New Artist Photos, Salome Book

Gradually feeling back to my normal electric self after a slower week.

I dreamt of being pursued by a flying beetle with a hard grey case, perhaps a robotic one. The experience was mortally terrifying, having to dodge this deadly insect about the size of a small mouse. This seems to reflect, or be connected to my recurring nightmares about being pursued by black flies, bees, wasps or other flying insects. All are disturbing and terrifying. This time, the beetle was being controlled by someone, using a radio control, a small malevolent figure who was present. After much dodging, I managed to crush the beetle hard against a wall with a folder of papers. I wonder if the papers represent work? A small bee appeared, but easily killed that, evidence that my old foes were now easily defeated, unlike this new one. I leapt upon the small man and threatened him not to try that again.

The day was productive. I took some new artist photos, it's time for a change. Here are all of them over the years:

There is one missing, myself in the red glitter outfit for The Spiral Staircase and other pure electronic works 'Barry Falcon':

After this, and subsequent editing, I continued work the new Salome book of words an music. Following discussions with Deb, we've decided to include words and music on the score, something I've not done with Fall in Green works before, initially because the 'lyrics' option in MuseScore is tied to per-note, and our words are spoken independently from the music. I can, however, use 'expression text', which appears below the music, like lyrics, but doesn't track the notes. This seems to work well enough, though the words will always be a guide more than anything exact, but that is how our work is performed anyway. Deb's words flow around my music, and my music tracks her words, pace, and feelings.

The hard part will be combining many pdf files into one, but my copy of Acrobat seems to do this. The book will be square, about 20cm, so about the size of an old 45 record. It will facilitate including a CD too.

Working on the music and these words I'm struck how good and how ground-breaking it is; more ground-breaking than, say, Genesis' Lamb Lies Down, and far less popular too. Unlike them, I'll try, however, to keep pushing on and do as much as possible in our new and special area. Sometimes things are unpopular because they are rubbish. Sometimes things are unpopular because they are brilliant, ahead of their time, not promoted, not electric enough to catch on. Unpopularity isn't always a bad sign, just as popularity isn't always a good one. All of the best art is unpopular at first and viewed with confusion, as were all of Beethoven's symphonies. Our performances can elicit this response. We are on the right track.

Onward.

Charlie Munger Maxims

Don't have a lot of envy. Don't have a lot of resentment. Don't overspend your income. Stay cheerful in spite of your troubles. Deal with reliable people. Do what you're supposed to do.

A slightly paraphrased quote of businessman Charlie Munger who died today, and whose wise maxims are more succinct than any I could write.

Album Filing, Wallpapering

A mix of jobs, first the burning of the Snow Business archive CD. I code albums now as Coding R0Y-ZM R (for album)
0 = Numerical index (can be any length)
Y = Sub version, eg. alternative recording/mix or modified/mutated sub-version. Only be used for versions of album with identical title, artist, track titles, track lengths, but with alternative recordings, such as remasters or re-recordings. If an album includes extra tracks or any change of track length or name, a new code is issued.
Z = Format:
A: CD, with extra ID as follows [XY - X disc burning origin, Y printing origin]. This is not part of the main code, these letters refer to various printers or manufacturers, with H to represent home-made)
CD [DD Paper Sleeve]
CD [HO Jewel Case Semi-Page Booklet]
CD [HO Slim Jewel Case 2-Page Booklet]
CD [HH Slim Jewel Case 2-Page Booklet]
CD [HH Slim Jewel Case Semi-Page Booklet]
CD [HH Two-Disc Jewel Case 2-Page Booklet]
CD [HN Jewel Case 4-Page Booklet]
CD [DD Jewel Case 8-Page Booklet]
CD [DD Jewel Case 4-Page Booklet]
CD [II Jewel Case 4-Page Booklet]
CD [HP Slim Jewel Case 1-Page Booklet]
CD [HX Slim Jewel Case No Booklet]
CD [HX Four-Disc Jewel Case No Booklet]
CD [DA Book Yxxx]
B: Digital
Digital [Download And/Or Stream]
Digital [Download]
M = Edition/issue (can be any length of digits).

So, Snow Business is R71A, and the Snow Business Bandcamp Download version is R71A-B1, the archive CD is R71A-A1, another CD issue might be R17A-A2. If, one day, I make a vinyl copy this might be R71A-C1 or something.

The morning flew with lots of smaller admin jobs done, Christmas presents purchased, and plans for the next month or two.

The afternoon was full of work on the house, hanging 3 lengths of some heavy gold wallpaper across a chimney breast, and preparing the wall first. After that, fitting the TV to a newly placed wall bracket. This job has been pending since May and my hand accident, so it was good to finally complete it.

We Robot CDs, Omar Sharif Dream, Cycles 2024

We did, it turns out, have a Covid test available, and it was negative. My pains and fever persisted for 12 or 24 hours, then stopped in a manner which suggested something other than a cold; perhaps hypothermia or a stomach disorder. After a night of terrible stomach pain, my energy recovered well enough by yesterday to get lots of little jobs completed.

First, the final filing of Snow Business, then the postponement of Wednesday's Artistic Echoes performance and video interview in 2A King Edward Street. This will now take place on December 20th.

Then work on the We Robot CD artwork. This album was my first in years where I didn't design a full set of CD artwork during production. This, it turns out, was a somewhat ironic choice as I now needed the artwork for a batch of CDs. There are benefits to designing the art later; in particular I could use artwork from the music videos. This will be my first song album to feature all of the lyrics, I think. As usual, I'm choosing the best quality options for the CD manufacture, so an 8-page booklet, printing inside and out and on the disc.

I slept well overnight, with a complex dream:

I was trying to fix the thermostat on the water heater in the bathroom, my mum was present trying to assist. It was a small black plastic device which looked a bit like the switches used on lamp cords. It had simple electronics in, seemingly a short red wire and an old fashioned bicycle-type light bulb. I made some changes and re-attached to the wall; it fitted below the heater at the crux of a vaguely 'Y' shaped junction made from similar matt black plastic, held there precariously by tension.

The thermostat was somehow connected to Snow Business and Bandcamp and I noticed, when checking my email, that two sales/payments had not gone through because the thermostat was not working. I took it down again and realised that I needed two screws of the right diameter to hold both halves together. The ones that were there before were very long, about 50mm machine screws. I couldn't find the screws, or any of the right diameter. I went down stairs to look for some. The house, for some reason, was my grandmother's and I emerged into her garden and out-house. People were talking outside, including my mother, and I think my grandmother too. I couldn't find any screws and went back upstairs to find parts of the thermostat missing; the bulb was gone, and the plastic shell was almost empty. I became angry and upset.

At this point I think there was a sequence of scenes as though from a film, including one of a 1950s-era policeman talking about why someone would steal something so unimportant. I, as an extra (or a detective or other character) in this film, formed my own conclusion and left the scene. I became Omar Sharif. For some reason my children and wife were killed by the lack of the thermostat and I was left alone and filled with despair and anger. I joined the British army in Victorian times and became a violent warrior, killing women and children mercilessly in revenge at those who had stolen the thermostat parts. Some time later, I was at a garden function as a war hero in my red dress uniform, a sunlit garden of light gravel, conversing with officer friends. There were several exceedingly fat women present, including Queen Victoria herself, her dome-like body wobbling below a tiny head. I was receiving some sort of reward for good service. At some point I went home with a flash of inspiration or realisation. I broken open the old rooms where I and my wife and children used to sleep, those were sealed shut and somehow frosted shut. Inside, some balloons were hanging from the walls on ribbon, and holding them up was one of the long screws I needed for the thermostat. I realised that my children had innocently borrowed them to secure the balloons, that my vengeance was misguided.

Today, the CDs have been ordered and I'll have a few on sale and on offer, notably for the Decemeber 20th gig, so a delay has helped. I'll also have a few ready for the December 14th show in the Macc Art Lounge, though the details for that need to be finalised. Last time, Deb and I did a relaxed poem or two in the day, but perhaps this time a few We Robot songs would work. Everything will need to be checked with Ché.

I've also prepared a little more for my second release of 2024, the remastered Cycles & Shadows. This too will involve some CD printing as it will be impossible for me to sell the 2017 editions of Cycles, now that I know how good the new version sounds! I could simply burn individual copies for the very few remaining albums here, or order a new batch. We shall see.

Onwards we charge.

Illness

Unfortunately, being in the famously cold Macc Art Lounge all day yesterday has given me a cold-like virus and I'm now aching and running a high temperature. This is a disaster for me, I was due to give my first album performance in years on Wednesday for Artistic Echoes in Maccclesfield. I may recover quickly, I may not. I may be Covid or a cold-like virus. At the moment, it feels more like Covid, with a high temperature and headache but no sniffles or coughs. We shall see (though I have no test kits).

I have contacted Artistic Echoes to keep them informed. A future date may be required. Today I am too weak to work, but have made some changes to the We Robot album artwork in preparation for a CD release. Here is a photo of me in the Lounge from yesterday.

Macc Art Lounge

A long day in The Macc Art Lounge. The exhibition is now all set for the preview event and day, tomorrow from 10:30.

People And Places

A lovely evening and great performance last night in Congleton Library for the People and Places event. We arrived early and set up well in advance. Here's a pre-show selfie by Fall in Green:

I performed Robot and Christmas Smells, right at the start of the show:

And joined in to accompany a few others, with an ensemble for Johnny B. Goode (great fun!) and, Mike Drew AKA Mick Dick of the Forrest Dick Band for Liverpool Lullaby.

Andy Stubbs was as big a star performer as any.

There were a mix of songs, poems, acts; with John Lindley, Mike, Cherie and ourselves performing original material, which is always a joy. All participant in order:

Mark Sheeky, David Tuffin, Dave Boothroyd, Mick Lomas, Chris Godber, Bryan Hurst, Jane Harland, Glyn Roberts. Second half Andy Stubbs, Cherie Pingel-Tuffin, Fall in Green, Phil Poyser, John Lindley & The Poachers, Phil Williams, Mick Dick (The Forrest Dick Band 'light').

We arrived home beyond 11pm. Today has mostly been spent doing admin and filing of this event, and other things. The time consuming work of life orderly.

We, the Snow Business 'Electric Sprout Foundation', are in the Crewe Chronicle this week too, a great write-up. In visual art news, there will be some sort of public consultation into the Crewe Market Shed's mural. Installation work on this may take place next spring.

Sheet Music Complete, Event Preparation, Art News

A full busy yesterday finalising the Apocalypse Of Clowns sheet music. I thought it would take a while but didn't appreciate the complexity of Jabberwocky, with extensive piano parts, then organs, guitars, and lots of other parts. I notated the intro/overture separately from the rest, and fully notated the piano parts, with guidance for much of the rest (no synth solo, limited notation of the guitar parts). Notating Siamese Twin Domestic was more difficult than expected too.

This took all day, and I finalised this today and added it to itch. I also made an edit of Maggie Shaw's A Christmas Song, a backing track with guidance to sing to, and checked my own music for tonight's People and Places event:

I've also updated my website, and Fall in Green's, with new event listings directly from Songkick, which may make updating events easier. Work on Snow Business is nearly complete, and today I announced Nigel Stonier as a contributor. All are now 'announced' apart from Mick Dick.

I had some good news today regarding SFXEngine, and I'll promote that more over the coming months.

In visual art news, the mural design for Crewe Town Centre is slowly moving forwards, and a Spring installation date is now anticipated. There will be some sort of public consultation for this. The next group exhibition at Macc Art Lounge is set to open this Saturday, of which I'm a part for the first time since 2021. This was once an artist-curated space but is now under the sole curatorship of Ché. I hope to make the most of my time there.

Countryside 2024 Finalised, Clown Sheet Music

Another full and busy day of just 5 main tasks. First, preparations for the release of the 2024 version of A Walk In The Countryside. Listing with the many licencing authorities, uploading the music videos, and preparing the album for release on January 12th.

Then, 4 pieces of sheet music. These were the most difficult pieces for Apocalypse of Clowns, three complex, hand improvised piano music. Again, only the raw notes, but this was a huge job, particularly (and unexpectedly) Falling. Dead Hand was by comparison unexpectedly simple, and Knife Thrower not too bad. The other track was the joyous Herr Kasperle, which was much easier as this was sequenced.

More Scoring, Prometheus v3.25

A poor night of worries and stomach pain. I slept badly and awoke at the remarlable hour of 11am. A new hat has arrived which is amazingly good quality, I may buy another in another colour.

I sent a few messages and responded to emails, then started to work on some programming. Making the 3/4 score for Maggie's song revealed another bug in my MIDI expoerter. I've probably made more changes and fixes to the MIDI exporter than any aspect of Prometheus! I fixed it, and optimised a few features. This partly settled my mind, activating cold logic. There is great psychological power in programming, a zen of the intellect.

It wasn't until nearly 4pm that I began scoring more of the Apocalypse music. Such a slow a tedious process. It feels good to have the music completed when it is, although I wonder if anyone will ever know of it, but this, for me now, is an essential part of my creative work. Things will feel much better when all of my old music is scored. At the present rate it takes about a week per album, so about 25 full-time weeks would be needed to score my backlog. As I've probably mentioned, all of these are done to a very basic degree, hardly any playing guidance, tempi, dynamics etc., and some of the timing my need tweaking, particularly on the expressive solo piano works; but this note-by-note process is the most difficult and useful part. A future being (hello, it this is you!) can fix everything to a wondrous standard based on the recording, if that still exists. I make sure to add chord symbols to every score too. As an often improviser, those are so useful.

Today I scored the last part of Mandalino, Fairytale, Grim By Day, Life Of Pierrot, and half of Herr Kasperle.

Apocalypse of Clowns Scoring Starts

A full day that has flown! I started with more Snow Business admin, and worked on some sheet music for Maggie's song, then started work on The Apocalypse of Clowns sheet music, which is interminably complex and difficult.

It's amazing, when listening to Skin, and looking at its MIDI sequence, how little it sticks to a rhythmic structure. There is a steady change of chord in time terms, yet it doesn't correspond with a change in note terms; not in 8 or 16 notes, but odder numbers. This makes it difficult to notate. Essentially, the 'bars' change mid-bar at almost all times. The alternative is to have pauses or jumps at the end of bars to aid reading, but that too won't help elucidate the structure. When playing live, I play to the words, the pace and feeling of the day.

For Mandalino, things are a little simpler, and better still for Clown Face, a tune I wrote specifically to match the poem. These three scores have take until 6pm or so. My life feels Sisyphean today. My stomach still aches and I fele physically under the weather. Such is life. Onwards we roll our rock.

Countryside Admin

Another really full day, but at times it can seem where the day has gone. I started by proofing the 2024 edition of A Walk In The Countryside, and updating the records to replace the 2020 version. Then working on the new (first!) Spotify canvas animations for the album. The first three tracks will have unique animations, and the last tracks will share one in the colour-on-black scheme reflected in the cover artwork (which was never printed, to date there has not been a CD version of this album). This cat will nod to the music for We All Have Hope:

I've taken down the two YouTube videos. I noted that The Cat Phone Song was among my most popular of the last month; an odd coincidence, so perhaps it's an ideal time for a remaster of this album. The album is somewhat negative and not reflective of my 2024 state of being, but it tells a definite story. The two halves are related, by perhaps frustration and then surrender or catharsis. This trend was continued in Nightfood to better effect, still one of my most loved albums. On technical and performance levels, the 2024 version of Countryside is much better.

Then I re-converted the videos with the new audio and updated credits, in preparation for a 2024 release, and updated several records to this end. There is still, will be still, quite a lot of admin to perform when the album is ready for release. Then, small updates to the album artwork to reflect the change of date, and filing of the main sequences.

I also updated 4 new sales of Snow Business, and updated some little details for tracks from the artists. Then made some CD-tray artwork for this, so that buyers could burn a CD and print their own artwork. More and more of the work on the album is complete.

Then, I did a quick run-though of Sky Robes of Celeste on piano, a rehearsal for next Wednesday's performance, and burned the final CD archive copy of Walk, plus updated the official Cornutopia Music Catalogue, prepared to update the websites, listed the sheet music on itch (or rather prepared to), and put together a lyrics booklet and sheet music pack for the Christmas Smells single.

All day my stomach has been agonising for unknown reasons, something from yesterday perhaps? To try to combat this, I took a long walk at high speed this evening.

Now, to rest. Tomorrow, I'll work on more sheet music I think.

I've made a lot of music this year, and for a large part of the year will release one new music video each week. At each summit of production I think I can't do more, but already I can imagine releasing one album per month in 2024. Well, perhaps not that many, but it should be a good year. Onwards we charge.

Countryside Recording, Snow Business Listing

More work yesterday and today on the new re-recording of A Walk in the Countryside. Completed all tracks except We All Have Hope yesterday, though I recorded the vocals for that song. My voice is now so different compared to 2018 that the low notes are nearly too low, the low A is right at the bottom of my range, and singing each track an octave higher feels more natural.

We All Have Hope needed the most work. The backing was a little too sparse, and I wanted to do more than add a new vocal, so I've made some of the instruments 'sing' to the melody more, as is my contemporary practice, but not too much... the content of the songs stem from 2018, after all. The bass was a struggle with this one, partly because it's not there for large stretches of the song, and also because it's plucked. Percussive, fading bass sounds hinder mixing. Bass should be constant in volume, it's one of only two things I compress (the other being voice), because a bass can easily change dramatically in volume just by changing note. Bass that fades can easily sound muddy, so it usually mixes best as a solid 'block' of sound, with no reverb. Of course, perfecting mixing isn't everything. The expression, the final emotional conveyance, is the most important factor.

The vocals for this song are plain, one single line, but are very difficult to sing because of the charge of complex words and melody. There is barely room to breathe, and the tight timing means that it really needs to be all done in one take. Any edits would show up. After about 3 run-throughs, I managed it well enough. It was great fun actually, and great training of course, like a vocal run along one of those 'Stunt Car Racer' tracks.

Also today, lots of work on the Snow Business album. The tracks are now uploaded and the album is just about ready. I'm now finalising details like credits, lyrics, and other optional material with the artists.

Countryside and Cycles need plans for release. I'd rather do it quick and get it over with, but some aspects need planning because there's a 4-week wait to list music, and a new release of this old material now may obscure the important new album that is We Robot.

Working on these old tracks reminded me that I should be working on new ones. These re-recordings are both certainly better in quality than before, and for the short time spent on them, worth doing, but with each re-recording, the difference between older and new albums grows smaller and smaller.

Sheet Music and The Cat Phone Song

Sheet music completed today for the album A Walk In The Countryside. The hard track was Sonus, which had no sequences at all. I set the music playing and played along to it live on the piano, recording my playing as a MIDI sequence. I expanded this into the actual score in a somewhat time consuming, but reasonably accurate way.

Then I recorded new vocals for The Cat Phone Song and Life is a Twitter Hashtag (in a mere five years this song is now a little out of date due to Twitter's fate). In the afternoon I worked on The Cat Phone Song. Structurally it's almost identical, but the mixing is quite different. the old 'boomy' reverbs are gone, and the new vocals sound notably better. Few may notice the difference, but the new song is certainly better in studio quality compared to the old one, and like the Cycles remaster, this will be balanced and mastered to a higher quality too.

At 4pm I made some changes to Prometheus, little fixes and improvements. I didn't feel like charging into music, after working for most of the day on scoring, so this programming acted as a sort of break. My score totals were wrong too... I checked. I've now notated 14 albums, some 300 pieces of music, over the past two years, but I have 25 albums to go. I have done most of the difficult ones, though Music of Poetic Objects and Apocalypse of Clowns will have their fair shares of complex piano pieces. The former could easily include scores for larger ensembles, but I won't have time for that; the basic notation should help in future scorer.

In the afternoon, local journalist John White pointed out two online articles about Snow Business:

Many of the artists have listened and approved. Most of the technical work is done and I'm looking forward to the live shows, and the final mastering process for it (the album will only be half mastered, some of the tracks will be distributed exactly as supplied to me, and some merely converted from 24 to 16 bits).

Tomorrow I'll keep working on Countryside and then work out a release schedule for it and for Cycles & Shadows. I can't allow these projects to sap too much energy from the important work of new releases.

The Countryside Sheet Music

Today, work on the sheet music for A Walk In The Countryside. It's a mere five years since this album, and 3 years since my first little re-recording of the Twitter and Hope songs, but even those 3 years is a lifetime in my musical abilities which are much better now in every way. I've managed to notate 5 of the 6 tracks, to a draft degree, today.

I can't find any record of a sequence for the 'Sonus' track. 2018 was a very productive time, with new work made weekly for ArtsLab, so there is a chance that I have the sequence under a a different name, or even a chance that I used alternative recording techniques, like a live recording from my SY-85 or the Microkorg, then overlayed with the 'jungle sounds' sample. I think this is unlikely due to the complexity of the track, but its possible... perhaps the later 'Let's Take a Walk in Desert' track was created as a response to losing this one. I would haw filed the sequence if there was one. It's annoying that I didn't record what happened. This blog itself is useful for things like this!

Well, this makes transcription a problem, though that music is largely one note.

My mood is low today. I feel unusually weak, tired, and lacking in drive, but I have broadly ignored these biological messages and today has been productive. I've eaten healthily, taken a walk, and reminded myself about the good people I know and the good future that awaits me, and all of us. The future, for me, is always better than the past, and every tomorrow is something to look forward to as a child does Christmas.

Live Preparations, We Robot CD Plans

A slower day today, to reflect and plan. I bought some more experimental sunglasses and a headwear, and have now spent over £60 in the past week on a future look, to prepare for the November 22nd show and perhaps the start of more live music performances.

I worked on more artwork for a We Robot CD edition too, adding more pages. One of my goals is to create more CDs, but I need a new plan of what to do with them. I love the format, but I feel like a rarity in this regard; and feel that CD player machines are rare these days. I have, however, encountered several people who have requested a CD version of Snow Business, and 'don't do downloads'. I feel intuitively that CDs will, in the great cycle of things, come back and compete on even terms with the resurgent vinyl records. And I myself primarily buy albums on CD. The only download album I've ever bought was Sparks' Lil' Beethoven, and that was because it was only available by download at that time (I later bought the remastered CD release). This philosophy means that I should really be releasing my own music on CD.

My last big CD release was Burn of God; and I've not felt like making CDs since, partly because of the cost and lack of ability to sell or distribute them, but also perhaps because I knew that my vocal music of the time was training, a work in progress. We Robot is my first vocal album that I considered of a good enough standard (well, The Golden Age is good too). It's also my first album of songs to be performed live, apart from the two solitary Marius Fate performances, so it's a logical choice for a CD for those reasons too.

After working on the album art I prepared the keyboard for a live rehearsal of the Nov 22nd performance, and a play of 'Do You Know Where Your Heart Is?' too. All went well.

More Snowy Business, Argus v1.30

A full day today of two main creations. First, a medley/overture for the Christmas album which layers the tracks in a way which paints a wintry scene. For inspiration I thought of the 'overtures' by The Electric Light Orchestra, and remembered that for Fire On High, the first track of the album Face The Music, they referenced their previous album Eldorado, inserting clips of its music as though blown on a wind of memory. I did something similar here, with distant bells and other sound elements to paint a winter scene. My interpretation slightly leans to horror film trailers, with Maggie's haunting vocals and dramatic bass percussion.

Later, I put together two new short videos with a vertical orientation for social media, fixing a small bug in Argus as I went.

Paintings, Performance Preparations

Well the day had flown. I've worked since 8:30 and yet don't feel like I've done much. I started by buying some potential accoutrements for future music performances - costume is a key part of all live performance; then looked up video sizes and notated the current standards for various platforms in my video text index. I made a (very) short edit of Christmas Smells for one of these videos, but haven't done a thing on the actual video.

Then I looked up my paintings of the year and added them to my website, but their poor look reminded me why my painting in 2023 ground to a halt. The image quality is just not good enough, the colours garish and odd. It was this that made me spend 2 or 3 months making a new lighting rig which I've still not used. My paintings from 2022 and 2023 really need re-photographing. This should only take a week, however.

I then deleted the now dead links to my digital art as listed on Society6. They have changed their 'plan' and now only 10 images are permitted. This means that about 90 images, almost all of my digital art, have been deleted and are now no longer available to purchase as prints or posters. Nobody purchased any, but had they done so, they would now have a digital rarity. This fact made me feel ignored by the world; but then, people generally are, and even the famous are forgotten in a flash. Florence Lawrence was once the world's most famous person. Now she is as anonymous as most of the Roman Emperors, never mind the serfs.

My big job of the day was preparation for my live music events, a main monthly goal, so I created some single-sheet scores. I decided to have only one 'live' score for each work. I've made a few before, but these often evolve into highly redacted mnemonics. As I learn a piece better and better, I only need fragments, but I don't want to keep all of the steps along the way, so I decided to keep copies in each 'event' folder, but just one best copy in the scores folder, otherwise I'll have lots of 'Live' scores, which are only ever intended for temporary personal use.

So, I cut down the music for the songs I am to perform, then created some test instruments on the MODX, an interminable task. It took an absolute age to design an instrument for 'Do You Know Where Your Heart Is?', but I managed that and performed the song once, then performed 'Silicon-Carbon Genesis' too, which was fun and relatively easy to play on piano. AI and Celebrity, however, was as complex and nightmarish as ever. It can be played to piano in a slow and moody way, but I think, for the Macclesfield show, I'll largely sing it to a fill backing track, play an intro and the solo only, thus duplicating the method used for Christmas Smells.

Then I listed the Artistic Echoes event, and the Crewe Library event on Songkick.

Nigel Stonier sent his music track this evening too, a lovely song. I also listened to Mick Masser's last single release, Nothing Matters, which is also a lovely song, and could easily be a big hit, if, for example, it should appear in an advert.

I'm entering a quieter time, the work on this album is closing. I need a better plan for 2024. Success is dynamism, a roller-coaster, and I need to add some more ups.

One last job of today was looking at the We Robot album art. This is my first album in over a decade where I've made 4 pages rather than 8 for the 'CD booklet', but I may actually press some CDs. I feel I must at some point. I'll certainly press some of the 2024 Cycles & Shadows remaster, of course, and make a new video for the new Cycles III recording. That is a certain part of early 2024.

Macc Art Lounge, Live Music Preparation

A delivery of art to the Macc Art Lounge in the day. Met the artist Laura Grace and had a catch up with the wonderful artist and arts champion Ché. A delightful morning all round, and I'm excited about exhibiting there again. There have been a few changes to the look and feel of the place that have made a big difference to the look.

The afternoon was spent largely on Snow Business admin. Deb saw the lyric video. There are a few things I'd like to do to improve it even more.

After that, preparation work on my two live performances of this month. These are complex songs. I'll need to work out how much to play live and how much to use backing tracks for. I'll be using my first generation Zoom H4 for audio playback, which has pros and cons compared to the cheap 'Allreli' player I'd used before. Neither device is designed to be easy to use as a playback device. The Zoom instantly flows into the next track, and the controls are fiddly and this makes accidental presses possible. I plan on using the MODX audio input to mix the result, but that too has pros and cons. The main problem is that each MODX sound has different settings and volumes for this input. The audio input is supposed to be part of sound play and generation, not plain mixing. Perhaps external mixing would be better.

'Robot' uses three live parts for different parts of the song, and 'Christmas Smells' two. Of the other From The Mic Stand tracks, two are instrumental, and I'll probably play 'Silicon Carbon Genesis' as a piano and voice track in the manner of Kate Bush or Elton John. I must work out the best options for 'Do You Know Where Your Heart Is?' and 'AI and Celebrity'. The former is particularly highly sequenced and has few vocals too... yet it's a good track and an explosive start to the evening. Perhaps it would work best as a 'mostly instrumental' track in the style of Jean-Michel Jarre.

These live performances are now my key focus for the month.

Library Winter Party, Prometheus v3.23, Lyric Video

Had a talk with Nigel Stonier last night; he was speaking with Deb and expressed interest in the album project. He has a track ready and I'd be honoured to have him on the album. He is still very much recovering physically from the Words & Music Festival.

The day began with first receiving Mick Masser's song, then designing a poster for the live music event to be held in Crewe Library. The event is a veritable mish-mash. It was originally the launch of Deborah's new poetry book, but music performances from the Christmas album were added, then an open mic poetry section to draw more of a crowd, and provide an alternative outlet for any musicians who might be unable to perform their songs.

We (as Fall in Green) have performed for the past two winters there, so this is, sort of and in a very loose way, this year's Christmas event, though much more of a group event, which pleases me. These shows are a lot of work.

Then, admin work on the album, filling in Mr Stonier with details, then some Prometheus programming, now to a final v3.23. I decided to add an 'analysis only' option which scans the song but doesn't save it out. This is useful to track the spectrum of a track without saving out its massive wav file. Now I can render 'WAV' (the plain song), 'Stats' (song and statistics file, the classic 'Stats' option), or 'Analyse' which is just the statistics file.

After that, I worked on a lyric video for Christmas Smells. It's a bundle of joy, The whole video bounces and rocks to the music in a manner very like my ancient dream did to the song 'I Love You for Your Money' - the dream song that got me started with song writing 20 years-or-so ago.

One thing I wanted in the video was the next line to be there, waiting to move into place at the right time. As a singer, I want to be ready for the next line, and I remember well the wonderful bouncing ball in the old Ghostbusters game on the Commodore 64 - this was so good! And it too showed the next line. A ball would have been a lot of work, but lining up the next line wasn't too hard, and I made the words dance left and right to the music like see-saws.

The solos are blue-sky flights into snowflakes. I could have perhaps added more snow. It's quite hard to select and process very large numbers of tracks. Even here there are 80 tracks of snowflakes (and so 80 flakes at any one time). They are relatively easy to control but hard to select and view all 80. I wonder if I can somehow 'fold' them together?

The video took about 4 hours, not bad for its complexity, though the amount of work, mental calculation, and typing I had to do made me think that 95% of people simply couldn't do it. Argus might perhaps be just too complex for public use. Then again, Yamaha made the MODX public, and its interface seems to have been designed by paranoid ants.

Tomorrow I'm dropping off paintings to the Macc Art Lounge in Macclesfield, my first foray in visual art in a while. I love painting, but it's almost impossible to make progress as a visual artist, and I'm very socially isolated from the visual arts. I've probably not spoken to another visual artist since I was last in the Macc Lounge two years ago (no - wait! There was David Jewkes, ah and my brilliant but doomed first mural design).

I must urgently practise my live music performances. This was a key monthly goal and I've not done a thing on it.

Onwards to glory we charge.

Contact Admin, Sky Robes Sheet Music, Information and Death

A very busy day, I've spent at least 2 hours updating my contacts list, trying to add an image to each one. Faces are much easier to remember than names, and I always try to add a photo of a contact to each one. Even a wrong face can be better than no face, it still makes it easier to remember, but the research of trying to find a correct face can take a long time, and I have many hundreds of contacts.

This process made me aware of many things. Firstly, people who aren't online at all have a sort of non-existence. When working online its easy to think that it is everything, the world, yet many friends and contacts have zero online presence. A related truth is how quickly data fades, how I could barely find any references at all to my first art club Art Support, its 50 members, starting from at least 2007 (and probably years before), which continues, yet I've struggled to find any information about them, or any of the members I know and knew. This alerted me to the third fact of how poor Google now is as a search engine. Several results has very few results at all, which is surprising when the internet is, I presume, bigger than ever before. Many results were tainted by my contact themselves, I think... existing friends, my website(!) appearing in results. It just felt wrong, broken.

After this basic work, I started to notate the 'Sky Robes of Celeste' piano music, getting it note perfect for the new music. This reminded me of Beethoven. How one writes a piece, performs it, and in performing adds more, so the original is updated. This almost certainly happened then, so originals are 'lost', and acts of performance result in new music automatically, as well as a lot of paperwork. I was reminded that Beethoven kept all of his notes, diaries, every record from his life despite moving house more than 100 times. This seemingly innocuous fact was crucial to his fame and success; there is so very much work in art, that that work is the necessary record keeping. The message from today is that a person exists only so much as the records which mention or reference him or her.

All death, even physical death, is information death. Storing and recording information is life. As I've sad before, this is life's principle purpose - though the word 'purpose' implies a driving force. Life has no driving force, it merely exists or dies. That which is stored well is hardy against death.

After the sheet music, I analysed some music and other waves to determine a possible ideal EQ balance. The results were surprisingly unintuitive, though much closer to pink noise than white.

In the afternoon, I prepared paintings for my next Macc Art Lounge exhibition. I'm uncertain when it starts, or other details, like what I must bring, but I expect my paintings will appear this weekend. I updated my website to put art exhibitions and live events on on page. These were separated before because exhibitions tend to span days and events or performances are one-off, but both are relatively few, so it's perhaps better to put them all on one page. I've called the list of previous performances 'Events' - but up-and-coming events are also called 'Events'. In English future and past events are labelled with the same word. 'Events Listings' websites tend to list up-and-coming events, rather than an archive of shows of the past. I wonder what the best terms could be.

After that, I made preparations to send out the Christmas Smells single. I need some radio contacts or others that may promote the music and the album.

Then, back to the contacts list. Most of this day has been filing, storing, recording, preparing.

Sky Robes, Prometheus v3.23 and EQ

Slept badly and awoke late, my mood strange and sad, perhaps due to the end of projects.

I started the day by updating Prometheus again, to v3.23, this time by making my spectral EQ-Tracker use RMS values rather than peak values. Peak values are easier to calculate, my reasoning was that the mix of peaks of different frequencies would give a good measure of the overall feeling and balance of a track. The problem is that one loud transient (a crash or boom) will set those peaks, rendering all of the rest of the song irrelevant. So I updated it to use RMS (average) values.

This wasn't too difficult, the program already calculates them to return the overall level. Doing this on a large sample can lead to inaccuracies due to the huge numbers involved (adding tiny numbers to a floating-point variable 10,000,000 times or more), so I divide the calculation into smaller sub-groups and average those groups at the end, and I use 64-bit double precision.

This meant creating a new 'standard' as an audio target for matching the levels, and thus loading in lots of existing songs and viewing the relative levels. The results were, actually, almost the same as when using peak values, but not quite. There's a definite arch shape: low, high, highest, high, low; whereas the peak traces were more low-flat-flat-flat-low.

Of course, the important thing is how it sounds. I reasoned that a mix of an infinite number of musical tracks would produce pink noise, and that music engineers would prefer white noise. If this hypothesis is correct then all EQ balancing is ultimately a matter of tuning pink noise to white; removing bass and adding higher frequencies. This seems to match my experience.

After that I started work on the Sky Robes of Celeste production. I started with the piano and added a few strings with minimal filtering. The whispery vocals clashed a little with the piano and the somewhat hissy strings, but it sounds good enough. I started the music by painting a scene, starting with a live recording taken from the Locus Sonus world microphone array, this one in Dar es Salaam at 4pm today. This forms the gap between day and night, the living and the dead, of this poetry about ancestors and graves.

Christmas Smells Single, Sky Robes Vocal Recording

Another full day, most of the day spent preparing for the Christmas Smells single release. Submitting this and the lyrics to the relevant distributors, registering the song in many places, adding it to my website, archiving the album content and details, finalising the artwork, and finally creating the Spotify Canvases. Christmas Smells simply uses the cover but with moving snowflakes and yes! - a dancing nose!

Christmas Is To Go uses the same snow but falling into a foggy darkness:

In the morning, Deborah came to record the vocals for Sky Robes of Celeste. My next task is to work on this.

I updated Prometheus too, though only neating variable names rather than any actual changes. The spectrum analyser uses peak levels to check each band, but perhaps RMS (average) value ma be more useful. At the moment, one momentary blast of white noise anywhere will convince the analysis that the whole song is perfect. Still, the analyser wasn't intended to be perfect, simply a tool. My changes to today make the future RMS feature a little easier.

Christmas Is To Go Recording

A full day yesterday of recording Christmas Is To Go. When I wrote it, the mood was, in my head, something like Bowie's 'Always Crashing in the Same Car'. In the end it came out quite different.

I've spent quite a lot of time programming yesterday and today as a result of this song. Yesterday because the 90 B.P.M. MIDI import failed; I rounded it down so that an integer value of 666667 divided into 60,000,000 (which is the 'correct' value for 90 beats) rounded to 89. This threw out the timing.

I like the irregular timing of live instrumentation, and I use the piano and the main driver of rhythm and mood for the whole song. Rather than try to fix everything to a regular tempo (no metronomes here!), my tempi are often wildly irregular, and I tie everything to that feeling instead. To do this, I can use the MIDI notes as a guide track, so that the chord changes and time of the notes are not guesswork but exact. In this case, everything was failing, so a little upgrade made the timing round to the nearest beat rather than always down.

I spent today upgrading the EQ tracer. I programmed it a few weeks back, and it makes it easier to monitor the EQ. I had neglected to actually test it, however, and did so today on pure sine-wave 'standard candles'. These tests led to a change of how the relative balance from source to target are calculated.

Both changes are a result of Christmas Is To Go, an innocuous B-Side to a single that I didn't need to make; but this exactly indicates the value of it. These are long term corrections, improvements to my main music tool and way of working. It's been a busy two days working on the song, but worth it for this improvement.

Those benefits aside, it's rather good song in itself. The melody climbs in an odd way, and it's this which appealed to me as I wrote it (in my head the chorus also climbed A to B to C; that may have been just too atonal, but for whatever reason, when I played it, I automatically played the more conventional A-minor, C-Major, E-minor, A-minor).

I played all of the piano in one go, so part of the composition was spontaneous. I've no time to notate it all just yet.

Here, by the way, is the cover to the single:

My idea of using a nose-shaped Christmas tree worked better than expected.

Christmas Is To Go

Most of the day flown on admin work, but also creating cover art for the Christmas Smells single. I have the crazy idea of recording a B-Side with these words. Crazy because I have about 24-hours to do it.

Christmas Is To Go

On every corner
of every street,
for every avaricious child
there is no chance of snow.
Christmas is to go.

At every meeting
of those elite,
for every candle-scented clown
there is no chance of snow.
Christmas is to go.

Snow Business Cover Finalised Sky Robes Piano

More album work today. Finalised the cover and have received tracks from almost all of the artists. It's amazing how they vary in style and ways of working. I'm trying to balance the relative volumes to set them all about the same. Most are fine, but one is notably quieter and one notably louder than the others.

I've also recorded the piano parts for Sky Robes of Celeste, at last, after playing it for most of yesterday. I took the keyboard down and set it up on a separate stand, with piano stool, all at the best height. This helped a lot; my previous best takes were played while standing up, but the strain on my left leg was considerable (I need the right for the sustain pedal, so most of my weight while playing is on my left leg). I also listened to a rehearsal from the 2019 premiere of the track, to note the structure and pacing. There was a solo in the mid section so I've added one here too, improvised while recording, no time to compose one.

Overall this, take 12, was ideal; or at least sounds it, I can't really tell until Deb adds her words. 12 short takes yes, but spread over 12 hours or so... this time matters. If I make anything look or sound easy, it isn't. It's hard hard hard. I told myself this as I put back the keyboard and re-plugged everything in after setting everything in a new place just for this recording. There can be no short-cuts.

My custom-made music stand fell off during moving and broke into pieces! So much for Titebond. It seems that the glue barely penetrated the shiny MDF surface. I will screw it this time. When anything has problems, is imperfect, action must be taken to fix it, improve it. Again, no short-cuts.

At 3pm, the final cover was revealed:

The last change of green writing did make a difference. I've also started a design for the cover of the single release of Christmas Smells. I don't have much time for that.

This evening we're off to Macclesfield. October was a very busy month. November will be busy too, hopefully not as busy. I'll (probably) spend about 6 days in Macclesfield this month, mostly sitting in the Macc Art Lounge.