A full day of Snow Business admin. A few more tracks arrived and more work on the few I'm busy with. Recorded 8 takes of Sky Robes of Celeste but not happy with them. They are fine really, but I must play it all perfectly through in one go and express every bit of feeling as I go!
Some more updates to the cover artwork too after feedback. Big cover reveal tomorrow, I think.
More days working on the Christmas album, yesterday and today working on an arrangement of Maggie Shaw's contribution. I also re-recorded a few of the guitars for Christmas Smells and changed the finale a little. I think this is all complete now.
I also registered with SongKick, which is a website for listing live music shows which integrates with Bandcamp, Spotify and other platforms. This may be useful in spreading the word with any of my, or our Fall in Green, music performances.
Indeed, there are some in the pipeline. We are set to perform something at John Lindley and Mike Drew's People and Places event in Congleton Library on November 22nd, I've been offered the chance to perform five We Robot songs in Kings Place Macclesfield on the 29th, then the live Crewe Library event on Dec 12th, which is the book launch of Deb's latest book (I Slip into French like Tolstoy) together with performances of some of the Christmas album songs.
My live songs have been inconsistent in method and quality, primarily due to the need to play and sing at the same time; due to the complex multi-layered music; due to the lack of a band or any collaborating musicians; and the need to memorise all of the lyrics as well as the music. Song performances could be either involve singing to a pre-recorded backing track, or performing a cut-down version with a single piano-like lead instrument (a so-called 'unplugged' version - even if I ironically use a synthesizer which is 'plugged in'). Regarding backing tracks, I've never done this completely, adding a live synth over some elements, as done for the Marius Fate performances in Wistaston Memorial Hall and All Saints' Church. The cut-down versions can be a worst-case of being very technically difficult and sounding poor.
The live music that doesn't involve singing, such as piano playing, or the Spiral Staircase synth performances could involve multiple instruments I'd dart between. These sounded very good, at least as good as the studio recorded versions and sometimes better. The Spiral Staircase used backing tracks for the repetitive arpeggios, so these too were a case of augmentation of that pre-recorded music, though many (if not most) of the other parts were played live.
I would be a good time to start investigation and improvement of these live performances.
A full day of production work on 'Christmas Smells'. I started by updating my new EQ plug-in a bit, using sine-wave tests to find the ideal bandwidth for positive and negative gains, values which are surprisingly unpredictable. This is now done. My 50-or-so hours of work on this is now, I think, complete.
Then, I recorded the Christmas Smells main vocals, and lots of possible extra vocals for layers, and some vocoder too. A backing singer may make things sound better due to variety of timbre, so I may recruit Deb. There are plenty of places where enhancement may work, so lots of listening, testing and experimentation, is needed. I have time to work on it and it must sound its best. I also added a synthetic wolf-whistle and beefed up the ending a little. I started the day by listening to all of the different Dr Who theme variations since 1963, and perhaps the 80s theme rubbed off because I decided to add a big explosion at the end, though not as big as that famous (and not very Christmassy) 'ftooom'.
Here are the full lyrics:
Come and take a ride.
You and me and the snow outside.
Santa's waiting for us on his sleigh.
Whistle up a tune.
Let's draw rainbows on the moon.
Come and make tonight a special day.
Christmas smells
of cinnamon and wishing wells,
of hope and dreams and angels up above.
Christmas smells of
of gingerbread and jingle bells.
Christmas smells of
love sweet love.
Put your hand in mine,
a one two three four step in time.
That's the way a magic spell is done.
Make a wish and see
a cup-cake world of you and me,
a firework of fun fun fun fun.
Shake it make it roll it.
Don't try to control it.
Feel it heart and soul it.
Relax and let it go.
Christmas smells
of candy canes and caramels.
of little baby Jesus and his dove.
Christmas smells
of snakes and ladders and cockle shells
Christmas smells of
love sweet...
Christmas smells of
love sweet love.
Another full day yesterday at the Snow Business cover design day event. I set out for Crewe Heritage Centre on a dreary and dark morning, half-expecting a quiet day. I arrived and set up a couple of tables. I had brought some basic materials; some papers cut in the shapes of Christmas Trees and Stars, some brushes and a few other things. I needn't have worried about materials. Almost everything was supplied by Creative Crewe, including a great 60x60cm square of card. One thing I'm pleased I brought however was my easel to display the result, it really made a difference to have that there, and a roller to add some colour to the plain white background:
Deb arrived at 10am or so, she was hugely helpful. I'd not have been able to do this without her as the day was really very busy. The event was supposed to start at 11am, but families started to knock on the door from 10, to take part in the many workshops in the room from Poppy Making to Lantern Building, to Face Painting, to the making of huge wicker sculptures for the light trail.
My table gradually got busier. The main creative task, I worked out, was for children to decorate a star or tree, then choose where it fitted on the result, creating a pop-art collage of Christmas. This worked well; I had just about everything. I was aiming for felt-tips and pencils, but paint rapidly became the medium of choice; the glitter glue especially treasured. The results were decidedly messy, but the PVA managed to hold everything in place for long enough.
I stuck artist images on there fairly early, and the image grew:
In the end 30 to 50 children took part, and I barely had time to pause. Deb was a huge help introducing the parents and children to the activity, and generally keeping things going. I spent a lot of time guiding or sticking the results. It was really quite a factor of creativity.
Mike Drew and John Lindley joined us, which was lovely.
By about 2:30, the canas was full up and everything was close to complete. Here's a photo by Mike:
I'm amazed by how well it all went. I had just about everything I needed, little more, little less. It was hectic, messy, chaotic but it all worked. I will wait a day or two for the image to dry, then flatten it and photograph it. Then the complex design work can begin.
And today, We Robot is released after months of preparation!
As such today has been filled with admin work associated with this launch. Website and links updated, preparations for the YouTube premiere and the album-length video of 'AI and Celebrity' set live. This, plus lots of filing of yesterday's event, adding that to my website, and documenting it for future reference. Sending out and receiving photos of the day. Tim Lee has sent his song, and The Poachers are about to send theirs, so over half of all artists have already completed their contributions, a month ahead of schedule.
I've also updated my master album list with a new format for credits. Each album now has Creation Credits (composer, lyrics), Production Credits (producer, engineer, recording), Performance Credits (each instrument). Sequencers count as instruments, so Prometheus, and other software, is credited as an instrument. Everything is much more ordered. The credits for I, Leviathan were the most time consuming to administer. Until now, that was my biggest 'community' project.
It's past 4pm and I'm still very busy with this admin.
A full day yesterday working on Christmas Smells. Lots of production work can be attempts to see if something works, only to find it doesn't quite. Spent an hour adding new organs to the chorus, but in the end, the original ones sounded better. Much of the time was wasted due to Windows not really working; the coquettish MIDI connection. I added some choirs for the chorus though, and re-recorded electric guitars with a different timbre, the others were too thin, so used an 001 setting rather than x01, the rightmost pick-up on. It's no wonder that Brian May said that 80% of songs use 011, as it simply sounds the best, but I want to push for variety.
Also, lots of preparation for the vocals, but I need to right time and space to record them. The first track has been sent in, a lovely solo-vocal song in the Taizé style by Maggie Shaw. It would be nice to add more to it.
I also did lots of preparation for Thursday's album cover design day. In retrospect I'd have done that differently as anything community related involves inefficient bureaucracy and publicity is restricted or banned. Paperwork for that complete today, and lots of printing of the artists' images - just over half of the artists sent one.
I've also written out another song, one which was in my dream as I awoke on the morning of the 20th. The words and melody of the chorus was clearly in my mind and I was sure that I'd heard it before, but can't place it. The words were "You're my candy cane, my candy, you're my candy cane, my candy". The melody as simple and as catchy as that of 'P-L-Astic' from We Robot. I wrote out the rest of the words and music on Friday and typed them up today:
You're My Candy Cane
I wake up and know
you're with me
with the special glow
you give me.
It's a fantasy
pink and sugary.
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
I could make you smile
if only
you would stay a while
I'm lonely.
Will you promise me
That you'll always be, my
honey in the summer.
Cinnammon in fall.
Glitter in the winter
when you call.
When you call.
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
In other news: We Robot has has a nice write-up in John Hopper's 100subtexts magazine, and all is set for Friday's release day. I've released and announced the update of SFXEngine. It might be that I'll be recording and producing a song for Andy Stubbs. Deborah has been invited to be guest poet at Joy Winkler's poetry evening at The Button Warehouse in Macclesfield next Wednesday, which is exciting. Deb asked if I'd like to play some music to accompany her. I think it's her special event but we may perform one or two works as Fall in Green. Tonight, we're going to the ballet to see The Nutcracker.
An enjoyable trip to Bristol for a birthday party. The floods on Friday resulted in a difficult trip down. We were set to arrive at 1pm, and actually arrived at 7pm after needing to find a National Express coach in the heavy rain. No alternatives were provided by the train companies, all of the many passengers for Bristol were simply told that travel isn't/wasn't advised, and that nothing could therefore be done. This was not helpful. We explored alternatives. Deb was amazing in this crisis, and slightly enjoyed the adventure. We hooked up with a student who was fairly new to the UK and hadn't been to Bristol before and we found him a coach too. The lady at Birmingham National Express was the star of the day, and went above and beyond to find us a place on a coach two hours before our ticketed time. Without her we would have arrived at 9pm. National Express were brilliant on every level.
The party was great and had everything; good food, lovely people, games, star performances by most of the guests, a 1970s disco, and all set up, enjoyed, and tidied up by 8pm. I spent much of the time talking with electronic musician Leo, also known as Widespoon, and I hope that he can contribute to Snow Business.
Today, the first day of recovery has been busy and joyous too. First, more admin work on the Christmas album. It might be that there's a performance of the music in Crewe Library, but we will see. The logistics of such a show is not easy and the work considerable. I answered a few questions for the local Nantwich News.
Most of today was spent working on my 1-band EQ plug-in for Prometheus and it's largely complete. Here are two graphs; two -6dB dips at 450hz and 3600hz (incidentally, ignore the 'scribble' at the bottom of these, that's junk from the live white-noise):
You can see that mine on top has a smooth result and the Sony plug-in is more 'precise' in that intermediate bands are not touched, but I rather like that they are in mine, that the result is a smooth 'flow' between settings. Of the many changes I made today, the first was realising that positive and negative gains needed radically different bandwidths to give equivalent results. Testing on sine waves gave perfect results, so, after about 7 or 8 full days of programming this, I think it's complete. There are two overall 'gain' controls too; one a master boost to all levels, sort of like a 'contrast' control, and one a post-EQ volume, sort of like 'brightness' (to continue the image processing analogy).
I've done this mainly so that it can be applied before limiting, rather than after. All future songs should be better balanced and better limited. Over time, each update, each improvement, becomes harder and harder for smaller gains, but we must improve. I must improve with each song and each result. There's no point in doing the same thing twice.
Next, I must finish Christmas Smells. Crucially, the vocals are needed, and perhaps a new take of the electric guitars. I sang so much on Saturday that a day of vocal rest today is beneficial. Onwards we charge!
Lots of admin work today on the Christmas Album project. The first hour or so was spent trying to get my camera to connect to the computer with a wireless set-up. Everything said yes, that it was connected and working - yet, nothing. The same with the secondary Bluetooth connection: not detected. I prefer using cables for this reason but it still makes the process slower than it should be.
Then, an album page was set up on Bandcamp, setting the album on pre-sale. Deb in her infinite kindness instantly bought the first copy and I created a public accounts page to track each sale and the total earned. Then I contacted the artists with the page update, a reminder about next week's cover design day, and prepared to share the artist and track details bit by bit on social media. I must start that soon.
By about 3:30pm, all of this was complete. Then, I got back to working on my 10-band EQ, and revisited the concept of a rank of band-pass filters, but now with the low and high shelves, the results were good to the effect that I think I've finally completed this time consuming project. It will take lots of testing. One crucial part was to make the filters apply in series.
Here are some comparisons between my EQ vs. the Sony plug-in. Here's +6dB at 900 an 1800hz:
Mine has more of a camel-hump, but not much, and perhaps this is better as it will give smoother results over a long space. The peaks are at the exact frequencies specified. Sony's applies a general gain between the former and next frequency band. Here's a more complex pattern; a -6dB dip and two +12dB climbs:
The most stark difference is this complex layout. +3dB at 225hz, -6dB at 450hz, +6dB at 900hz, a -infinity at 7200hz, and -infinity at -15000hz. Here's the Sony plug-in:
Hardly -infinity, and a few odd bumps, such as at 800hz and 1100hz or so. Here's mine:
The 7200hz fall is a stark 'spike' due to the band pass, though one could say it's correct, even if the frequencies near it are touched less. At the top end though, it works much better.
I have some tweaking to do to the gains I think, but it seems to work.
Now I have 3 days away in Bristol before I charge into a busy next week. I need to launch the new SFXEngine update on Tuesday, an IndieSFX sale on Wednesday, the album cover creation workshop on Thursday, and the big We Robot launch day on Friday; and through all of this I need to record my Christmas song vocals and completely finish it. To be ready for a potential single release it needs to be done before November 1st.
A manic, and magic time of busyness, partly because of a three day 'break' at a time when so many plates are spinning. Today, working on an update to SFXEngine. There were few visible changes, but I've fixed two small errors, and created some new sounds for customers of the Analogue VCF Sound Pack.
The biggest change, which took most of the day, was checking languages and replacing 90% of the text in the program with data read from an external file. This allows the creation of many files, and thus multi-language translation. This is a complex task. Lots of string processing is needed to assemble messages rather than simply print them, and there must be a back-up message in case something isn't found. Well, it's largely complete.
I'm also thinking that I'd like to restore the band-pass filter array for my EQ, and have had thoughts of a new transform for the frequency curve, but I'm unsure if such a thing is possible.
In other news, Tim has recorded the basics for his Christmas song, and mine is about 75% complete, and I hope to complete it before November to release it as a single.
The London pop-up exhibition I was set to take part in is evolving into something else.
There are 9 days to go until the grand release of We Robot too, and two publications are covering it. More is needed. More, more of everything!
Onwards we charge.
A new internet connection was fitted yesterday, and now everything is 3 times faster. I spent quite some time documenting the Fall in Green performance. Here's a great photo of Deb by Rob Collins (A.K.A. Way of the Bob):
Today a full day working on the Christmas Smells recording. Started with the brass tracks, refining the compositions there, then added some organ with my new 'Pythagoras' plug-in, which sounds amazingly like a Hammond organ, but not as slick as the wonderful MODX7 sounds - I may record some of those.
Then, acoustic guitar parts, which were general strums along to various song parts. My old F-310 guitar sounds amazing every time I record it, still a wonderful instrument.
Then some electric guitar parts, which I loved and were rather grungy and bluesy, a slight contrast to the slick sound of the rest of the song. Everything sounds good so far. The production is huge.
If I can finish the song in time I'll release it as a single too, with proceeds from Dec/Jan sales to the charity.
After 7 rehearsals, we performed our set to support Carol Ann Duffy and John Sampson at Nantwich Words & Music fest. The tech team were brilliant, all of the staff on hand and volunteers really friendly and made us feel welcome. It was an honour to perform with Carol Ann and a pleasure to meet John Sampson, one of the nicest people you could meet, and a skilled veteran of hundreds of musical performances across the globe.
One of the founding members of Ink Pantry travelled to see Deb and I perform, which was touching, and a couple of friends were there. We didn't have long, our instructions were simply that we had 15 minutes to perform and must be off quickly at the end. In the end we managed to remove all of our equipment; two synths and stands, chairs and tables, two mic stands, tubular bell, many props, in under 15 minutes. For me, being efficient and correct in these technical aspects are most important and my biggest concern. We were blessed to have such a good team that it wasn't a worry. The sound quality was great, the look as good as we could make it.
The crowd was 50 to 100, so this supporting performance was technically our largest, above our opening for Knutsford Music Festival.
After the show we packed things away, had an evening meal and generally recovered. We listened to John Sampson's CD, somewhat enthralled by the odd wind instruments (I was struck how the Kazoo-like timbre of the crumhorn sounded like our Stylophone). The best track was his sole composition on the album, but the album itself was produced and performed to a really high degree by a large ensemble of expert performers, at complete odds to the cheap graphics of the CD.
Over the weekend, I had an idea of how to fix my EQ system, again based on a rank of single high pass filters rather than the effort of high and low. I'll give this at try at some point. The hours and days have been flying with too little production, and the work on the Christmas song is slow and built in many layers. My addition of Wizzard (or Abba's Waterloo) style brass 'honks' a the start of each bar has added an instant Christmas feeling to it.
I have managed to write one song in draft called Hope and Longing, here's a snippet.
Nothing lasts forever but hope, and longing.
Memories will melt away.
Love is but a butterfly
on fire to light the way.
Tears of joy and sadness come and go.
Youth is fire as fleeting as the dawn
Singing as a bird-song in the morn.
Every day is precious
Don't wish one hour away
Nothing lasts forever but hope
and longing for a better day.
My voice is getting a tiny amount stronger each day and perhaps in a decade or two I'll be happy with it. My PRS report showed that my most popular track was Cycles IV, perhaps a good sign for the remaster. I'll make some new videos for that release next year. Now I have a day to file and compile. A busy few weeks has begun.
Two busy days. A final rehearsal for Sunday's performance yesterday, plus steady production work on the Christmas Song. Today, work on making a calendar. Time is flying. All set for tomorrow's performance.
A first day of production work on my song, Christmas Smells, for the new charity Christmas album. It's a matter of going though each part and making it 'sing' with the song as a whole. The bass and drums are broadly complete. I must ponder and work on the rest.
Another very busy day after a somewhat sleepless night. I thought, in the night, that my High Shelf Filters might give better results than the low pass, they certainly seemed to work better for the top and bottom ends (the low pass is the inverse as the high pass). After some tests, the results were different, but somewhat comparable; neither being ideal. I think I need some sort of sorting algorithm to apply the filters in a better order. Three 6dB peaks next to each other could be combined into one, but, of course it's not that simple, a 6,7,6 would need two, with a second in the middle.
I've given up for the time being, and updated the plugins generally. I optimised the High/Low Shelf Filters, and created an evidently more useful 24dB/oct version. This took all morning, but the new effects are now complete, and Prometheus is updated once again. I've spent a week working on this EQ, and it was a hard battle without results, but I've learned a few things, and have something to work on in future.
In other news, the Christmas album project is on track. I'm thinking that I'll need to regulate the cover-creation workshop quite carefully to avoid scribbles and mess. The result may look rather punk-like, but that is perhaps the point.
In the afternoon Deb came round for a second Fall in Green rehearsal for Sunday's gig. This is actually about our 5th rehearsal of this show, at least that. All went well, and we add more at each run-through. It will now feature a Stylophone solo, as did some of the Salome performances.
Then, the final filing and completion of the Cycles & Shadows 2024 remaster. It won't be released until at least January next year. It sounds notably better, louder and cleaner due to the new EQ system, as well as the much more modern reverbs. The new version of Cycles III is substantially better, and it now ripe for the video I'd always planned but never got round to.
In other news, I'm set to do a long stint exhibiting paintings in the Macc Art Lounge in November and December, which involves 5 full days as shopkeeper. I'm already dreading this unproductive drain upon my genius, but it's part of the job, and it will be something of a break on those days. It will also probably involve contact with artists again, something I've not had in over a year.
My next urgent task is recording my Christmas song.
A busy day yesterday. Started be adding basic Low Shelf/High Shelf filters to the EQ system, so a total of 36 filters now, but no time to run it.
Then, a morning rehearsal for our Fall in Green event on the 15th.
During which we had a call about playing for the opening event of the festival that evening. I'm so pleased I bought the light-weight MODX. The moving of the heavy piano is so nightmarish in live situations like this. So, I prepared most of what was needed before lunch.
Then some time for more EQ work. It seemed that two filters were needed, here's the roll-off for one:
And two in series.
Not enough time to test anything. Then a call to confirm the Christmas Album cover creation day on Oct 26th. I'll need to prepare some materials for that, so made a basic plan. A liquid meal, then off to perform. It was a great night. The festival team and volunteers, and the staff at The Red Cow were wonderful, accommodating in every way. Even as a performer, the evening was an honour and a pleasure.
After that and the packing away of everything, the last of the evening involved dates and plans for my next exhibition in the Macc Art Lounge, now set to start mid-November. It will be my first time there in two years.
Another long and exhausting day working on the EQ programming. I'm getting closer but it's been far more difficult than I imagined. Here is a trace from my EQ at the moment. There are test peaks +3dB at 225hz, -6dB at 250hz, +6dB at 900hz, -inf. at 7200hz, and -inf at 15000hz:
Here's the same arrangement on my Sony plugin:
Pretty similar. If anything, mine is a little more accurate in frequencies and a bit smoother - this is good. The biggest deficiency are the high frequencies, mine just won't fall off! My plan of using a bank of low-pass filters was flawed, it couldn't cope with zero values (they could never be multiplied up again). So In the end I have my old plan of lots of high and low pass filters. I didn't appreciate the problems that the Q factor can cause until they started to appear. Too little Q and the bands vanish with no effect. Too much and everything wobbles alarmingly at the corners, like that little dip I have at 2khz. The little bump at 6khz that the Sony trace has is probably caused by the same thing. Both are supposed to have -infinity as 7200hz remember - zero evidence of that on the Sony trace, and only that tiny bump on mine. If I increase the Q it works better but everything else gets more wobbly.
This not bad, but those low and high ends need tackling, so I plan on applying separate low-shelf and high-shelf filters there.
There are 4 filters per band, so a whopping 40 filters for this; two low pass, two high pass, a lot of processing, but I expected this to be the case. Whether all of these experiments will be worth it is uncertain. Such is all science.
Today has been a hard slog of programming a 10-band equaliser. I started by thinking that I had most of it done. My ages-old code seemed to work, but I wanted it to be its best, so decided to take to time to test and check. The whole testing process is very slow, comparing with test waves and trying lots of options and comparisons.
In the end, it's now nearly 5pm and I'm far from completion, having spent an exhausting day exploring dead ends.
The first used a bank of 10 band-pass filters. This seemed to be working. Here's some white noise with -infinity cuts at 3600hz and 15khz:
See what I mean, it looks, on the face of it, ok, and compares reasonably with my Sony plug-in. But my sounds seemed oddly louder than they started, which for cuts should never happen. I also wanted more than a dip at the ends, more of a round-off, so spent some time programming high-pass and low-pass filters, but the results didn't seem to do much, so in the afternoon I restored the band-pass array.
Then I realised the problem; that I couldn't apply the filters in parallel. Each filter would mess up the signal, interfering with the other filters in progress. So, I applied them serially. Here are 3 dips on my spectrum for 3-bands:
Pretty though that is, those dips are hardly useable for a music EQ. I don't want sharp cuts like that, more of a smooth contour... so I experimented with bandwidths and added some intermediate filters:
Note that some frequencies in the middle are toyed with here, which is why it has a lumpy shape. The top end does slope down more, but it has the look of trying to squash a rubber balloon into a small box. The band-pass filters were not working, so I had to go back to basics.
My earlier idea was a bank of low and high pass filters, to make a series of bar-like regions, but then realised that I only need an array of either low or high pass filters, applied in climbing frequencies. This discovery is probably obvious to existing DSP programmers. Such discoveries remind of my mother who once said 'What if stars were like suns but really far away?' - an epiphany of genius if made one or two thousand years ago.
One hard part is to calculate the gains. When running from low to high, the lowest frequency is processed many times. The arrangement is like the 'Twelve Days Of Christmas' song. The partridge gets repeated attention, so we need to calculate everything so that all 'gifts' are measured correctly at the end of the 'Twelve Days'.
More experiments needed. I had hoped to have it all done today. It may take a week I can ill afford.
Do I need this? At the moment I use an external Sony EQ plug-in (a very rare example of me doing so), and only when mastering, that brief time at the end of a project. It works well, but it would be better if I had a Wet control, to slightly reduce the effect if needed. It would also suit me if it came earlier in my signal chain, before my Cathedral Limiter. It would be better to program my own. It's certainly good mental training.
A long day of hard work on the Testing The Delicates scores. I keep reminding myself why I'm working on these. The benefits are limited, yet it's the goal of life to file, store, record, and perhaps this is work I should have done when making the album. Three or four tracks don't have music, but many are complex, improvised piano works that have been arduous and time consuming to notate.
Well, these are now done in draft, so another album is complete. A week ends, and each week completes a project. This week, the completion of the TTD scores, and most of the initial planning for the Christmas Album project. I'd say that, as a whole, that project is already 25% complete.
I then started work on the 10-band EQ plug-in. It's based on a rank of band-pass filters but I'm unsure if I'm doing it right, or the best way. My results seem too loose, the slope to shallow. Perhaps I need to use low pass/high pass filters.
A full day of busy work, yet not very productive. The morning was taken up with a meeting about the Christmas album, then paperwork for that, taking and making notes, sharing the news with the contributors.
By 16:30 I could start on other things and completed the scores to 'Time, Falling' (this, by the way, is the correct punctuation for this), and 'Engrams of History'. These live improvised piano tunes are particularly complex. These need note-by-note editing in a very time consuming fashion.
Second Spring has taken the last two hours and it's still not finished. This track is very difficult. Two of the confused bass notes didn't fit well enough and have been deleted, but everything else is there with highly quantised timing (ie. backwards anti-expression; just as every performance is expressive, every score removes this, tightens up all timing). All of these piano tunes are far, far more expressive than the score indicates, which itself is interesting. Most of the album is scored now, though the most time consuming works remain. The hardest one so far is Quick Get Your Lows, which is ironically one of the easiest to play... perhaps I should notate my playing score instead.
These scores are mentally and physically tiring, and for little reward, yet I know that nobody else could do this at the moment. Perhaps the dreamed-of AI will do it one day, though, would it be bothered to do so? AI today remains as poor as it was in the 1980s, and as hyped and feared. It can do some things, like photo colourisation and image sharpening, translation and text/speech recognition, brilliantly, but in terms of actual 'intelligence', it has little. Even the error spotting in Visual Studio is so wrong that I could rant at it with many cries of "but that's NOT an error!".
I hope to finish tomorrow, or perhaps then start on the EQ system. The week is flying by!
A busy day yet, as ever, so little done!
Still, I tweaked the complex EQ programming first, adding a feature to externally compare two lists of numbers, allowing a track to be balanced without having to re-render it.
Currently I'm using an external EQ plug-in during mastering for the adjustments, but I'd like to program my own... this may take time however. My trace uses an array of band-pass filters. The easiest EQ would use those, these are relatively easy, and give a hill-shaped dome to the zone of balancing, which may be desirable, may not. The plug-in I'm using seems to use low and high pass filters to create more of a 'block' or bar-graph shape to the EQ zone. The advantage here is that the steps of the EQ look/are more like the actual sliders on the EQ setting, though I'd have imagined that a smoother graph would be more desirable here. Well, this is for a future time. After 21 years I'm still adding features.
Then, the tedious but important work notating my music, now for Testing The Delicates. All of the albums with hand-played piano will take the longest. After this, the other FIG albums, and Music for Poetic Objects may take longest. This one is particularly difficult at times. I managed 4 scores today, but there are 23 tracks on this album.
In between, I wrote a song for the forthcoming Christmas album. It's simple musically and in chord terms, perhaps too simple... but sometimes simple is good. The lyrics mix startling surrealistic humour and a tinge of sadness. I may write several songs and pick the best. This one, for me, was a test in matching rhythm to words and melody.
In other news, my first audiobook, The Intangible Man and Other Strange Tales, was approved and went on sale today. Deb kindly bought the first copy.
A frenetically busy couple of days with much stress. So much to do, so little time.
Yesterday I started to put together an idea for a Christmas themed charity album. It's early days yet, but I've had lots of interest from musician friends and groups. I expect this will be something special, socially and artistically.
Much of the day was spent updating Prometheus, adding a new Stats (statistics) render path. Stats were part of an older version, it returned peak levels, but for some time peak levels have been returned as standard so those stats were redundant. My much faster machine now permits more complex stats, and these might help with mastering. RMS and peak RMS are calculated on average and per-channel, but more usefully spectrum analysis takes place on the result and compares this with a 'standard candle' level to give a guide to the overall song balance.
A 'target' spectrum can be gleaned from existing music, so I could instruct the program to analyse a song like Wuthering Heights, then balance my music to match its EQ profile. A sticking point in the maths was how to equate source and target of different volumes. I didn't want to normalise source and target; it would be silly to have one band peak at 1.0, one trough at 0.0, and everything in between. This may appear to be an ideal representation of a spectrum, but it's too extreme. Most songs will have more subtle balances and the contrast between frequency bands should be preserved.
In the end, I set the average of both spectra to match. Whether it 'works' will be a matter of subjective experience rather than mathematical calculation. Here's an example of some stats:
Song Name: Cycles III Perpetual Change
Version: 2023 Version
Author: Mark Sheeky
Created: 27 December 2016 20:54
Last Updated: 29 September 2023 10:12
Render Type: 2D (Stereo)
Output File: D:\Audio\Albums\Inuse\R28B-CyclesAndShadows\Tracks-CDMaster\T04-CyclesIII-PerpetualChange.wav
Render Completed: 03 October 2023 14:11
From Tick: 144
To Tick: 19473
Channel Format: Stereo (Left, Right)
Depth Format: 32-bit FLOAT
Render Took: 00:00:36.040
Song Length: 4:12.357
Song Length (Samples): 11128960
Song RMS (Stereo) (dB): -18.344
Song Max Peak (1/Peak): 0.975 (1.026)
Song Max Peak (dB): -0.220
Channel L
RMS (dB): -18.679
Max Peak (dB): -0.220
Samples Clipped: 0
Peaks -ve/+ve: -0.899/0.975
28hz: Peak 0.163337 Target (dB) -3.297
56hz: Peak 0.247985 Target (dB) -0.229
113hz: Peak 0.379043 Target (dB) -0.311
225hz: Peak 0.404601 Target (dB) -0.594
450hz: Peak 0.514534 Target (dB) -1.638
900hz: Peak 0.497288 Target (dB) -1.490
1800hz: Peak 0.271260 Target (dB) +1.142
3600hz: Peak 0.157141 Target (dB) +3.513
7200hz: Peak 0.073190 Target (dB) +5.070
15000hz: Peak 0.032030 Target (dB) +3.778
The aim of these changes is to speed up and improve the quality of my music making. Whether this is true, time will tell. I add lots of features to my software constantly, and, as it becomes more sophisticated, delete lots too. Everything must be as efficient and practical as possible. One upshot of these changes (which have taken about 2 days) is the removal of an older spectrum analysis feature. This one trumps that.
Now, I must finish the Cycles remaster, create a Christmas song, and keep notating the Testing The Delicates scores. The week already feels too short!
The first of a month, and a quarter, so a day for quarterly backups, and these have taken most of the day. Other things like accounts, monthly goals, reviews, checks on bills and various things that I do each quarter are done too.
My night was sleepless and full of energy. At one point I had the idea of putting together a charity Christmas record, and will make some casual enquiries about this. Time is short, it would be difficult, but I like to be pushed and work best when extremely busy.
The evening has been spent writing articles and promotions for We Robot. The Cycles remaster is just about finished but I'll hold off release until 2024. I don't want it to appear to be a new release, or for it to usurp We Robot. I can quite see why some remastered albums include the date or '(Remastered xxxx)' afterwards, but I'm unsure if I want to do that...
