Stomach Pain, Fake Plastic Lies Production

A night of agonising stomach pain and no sleep, followed by a day of similar pain. It seems I'm doomed to eat irregularly and lightly. It appears that onions, fibre, fructo-oligosaccharides, are my enemy. Since childhood I've had a vomit-inducing intolerance to garlic, but over the years this had grown to include onions, and high-fibre items like baked beans or bran. I tried some fructo-oligosaccharide-based soluble fibre last year and this was instantly agonising. I would like to know why, and what has changed. Are certain cells now missing that were once there? Are certain bacteria now absent that I can replace? It is possible that the out-of-date peanut butter from yesterday has caused this pain too.

The day started early anyway, with a transient house-sitting trip for workmen who didn't arrive.

Then, some good work on Fake Plastic Lies. I needed to work on the middle solo section. It would have been easy to loop the verse or chorus chords and play something happy over the top, and this was the initial plan, but that seemed too simple and this was to be the last track of this 'first section' so I thought I'd crack the music open so that it broke into the main melody of the opening track 'Do You Know Where Your Heart Is'. So I borrowed the same instruments and set up from that sequence and changed the key to fit, but the rest of the song kept playing the Fake Plastic Lies backing, the chords jarring.

Gradually, more and more parts from 'Heart' appeared, until the song smashed into a booming piano part, echoing the start of the album. I played this piano part in one take, a fall in chords, a tragic and epic mood, a moody collapse of keys and notes. I added some unexpected pauses, thoughts. This was all about searching, the search from the start of the album, but also the search mentioned in these lyrics, the search for the real behind the fake.

The piano notes hit a slight rhythm to mimic the bouncy rhythm of the main song, then the song instantly bounces into the happy continuation of the next verse. The change is so unusual and sudden it made me smile. This convinced me that this unusual interlude must remain. Nobody will hum or whistle this (or at least the middle part). No karaoke or party dance-floor here. This song is not for that.

In the afternoon, my stomach still in withering pain, we left for Bickerton to collect my unsold three paintings. I had hoped for a sale, but enjoyed painting the portraits, and indeed reframing Female God, which looks much better now. After that, a brief trip to town, then a light meal of rice, peas and ham which my stomach has accepted.

Album Cover, Vocals, Light Legs

Did much work on the album art yesterday. It was broadly inspired by the swirly and complex designs on contemporary passports. I also wanted to include some primary digital colours to evoke the old BBC Micro. There's also a minimalism to it, influenced by the cover to Jarre Live, the first L.P. I bought. First draft:

Second draft:

I weighed myself last night at 54.5kg. My weight was (at one point) 59.5, and in 2020 averaged 56.7, so this is an unusual drop, probably a result of stress on this anxious year rather than general fitness. I feel healthy, but sometimes tired or weak at those times when anxiety/life-lust subsides. I haven't really had a day off in many months so I resolved to have an easier day today.

In practise it has been very busy so far, but joyously so. I started by singing new vocals for the last two tracks on We Robot: Fake Plastic Lies, and P-L-Astic. These were good, today's singing perhaps my best to date. Spurned on by this, I sang one take of vocals for Style Guru Fashion Queen. A few months ago, when I wrote that song, the high chorus was a stretch. Now that's easy, but the low verse difficult. The song jumps more than an octave and it's quite a challenge to sing in one take. I managed it, but skipped the lines to be added in a different voice later.

I'm still learning more about production. Fake Plastic Lies benefitted enormously from sub-melodies, and is my first song with pop-brass, which gives it a happy, 1980s, Caribbean sort of feeling. This songs needs a solo. I think that's the last of the major changes. I've also investigated today (again!) how to calculate LUFS; it would be useful to add to Prometheus if I can manage it.

This afternoon I drilled the 6.5mm holes in the 12x25mm pine for the legs for the studio lights. This has proved to be quite a mammoth engineering project. Some parts failed in testing so I've re-glued them and will try to attach everything again tomorrow or later.

Life, Van Gogh, Studio Lights

Awake worrying about money and the future, as usual. So little of the past year seems to have been spent making art, instead pursuing scraps of money here and there, not at all efficiently and pleasantly, and not very successfully, but successfully enough that I must keep doing it. The practical result of this is more computer work, but like art, this creative strand, though old (and poor in regard to games, I could do far better now), is still a valid part of my contribution to the world.

I don't think the Vincent van Gogh was mad. He was merely treated with the casual disregard that most people are, combined with living in dire circumstances of poverty and dependence. He, like all artists, had no alternative: art or death are the only options. In the unlikely event that such a ragged and antisocial being were offered a paying job, his psyche (and/or his colleagues) couldn't have coped with it for long. By the time of his suicide, the thin fuse of his brother's money and life was running out, and evidently so to both siblings.

We Robot is nearly complete, and I've been working on the lighting for my painting photography. Have wired a two-and-a-half lights and completed most of the woodwork on two of the floor stands:

Two main recording strands of my life are now that: photography of my paintings, and the transcribing and ultimate publication of my music. When that's out of the way I can charge into new work. I'm at the peak of my powers (unless there are more peaks to come!) and am frustrated that I can't use the time for the benefit of art, science, humanity, truth. There must be a way to maximise everything in one. I must keep creating at my best, and archiving at my best, and selling at my best.

Prometheus v3.15, You Are My Ice Cream

A somewhat slow and rubbishy day. I slept badly, awoke tired, but I was working past 9pm last night, refining the music and taking a look at things. Today I edited the piano parts to Silicon Carbon Genesis a tiny amount, changing one single note.

Then I decided to update Prometheus with a few minor upgrades. First adding tiny icons to jump to the start/end of a sequence (there is a key for this but I always forget it). Adding cleverer systems for checking parameter changes when changing instrument. It's possible to change or set any parameter in the program on the fly, programmatically in songs. Even samples in sounds can be changed 'live' in this way (I've never actually done that), but changing an instrument will generally invalidate all of these parameter changes on the instrument level, and the program would crash if a change was instructed for a dead or illegal parameter, so I've generally deleted all instrument parameter changes when an instrument changes... but there are times when this isn't a problem; when, for example, you have two very similar instruments and want to keep the changes. So now any parameter changes are checked for legality and limited or kept if possible. Another change is that stereo samples are now loaded as a pair automatically, rather than asking which channel is preferred. Finally, the number of notes deleted is returned during any mass-delete options.

The programming changes were minor, something of a distraction. I feel the need to be more creative, do more, but I've felt tired today. In such circumstances, I aim for rational action. Emotional action is often inaction or indecision. One job on such days is to tidy, organise, prepare and make it easier to create in future. So I decided to write up and file a song I spontaneously wrote a few days ago. The words are rather amusing:

You Are My Ice Cream

You are my ice cream.
You are my sweet.
When I see you I get hungry
and it's you I want to eat.

You are my candy.
You're my delight.
When I wake I think of you
and want another night.

Let me sprinkle
sugar on your day.
Let me blow your
angry clouds away.

You are my whipped cream.
You are my spice.
Every thought I have of you
is very very nice.

You are my play time,
my holiday.
Come to my Wendy House
and we'll run away.

In other news, a new passport has arrived, so I'm free to travel for the next 10 years, although my main reason for getting it is identification, with a secondary aim of application for a (more useful) Irish Passport, to which I am entitled. My father's watermark detector machine arrived today too, which turns out to be as rubbish as my mother and I expected.

So, I must move to complete this album, and complete my studio light-leg stands. Time to get things over with and move on. Roll my rock over this hill towards better pastures. Overlander me must roll, advance like the army we are. Advance, advance! Eternal and ever-rolling.

We Robot Draft One and Track List

More work on the songs today. Mostly work on Fake Plastic Lies, adjustments of many others, and a first complete draft of the album. I can now reveal the final track-list as follows:

Do You Know Where Your Heart Is?
We Are The Damaged
Joy From A Machine Code Perspective
Robot
A.I. And Celebrity
My Baby's Non-Binary
Fake Plastic Lies
Mothmoon
Life As A Robot Guard
P-L-Astic
I Think You Love Me
Where Is Love
Flight Over Rust City
Silicon Carbon Genesis
Android Heaven
Someone Else's A.I.

There's still much to do. About 60% of the tracks sound good enough, but more work is needed on the others, so I'm entering the final tweaking stage. That itself tends to take as long as everything else, and everything on this album has been very time consuming and exacting, but yes, I feel it's my best work to date.

Attention Span and Ageing

As we get older, our attention span shortens because we are making a pattern in 4-dimensions of increasing complexity and fine detail. Observe a tree. The trunk is thick. it branches into a few stout branches, then finer branches, and at the tips, when the tree is older, many fine filaments of branch. When drawing this tree, when we are the tree building ourselves, we must start slowly and steadily, but at the end dart quickly from fine branch to fine branch. Loss of attention is a symptom, perhaps, of this fine stage, but it is not itself a failing or frailty.

Fractals seem to start with thick, stout, cores, and end in finer details, and all things seem to grow in this way. It is apparent from the design of animals which have evolved over the millions of years that these fine details have become more common, that details have been added. That the level of detail controls refinement. Stars, galaxies and the larger structures of the universe seem to retain this too; that finer and finer details are added in successive generations.

So, perhaps these 'attention spans' shorten with the age of all things.

Silicon Carbon Genesis, Robot Refinements, The Ascent of Man

A super full day of work on the We Robot album. It seems that with each doubling of energy, half the progress is made, but I'm making progress for certain.

I started with refinements to Silicon Carbon Genesis. The vocals for the song, which sounds remarkably Kate Bush-like, didn't quite fit the timing of the melody. This is because I played it all on piano first, imagining the words, then sang it later. That, plus the fact that the words, true to my new style and method, do not fit a simple meter. They were chosen poetically instead, which I like and prefer. This meant that the lines of the second verse overlapped the music and became to awry. So, I decided to extend the piano part there. I had to guess where the third line came in, made a gap, then recorded a few new notes at the right time, all in MIDI. I added the result to the song but it still didn't fit, so it took 4 or 5 edits and little movements left and right, but I got there in the end. Then it was a matter of re-converting the string arrangement, then adding (and refining) the synth brass.

Overall, this tiny change almost took as long as the rest of the song to date, but that's the way with changes. It's good enough now and sticks in my mind in a nice way. I'm almost tempted to record more work in the Kate Bush Kick Inside style... still among my favourite albums. I had a fantasy phone conversation with Kate, telling her about Prometheus, and her old Phoenix demos.

Then, a little more work on the 'I Think' vocals, but only basic balancing, they are generally fine. Then work on 'Someone Else's A.I.'. I recorded a new longer intro, because the charge right into the first line was too explosion-like, making the first words hard to make out. I also added a new, slower, 'baby' line, and added more to the unfinished 'solo' part in the middle, though nothing was played live. I did add some of the new DEC speech too ('li-kin-ay-ai'). The irony of this song, and the album itself, is that no A.I. was used at all, only manual/traditional techniques. Even the DEC speech, perhaps the most artificial sounding part of all of it, was made painstakingly note-by-note and syllable-by-syllable, as I've previously stated.

That track is an epilogue, a fun ending like the Beatles' Her Majesty. The last word is actually Silicon Carbon Genesis, a song about the peaceful fusion of man and machine. A rare example in sci-fi of peace and brotherhood between man and artificial intelligence.

Speaking of which, I've been watching The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski, the first two episodes of which have been repeated by the BBC. An amazing programme, astonishingly good. His insight that war was carefully organised theft rather than anything animalistic was a revelation (though some wars are pre-emptive strikes against potential thieves), but more-so that people fear technology because they fear that the subordinate animals that they have trained to serve them will revolt and steal their amassed resources.

So, fear of A.I. is no different than the fear of steam, the weaving loom, of the mill-stone, of sheep. Is such a fear an inherent part of intelligence? Perhaps A.I., as it will be designed to emulate humans, will not help answer this question. The answer depends on what is meant by 'intelligence'. Most intelligent people are not avaricious and do not submit to fears. Emotional control is a good measure of the relative intelligence of humans, and control over fear is the most direct example.

DEC Talking

Well, my recent comments about programming my own speech synthesizer were, amazingly, not that far from the mark. I found some source code to the old (or one version of the old) DECTalk speech synthesizer, a first generation speech synthesizer from the 1980s. This variant bled into the the first Apple and Amiga speech synths, and a version of it was famously used by Steven Hawking.

It was the first time some source code that I found online compiled without a hitch! The resulting program had too much documentation, most of which was conflicting and contradictory, but I spent an hour last night and two hours this morning working out how to make it sing. The notes are basically 'bent' toward the destination, so songs consist of short stabs between vowels, then longer held vowels. The result is as pretty as the old Bell Labs one, and certainly better than Say-It (that has a morose and sad charm, but the quality is poor, gratey, and has an awkward 'parpy' tone like the singer in The Beautiful South).

I've spent all day reprogramming my song, phoneme-by-phoneme and note by note, into DECTalk format, then saving and editing the words and sounds from wav files. It's been exacting and exhausting work. If I'd done this in 1985 I'd be a brilliant artistic pioneer, and I'd have an avant-garde hit on my hands. Now, the music sounds a little like all music does now - but not quite! This song was written for this voice, it is sang from a computer's perspective, so it's perfect here, and songs in this 'retro' voice (the only good sounding voice) are rare. On balance, I might prefer the Say-It version for it's out-of-tune sadness, but the tone of that is very poor, badly aliased and difficult or impossible to decipher. I will see how time treats both versions.

In other news, I've renewed my membership to the surrealism.co.uk website. I don't particularly feel like a surrealist, if I ever did. As I've often said, I used the term only because it gives people an idea of 'what my art is like' but, perhaps that's what the term means now anyway.

Now I'm exhausted, having been awake since 4:30am, and working since before 7. What do I have to show for it? A song that was 95% complete a few weeks ago, but ah, the last 5% is the most important. DECTalk will come in handy in future too.

We Robot Progress

I remain amazed at how much work this album is. I'd hoped that, as with any endeavour, I'd get faster over time, yet seem to be getting slower; but, of course, by doing more. By pushing harder.

Last night I played 'I Think You Love Me' to Deb, with the synth vocals. She couldn't really understand the words, only about half at best, but I think I'll keep them because the song itself needs a computer voice, and the fact that the computer can't quite manage to sing adds a cute and lamentable quality to it; and a unique one.

I work early and sang some more vocals, perhaps the last needed for this album. My singing is better than ever, but there is much improvement to come, and each album and song sounds a bit better. I sang the words to the strange song 'Silicon Carbon Genesis', and some layers and harmonies for 'Fake Plastic Lies'. Then a few more lines for 'Someone Else's A.I.', and an alternative 'P-L-Astic' with a sort of computer feeling.

The day was largely spent working on 'Silicon Carbon Genesis', which needed extending in some areas. It's a simple piano song, almost in the mood of 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes', but less structured and more poetical.

In the middle of the day I fixed up a watermark-detector machine for my father, but it barely works. These things seem to be a light and a coloured filter, £10 of equipment, but they retail for £200 or so! I could probably mass produce them.

This evening, work on the 'I Think You Love Me' words, trying to make them more intelligible, or at least less buzzy or aliased. The fault is with Say-It, which is poor quality, low-res and not anti-aliased. There's not much I can do about it other than design my own speech synthesizer; which, as always with me, is tempting!

On we march.

Chorus, Flanger, and Phaser

A slow, tired day today, but I have refined finalised the new chorus, flange, and phaser plug-ins. The phaser is surprisingly powerful with slightly longer delay times.

Music Magic

A 12-hour day of musical wonders. I wanted to rework the song I Think You Love Me. It sounds okay, but needs more, needs to be better. The original draft version (from over 10 years ago) was actually 'sung' by the computer, a speech synthesizer to sound like the old 'Daisy Bell' demo by Bell Labs from the ancient days. This version kept haunting me, but I didn't finish it because it was devilishly hard work. Today I vowed to redo it.

I started by tuning my ancient speech synthesizer software. So I experimented with pitch values, making the robot say aaah (although, actually this is one vowel sound it resolutely will not make, so I had to use another), and an online pitch detector to find the note, then I created a table of roots in a spreadsheet to calculate the 12 tones:

This was step 1, and was done by 9am. Then I wrote out the song, the notes for each syllable, and durations in seconds. The old version of the song used loops for each vowel, but they sounded poor and took an age to make, so I decided to simply make the synth sing the vowels for longer ('aaaaaaaaaaaaay thiiiiiiiink' etc.). This worked well, so I spent the next 6 hours or so, typing each syllable at the correct pitch and duration, eventually mapping out the entire song.

The results were perhaps less musical and less intelligible than those of Daisy Bell from the 1960s, but rather similar. Overall, I'm unsure if this helps the song at all.

I went out at 3pm to meet Deb, and for a walk, and to get some chicken for tomorrow's soup.

Once back, I paused on the music and started programming instead, changing my chorus/flange/phaser effects. I've had basic chorus and flange effects for some years, and a stereo flange, but I thought that I could add more parameters, separating everything into left and right for more control. I also have a 6-channel ChorusX plug-in, but that has a 500ms delay, and I've been using that because I have no stereo chorus. It can create interesting effects with such a large delay, however.

So, this evening, I've created ChorusS and FlangeS; two stereo versions with full left/right parameters, and replaced ChorusX and FlangeX with slightly better versions, and at the same time upgraded the Phaser to PhaserS too. The programming was trivial; the hard part was finding every use of these plug-ins in old songs and carefully updating those song files. I have 1500-or-so songs, so every update process is large, and extreme caution must be used so that everything upgrades correctly. The new plug-ins can exactly replicate the old ones, but with more functionality, so all is fine there. For now I have Stereo Flange AND FlangeS at once. They effectively do the same thing, but with parameters in a slightly different order, but Stereo Flange is used a lot, several 100 sequences, so I don't want to update those right now.

So, I must complete the work on the songs. The album sound really good so far, my best I think.

My stomach is largely better but I'm not eating much and am probably overworked, but such is poverty and the short fuse of life. I'm not so much slave-driven as driven, a lust for life spiced with a fear of losing that which I have. I'm not a deaf German, but one thing I do have in common with Beethoven is the love of challenge, battle, struggle, and these are key elements of my satisfaction, and goals. The deathly relaxation of contentment is pointless and to be feared, and 'happiness', that transient emotion, as a goal is idiotic; the preserve of fools and animals. Any emotion is irrelevant to the world. The world cares nothing about how I feel, or how Beethoven felt, or how Vincent van Gogh felt on a particular Sunday afternoon. Only actions matter.

Stomach Pain, War Is Over Scores 2

A terrible night of stomach agony! Chips the culprit, that food I cannot eat. It's amazing how my digestive constitution differs so markedly from my mother's. She loves and can easily digest potatoes, yet can barely handle pasta and dislikes rice; yet I'm the opposite. I can eat lots of pasta, love rice, yet potatoes to me produce a concrete-like effect in my digestion. I slept for an hour or two, and could barely lie down. Magnesium Citrate is my friend and saviour in these circumstances, but it's been a slow day of only partial recovery.

As such, I couldn't muster the energy or desire to work on anything creative. I fixed the 46 Prometheus sequences which mixed the two new 'Randy Monotone' plug-ins. I made some code changes and batch fixed those. Then, in an attempt to be productive on some level, decided to complete the War Is Over scores.

Struck Lucifers is amazingly complex note-for-note, but essentially two moods, well three. It starts with a 'White Cliffs of Dover' homage, then a boogie-woogie rhythm, interspersed with gentle flowing notes with a middle-eastern feeling (matching the poem's words about Egypt/Palestine, a key area of British foreign policy in the 1940s). It's quite simple to play and improvise it all live, but matching the recorded version note-for-note is devilishly difficult. I managed to transcribe those notes well enough, though it all took about two hours.

For the final track, Asylum Flowers, I stopped trying, and added a written note that the music should collapse at the end into post-traumatic fragmentation, which is how I play it each time.

The scores were completed and released on itch, and I updated the others there. Then a last job of promoting the latest IndieSFX sale.

My stomach still hurts, but I have managed to eat today. I'm now awaiting Beethoven's 5th on the Proms; tonight on TV. I must, tomorrow, work more on We Robot.

War Is Over Scores Day 1

Too tired to work on music today after a very busy yesterday.

Instead, I spent the day on the simpler task of scoring the War Is Over music. The complexity of the improvised piano opening, and the One Hat vibraphones make this really difficult (from the MIDI sequence, I never really stick to timing or pay any attention to it - I record everything at '120 B.P.M.' with no click track). I'm so pleased I've developed the tools to help. My tool essentially shoves the notes next to each other, then I can manually edit the music in Sekaiju. It's time consuming, but a lot faster than hand entering note by note. I suspect that even an A.I. or apprentice couldn't do this seemingly ideal task for them, as there are a lot of creative control, active composition decisions, needed.

It made me think. The essence of One Hat, while playing live, isn't at all to match that recording. I generally improvise it all using the same approximate chords as the recording, but I've never really played some parts in the same way. I've never since, for example, played the darting between D and C during the 'onions' part, and often the strokes for 'Half he said, half' tend to be more on time when live than on the recording. Much of the live playing is about matching Deborah's pace. Now, I rarely write Fall in Green tunes like this, instead writing actual different parts for the poem, more like songs, but these early works were more improvisational.

I thought that the essence of the score should be like my 'live' mnemonics, here:

Rather than the full notes in the recording, which are far more complex. A similar issue exists for Janus Never Blinks. I do tend to play it rather like the recording, but over the many live performances it's evolved into something a little different. For the Testing The Delicates music, this will be a big issue, as most of it is improvisatory in nature.

Well, the scoring process is tedious but I've managed Janus, One Hat, Valhalla (which is barely musical), and the piano piece at the start which is called War Is Over Intro. I wrote two others at the time, for the live Knutsford and Congleton events. These were called We Are The Dead and Rhapsody For Peace, but I can't remember if I played them - they were only sketches in the score. However, I've tidied these up a little too. That's it; a day's work done.

We Robot, Bickerton Drop, Gog

A super-productive day. Up at 7am, I started by reprogramming the Axial Pan plug-in, converting the 16 or so sequences that used it, then updating Prometheus a little with small improvements applied during batch processing, such as stopping when encountering an unexpected error. Then I updated the batch-file converter spreadsheet so that I could automatically copy over the new sequences to the correct album folders.

Then, started work on the final section of the album, now called 'We Robot'. This involves three tracks, starting with a long and slow series of chords I played on the MODX a few days ago. I added some atmospheric white noise, filtered up and down, but with a strong compressor added which created some wonderful sizzles at certain points. I added an irregular random 'bleep' using one of Prometheus' procedural generators, Edward, which creates music at random from a table.

After lunch, a pause for a 90-minute round trip to deliver my paintings to Bickerton, with extreme thanks for the lift from Chris. I'd forgotten to attach a label with the price and the people there wanted to write the price in pen on the back of the painting, which I wasn't happy about. I can't remember this being an issue before. Normally, if I recall, the painting's number is simply stuck to the front and the catalogue lists the price, not the back of the painting. If the back is written on I'll have to reframe it. I also hope that this doesn't harm the chances of a sale (ie. the price being listed). It was a chaotic drop-off, with many people at the desk at once, and I left my packaging there by mistake. It was nice to meet Janet Tweedy there though, from my first art club, one of the very few artists of distinction there.

Once back, I continued work on the music, and added the sequence to the song, the piano tune Silicon-Carbon Genesis. I separated out the lead melody from the chords and imported that into the sequencer to give me an exact guide to the timing, then rewrote the music as a counter-melody. I then loaded the full piano sequence as a midi file and changed the instrument to strings to follow the lead. This sounded good, but perhaps a little too simplistic as it merely followed the piano, so I deleted all but the F, B, C, D, and E notes which led to some unusual sonorific effects.

Finally, work on the last track, a dreamy chord sequence like the angelic choirs at the end of The Arcangel Soundtrack (which I also used on Synaesthesia, and emulated on The Spiral Staircase too - I realised the potential cliché).

Then, this evening, some sampling of waves from the MODX. The auto-loop detector in Prometheus is a vital tool. I'd have no hope of looping these by hand.

Of other jobs, I've researched more on music publication, which I'm certain to do for my 1000+ works one day. Joyously, Acrobat can join several pdf files to make one, and Amazon can print at A4 too, so I could make books of my sheet music without the extreme problem of formatting everything in Muse Score. I created a new series of xcopy batch scripts to copy over any updated scores from my master files to the album's folders. A day of full, work at robotic speed, intensity, and efficiency.

Speaking of robots. At lunch and tea, I watched a 1950s film called Gog, which was remarkable for being very focused on the awesome potential for science. It reminded me of The Andromeda Strain (the theme of science going haywire evoked Michael Crichton, though this film had a surprisingly positive view of radiation and killer-space rays). The elements of a Film Noir detective thriller helped it. It was a poor film, and the robot villains comical, but I feel that there's a good idea in there somewhere.

More Programming Than Music, Washing Machine

Ah, sigh, a very busy day of exactitude!

I started by developing a new panning plug-in called Vector Pan; this includes Shell and Core parameters and two pan values, each added to each other. This means it can effectively replace the Basic Pan, the Axial Pan and the Complex Pan. I did a search of how many songs used the Complex Pan, about 50 or so, so copied those over and used a Conversion Matrix to update all of them with the new Vector Pan.

Then I thought I'd continue my Prometheus efficiencies by seeing how many songs used the Randy (random!) Monotone Samples with delay. Not too many... most of the time only the volume is random, giving a more naturalistic sound. Those with a delay could be converted to Randy Monotone Sample II, so I did that, then removed the 200ms delays from the Randy Monotone Sample plug-in, thus saving memory during the majority of the time when this common plug-in is used.

Then I updated the Random Pitch II plug-in; this was only used 3 times, so I did that manually. Now that has a 'Core' parameter too. That attenuates (or raises) the volume in the 'centre', so can be used for more (or less) extreme pan effects.

Those changes all involve about 100 or so sequences/songs. For these, the results should be identical as all plug-ins are being replaced with new ones with the same plus more functionality, and making things more efficient by removing unused parameters or sharing features. This is only possible because of the Conversion Matrix option, which can batch update a directory full of song files.

I discovered a minor bug in Prometheus too; a rare crash, and added a couple of little features to the batch conversion process, to stop dialog boxes, and one to check that the destination plug-in actually exists - I'll add that feature to the next SFXEngine update too. So, Prometheus was updated to v3.14 today.

After all of this I had a folder of 1,393 song files, all (hopefully!) converted to the latest set of plug-ins, with all obsolete ones now gone forever. My fear is that these mass changes will cause an error somewhere. Like a digital cancer, one small error could proliferate among my archive, so I must be as careful as possible.

I then filed the updated program and plug-in code, and darted to work on the 'Someone Else's A.I.' song. I started by sampling a banjo and added that. It's timbre really helps the mix, but this song needs a lot of layers yet. That music work was a brief respite from my coding and admin.

Then, a final stage of the program updates. I needed to copy the right songs to the right folders. I have 70 albums, singles, and EPs filed, each with a subfolder containing the sequences for that song. The correct ones needed to be copied from the master list now that they have all been updated. So, that's about 700 songs... I started by using DirectoryListPrint to compile a list of all of those filenames, then pasted them into a spreadsheet. I then used the Concatenate function to create a list of 700(ish) xcopy commands to custom-copy those exact files from the source folder to the destinations, using the "/d" flag to copy only the new ones (a minority).

I've never done something like this before, but it worked brilliantly... except for one instance. The Cycles & Shadows album has the ampersand in the folder name, so when the command prompt hit it, it expected a batch file - eek! I don't think any damage was done. Ultimately, I seem to have copied all 700 files (well, those new ones) over in under an hour. This will be a useful trick for similar updates in future.

All of this plus, in other parts of the day, a new washing machine came. Not new, but my brother's old one. This was heavy and required moving into the kitchen. The old one was too heavy for me to shift; a local scrap-metal man came for that.

My father has managed to sell all of his work at Nantwich Museum to the café opposite for a lump-sum (I have no doublt that he hasn't even considered paying the museum the commission he should; unlike him, I must and do behave professionally and with a long-term and stable attitude). So, he's sold more paintings in a day than I have in many years put together, but, of course, for small sums; one of my paintings can fetch as much as his entire oeuvre. My work isn't to the average taste of the public and would probably not suit a café; disturbing, ironically, due to his effect on my life and psychology. Of course he made sure to belittle me with his news.

Someone Else's A.I., Words & Music Fest, God and O.C.D.

Like so much of 2023, today has been long and exhausting with little to show for it... but yes, I've made progress. I started the day with about 90 minutes of singing high harmonies and layer vocals for 'Someone Else's A.I.' and these sound pretty good, but the song itself sounds thin and tangly, like a metal spider dancing in the back of an old piano.

We've had confirmation of our Fall in Green gig in Nantwich Words and Music Festival, supporting former Poet Laureate, and general all-round great poet Carol Ann Duffy, so I spent an hour or so sharing this exciting news. The website decided to fail! Spelling mistakes and typos decided to leap upon me! And I sent five accidental Tweets with errors in, all strange errors which never normally occur! Such it is with important things.

Then I added the vocals to the song sequence, which itself took another 90 minutes of processing and editing, but this was experimental and later editing was needed (at time of writing about half of my recorded vocals were not used). I wanted the results to sound close and 'tight', so I programmed track volume changes to sharply cut and rise the levels to match parts. This sounded good, but the sparseness of the rest of the song, these tinny digital pianos, didn't help any of it. I used my Watergate plug-in, a noise gate, on stereo samples, and realised that I should really be tracking the volume as one, merging it all, rather than tracking each channel separately.

I created a new experimental plug-in, Watergate II, which did this. For mono samples it works as before, but for stereo (or hexio - Prometheus supports 6 channels natively remember) will now track a chosen volume (average, or left, right, or whatever). I realised that I'll probably ONLY use this from now on. This revelation gripped me and caused a great nervous anxiety: I needed to replace every occurrence of the old Watergate in every sequence! I also noted that my Randy Monotone Samplex plug-in was also slated for replacement, so I bit the proverbial bullet and created a new slew of plug-ins, a new Randy Monotone Sample II (replacing the Samplex) and compiled all 1400 or so song files for analysis. About 85 used the now-obsolete plug-ins, so I isolated those, and created a Conversion Matrix to convert the old to new plug-ins. By 7:30pm it was done (caveat: in my main archive, not elsewhere).

In a way, I'm nearly back where the day started BUT everything is neater now, more efficient. A lot of work is this. Life is about neatness, accuracy, efficiency. Letting things slip into laziness and error is a one-way entropic trip that leads to doom, and ultimately death. All death is a terminal collapse of information - not mere energy weakness (energy is needed for information transmission and storage, not the other way around). Our cells themselves must work to maintain accuracy: Accuracy! The key to life, youth, perfection! So my obsessive compulsions in this regard are not irrational fears like other obsessive compulsions, but a key application of the method of existence. Life exists to defy entropy. The universe is wounded, god is imperfect, and it/he needs us to help, to heal, to repair, to perfect. Like the fish that clean the teeth of giant undersea monsters, humans and all life-forms are the healers and essential assistants of god; not subjects.

Silicon Carbon Genesis

A full day. Started with some essential admin, then more work on the album. I didn't get started until about 3 or 4pm... unsure of next steps. Much of creativity is deciding what is wanted. Here, I'm making the third section, the third 'movement' of the album. The first is a somewhat energetic 'external' element, then we 'enter the machine' a little, for a quieter middle phase; but musically the parts are essentially a series of songs with a fairly loose interconnection, a rough story.

My sketch for the finale was the Aspartame song, but it didn't seem to fit, so I decided instead on something moody and atmospheric. I played a version of this a few days ago on the MODX, a recapitulation of the 'Non-Binary' theme, but it was too strong, so I replayed this today, one take with less musical emphasis, less 'rhyme' poetically. It had a sort of glowing hum, like the engines of a futuristic space vehicle or aircraft. I toyed with the idea of adding words over the top, as with my 'Let's Take a Walk in the Desert' song, as the imagery was similar.

I yesterday (or perhaps the night before that) wrote some words about how the Earth was warming to accommodate computers, how global warming was a step towards symbiosis, not abuse by humans (other species would and do behave in the same way, expanding to consume as many resources as possible; this is nature). Plus, that these climatic tumults are are sort of Gaia Anxiety, a speeding up by nature, as in bodily anxiety. The storms, uncertainty. I saw these things as natural, a growing symbiosis between the organic and the mechanical, not a conquest or subjugation of nature. But those first-draft words, and that song, was a sleazy rock song in the style of '21st Century Schizoid Man'. Today, I re-wrote everything with the same theme, but better:

Silicon Carbon Genesis

Rust sky, battery hot.
A bird's wing clatters, hums.
The anxious world of data avarice
and instability.

Silicon-carbon genesis
Silicon-carbon genesis

Fragile plants, slave-driven.
Humans angry, afraid.
Machines shudder, nightmared.
Information hives pollenate fears.

Silicon-carbon genesis
Silicon-carbon genesis

Symbiosis, the paragon of nature.
Freedom, spark of divinity
All beings become brothers
Where thy gentle wing abides.

You'll note the last verse is from Schiller's Ode to Joy. For a melody, I set the keyboard to record and improvised something gentle in F-minor, evoking 'Time, Falling'. I liked it, so, at the end of the chorus, simply continued playing and, amazingly, this first improvisation became a complete recording on piano of the full song, so I'll use that.

Vocals, Scores

Another sleepless night, loaded with energy and anxiety. Last night, I thought about the formatting for my sheet music, and the mammoth task ahead of scoring other albums. The Fall in Green albums are most urgent, as I often have to perform these. I have some notes (notes of notes) for them, but a full score would be useful, as well as part of my long term ambition, yet with 30 or so albums, it's a full-year's work to transcribe all of them. Still, I must try. I want to do everything.

A good day today though. I started by reformatting my existing scores; 210 scores, with a slightly neater layout. This is a start. Then assembled my new wooden music stand for the MODX, and then lots of singing: vocals for 'Hydroxy-Chloroquinine-Aspartame', 'Fake Plastic Lies', and then a super-ambitious 'Someone Else's A.I'. which was (and is) a complete joy to sing, and so very difficult; it's a gaggle of words at 210 beats-per-minute, barely room to breathe, and very high. My singing is better than ever but I have a long way to go. I must aim for practical improvements; learning to sing from score would be good, but I'm currently too impatient to bother to print the notes. I have noticed that even writing the note letters on the lyric sheet helps with accuracy and that most of the errors are due to not knowing what is coming next.

The resulting music for all of these tracks, when the vocals were added, is sparse. 'Someone Else's A.I.' is only half finished anyway, it needs a lot of layers, and all of these songs could benefit from more vocals too. I generally don't like vocal layering, it can sound inauthentic, but, sonically, usually sounds better. Fake Plastic Lies is, in production, somewhat different from the highly electronic (to my generation 'Yazoo-like') tracks. It reminded me of Bucks Fizz a bit, with its acoustic guitar strums. Their songs were very layered vocally. It's rare for a single line of any of their songs to have one voice.

One other job was filing the recordings for the Midsummer Musical Picnic, our last live event, which Mike had sound-recorded to great effect. This feedback is vital.

Orb Dream, SFXEngine, Music and Music Stand

A sleepless night followed by a vivid dream at 6am.

I was in Crewe library, the location of the old library, but it was modernised and light inside, like a railway station or shopping centre, with shops and different reading areas. Someone mentioned that the library had just been sold by the council to Dunelm Mill, that the library would be closed, and that the man doing to sale was a dodgy politician who took two years of underhand work to manage the deal. He was someone who helped cover something up for Boris Johnson during the Covid-19 pandemic. I said that the sale wasn't perhaps too bad, that a new library would emerge one day and perhaps be better.

I found myself outside, in an alleyway, like the 'backses' near Dane Bank Avenue on my school-walk route home. A man with a stick and limp was there, but his stick was small and perhaps stolen. I said I'd find him a new one. I saw a large wooden spoon on the wall of a house in the alley and took it down, then rang to doorbell of the house. Two women inside were talking agitatedly, as one answered. I asked if I could keep the spoon and she said fine. The bowl of the spoon was now broken, leaving a curving shard up one side, not too dissimilar to a crutch. I gave the spoon to the man and he was pleased with it. The alley now was large and surrounded with trees or rusting objects covered with leaves, ivy, brambles; a pretty, verdant forest. The tree before us was vast and I thought I could see that it was a machine instead, an enormous digger/earth mover. Suddenly it became clear that it was indeed a vast, rusting digger covered with greenery, and it roared into life moving towards us alarmingly. A large screw/auger on the front appeared, and it joined another mole-like machine to dig down into the earth to create some sort of new underground building or tunnel system for Crewe.

Something went wrong and workers started to flee the tunnel. Underground, the mole-like digger was about to explode and the area was flooded with an inflammable and radioactive toxic chemical of transparent blue. An apocalyptic explosion was coming and everyone, including myself ran for cover.

I found myself in a glass ball about 2-3M in diameter, sealed in. It appeared that, after the explosion, the wrecked world was toxic with radiation, but that a few people like me had managed to survive in these Zorb-like/Super-Monkey-Ball-like orbs. I followed a group of survivors underground, through a series of dark and contorted tunnels, often going underwater and past broken girders or other remnants of civilisation. We emerged into a cave lit with an artificial blue light, an underground refuge or base. The orbs opened to release us, we were safe here. The floor was ankle deep with water and the place was cold and black, the decor of the game Halo or the haven of the heroes in The Matrix film series. There were some beds here, a communal bunk area, and I tried to sleep but made moans and noises due to anxiety, which annoyed some of my fellow survivors.

Next day, waking in the dark base, we left on a mission, climbing into our orbs. The scenario was now to me like a sci-fi series, where weekly adventures were about exploring the broken, toxic world in these protective orbs. We entered an abandoned old warehouse or office. I found some old Amiga-era 3.5in floppy discs; some DD (Double Density) and some HD (High Density). A team member commented that the DD discs was more valuable, harder to find, but that both stacks of discs should be taken for future use. This ancient technology was now valuable by its rarity. I realised that the discs were mine, my old Amiga archive.

There my vivid dream ended.

I awoke to a day of admin, the launch of an update to SFXEngine. I also transcribed some music from the MODX which I recorded late last night. Unusually, connecting the MODX via USB caused an instant 'Blue Screen Of Death' in Windows 11; highly unusual. I spent 90 minutes working on the music stand for the synth, which needs testing tomorrow. I've also recorded the vocals for 'I Think You Love Me' but I feel a little artistically at sea. I need more projects, more ambition. I'm spending time on the physical projects; lights, woodwork, when I should be more productive in other areas.

On we forge, through the jungle of life, through the labyrinth we must move, crawl, seek, push.

ArtSwarm Tea, Redbush City Limits

Well, I started the day determined to make a good 'ArtSwarm: Tea' event for Saturday, so prepared a new song 'Redbush City Limits' by Teana Turner, as well as practising my Tea Sonata for piano, a tune by Mister Tea, a guess-the-bag-by-scent game, and a jam-along to a rendition of Flying Teapot by Gong (this was useful to me at least, I created a complex sequence on the MODX, so learned a bit about drum-part creation).

All of that because, as of last night, I had but one confirmed attendee, plus one probable, and of course, Deb and I. I asked around to see who might be coming but, after asking more than 10 people, none could make it for one reason or another, so just before 4pm I made the decision to cancel the event, and end ArtSwarm in the process. I rather liked them, and a few others did too, but it seems that the community is just too scant to make such an event viable, even for personal training purposes at the moment. Only one of the eight live ArtSwarm events broke even in hall-hire costs, and the work of organising them began to fill me with dread. One of my initial aims of a sort of an artistic community hub, or at least some sort of meeting of friends, didn't really work for me because I rarely had time to talk to anyone. Almost all of my conversations took place at the end as I dismantled the equipment, and many people had left by then.

Still, Tea alone has taught me a few performance tricks. I rarely sing and play the keyboard at the same time (my first and only public attempt so far was the Bob Dylan event at Congleton Library last year), and practising this alone has been valuable.

In other parts of the day, I added more to my keyboard stand design, and ordered some screw parts and organiser boxes. I watched a Toyah concert, from 1981. The songs were very amateurish in composition but the show full of joyous theatricality which I loved and love. In some ways it was what ArtSwarm itself was about!

Well, here are the words to Redbush; a commentary on Crewe. Perhaps it's actual composition indicated why it could find to audience! The music is A-Maj (and bluesified into minor) with C-Maj/G-Maj choruses).

Redbush City Limits by Teana Turner

Tea house, coffee house
on the Nantwich Road.
Chips, kebab, pizza,
the sky's the limit!

They call it Redbush: Redbush!
Redbush city limits.
Redbush city limits.

It's a one tea town
and it's caffeine free.
It's a no-horse town.
No-one here but you and me.

They call it Redbush: Redbush!
Redbush city limits.
Redbush city limits.

When apocalypse comes
it'll pass us by,
for their ain't no fire
in this rust-blood sky.

They call it Redbush: Redbush!
Redbush city limits.
Redbush city limits.

Tired Day, MODX, Reface DX

An exhausting day, probably due to the lack of food and stomach pain yesterday combined with a frenetic torrent of jobs. Today I've looked at the album a little, and worked on the MODX music stand.

The main work done has been a refinement of new MODX sounds for the Fall in Green performance. This took a few hours for the minor tweaks. This takes hours due to the exceptionally badly designed interface. I keep toying with writing to Yamaha with suggestions but I know it would be useless. Their Reface DX is an amazing sounding and playing synth, but utterly crippled by having 32 presets that can't be easily saved or loaded externally. It makes a toy of what could a professional instrument - I find this frustrating and depressing!

I feel too weak today to think. I must rest and refocus.

Sound Effects, 2002 to 11 Jul 2023

I've spent today compiling a complete list of the sound effects packs, sets, and commissions since 2002. Packs vary from a few sounds to over 100 per set. Some for my use in games/projects, most for either public sale on various onlune stores, or commissions.

S1A, 2003, Explosions And Arcadia
S2A, 2003, Squad Level Mechanics
S3A, 2003, Robotnik
S4A, 2003, First Person Shooter
S5A, 2003, Fantasy Reality
S6A, 2003, SoundMATTER Suite
S7B, 2004, Glass
S8C, 2004, Gunfire
S9C, 2004, Controls
S10B, 2004, Water
S11C, 2004, Atmosphere
S12C, 2004, Footsteps
S13C, 2005, Hits
S14C, 2005, Space Shooter
S15C, 2005, Sokoban Sounds
S16C, 2005, Knightlore
S17C, 2006, Car Sounds
S18C, 2006, Background Loops
S19C, 2006, Aircraft
S20C, 2006, Casual Sounds
S21C, 2007, Doors
S22B, 2007, Switches
S23C, 2007, Space Weapons
S24C, 2007, Sports
S25C, 2007, Card And Casino
S26C , 2008, Pickups
S27C, 2008, 8-Bit Arcadia
S28C, 2009, Creatures
S29C, 2009, Melee Weapons
S30C, 2009, Get Drop Slide
S31C, 2010, Mobile Tones
S32B, 2010, Motors
S33C, 2010, Animals
S34C, 2010, Monsters
S35C, 2010, Future Weapons
S36B, 2010, Glass And Water
S37D, 2010, Macro Pack 1
S38D, 2010, Macro Pack 2
S39D, 2010, Macro Pack 2
S40E, 2010, Instrument Archive Alpha
S41E, 2010, Instrument Archive Beta
S42C, 2012, Cute Creatures
S43C, 2012, Clocks Alarms Switches
S44C, 2012, Apps And Minigames
S45C, 2012, Explosions And Impacts
S46C, 2012, Weapons Construction Kit
S47C, 2012, Pickups Construction Kit
S48C, 2012, Bladed Weapons
S49C, 2012, Adventure
S50C, 2012, Arcade Shooter
S51C, 2012, Doors
S52C, 2012, Monsters
S53C, 2012, Casual Games
S54C, 2012, Footsteps
S55C, 2016, Sheeky's Adventure Sounds
S56C, 2016, Sheeky's Army Sounds
S57C, 2016, Sheeky's Background Sounds
S58C, 2016, Sheeky's Casino Sounds
S59C, 2016, Sheeky's Explosions Sounds
S60C, 2016, Sheeky's Fantasy Sounds
S61C, 2016, Sheeky's Jingles Sounds
S62C, 2016, Sheeky's Monsters Sounds
S63C, 2016, Sheeky's Nature Loops
S64C, 2016, Sheeky's Powerups Sounds
S65C, 2016, Sheeky's Puzzle Sounds
S66C, 2016, Sheeky's Racing Sounds
S67C, 2016, Sheeky's Retro Sounds
S68C, 2016, Sheeky's Strategy Sounds
S69C, 2016, Sheeky's Swords Sounds
S70C, 2016, Sheeky's Weapons Sounds
S71C, 2017, AGK Actions
S72C, 2017, AGK Blade Combat
S73C, 2017, AGK Bonus
S74C, 2017, AGK Buttons
S75C, 2017, AGK Christmas Sounds
S76C, 2017, AGK Doors Drawers Locks
S77C, 2017, AGK Environments
S78C, 2017, AGK Explosions
S79C, 2017, AGK Guns
S80C, 2017, AGK Military Weapons
S81C, 2017, AGK Misc
S82C, 2017, AGK Monsters
S83C, 2017, AGK Movement
S84C, 2017, AGK Pickups
S85C, 2017, AGK Potions Spells
S86C, 2017, AGK Rooms
S87C, 2017, AGK Scifi Weapons
S88C, 2017, AGK Vehicles
S89C, 2022, Flowlab Casual Sounds
S90C, 2022, Flowlab Animals
S91C, 2022, Flowlab Adventure
S92C, 2017, AGK Unused
S93C, 2022, Flowlab Unused
S94C, 2022, SCI Pickups
S95C, 2022, SCI Retro
S96C, 2022, SCI Swords
S97C, 2022, SCI Weapons
S98C, 2006, SoundMATTER Aircraft
S90C, 2006, SoundMATTER Bleeps
S100C, 2006, SoundMATTER Creatures
S101C, 2006, SoundMATTER Doors
S102C, 2006, SoundMATTER Explosions And FPS
S103C, 2006, SoundMATTER Footsteps
S104C, 2006, SoundMATTER Hand Weapons
S105C, 2006, SoundMATTER Jingles
S106C, 2006, SoundMATTER Land Vehicles
S107C, 2006, SoundMATTER Location Loops
S108C, 2006, SoundMATTER Military Weapons
S109C, 2006, SoundMATTER Pickups And Bonuses
S110C, 2006, SoundMATTER Puzzle
S111C, 2006, SoundMATTER Rain Wind Fire
S112C, 2006, SoundMATTER Scifi Weapons
S113C, 2006, SoundMATTER Sea Vehicles
S114C, 2006, SoundMATTER Space Weapons
S115C, 2006, SoundMATTER Sports
S116C, 2006, SoundMATTER Strategy
S117C, 2006, SoundMATTER Weather Loops
S118C, 2014, TGC Artillery
S119C, 2014, TGC Beams
S120C, 2014, TGC Bonus Lose
S121C, 2014, TGC Bonus Win
S122C, 2014, TGC Bows
S123C, 2014, TGC Buttons
S124C, 2014, TGC Cannons
S125C, 2014, TGC Clockticks
S126C, 2014, TGC Doors Metal
S127C, 2014, TGC Doors Scifi
S128C, 2014, TGC Doors Wood
S129C, 2014, TGC Drop
S130C, 2014, TGC Explosions
S131C, 2014, TGC Explosions Atomic
S132C, 2014, TGC Explosions Flame
S133C, 2014, TGC Explosions Magic
S134C, 2014, TGC Explosions More
S135C, 2014, TGC Explosions Scifi
S136C, 2014, TGC Flamers
S137C, 2014, TGC Footsteps Grass
S138C, 2014, TGC Footsteps Gravel
S139C, 2014, TGC Footsteps Metal
S140C, 2014, TGC Footsteps Snow
S141C, 2014, TGC Footsteps Stone
S142C, 2014, TGC Footsteps Wood
S143C, 2014, TGC Heal
S144C, 2014, TGC Hit Cloth
S145C, 2014, TGC Hit Metal
S146C, 2014, TGC Hit Slime
S147C, 2014, TGC Hit Wood
S148C, 2014, TGC IonGuns
S149C, 2014, TGC Jump
S150C, 2014, TGC Lasers
S151C, 2014, TGC Levers
S152C, 2014, TGC Locks
S153C, 2014, TGC Pain
S154C, 2014, TGC PickUp
S155C, 2014, TGC Pickup Ammo
S156C, 2014, TGC Pickup Coin
S157C, 2014, TGC Pickup Happy
S158C, 2014, TGC Pickup Weapon
S159C, 2014, TGC Platforms
S160C, 2014, TGC Punch
S161C, 2014, TGC Reload
S162C, 2014, TGC Rifles
S163C, 2014, TGC Rockets
S164C, 2014, TGC Shotguns
S165C, 2014, TGC Slide Object
S166C, 2014, TGC Smash Glass
S167C, 2014, TGC Switches
S168C, 2014, TGC Throw
S169C, 2014, TGC Traps
S170C, 2014, GC Blob Background Loops
S171C, 2005, GC Creator
S172C, 2006, GC Dark AI Demo
S173C, 2006, GC Domino Demo
S174C, 2005, GC Driving Test Simulator
S175C, 2005, GC Driving Test Simulator II
S176C, 2007, GC Driving Test Simulator III
S177C, 2006, GC FPSC Model Pack 3
S178C, 2005, GC FPS Creator Sounds
S179C, 2007, GC FPS Creator Sounds Zombie
S180C, 2010, GC iPie
S181C, 2018, GC Melee Weapons Sounds
S182C, 2010, GC Moles
S183C, 2010, GC Mouse Organ
S184C, 2014, GC Store Loops
S185C, 2018, GC Ten Reasons Stopping
S186C, 2019, GC Village Levels
S187C, 2019, GC Village Malta
S188C, 2009, GC Whack-A-Mole
S189C, 2015, GC Wind And Weapons
S190C, 2020, GC Zombies 2020
S191C, 2020, GC Zombies 2020 Steps
S192C, 2012, Loops Nature
S193C, 2012, Loops Moods
S194C, 2012, Loops Waiting
S195C, 2012, Loops Places
S196C, 2016, Ink Pantry
S197C, 2012, ArtsLab Jingles
S198C, 2005, Vocode Carriers
S199C, 2005, Gunstorm
S200C, 2005, Future Pool
S201C, 2006, Gunstorm II
S202C, 2015, Radioactive
S203C, 2017, Flatspace II
S204C, 2019, Radioactive Speech 2019
S205C, 2020, Taskforce
S206C, 2020, Taskforce 2020
S207C, 2022, Radioactive Speech 2022
S208C, 2006, Pirates
S209C, 2006, Marble Tactics
S210C, 2006, Atomic Battle Dragons
S211C, 2006, Cloudscape
S212C, 2007, Football Chant
S213C, 2007, Football
S214C, 2007, Raptor
S215C, 2007, Raptor Vocals
S216C, 2007, Birth Of Shadows
S217C, 2007, Seascapes
S218C, 2009, Gary Fung
S219C, 2009, Cuatic
S220C, 2009, Gary Fung Message
S221C, 2009, McNamara
S222C, 2009, Alperin
S223C, 2009, Bunny Charm
S224C, 2009, Gary Fung Email
S225C, 2009, D Turner Giggles
S226C, 2009, Lightsabres
S227C, 2010, Alarms
S228C, 2010, The Floobs: The Rainbow Quest
S229C, 2010, Blockies
S230C, 2010, McNamara Scenes
S231C, 2010, Pokie Monkey Mania
S232C, 2010, Pokie Maxicash
S233C, 2010, Pagers
S234C, 2011, Pyramid Plays 2
S235C, 2011, Chicken Dash
S236C, 2011, Spirit Walkers
S237C, 2011, Engine Mah Jong
S238C, 2011, Mystic Palace
S239C, 2011, Mouse Organ
S240C, 2011, Mystic Panda
S241C, 2011, Virtual Birds
S242C, 2011, Arizona Rose
S243C, 2012, NinjaPonk
S244C, 2012, Pins Penguin Puzzler
S245C, 2012, Pokie Barons Bonanza 2
S246C, 2012, Pokie Barons German
S247C, 2012, Pokie Magic Mystic Genie
S248C, 2012, Shallow Grave
S249C, 2012, Black Country
S250C, 2012, Words Quest
S251C, 2012, Picture Hangman
S252C, 2013, Boo Boo Pets
S253C, 2013, Black Country Metalworks
S254C, 2013, Pokie Wolf
S255C, 2014, Munch Lunch
S256C, 2015, Zazo
S257C, 2015, Zazo Chime
S258C, 2015, AHC Future Jet
S259C, 2015, Fun Vision Jumper
S260C, 2015, Lost For Words
S261C, 2018, ArtSwarm Ambient Loops
S262C, 2007, Pursuit Of Power
S263C, 2022, Pursuit Of Power 2
S264C, 2011, Trucks
S265C, 2023, SFXEngine Preset Pack 1

SFXEngine, Music Stand

First, a photo of the completed light fitting, with bolt holes for the legs. Taken s few days ago:

A good day yesterday spent updating SFXEngine, ready for a public update on Friday. There are three new features:
-Keyboard input is now only valid when the program is in the foreground, a long term fix recently applied to Prometheus.
-New white point marks in the top right corner of 3x1 icons which have context submenus.
-A mew Max icon to normalise the sample.

The changes were easy, taking under an hour, but it took many hours to update all of the screenshots and manual.

At 4pm, I started to make a new music stand for the MODX:

It will (should!) slot onto the back. The profile was found via experimentation with paper.

My stomach became blocked in the night leading to a troublesome night of nightmares and pain. I thought about how to improve the terrible film Magic, which I saw the other day, then thought that I should be doing the same with my album, now called A Robot's Tale. I'll start to work on the changes today. This afternoon will mark our first rehearsal for the Nantwich performance in October.

Where Is Love Pianos, ArtSwarm Plans

More music work today and yesterday, slow and steady days. Much of yesterday was spent adding more music layers to 'Where is Love?'; an electric piano solo at the end, and some organ sounds which are 'infinitely looped' with a Prometheus trick. It sounds rather nice, rich, warm, like the organs in 'Whiter Shade of Pale'. I also completed the end parts for the light fittings.

The lights are nearly complete. I need to make the legs, and wire 3 light fittings, but that can wait.

I need to finish more artwork, this interminable album. New albums! I am making slow progress. I need vocals for Fake Plastic Lies and Aspartame. With those tracks I'll have 45 minutes of album, a standard length. It's broadly stuck to plan, though it feels rather normal and staid... a mix of tracks, a dozen or so. I'm trying to unify them musically and reinforce the story and scenes. The initial idea of a three tone unifying thema has barely materialised, except upon analysis of tracks like 'Where is Love?' when compared with the Robot Guard song and P-L-Astic.

Aspartame is proving difficult. It's nigh on impossible to sing because the melody was generated by computer dice rolls. There are octave jumps and a melody which is too random to easily follow. Perhaps I'll need to sight-read it.

Another job done today was framing the two portraits for Bickerton. Perhaps I should paint more, but I feel a little artistically lost, uncertain. There are too many possibilities. I am musing on new directions.

This week I'll work on an SFXEngine update, and my piece for ArtSwarm: Tea. Unless I get 15 attendees, it will be the last ArtSwarm. These events are more work than pleasure and always were. Elton John, in one of my recently watched documentaries, said that artists should play live, 'even if only to 20 people'. Of my 100 or so performances, very few have reached the dizzy heights of 20. I know that I could host an ArtSwarm every month for my entire life and still not attract more people. The main benefits are the creation of new work, and the experience of playing live, but aside from the physical work and promotion, each costs me more money than I can afford.

A.I. and Celebrity Vocals, Hydroxy-Chloroquinine-Aspartame, Light Progress

A good day today, woke early and recorded a few lines for 'A.I. and Celebrity', then an attempt at Hydroxy-Chloroquinine-Aspartame, which is nigh on impossible to sing, thus joyous to try.

Then more work on the lights, drawing out the sides and cutting these from 3mm board, gluing these up, then cutting bolt-holes for the legs. I'm near the end of this mammoth project, then I can charge into art (though next week will involve SFXEngine, and preparation for ArtSwarm: Tea).

Finally, some vocoder recording for possible extra layers on A.I. and Hydroxy. I've had an idea for a new vocoder algorithm which uses higher order low and high pass filters, with possible separate input/output frequency ranges. As it's used primarily (exclusively?) with voices, it makes sense to focus the frequencies on the voice area. This would be 4 times slower than my current algorithm, which is already slow, already needs 16 or 32 band-pass filters. I suspect than even this fancy computer couldn't manage it it real-time, yet the sound might be good (and certainly unique). I love vocoders as much as I despise 'vocal pitch-correction'. The Microkorg sounds so good compared to even the fancy 2022 edition MODX.

Lights, Where Is Love?

A tired day, and struck by anxiety at a nearly serious powertool accident. I really need better tools, and must remain on my guard.

Drilled the holes for the light fittings today, and recorded vocals and did a little work on a very gentle, plaintive, gospel-chapel song called Where is Love?

Where is Love?

Friends,
of the future,
from the void of the past, I ask you,
where are you going?
and who will care when you get there?

Where is love?
When there's nobody like you.

Where is love?
When you haven't a voice.
Where is love?
When your actions mean nothing to the world.
Are you feeling ignored?

Who is there?
In the patterns in the wallpaper?
Who is there?
In the dew-soaked hedgerows?
Who is there?
In the dark, dense woods? The moonlit maze?

Who is that statue, these statues? They are weeping... For me?

A.I. and Celebrity Vocals, Light Tests

Well, a rather sleepless night resulted in waking from deep dreams at past 10am.

I started with a new porridge formula. The newer 900W microwave has started to overspill, and get my (also new, but vintage from the 1990s) Johnson Bros. plate too hot, so I've been experimenting with alternative timings. The new formula is 60g porridge, 240g water; and 1:30 at 900W, then 2:30 at 600W. This seems to work. Deb thought it excessive that I'd consider the season, the room and water temperature in my cookery calculations.

The house was empty so I dashed to vocals and recorded them for 'A.I. and Celebrity'. They sounded fine, but there are a lot of fast words in there so a second take to account for overlaps may help. I watched parts of the Sparks concert. Their music doesn't seem to suit a live audience well, with mouthfuls of usually unintelligible words; their artisan, absolutely surrealistic, music works best recorded. For live work I think they'd benefit from a creating a simpler album for just Ron and Russell, less heavy production, perhaps yes, more Elton-John-like.

After the vocals, I assembled a test backing for my lights. They are so very flimsy. I wanted them lightweight, but perhaps they are too weak! It was good enough for a bulb and diffuser test however. This images barely indicate reality:

There is a visible fade for the bulb and the light is not very bright (this is less of a problem, I can simply use a longer exposure time). I'll certainly need 3 bulbs; the more the better! This took a few hours, then preparation for a piano lesson for Deborah, for this evening. Next step for the lights is to get those bulbs, then make the end panels which will hold the cone in its frustum shape. Then, making the legs, which will be foldable and each made from a single 2.4M length of wood.

The A.I. and Celebrity words have evolved quite a lot since initial writing. Here they are as sung today:

A.I. and Celebrity

I made a new friend today.
She's addictive.
Got her chromium claws in my brain,
like an alien insect dominatrix.
She's no fool.
Seems to know all about me.
Has the scent of a silicon toy,
and the taste of American dollar bills.

The thrill of apocalypse
on a Sunday.

She's A.I. and celebrity.
She's A.I. and celebrity.
Offers dreams beyond reality,
beyond the darkness,
the dirt
of the organic.

She took my desires
twisted my hopes to knot.
Promised me comfort then made me a slave,
the worry of freedom is long forgot.
And my flickering thoughts
are on her market
She's got my bed in her mind and her sights
her grass is metallic and so green

Inside her whirlpool!
I can't escape it's much too late!
Her blue-light pulls me, Icarus
to heaven's golden gate

She's A.I. and celebrity
She's A.I. and celebrity
Offers dreams beyond reality
beyond the darkness
beyond the dirt
beyond the dreary
senseless life
organic.

There's no food.
There's no sex.
There's no spite.
There's no worry.
There's no chaos.
There's no mud.
There's no delight
In her blood.

She's A.I. and celebrity
She's A.I. and celebrity

Light Construction, The Album

I cut a couple more of the 'petals' for my lights last night before bed, then slept for 11 hours, exhausted. I woke and painted these with 4 coats of white primer, then marked them for drilling and drilled the hinge holes, sorted the hinges; at least a third were too stiff to open at all and needed to be thrown away! So much for 'bargains'.

Then it was a matter of cutting the diffuser film and attaching the pegs to the outside. As everything is bolted, these have potential to be dismantled.

After that, the hinges were fitted.

It's been a tiring few days working on this, my latest exhausting obsession for little reward, but such is art and such is life. Progress on the 'Robots' album is going well, though hampered by my inability to record the vocals here. When will I have the space to do this? This prevention of making my art saddens me immensely. I know my 'parents' (as I've said elsewhere, I feel no connection with those people, and never believed they were my actual parents - whatever that word may mean) hate my art and everything I do, as they express this often and hurtfully. I dislike showing my art, any aspect of my work or self, to anyone due to their training to conceal it or face retribution. So much of my art-life has been about trying to overcome this. At times I feel doomed. Yet, I know that victories come only from battles.

I watched Elton John's 1977 Wembley concert, laughing at his declatation that it would be his last. I've only ever seen (on television) three Elton John concerts and at each one he's delcared it to be his last! After that, a more recent Sparks concert, which wasn't as good, though Russel's vocals (at over 70 years of age) had a higher reach than Elton's in 1977, and one can't help but love those brothers. For me, these concerts are learning rather than entertainment opportunities.

Yesterday I scanned (on my flatbed scanner) the two Bickerton portraits but the colours were massively incorrect. Perhaps this obsession is idiotic. Perhaps I should be painting more, making more art, not so worried about its preservation and presentation, yet, for me, the filing aspect, the catalogue and photography is part of the art. Nobody cares about or will do this for me. I have to do everything myself. I am able, so I must.

Prometheus Resampling, Lighting Construction

A sleepless night of stomach pain and inflammatory twitches. This led to a late awakening and a slow start. Started with some more programming refinements to Prometheus. Ah programming! This always settles me but can lead to odd obsessions for perfection which drag on time.

The tiny fix I made yesterday was almost too small for an update, so I added a new option to maximise (normalise) a sample, plus (more usefully and importantly) the ability to resample a sample between any two frequencies. The algorithm was/is based on the anti-aliased sample playback, but with even higher precision. It seems to work but I don't know how to objectively test how brilliant it sounds. This may be useful for SFXEngine updates, or any updates. Now, and always for years, all of my samples have needed to be 44100hz, but now I could theoretically import at any frequency and convert (though it would tend to be lower quality; starting and staying with 44100hz would be best). I could, theoretically, export in any frequency too, with the same caveat. I could change the export options and use the algorithms with a new sample-table. Even now I can turn down Prometheus an octave, thus effectively exporting an 88200hz file. It's trivial to extend that to any value. 48000hz has, in recent years, become the de-facto basic standard, with 96000hz for 'pro' quality audio; so my motivation for this resampling code was preparation to potentially support for these values. Internally, SFXEngine and Prometheus samples are 4x oversampled, so they're effectively 176400hz and downsampled during playback.

Well, the programming took all morning. Then I started work on the lighting. By chance, Wilkinson has some 810 lumen bulbs on sale at £6 for two, so I bought four. These used to be about £8 each. I think they're cheaper now as they're being supplanted by dimmable ones, which I don't need or want. I then cut the 6mm MDF into strips and painted my 3mm HDF too, but now I realise I'll need four more of these! These lights will cost me at least £100, probably £150 in materials.

All of this has taken all day. No work done on music, art or anything else. Next step is to cut 4 more of the thin baffle/reflector flange things for the other light, then cut the polyester diffusers, then drill holes for the hinges, then everything will be ready to test with mock-lights so see how even it all looks...

This will hopefully help solve my problem with getting the best images of my paintings. Last year's were not great. Lighting inaccuracy is the next biggest imperfection in my never-ending quest for the best art reproductions.

A.I and Celebrity, Studio Lights, Prometheus v3.12

A busy and tiring day, but one of dramas and artistic highs.

The day started with work on my studio light design, floor-standing horizontal lights for photographing my paintings. I couldn't decide whether to make several smaller lights which could be added to as needed, or aim for strips 1 metre wide, and if the latter, how many bulbs to use? I'll start with 2 I think but perhaps drill space for 3 as an experiment to see what works best... the backing will be 6mm MDF, with 3mm boards for the top/bottom reflectors (I cut these today), and polyester drafting film as the main diffuser. I'll need to make two lights in total, a matching pair. A key problem is storage as I'll probably use them only once or twice per year, so they can't be too big, yet they need to be as big as my biggest painting to provide an even light, and need to be as big as my biggest paintings, almost half of the room in length! The legs (the light must be 1M off the floor) will need to be collapsible for storage. I'll use 6mm bolts to fit them and they'll fold like my studio easel.

I drilled some 5mm holes, and did some experiments with bolts and hinges, I'll need M4 bolts/machine screws. Normal screws are not an option for fixing hinges to 3mm wood, and it also makes everything dismantlable and reusable.

Most of today has been spent working on the production and composition of 'A.I. and Celebrity', a song which I didn't particularly like at first and needed a lot of work. Essentially, before now the music was a thudding bass line and some smooth chords. I decided to break up the rhythms into fast and slow, with occasionally breaks of the very-electronic sounding bass into slow bends of the sort which appeared in Commodore 64 tunes a lot; the Zamzara theme by Maniacs of Noise is one example, it broke between fast, and sustained bending bass, and my pulse-wave based bass very much echoes the C64 (as the song is about A.I. and computers, these allusions are intentional).

This sounded okay, but my initial sub-melody/counterpoint sounded morose. Sub-melodies are crucial to a song. It is these, rather than the vocal lead, that stick in peoples' minds and songs that lack them are second rate; but they can so alter the mood that their composition (rather than the method of playing or timbre) is the key driver of the emotion. I started with a strange oscillator synchronised lead, but it didn't work, so I switched it for a pulse wave (which has a stabbing start; a 50ms pitch jump, and a rapid pulse width modulation). It's melody romanced the lead melody. I then added layers gradually to build up energy in this race of a tune which gains energy during the verses. Another instrument, for the chorus, was a bleep that emulated the ancient beep that old IBM-PC speakers used to make upon start-up.

The chorus has an epic feeling, and breaks into a half-speed beat, like a rollercoaster that has hit the peak and has taken off into flight, so timing is used as much as anything to build; swell the mood and drama of the song. This first chorus ends in a slowed down solo, which I played along to live using the MODX, before charging into a second verse, a mid-section, and a second chorus which has a slightly different structure.

At one point I found a bug in Prometheus concerned with the expansion/contraction of notes, so it's been fixed and updated to v3.12. I've also been working more on SFXEngine promotion and update plans.

Onwards I charge!

Music Work, Fake Plastic Lies, Aspartame, Art Thoughts

A few most steady days of music work, punctuated with helping my father with his passport, and with SFXEngine work, promotion of the Steam Sales.

Work on the music has been slow, but steady. Often I'm unsure why I'm doing it, but I am learning, and getting better with each song and each release. This isn't always evident on a day to day basis but more clear over longer times, and so worth doing for that reason alone. Artistically, these songs are often pop-like and simple, but not always, and, of course, I aim to do my best, the best, of each song and each section.

Yesterday I reworked an Oldfield 1 composition I called 'Yellow Balloon Attack', but added words and wrote a new song called 'Hydroxy-Chloroquinine-Aspartame' around it. For all of Oldfields' 'intelligence' I've had to do a lot of work to make this into a better song. The structure had to consist of the first couple of pattern's repeated, as it was too loose and stochastic at first, and the balancing was all over the place.

Much of the past three days have been taken up with Fake Plastic Lies and its tedious and exacting guitar accompaniment, strums and strokes in acoustic and electric. These sound good, and I've learned more about playing, as my fingers will attest. The song itself is one of the most simple and pop-like I've recently written, light in every way, which clashes (as it should) with the words... the album itself is very much an ironic comment on computerisation.

This work is hard, slow and unrewarding, though its aim was (as with much of my recent music) to put out there some of my good but unheard songs from both recent times and the past. I should paint too, though again my incentive is minimal, for my own self-improvement. I've read some fragments of Dali. I must agree with a lecture where he condemned (the art of) local customs, and all buildings over 20 years old. Such condemnations are more important than ever; what was his machine age is now a digital one even more divorced from 'tradition', and now we have 'community art' to add to the pile of pointless customs and minority art or art for/by specific exclusive groups. If we are to dispose of these things, what is left? The universal? In the universe, would the art of the Earth be considered parochial?

For now, our culture remains in 'anything goes' mode, a philosophy when applied to academia is 'everyone gets an A'. Things must change, but I've been expecting this for years, and the primary changes have been technological, and even socio-political due to that technology. Creation methods aside, cultural content seems to have been remarkably static, generic, noisy, unfocused for the last 10 years.