A steady day. Started by recording the last few stories from The Intangible Man. All of the editing remains. I wanted to save that for another day. It's amazing how like a performance reading is, that a rehearsal really helps.
Speaking of which, a real rehearsal then followed, of the Nantwich Fall in Green performance. This is, I think, already our 4th rehearsal for this important, but short and easy show. This is plenty for me, but Deb has the difficult job; memorising the words, the actions, being the primary performer. For me, today was the first time I'd played all of the music from memory. I used to play almost all of the tunes and perform everything from 'memory', but the music then was improvisatory in nature. It was a mix of the 'right-sort' of chords and 'right-sort' of notes, right instrument, right mood, but essentially everything a little different and unique each time. Now things are much more exacting, and each performance is a recital of pre-recorded work.
This reminds me that most of the Fall in Green music isn't scored. Salome and War Is Over is, but not Testing The Delicates, or Apocalypse Of Clowns.
After that, Deb helped me get some wood for the last stage of my studio lights, the final 'legs' for the stands. These have taken months! At times I think it was silly to bother, a huge endeavour and large cost for what, for more accurate photography of my paintings, but perfection, getting better, takes more and more energy for smaller gains; and over time things should, must, get better. If I spend £100 to become 1% better at something, it's worth it. All investments in life, all, so pay back eventually, and investments in skill or a personal and unique ability are worth even more. No artist will have my art photography system.
Another inventive investment is the new music stand. So, the X-frame is wide, with the big synth on. Above, the next tier leans inwards, a trapezoid to 'trap' the smaller Reface DX there. This makes for a neat 2-tier arrangement. Now, for a music stand on top of that I'll use two microphone clips. These will grip the tubes of the upper tier and the music stand will be fixed to those. There are a few nice things about this system. First, the very angle joint on the mic holders can be used to tilt the music stand as needed; and second, the 'face' of music holder itself can be bolted on from the one I made a few months ago, here:
The back part is specially made to hook onto the MODX, but the front has bolts (see the silver screws) which can be removed to permit a variety of different faces. In this case I can remove the face and bolt it onto the new stand. Essentially, I've developed a modular music stand.
The mic clip, for £3.99, came today, but annoyingly the bolt adaptor I need didn't come with it (sigh; these conflicting standards, and all in inches!). There are three thread sizes: 5/8" and 3/8" for mics (most mic stands have adaptors to support both, but in this case the mic holder clip I ordered ONLY supported 5/8"). For photography tripods the standard is 1/4", which is what I'd like to use here, as I have many of those bolts to hand. So I've had to pay £9 for the adaptor. Well, this may be a long term thing. I might be able to create a modular system here too, make those holders boltable somehow.
SFXEngine has a new pack out on the 22nd and I'm determined to make this the best sound effect software there is - well, I feel this already, but I must alert the world! Twitter is deader and deader in reach, so I'll need to develop pre-social media methods.
