Sigh, difficult days! In the night I started a book about how to enjoy life; I may continue writing, as it was rather fun. Life feels like a struggle at the moment, but I must try my best every day.
By yesterday morning I thought I'd finished the Cycles remaster. I burned a CD master in the morning, ready to carefully proof-by-ear later (I prefer to do this on CD, still my preferred way to listen to music), then started work transcribing some of the Testing The Delicates sheet music.
There is a transcription schism with some of these. For 'Float Like Memories' performances I play scales and strokes in D-Major, switch to A-Major at one point and back to D again. I've noted approximate times in the lyrics for chord changes, and some basic melodies to play with. Each performance is different, but pretty similar too. For these transcriptions I usually transcribe the CD version note-by-note, which can create a few problems with these largely improvised tunes. Usually the problems arise from the loose timing. The chord changes rarely take place at the 'start of a bar' and sometimes there are odd numbers of notes in bars at timings that are virtually unscorable. Another option I thought, is to publish a score as I play them, with 'hints' and guides, like the D/A switch as above.
I managed 3 or 4 scores, but it was slow and unrewarding work. I need some sort of regular income and I'm starting to fear the oncoming year. Still, these scores are important, and I must do them all. I've made good progress in there mere two years since starting this grand plan, with almost half of my albums now fully scored.
Before bed, in the late dark, the best time for listening, I listened to Cycles with headphones... and disaster! Almost all of the piano parts had blips and ticks. Usually only one -tiny- tick in a 3-minute recording, but it was there. An annoying thing about this is that these are not audible when monitoring during recording... so after recording I must re-listen to an entire track. Today I've analysed each piano part (there are about 20 such recordings for the album) and re-recorded those needed, which was most of them. This time I used the P105 piano to playback the MIDI files, to reduce USB bandwidth. All recordings but one were fine; but even so, one still had a 'tick' and needed re-recording. This tedious, mind-numbing task has taken all day.
One upshot is that I've discovered (how could I miss it!?) that my PC has a USB-C connector in the back. These can be double the speed of a normal USB, so it should theoretically help with latency for this USB-C sound card. Come to think of it, I'm unsure if this is faster or merely an alternative shape. The one on the front IS faster, it advertises itself as so. I must hope.
It's nearly 3pm and Cycles is again ready for a master test. Last week was spent tediously working on the audiobook, a job that I thought would take 2 days, and so it is this week with Cycles. So it goes.
It's AI and Celebrity day, and my single (my first since Jabberwocky in 2021, but that was Fall in Green) is now out. I've only had two single releases as a solo artist: 'House Of Glass' and 'Masculinity Two', but both were later re-recorded and released by Marius Fate.
Later today, work surrounding the release will take place. The premiere of the video, release of the Flatspace We Robot Music Pack, and a special Flatspace sale. I have the option of attending a company meal on Oct 24th, the album release day. If I do then I will delay the premiere of the video to Saturday.
