise. His works are not technically difficult, well I can envisage copying any of his in two layers, though, taking an inordinate time of detail work on each layer; that, rather than many layers, is the key.

After that, yet more 'Non-Binary' production. Generally I've felt very tired, ill and under-par all day and all week. It reminds me that life is short, and health finite.

My Baby's Non-Binary

A anguished night, and strange dreams, of befreinding the band Sparks, who liked me. I suggested a title for their next album, one I also liked for myself, and they chose it. I also dreamt of a Norwegian TV series which had large puppets or strange monsters separated into twin pairs, one questing for the other. I feel these dreams are linked to the song occupying my mind last night: My Baby's Non-Binary. Today has flown, making small changes to that song and others. I should be painting, or should I? I'm busy, but lacking in motivation. My motivation to paint is that I can, I have 'good ideas' and perhaps might not have the time, sight, skill to paint them in future, though, of course, none of the results will be exhibited or sold (well they probably will be eventually, but are not certain to be soon), which is a dampener on such things. So, much of today's work was on My Baby's Non-Binary. The initial words were:

I want her darkness
I want his light
I want her sinews
above me
I see her working
at his desk
I need her mind
I need their mind

But they are rather easy; lacking in image, poetry, contrast, emotion. The very words are repetitive, like the music. I wrote some new verses, based on the fundamental image of a dark nightclub with neon, smoke, strobe. The music and words should describe this.

Dances while caged.
Scarlet-haired neon.
I need her sinews, their
glitter above me.
Angelic and strange.
Bitter-sweet lonely.
Is she a raven
or dove?

My baby's non-binary
Goodbye love?
My baby's non-binary
Goodbye love?

Plastic and silver.
Side-glances hateful.
I'm afraid, of myself,
the lock above.

etc.

I need to add more to the sweeping, but somewhat monotenous music (this is often the case in pop music anyway - I want more). It may have enough, though. It is high energy, a futuristic disco song, something like The Number One Song In Heaven, hence the Sparks dream.

Female God Frame

Another job done today was reframing Female God. From 2008, this hasn't been exhibited in a while. It's been show four times before: Surrealist Art Exhibition, [The Cubby Hole] (2010), Mark Sheeky & Ray Perez: Exhibition [Lyceum Theatre] (2010), Marbury Church (2010), and at the Macc Art Lounge (2016) (though I'm unsure if it was ever displayed there).

Like many of my paintings from this era it needed a better frame, so I've refurbished it. It's much like black with flecks of gold than this slightly brown image indicates (the camera white balancing is not correct). One of my more successful refurbishments of an old frame. A new frame would look better. The wood does not match on each side and the joints imperfect, but this is better than it's ever been before.

The painting itself is a partner for a painting called Eve Eating An Apply While God Looks On. That was an experimental painting of a square apple, with 'Eve' represented by a frilly circle, so that visual theme was continued here.

I Think You Love Me

A lot of arrangement work on 'I Think You Love Me' today. The original draft (Feb 2005) was a simple verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus; that's it! I want more these days.

I started by adding a melodic intro (essential). After the chorus I wanted to add elements of hope and belief, this is a 'does she (/he) love me?' song, albeit one sung from the perspective of an A.I./computer in a box/or a boxed-in person. So I added a two chord section with a super-simple backing which climbs up and down, something that sounds bright and hopeful, like doors unlocking, a passage to spring and light, then repeated this moving up a key and into an extended instrumental solo of a sort (I imagine guitar, but can't play it yet due to my hand injury). That's in GM/DM, a natural continuation from the key-up but it also leads nicely back into a second chorus back in F.

But that chorus is sadder, Hal (or whoever) realises that he (/she) is immortal and suddenly all is lost, insecure. The end tails off in slowness and sadness. This is less dramatic than the first draft which had some 'epic' blues but this feels nicer and more natural. It's a tainted love song then. Longing is always the most romantic emotion. Finally, the melodic introduction, which is rather long and doesn't appear again anywhere in the song, is replayed on a lonely and emotional piano. The whole song is about 3:30 even with the long piano ending, but this is longer than many of the other songs on this album, and it's 150 B.P.M., so bounces by. Most of my tempi are divisible by 30 (or 15): 120, 150, 180. Almost always, though all of my songs now vary the speed. Regular tempo can be a huge emotion/expression killer, so one must craft it like any other instrument.

I Think You Love Me

I think you love me... I think...
Would you tell me if you loved me?
You and me.

We could both grow old together
a little cottage by the sea.
You could talk about the weather
I'd put it in my diary.

I think (you love me)
I think (you love me)
I think (you love me)
I think

I am younger, you are older.
Here in our cottage by the sea.
You grow weaker, I grow colder.
I put you in my memory.

Would you tell me if you loved me?
Do you..?
Can you..?

Life As A Robot Guard Vocals

A steady, if slower day of album work today. I spent the first hour listening to E.L.O. songs, and Roy Wood and a bit of Richard Tandy's concept album.

Recorded and added the vocals for Life As A Robot Guard, which used a vocoder lead which sounds like the robot voices from the terrible Star Wars 'prequels'. The chorus is sing normally and has rather a strong emotional quality. I'd never have guessed I'd be resurrecting such an ancient song, and making a good job of it. It's short, but now complete.

Also recorded some vocals and improvised backing vocals for P-L-Astic, then work on I Think You Love Me, which is perhaps even simpler than 'L.A.A.R.G.'. It needs more both structurally and in production terms. Its very minimalistic, thin, but pretty. It was about doomed love, a song sung by a robot, but it's so happy in musical feeling that it seems to need to be an actual love song.

Also listened to the three new Sparks' singles. Not as good as their early work, less musical variation in the songs. I started to ache for a break in these, some contrast, but no. Still, the songs are on par with the last album, better than the poor Hippopotamus, though not their best work despite the critics' opinion to the contrary. The critics praise them to high heaven, out of respect, a cheer for being alive and still working at their age, and out of nostalgia for a real band we can rely on, now that even people like Elton John sound like fake robots. At least there's no (audible) auto-tune in there.

Music Progress

Ah, a full day today. First, I worked out that yesterday's calculations allow me to improve the accuracy of the timing reports, so added exact (to one sample) time calculations for per tick, per beat, per measure.

Most importantly, I've been working on the music. First refining P-L-Astic, this was relatively easy.

The hard work, and much of the day has been spent on a moody tune called We Are The Damaged, or The Growth Of God (or I Had No Friends). I had/have many options for this... it's emotion based, that is it must vary a lot in timing and volume. This is best done 'live' for maximum expression, but that lack of structure can be a problem. The beat in a song really drives emotion, and my most moody songs are totally arhythmic, which makes them difficult to compose and produce, I really struggle with moving the ethereal improvisations of music into a rigid form. So, I created draft after draft of this song, all a bit different. I'm perhaps already on a 4th major version. A first draft switched between two chords, then I made a ticking rhythm and slow beat, something like (but slower and darker) The Great Grandfather's Song from Burn of God, but this only half worked, so I started again and tried another draft. I had a strange chord arrangement worked out, something from the 'broken punks' era of this song, A-minor to C#-Major, two wildly atonal keys.

So, I simply played this on piano, and this sounds better. I will sing an approximate melody to this. This seems to work well, much more like the concept I had in mind, but it has required adding some drums by hand. Lots more to do.

I also did some work on a new song called What Is Love? and My Baby's Non-Binary (Goodbye Love).

So tracks so far are:
Do You Know Where Your Heart Is (draft 1 done)
We Are The Damaged (barely begun)
Robot (draft 1 done)
My Baby's Non-Binary (very little worked out not even a melody)
Plastic Lies (basic melody worked out)
Life As A Robot Guard (lots done)
P-L-Astic (lots done)
Where Is Love? (written, nothing else done)
Someone Else's A.I. (lots done, but lots more to do on this complex song).

Timing Bugs

SUCH a hard and frustrating day today. As often happens with programming I've worked non-stop to end up close to where I started. A small MIDI bug in Prometheus meant a slight change to the program. I thought I'd add a feature to calculate the time from a section near the start of the song, rather than at the start, to the cursor. This can be very useful, as sometimes the first beat or so isn't rendered, it's a blank 'pre-intro' before the song proper. When rendering from anywhere but the very start makes any timing calculations for frames, exact locations of notes etc. wrong. I thought it would be easy to calculate because I can calculate the exact sample of any note, even when the tempo is wildly modulating. All I needed to do was calculate the initial start (say, the second beat) and subtract that...

But NO! This doesn't work because rendering itself from the second beat involves a different set-up. The results were a frustrating 64 samples (about 1ms) out at times, and sometimes wildly inaccurate when modulating the tempo; yet at other times worked correctly. I needed to mimic exactly the set-up and running process used during rendering. It's taken all day so far, over six hours to track down the process, when 99% of the code was there already. I expected this trivial job to take 5 or 10 minutes. I think, now, that it's working, but it's been an exhausting battle.

Hopefully I can actually make some music or have something to show for this day.