I'm In Love With My Car Production

A steady day of music work. I was determined to charge in and get something completed.

Most of the day was work on I'm In Love With My Car. As I've mentioned, it was a rock song in my head but has transformed into an electro-pop song, and the day started with MIDI sequencing some powerful chord stabs which emulate the guitars I imagined, which were somewhere between those in Born To Be Wild and Queen's Tie Your Mother Down; a simple, rhythmic punch of chords. The booming lead I chose, plus the buzzy and powerful bass gives the track a dangerous industrial feeling, distorted synths. The song ends up almost like power-girl pop with a heavy-metal tinge, and the words which compare the car with a woman to be 'thrown on the scrap heap' makes the song overtly NOT a girl-group song. Creatively exciting.

The vocals are still needed, but the production is remarkably simple: drums, bass, those chords, and a synth lead, plus a grungy electric guitar solo, another rebellion against its own power pop. There are only 8 tracks, 4 of which make up the drum pattern, which is rare even for my efficient composition, and yet it works. There's careful interplay between the parts and lots of chugging to the song. Things may need moving when the vocals are added. I may need to distort those too.

Then work on a few other songs. First, preparing the backing for the Rock And Roll Is King song. I had enough to perform it live, but it needs a solo, and the vocals.

Then work (again!) on Thinking About The Cats I Used To Know. I recorded a new electric piano part, a moody single take, a few days ago and have used this today. It uses the E-minor/D-minor arrangement of the first idea, which sounds nicer than my second takes. This was/is played over a live recording of a street, but today I thought I'd add some off-kilter jazz drums which are totally not in time with the music. The brush drums are a little like the ones in Bowie's Bring Me The Disco King, but here totally not interacting with the music except that they retrigger for the main verse/chorus parts. These are distant and quite quiet, and add to the dual meaning of 'cats' as jazz musicians.

I rather like the fact that the music is at odds with that rhythm. The Shaggs did that. People call The Shaggs non-musical, crude, naïve, but they were musical. The two singers were in perfect unison, just not in time with the other parts. Fundamentally, it was the temporal independence which gave their songs the highly unusual quality, a social distance, a quality of the social misfit in music.

So, this track is (again) finished.

After that, more work on Cat Parasites. I'm stuck after the last verse but before the last chorus. I had the idea of wah guitar over the disjointed piano at the start, but I don't have a wah pedal, and the guitar timbre didn't sound quite right - I wanted a sound like a cat. I found a wah guitar sound on the MODX, and played with it, swapping the guitar sound for a violin and the result was exactly what I wanted, something like the 'cat' version of the adult voices in a Charlie Brown cartoon.

So the day ends well, but no vocals were recorded. This must be a next step. Tomorrow: monthly backups, the premiere of the Cycles III video (the single is released at midnight tonight), and the release of the Flatspace update. None of these things will take long, I will have time for vocals if I can have the house to myself.

FIG Preparation, Game Thoughts, The Face of Violence

A slow day today as I move between projects. I crated new sounds and backing tracks for the next Fall in Green performance in Winsford. This is the first time I'll be using only the Reface DX, so all of the arrangements will be different. I so wish that this potentially great synthesizer had more than 32 presets! It could rival the Microkorg in popularity and utility, but Yamaha seems to have designed it as a studio toy not a serious instrument. I've said this before. It's tragic.

I've recorded a few guitar parts for my songs in progress too, unhappy with all of them, and spent too long on programming diversions. I watched a first review/walkthrough of Gunstorm and it made me think that I need to add a few changes. Firstly, the controller isn't supported from the outset, you have to customise the controls one at a time. I thought about simply adding fixed controller support, BUT this would interfere with any custom controls... I could simply remove custom controls (or make those keyboard only), but I can't imagine anyone playing with keyboard anyway, and the game is fundamentally designed for mouse and I expect that everyone would eventually use the mouse. Secondly, the reviewer complained about a lack of tutorials or instructions (there is a manual of course, I seem to be the only person who reads manuals). This makes more sense as a future feature.

Finally, I printed out all of the Flatpace IIk ships in an effort to standardise ship design rules (amazingly, I've never had a full list of these before), but the task seems so huge that I feel overwhelmed and uncertain by all of it.

At the moment, ships have a 'look' and size number and just about any component that will fit in that number is permitted to attach to the ship. In other words, the physical size of the ship isn't an issue, so a tiny ship can happily have a huge gun or generator. I wondered if new design rules would tie the shape of the ship with the items, so when swapping weapons the shape of the ship itself may change. A new big generator may bolt on a big box to the ship.

I'm thinking that I might be wasting days and weeks of thought about this. The plan seems to be growing more complex when my aim was greater simplicity. My thoughts are also darting towards the maze game idea too.

Reading The Face of Violence is fascinating. It makes that case that the two fundamental drives in a person are to integrate socially to make progress in the world, and to prove individuality and rebel against that society. Those who crave independence still need society as society gives us everything. If we are alone, independent, we are not needed, and being needed is an essential trait for survival (if we're not needed we may as well be dead, who would notice?), yet to conform totally is to cease to be individual, to become a proverbial cog in a machine, therefore replaceable, in which case our life is equally pointless. We exist in the gap between these extremes, treading the border between being needed but replaceable by someone with the same skills, and being independent but alone and thus not needed by others. The size of our social group perhaps determines our position on that always uncomfortable scale.

In this age of social media, our social groups are unnaturally large, as big as the world to some extent, so most people are in the 'replaceable' camp, but surrounded by social forces that control and repress our behaviour which is frustrating, but there is no natural outlet for that frustration, so it manifests itself in strange behaviours that are essentially solitary and personal: gender issues, social anxieties, eating disorders, hyperactive disorders. The rise in these personal disorders is directly caused by social media, by a mass-media of which most of society takes part. We are no longer 'famous for fifteen minutes', but on stage before an audience all day every day, and those on this stage are inevitably driven crazy by it.

Mural Preparations, Flatspace v111, Non-Binary Backing

A steady day today.

First, completed the last mask for the mural, the bee. This completes most of the preparations, though I need to test the mask adhesion on the wall. In the afternoon I made a 3D mock-up of the site so that I could work out the best placement of it all, both how far from the right edge to start, and where the parking sign (yellow here) will impinge on the design:

The paint and the weather are the final two steps before painting can begin.

After that, I completed the Flatspace update which involved added a new font and checking the placement and look of everything in different resolutions. Then uploading to Steam for testing, and activating the Steam Cloud. All seems to work, and the code was backed up. I'll activate the release this weekend. Gunstorm is still the latest announcement and one update per week is enough.

After that I created some synth instruments for the live performance of My Baby's Non-Binary. The sine-like lead instrument heard at the start is a sine wave with a slight, slow, pitch-wobble, doubled with a band-pass filtered saw wave. The sine is an octave above. I spent some time duplicating this Prometheus sound on the MODX and it sounds very similar.

I've made a somewhat amazing distorted lead sound too, which is actually an FM sound, a modification of an original DX7 electric guitar, now with distortion (delay then distortion, this creates a nice effect) fed into an enormous phaser. The result sounds close to the real guitar used in the song. That was my BMG Special played with a heavy distortion from the Yamaha Digital Amp.

The jobs to do are completing the backing for this, and working on the tracks for our first Fall in Green gig of 2024 at next month's Women's Day event. It's a small one, just 20 mins or so, and no room for big keyboards or amplifiers, so it will largely be backing tracks with a small synth; a unique equipment arrangement for us.

I'm getting things done but I feel I'm not being ambitious enough.

More Cat Parasites, Flatspace Update, New Pencil

A steady day yesterday, working on the many songs in progress. Most of the work was on Cat Parasites, an interesting tune with a progressive feeling so far. I also did some work on 'I'm In Love With My Car', which, in my head began as a hard rock song in the mould of 'Born To Be Wild', or 'Motorbiking', but now has a buzzy electronic bass. Hybrids are exciting!

Still, I can't spend too long creating new music ad-infinitum, and will divert for a few days. I have lots to do. I'd like to update my existing games to the latest engine, and add Bool and Firefly to Steam, and perhaps update Outliner too. That would leave only Breakout Velocity, but that game would need a lot of work, it's far too simple for a game design. Doing this and finishing the 20+ albums of sheet music notation would feel like a life achievement! But one then awaiting new music, new games!

These games are there as part of my legacy as a creator - the months and years spent on them means nothing if they are not on sale or available anywhere, and as a quest for some income which I need. I don't enjoy working on games, but I must. Perhaps all jobs are like this. We can't do what we feel or what we would 'like' to do, that's a terminal course. No - the best things and only benefits in life come from doing things we don't want to do, or at least 'want' is not relevant. We must do what we should, whether we feel like it or not.

Some sad news recently in that my oldest friend Simon has heart failure. This has played on my mind over recent days, and reminded me of the preciousness and brevity of life. It is a fair understatement to say that Simon does not consider life precious. He has wanted to die for some years, and we his friends have tried relentlessly but can do nothing to persuade him otherwise.

Today, a full day of work on updating Flatspace with the latest game engine. I always underestimate the work of this. I've added new main loop, updated the graphics code, the CONFIGFILE and TEXTFILE parts (the latter requires a LOT of casts), and updated the textfiles, main initialisation, report files, and Options. One more day should be enough, although there is a lot to do. I must create new fonts, update some graphics (pointer, lens flares, stars) and update the aspect ratio changes as present in Flatspace IIk.

I still have Yinyang to update.

In between programming, I've helped my parents fix up a new roof for our little shed. I'm also ready to cut the final mask for the Ly2 mural. A new pencil has arrived, an OHTO Promecha Pencil MS01. This is heavy, sleek, shiny metal. I love it. It doesn't really need the feature to adjust how much lead emerges per click, but the solid metal feel and adjustable lead sheath at the end are wonderful. It feels much better than the more expensive Pentel Graphgear.

Cat Parasites Production

A slower day today, a time of switching between jobs. Started by more work on the Gunstorm release, contacting the few previous customers.

Then turning towards music and the new album. The only tracks complete are American Lawyer and Excessive Consumption Has Laxative Effects, though there are a few others in near-complete state that are candidates: Go To Bed And Miss Me, the new Rock And Roll Is King track (which lacks vocals and a solo) and Thinking About The Cats I Used To Know. Those are all secondary possible songs.

The song I worked on today is Cat Parasites. It began as a morose piano melody, then explodes into a more lush arrangement of piano and strings with drums, something like Wuthering Heights or a Carpenters production.

One odd thing about is the tempo. The live piano flows oddly in Romantic swells, but I've made this the marker for the tempo. For most sequencers, this may cause problems. One can line up parts with specific piano notes, perhaps gazing at a concurrent MIDI sequence, but that can be a time consuming pain, so I've programmed a feature which adjusts the song tempo in precise jerks so that the patterns of the song exactly match the tempo of the manual piano. It works rather marvellously and makes it easy to add strings, drums, lead or any other parts to a song as though the tempo is fixed and regular, when it's actually ebbing and flowing all over the place.

The chorus has a different (sequenced) tempo again, and then a solo which is even faster. It's rare now to have tempi that change so dramatically, yet this is a crucial part of mood; as in volume. Those are the two key components. This will be hard to get just right, as the tempo and volume/power vary hugely.

Mural Plans, Gunstorm Release

Mural plans continued today, with work on the bee image. I can't continue and must now await for clearance to proceed, so at least another extra day of work on this frustratingly slow and inefficient project. To think that the Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted in four years, and this sort of time scale and level of ambition is something I am used to; yet this trivial design (one can barely call it an artwork) has now taken nearly three years, starting from the time David and I were first asked as contributing artists. Six months after the design was 'finalised' and eight weeks after the 'public consultation', I am now being asked to make more changes by unknown entities.

Those familiar with my visual art will note that this design is not anything like it and contains almost nothing of me or my art, but I have done what was requested so far and await the final request for the bee/wasp/whatever insect they want.

As you may discern, I'm still irked by this situation, but I will complete the work efficiently; no Rothko with those Seagram Murals I. I am eager to move on a little wiser.

Bee aside, the other preparations involved testing the grids and re-counting and packing the masks. All passed, so the grid-marker templates were cut in two, then stacked and packed onto lengths of wood. Each of these 48 paper strips is 80cm by 3.5cm, so are quite difficult to store neatly.

At 6pm Gunstorm was released, which meant clicking a few buttons and posting a few initial messages about the game in various internet locations.

More Mural Plans, Gunstorm Release Preparations

Another full day of mural preparation. Yesterday I cut 121 vinyl squares. Today I cut 32 equilateral triangles, 75 or-so hexagons and about 30 circles (inner and outer). All hand marked and cut, so this took some hours of tedious work.

I had a request to change the bee because it 'looks more like a wasp', which frankly annoyed me. Apart from the ignorance of the comment, that honey bees are frequently confused with wasps and that my bee certainly looked like a bee and not a wasp, I also rather like wasps and it seems like a snobbish sort of racism to like bees and reject wasps. Both are equally important insects, and wasps, now under threat as a species, are maligned much more unfairly. Ultimately, what's wrong with wasps! And what's wrong if my bee looks like a wasp? If I'm the artist I can make it look like whatever I want. Perhaps I should make it a wasp as a statement of the fragility of nature under anti-environmental bureaucracies.

Sigh!

But no. I remind myself that I am not, entirely, the artist here.

I can reserve the right to complain about this working method of 'art-by-committee', which I abhor in the philosophy of art, but art-by-committee, to some extent, always is and always has been part of life when working with public art, so I will make adjustments (and argue the philosophical reasons why I don't think I should here). All of this artwork is an adjustment, after all.

I can paint something about the plight of wasps for myself.

The vinyl masks are now complete. The last step was marking cross marks for the grid lines. I need to draw that bee and to test the grid markings, then I'll test how the masks stick to the wall itself. I have the tools ready, but the paint is up to David. The job itself must wait for warmer, drier, times.

I'll spend most of tomorrow on more plans for this and finalising the grid markers, then I'll prepare for the Gunstorm release - yes! It's less than 24-hours until that game is unleashed on Steam.

Red Cow Night 3, Mural Preparation

A busy night last night at the Red Cow Open Mic. I elected to play two tracks from Cycles, as this is technically my latest release (although We Robot is the latest original release of course, and I've even had A Walk In The Countryside in-between).

Cycles III went well enough, but I was unhappy with Cycles V, mainly because I hadn't decided to play it at all until only a couple of hours before the performance. I had little time to rehearse, but was confident I could breeze though it from memory. I did not; although the result was a passable imitation! I berated myself for this. The insecurity of what to perform was the problem. I should have either firmly decided, or if not, decided to try something improvisational from the outset, or just not played anything. I used to relish jumping straight in to improvising at the Mash events, but now I prefer a rehearsed and polished performance.

At the end of the night, Nigel requested a future replay of Robot, as enjoyed by many on the opening night, so I'll perform that next time with another We Robot track. I don't particularly like the idea of playing the same thing twice (how easily I am bored! - though my main reason for preferring new things is that it increases the learning potential, the experience gamut) and I had aimed to play something new, yet I realised that this was my first ever 'request', and what a delight and honour such a thing was!

For the first time I noted the full list of acts and songs, and there were a few first-time comers to this night, if old hands at performing including J.D. (John Darlington) and Jonathan Tarplee.

Today, a full day working on the Ly2 mural design. There are 12 'boards' to make, each 80cm square. These begin a simple noughts-and-crosses boards, but start to become more complex, with equilateral triangles, hexagons, and circles.

Applying these to a 12M section of wall is not a trivial task. Each grid line needs to be geometrically accurate. Simple enough for a grid of squares (though even then, this requires exact measurement) but more complex for triangles and hexes. The wall isn't level either, like real-world walls never are.

My plan is to initially divide the wall using verticals, then draw up the 12 80x80cm squares. Once at that stage, I'll use horizontal and vertical strips of paper with the exact grid measurement pre-drawn on, then join those lines up. This way I can quickly draw a complex grid on the wall without the need to measure it there and then.

So, today, I drew out those strips; four per grid (top, bottom, left, right), so 48 paper strips with exact measurements for the intersection points of each vertex:

As you might see, the hexagon grid has 5mm gaps between hexes, which is easy to work out for the flat sides, but the horizontal spacing needed to be calculated to match.

These grid marks are now complete. The next step is to cut lots of squares, triangles, hexes and other shapes from sticky-backed plastic to use as a mask. A lot of squares are needed: 112 squares alone, plus 32 triangles and over 70 hexagons. The circles need external masks too, and I'll probably need more for things like edges, and the final 'bee' design.

Lidl were selling some plastic film with an image of bricks on as sort of cheap wallpaper. I bought some for this project and it seems to be ideal. Normally this plastic is expensive stuff, but this is cheap, thin, and not very sticky. It's better as a paint masking film than for its intended purpose!

This preparation work should pay off on the day (or two...) of painting, though it will need to be applied with care and military precision.

I'll do more mask-making tomorrow and hope that one roll will be enough.

Secret Scores Complete, Lot Pred II

Lots of small jobs done yesterday. I completed the last of the Secret Electric Sorcery scores, though the last tune, The Ones We Love was more complex than I expected. It uses the same melody twice, a gentle introspective melody which overlaps like a canon. This, being 'naturally' played was difficult to transcribe, but the result is passable. The words too needed transcribing as these were droned with odd timing.

Then I worked on a lottery predictor program, LotPred II. I'd written LotPred years ago in the early day of the UK National Lottery, a Visual Basic program, but that was fixed to 1 to 49 numbers. Now the draw uses 1 to 59, and there are many other types of game. The principle of operation is simple, that over an infinite term all random numbers are destined to be drawn equally, so that when analysing past results, the numbers that are least frequent are more likely to appear from now on. Part of this implies that randomness has an indirect memory.

Anyway, I programmed LotPred II. It can process two 'ranks' of numbers so can be used for games like the EuroMillions Draw where there are two ball sets, and any ball rank can span any range and contain any quantity of balls. It checks a database of past results and produces and frequency tables which are used to produce a 'prediction' which is still random, but skewed towards the least popular numbers.

Doing this made me think of John Whiteside Parsons, the 'mad' rocket scientist, who, being on a downward career slope, decided to invest his time in magic and strange rituals in a quest for success, riches, glory, love. Are all lottery players similarly tantalised? I wrote some words for a song, I'm Turning Into John Whiteside Parsons, inspired by this.

Today, a slow day. I feel tired, at the end of my scoring project, and tonight's live Open Mic event is distracting me. I've elected to play Cycles III, as this single will be out on the 1st of March, but don't know what else to perform. I had the original idea of a piece from Tree Of Keys, either Murmuration or The Dark Cliffs, but didn't really like either when I played something like them, then had the idea of another Cycles track... but again felt unsatisfied.

I've just carried 28Kg sheets of plywood into the garage for a shed-repair job that my mother has decided on, planned, and ordered the materials, and only now asks me to do the job! If I were planning this job, I'd do things differently - at very least have had the wood cut to size, as this is offered as a free service in some places. My hands hurt now, but I don't think it will damage my performance too much.

I've also made up a Snow Business CD for Bernard from LATH, and listed the next Fall in Green gig for March 16th. There are more jobs to do but I feel tired, and it's only 4 hours to go until the piano performance.

Stranger Sings, Hat Organisation

A busy day yesterday with Deb, ending with a theatre trip present to see Stranger Sings.

It was very 'American-Jazz-Hands'; a genre of musical characterised by strong East-Coast American accents, 'screamy' vocals, a sweet high-school sort of innocence, and ironic humour. It was a parody, but I thought that perhaps they called it this because it wasn't good enough to be a serious work. The jokes, if one could call them jokes, were oddly placed. It seemed to be pitched at older children and young teenagers, with the occasional F-word and sex reference for entirely comic effect, which perhaps made it an odd choice for a children's show. Everything was too superficial for adults. Parts were self-referencing and self-parody, which usually, as here, is a sign of desperation at the lack of meaningful content. Musically, the tunes had chords and melodies were subtle pastiches of 1980s pop-music, all done brilliantly. The connections were subtle, there were no deliberate links apart from a NeverEnding Story joke.

Ultimately, it wasn't my sort of script and can't recall a song I particularly liked either. The performers, however, were exceptionally good. The acting, singing, and dancing were the best I, in my limited way, have yet seen, and it was these performances which lifted the show. The cheers and audience reactions and participations were due to the prompting and élan of the actors, and never the limited material. The staging, sets, lighting, choreography (not merely in the dance parts, there were amazing sequences of prop movements and shifts of scene) and other qualities were first class.

The music performance was a mix of pre-recorded parts and live play, all by one musician on a synthesizer, on-stage at all time. It may have even been a MODX - it was certainly of the current generation of super-instruments. My eyes were transfixed on him for much of the show, partly as this represents the way I'll probably perform in future.

The day was long, ending two full days of celebration/break. Today was filled with jobs and I'm faced with a back-log.

I started the day by tidying up my props; hats, and shoes. I needed to reshape and re-dome my tricorn (a problem I'm sure all surrealists will be familiar with). A little steam and a stretch and it's fine. Then, created an arched wall hanger for it and my cavalier hat, and made a new hat box for my bowler hat and crown. Now the small hat cupboard is neat for the first time.

In the afternoon, more work on the Secret Electric Sorcery scores.

Chester, Lino Supplies

A day in Chester. Among other things I burned the archive copy of the Cycles III single, then thought that it might be an idea to create custom printed CD surfaces using lino printing, so I've ordered some lino printing supplies. I have some supplies already, but I think only one tiny test sheet of lino, and my cutters are more for wood carving, so not exactly gouges. I've assembled just about every type of art supply, yet never quite seem to have enough...

Secret Electric Scoring Continues

A busy scoring day. These days are tedious, the work hard and unrewarding apart from the knowledge that I've noted down this music for the future. Doing this for Secret Electric Sorcery is unusual as the music isn't remastered or at what I'd consider its best; I'm tending to score the best albums or those which have been remastered first. I'm doing Sorcery due to the possibility of live performances, for which I'd need the score. Without a score I'd spend a lot longer working out how to play them. I used to be able to simply memorise and play by ear (I still mostly play by ear), but decades, and many thousands of tunes, later my brain can't remember all of the music. I guess that 10% of Elton John's brain is filled with the words and music of his old hits; no room for new ones, and the old hits are what people want. Factors like this may explain why bands often play their old material adinfinitum.

I'm aware, when listening to these, how much better my voice is now compared to when I recorded them, which must be a good sign, even if I cringe when listening to these recordings. However, I'm pleased with the quality of the songs. Out Of Date seems to be particularly amazing today, but all are. I must ensure that the next album is as good.

I've managed to score Passive Aggressive, Boring Ceefax Lift Music, Confidence In Kindness, The Misery's Hard To Take, and Out Of Date today. The time taken often depends on the detail and how much is scored. Boring Ceefax Lift Music has a bluesy piano solo of pain and sadness, and I deicded to score this too (even if it's nigh-on unplayable as it is, but it's a good guide even if merely looked at). There are other solos I've scored, like the simple acoustic guitar lead in 'Misery' and Passive Aggressive, though I've not scored the solos in Out Of Date. I have however included the piano, strings, horn, and bass there, so it's a full ensemble. This will do for now, I think. I can add the rest later if needed.

Three tracks are left for this album, then, ahem, 23 more albums. I'll curse every day I spend on this tedious task; uncreative, unproductive, unpaid; but its value is in the long term. I remind myself of this during the nights of exhaustion.

In other news, the first order of Salomé books has arrived. They look brilliant. This may be a format this sheet music is destined for (in 5 years or more, when it's finished).

I need a plan, and some rehearsals, for Tuesday's open mic. We also have a first, small, gig of the year booked for March which I must list and promote, and set up the music for that, and practice that...

A few days with about 36 hours each would be ideal. Onward.

Secret Sorcery Scoring

Two very busy days with too little to show for them. It seems that one must work twice as hard to produce any results. I must remember that, rather than showy results, slow and steady drips in the right direction are the important things. I started scoring the songs on Secret Electric Sorcery yesterday, which, apart from anything else, should be useful for live performances. I'm wondering if I can create an arpeggio on the MODX which alternates the siren (which is always in octaves) and the bass, which is usually in 5ths, but not always, so it would need to be a two-key arpeggio where only the lower note is noticed by the siren. I think it's possible.

Three tracks were done, then spent the afternoon shopping, a 2-mile walk each way at pace, and two more hours (though more relaxed and enjoyable) in the evening, so today I have the all-over ache of a day of exercise.

Today, lots of little jobs. The authenticator app Authy has been discontinued on Windows, so I spent an hour or so migrating to a new one and cursing Authy. Then some emails and replies, which have been waiting for a while, then a Windows update. This took two hours, all to merely stand still.

Then work on the Be My Jesus score. On the face of it, it's a trivial job as the song is all in A-minor and E-minor and in simple layers that grow, then a chorus in F-Major, G-Major. The words (and emotion of them) are key to the song, but they don't scan evenly, so it's annoyingly awkward to score the melody exactly. Each verse, simple musically, is therefore different in this respect, so I've elected to score two versions: one with a merged verse and chorus where smaller notes indicate, to some but not an explicit extent, where the notes should be when they overlap, thus:

It's not obvious which note 'sweat' or 'bed' are, though perhaps it's a clue that the smaller note makes up 'room'. It doesn't really matter either, as the song is bluesy and improvisational in nature. To clarify, I made a second score where the music is explicitly scored for each verse. I've not added the electric guitar stabs, but have (as you may discern) notated the exact strums on the acoustic guitar, which are the most basic A and E shapes anyway, though the F-chord isn't, so there is a tiny benefit for doing it this was.

This all took hours. My next song, Passive Aggressive, is 3/4 swung, and didn't want to export correctly in Prometheus, so I've had to re-program it a bit to permit 'quavers as 1/3 of a beat'.

The new Windows update has shifted the 'Copilot' AI nonsense to the right, and got rid of my 'Show Desktop' button in the far right, which has been a useful feature of Windows for years. Copilot, in that annoying Microsoft way suggests I ask it a question and all I can think to ask is how to uninstall Copilot (and, for that matter Edge) and restore my 'Show Desktop' button. I know it won't answer. So much for intelligence.

I'll probaby spend the rest of today programming Prometheus, before a delightful celebratory meal with Deborah for St. Valnetine's Day.

Every Joy's Price

Every Joy’s Price

Every joy’s price is measured in pain
Every smile's bought with a frown
The deeper the down, the higher the height
The more terrible the darkness
The more brilliant the light

Train Dream, Dolly, Synth Letters

A sleepless night. I dreamt of a runaway steam train, huge and old fashioned like an American Old West train. The train moved through rooms, workshops in which I was present. I knew that the train was destined to slip off the rails and crash tremendously, but for some reason I decided to jump on board, with some sort of doom-wish, or perhaps trying to engineer its repair.

In the day, a few small jobs. First, programming a new 'dolly' routine for my game engine. The current routine (as Future Pool/Future Snooker players will realise) interpolates between camera matrices, causing unusual (and rather cool) spatial distortions. The new routine interpolates between x,y,z,anglex,angley,anglez as expected. I haven't included it in Pool/Snooker, but this may be useful in future.

Then, backing up those games, followed by some design work on my synthesizer. I've stuck my name on the back in white vinyl letters, to catch the eyes of the audience at gigs, and the result looks rather brilliant. The typeface is remarkably like YAMAHA's, and a similar size. I also trimmed down the music stand.

Then, listing the new Salomé book on my website and on the Pentangel Books site. I need to publicise this more, and order copies for ourselves and the legal deposit.

It was a short day as in the afternoon Deb and I went to visit a friend.

This evening, some press work promoting the Steam Remote Play Together Sale and game updates.

My plan for the week is to notate a music album, but I don't feel motivated. I want to create art... yet I know the value of the notation. Time will be short and social during this week of Deb's holiday.

Futures Complete, Tigers, Bronowski, Morecambe

A second, long but efficient day of Future Pool and Future Snooker updates. The process is a bit like plumbing; removing a section, then adding the new one in, and checking it all works.

The day started by adding the new Gunstorm-style font. I think this is the one used in Taskforce too. It makes for a consistent look. I'd probably shake things up and do it differently now, but it's too late for major changes as this will involve new videos, new marketing material. Even these changes meant a pile of new screenshots.

I also changed the way the camera zoom works. I've created a class called 'dolly' which has two camera placement and a tween value, so that movements can be automated. Until now, one placement was isometric view, one overhead and the system simply switched between the two. This has limitations though, as only two positions can be used. Today I changed it so that it's always in the destination position, and when moving sets the current to source, then the new target to the destination. This allows any future camera placement to be added, with a nice smooth motion between the current and target position. This allowed me to add a control to centre the camera on the player.

The changes and basic tests were complete by 3pm, then the many jobs shifted to a different sort: Compiling the full build, then the Steam exe and preparing that for upload. Compiling the final game folder for users, and using a script to upload it all to Steam. Then creating a secret branch for a test build, and setting up the Steam Cloud settings which is a new feature for this version. Then testing the build in Steam. It seemed to work.

Next steps, taking 10 to 15 screenshots for each game. The look had changed, so this needed doing, and updating the manual too, as some controls had changed and the manual needed to remain correct. After that, exporting the manual as a pdf, and adding it, with the screenshots to the Steam Store; but not making this live yet.

I tested it again and found one anomaly, the music wasn't playing. For some reason I had the Future Snooker music in the Future Pool folder, so I fixed this and re-uploaded it all. Another test.

Then typing up the many documents about the release. The games, like all of my games, have a Readme.txt file which needs updating with the changes. I also typed up a small note about the changes for existing users, and the Steam client, then prepared a larger post for the Cornutopia Software page on Steam, and two more: a more extensive note for the each game's forum, and an email for those on my e-mailing list. Then smaller announcements for Twitter and Facebook.

Then, backing up the main program for filing. Creating images for my website and the Cornutopia Software website, and updating the game version and date there, and updating the version and date in my main software catalogue.

Admin, yes, much of my life is admin! It's hard to automate much of this because it's so varied across systems and disciplines.

Now, gaming aside I have other news. A CD, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) by Brian Eno arrived. Not remotely new, but I haven't heard it before, and I've resisted doing so online - I want a first listen to be on CD through headphones, which is my method for premiering all new music.

Second, a copy of The Face of Violence by Jacob Bronowski has arrived and even a quick read is already as brilliant, as I once knew. I know of it, bizarrely, because I recently found an email from years ago that I wrote which quoted it. So, I'm inspiring myself by way of some sort of 'time loop'. Ouroboros.

Third, Deb, and delightfully including myself, have been gifted tickets for Morecambe Poetry Festival this September. This is a 3-day affair, so we have booked a place to stay. If the gods smile, we may perform there.

Fourth, our new book, Lou Salomé: Empathy With Daisies, is now live. It's the first book of my sheet music, and our first joint Fall in Green book. I must promote this some time, somehow.

It's 8pm and the day is just ending, yet with still more admin to do. Perhaps I can wrest a few minutes of peace this evening, this weekend. I'm physically tired, stressed, a sort of anxious edge that only computer programming can cause.

I will now pause. I may listen to Eno, hoping that he's still rocky and not too ambient. I may read Bronowski. I will, however, stride onwards though time.

Future Pool and Snooker Updates

A long day updating the engines for Future Pool and Future Snooker. It's time consuming and exacting work, removing old code and replacing the exact parts with the newer version, and about 40% of the program needs replacing in this way. The general effect for this should be zero, apart from fixing lots of tiny bugs found over the past 5 years. It will make it easier to add things or update in future. These changes make everything in line with my latest standards. Any updates or changes must start with this, so it's something of a file-keeping exercise, but an important one.

It was exactly 5 years ago today that I started work on both games to prepare them for a Steam release; and that release happened half-a-year later, on October 16th in Future Pool's case. The original version 1.00 of Future Pool took 16 days to create; graphics, sound, and all. How times have changed! Since then I've put months of work into both games, mostly engine updates like this rather than major fixes or improvements.

There is only one visible change so far, cropping the display horizontally for wide screens, as is my new standard for setting the screen. This makes the game look much better, bigger, on 16:9 screens.

This game, like all of my games, was developed for a 5:4 screen (and the 5:4 world of the early 21st century). When remastered for Steam I simply widened the display, adding what could be thought of as 'black bars' to the left and right. Of course, there is data there, not actual black bars, but the perspective was adjusted to zoom out by the correct amount. Now it zooms in instead, fixing the width rather than height.

New options like aspect fixing, 'robust' initialisation, a full European/Latin character set, and countless other engine improvements are in there, though they don't affect the gameplay.

I'll at least add a new high-res font, but I'm unsure whether to make any gameplay improvements. I can't really spare the time to do that, but it could do with one or two, such as control options.

Twitches, Photo Filing, Cycles & Shadows

A horrendous night of constant bowel and stomach twitches. When I did sleep I tended to wake a short time later with sweats and shivers. All a regular part of my Beethovian condition, but this is the worst it's been in some time.

I woke late, at 10am, as a result, awoken by the ring of the postman who delivered our 2023 event photos. I was barely awake at the time, and have spent the day in a semi-conscious stupor of weakness, coldness, shakiness with electrical energy. Perhaps these are what Dali used to call his 'anginas'.

Almost all of the day was spent filing these photos, our annual 'memories' of key events of the past year. This is part of my philosophy of accurately storing and recording, and each photo is carefully labelled and dated. Few people even bother to print photographs now, even though this act is cheaper than ever. For me, the physicality of these is an important part of countering the ephemeral nature of digital media. Few people record details of each photo; who is in the image, what the event was, or the place, or day, or time. Deb and I have photograph albums each dating back to 2016, when we met, and this annual job, hard work though it is, is an important one.

The filing process meant a lot of checking of past dates and events (proof itself of the importance of this, an unrecorded event is the same an event not occurring). Even though I file and record everything, it's amazing how much can still be missing).

By 4pm this was finished and I released Cycles & Shadows on Bandcamp. I then opened all of the existing CD copies I have, 35-or-so, and destroyed those 2017-edition CDs. I'll reuse the packaging for these 35 as I sell them. The first few will be hand-burned on plan white CDs, making them even more exclusive. I'm wondering how I can print on them, make some sort of on-disc artwork that I can relatively easily use. Even the 'commercially' burned CDs I order are only so-so in print quality (the new discs, like We Robot, are notably better than these 2017 ones, I think I used a different company in 2017).

My next job is game engine updates, though tomorrow is only a two-thirds day of work use to a Chinese New Year celebration with Deb. For album music notation, I'm thinking that it would be a good idea to notate Secret Electric Sorcery next, then I can perform some of these songs live. I could, of course, perform without the music notation, but this does help, especially with songs with complex chords like Out of Date. These open mic events are a great incentive for me to notate these albums.

Foot Pedal Holder, Artwork Unpacking

Started to day painting a newly fixed up foot-pedal holder for my synth. The Yamaha FC5A sustain pedal works well enough, but it's a light-weight bouncy thing, and on most floors it will hop around like a proverbial frog during a performance.

For performances, I've made a big holder for it from wood which wedges up against the keyboard stand feet so that the pedal is fixed. This works brilliantly but it's big, as wide as the keyboard stands, is quite heavy to carry, and complex to transport. I essentially fit it in the bottom of the keyboard bag below the synth, but this makes the keyboard only just squeeze in, which is not ideal.

So, I've made a smaller version too which doesn't fix to anything. It has a footprint of double the size of the FC5A and this seems to hold still much better during a performance than the pedal alone, and it's small enough to fit in the small pocket in the keyboard bag. The first test was at Tuesday's open mic. It worked well enough, but needed a bit more height for the 'blocks' that surround and hold the pedal. I've added those, and painted it black today, so it's all ready.

After that, the long job of unpacking, checking and re-wrapping the 10 to 20 paintings collected from the Macc Art Lounge yesterday. They were in great condition, as wrapped by the artist Kate Fawcett. I hate the combination of bubble-wrap and sticky tape, it wrecks the wrapping (masking tape or other paper tape is the worst for this), but Kate used small pieces of thin plastic packing tape which, if one is careful, can be removed cleanly and it all was. I prefer to use cling wrap as it's not sticky at all, but that creates its own waste too, of course.

The afternoon was spent with a trip to buy a cash box for my annual backup drive. I have two, and swap them annual with a distant backup. I was charged £3 for something clearly marked £2.50, the second time that's happened in a month. I pointed it out and the difference was returned in a flash, so bravo to the Dunelm Mill assistant.

After that, preparing art for possible inclusion in the Macc Art Lounge throughout the year, although those will probably only be on their website, or part of back-room stock to be taken out on special occasions. I'll be including some older works, many of which have new frames now and have been refurbished to look better than ever. All are in the £250 to £600 price range, so quite sellable.

The day has now flown, with no creative work or work on my main monthly targets, that is to update a game or two, notate an album, plan the Crewe mural execution in greater detail, and produce more album tracks. Things will move on, though next week is a rare holiday for Deb, so I will get less work done.

Still, there are many positive signs for 2024.

Onwards we stocily march. Onwards we sing as we charge into the future!

LATH Presentation, Open Mic 2, Macc Collection

Two busy days among a good start to the month.

First yesterday, the 'presentation' event for the Snow Business total raised; £347.21. The money was transferred to the charity on Monday so this was a symbolic event, but it was lovely to finally meet the charity staff and clients, and to see the space. I was handed a laminated award to the group!:

The brilliant local photographer Peter Robinson came to photograph the event. I rather liked this photo, with my concealing the surprise mock-cheque! Bernard the chairman here is apparently well over 90. It was nice to see Mike Drew too, who travelled to meet us for the event.

I left the original cover artwork with them. They hope to frame and display it, so I made up a description document with an image.

After that, preparations for the Red Cow Open Mic. After the opening by Victoria Kettle, I performed Rock and Roll is King and Pictures on my Telephone, then Deb and I performed Mr Tambourine Man, Skin, and A Muscle Illiterate. John Lindley came too, and I enjoyed his great reading of Survival Techniques (A.K.A. "never go in without your skin"). He kindly mentioned my creation of the cover to that book, and shrewdly brought a book or two to sell. I signed one and had a nice chat with its new owner, a man who is clearly something of a polymath.

These events are already following a pattern, with several regulars: Victoria Kettle and Nigel Stonier, Rowan Kettle and Egan Stonier, Thea Wade, and Nastee Chapel, and one could even say myself and Deborah. A four-piece folk band from Northwich appeared and performed three songs. They were a little like The Poachers, with a better sound but, in truth, the songs were not as well written as John's. Newcomer June Holland performed an wonderful bluesy song in an amazing voice, followed by another female singer-songwriter with a more country edge.

I got in at nearly midnight and listened to a few older songs for inspiration of what to perform next. The songs on Secret Electric Sorcery suddenly sounded better than before, though I nit-picked at various aspects of the balancing. For me, the hard part is the balance between a full recorded-version sound, a band sound, or a more intimate 'solo' sound. Singing and playing piano is a lot harder than singing and playing guitar. Perhaps I could explore some of the MODX features for pre-programmed backgrounds; arpeggios for the basslines, or for the siren sound in Hitler in High-Heels for example.

This second open-mic had two innovations for me compared to the first. I've made my clampable music stand (I didn't use it, on this occasion), and a holder for the sustain pedal, which generally worked well. I also decided to focus on the outfit more, it's clear that this open mic is a finished performance product arrangement, not an experimental 'rough around the edges' gathering. These acts are polished final sets, and usually performed from memory. The sound set-up worked better than before for the busy sound man, but the change between acts was still long, perhaps 30 mins of the 2 hours or so were technical changes, tuning-up etc.

I slept badly, somewhat achey and weak, and arose at 9am, still needing more sleep. Deb arrived at 10:20 and we went to Macclesfield and The Macc Art Lounge to collect my paintings, which had kindly been pre-wrapped for me. This speeded up the collection process but means that I'll have to re-wrap them in the coming days.

I have a busy few days, tidying things away and preparing other things. There are a few interesting opportunities on the horizon.

Cat Parasites Production, I'm In Love With My Car

I'm struggling with motivation and focus at the moment, eternally worried about the future and my precarious life, but when I'm working on music I'm producing some great stuff, better than ever. This spurs me on.

Today I've recorded, at last, the 'Thinking About The Cats I Used To Know' tune. This was take 6. The first two takes (from weeks/months ago) used different chords, something I didn't notice until I listened back to those today. That one shifts from E-minor and D-minor, with the 'chorus' in F-Major. The new version uses A-minor and E-minor, which is more standard and not quite as dreamy. Perhaps I can revisit the old version in a new work. The final step here was a live recording from a Locus Sonus microphone, this time from Central Europe, and mostly nature sounds with distant cars; perfect.

After that I recorded the final vocal for Excessive Consumption (T-T-T-Time will tell!) and started work on the Cat Parasites song. I've opted for a lush string arrangement for the chorus, which works wonderfully, as epic as Comfortably Numb. I use odd chords here, I was tired of the boring standard ones, so it goes from C-Maj to D-min to Bb-Maj then G#-Maj and G-Maj. I've rewritten lots of new words too. The music was inspired by the atonal Brian Eno song Driving Me Backwards - which is nobody's favourite song. It mentions madness in the words and is a cliché on that theme musically and over its five minutes it never changes pattern. As in poetry, a song needs a singular moment of joy, the focus.

There is more music to write on Parasites. It's taken more than an hour for the very basic strings and drum patterns of this chorus alone. The first verse will probably be solo piano but the words after that have a different structure, so this will probably me a bit 'progressive' in structure - which I'm relishing.

I also sketched out the music for a song called I'm In Love With My Car, which was a written in homage to the Roger Taylor song; mainly because I thought I could write a better song with that idea (although Mr. T was young then, weren't we all!). Here are the words:

I'm In Love With My Car

I'm in love
with my car
It's totally platonic
but it gets me far

I like the way it takes me
from A to B
what is love DM
but reliability?

and when she fails
her MOT
and when she costs me
money I don't have
I'll throw her on the scrap heap
and find a better model

My snap production work has the energy of Lust for Life but clocks in at under a minute.

I've listened this evening to an album by Mike Drew, Museum of Broken Dreams. A lots of nice songs on there, all clever and deep lyrically. Inspiring.

Stone Wasp, Rock and Roll, Games

A slower day yesterday, perhaps understandable after the busy day before. I recorded a simple song, Thinking About The Cats I Used To Know. Like American Lawyer this is an idea that's years old. I played it once, a live sort of 'jam' or expression and liked it so much that I wanted to use it in a new album, but there were a few errors and each subsequent play created more. Over months and many plays of this simple tune I've been driven mad by it. Yesterday I played it two or three times again.

I heard the nice news that I've sold my Stone Wasp painting via the Macc Art Lounge. I barely feel like a painter now, but that's due to a change in seasonal priorities. I'll get back to painting at some point, it's something I love, and whenever I paint I feel it is my purpose, but I have little incentive. I have no outlets to display my work, and I have no groups or any social contact with artists; yet, this has often been the case. Art transcends the social and emotional, that is a key aspect of it. Perhaps my early years of being in an art group did add an incentive I now lack.

I've played along a few times to the Rock and Roll backing track. This is incredibly difficult. The relentless tempo of the backing track must be rigorously stuck to, so this is excellent training. I must keep at it until I can master it.

My recent programming has unexpectedly revived an interest in games, and I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to create a new game this year, primarily to generate some income. Unlike in the days when Gunstorm II was first signed off as my last game, there is now an interest in my games and a market out there. To this end I've spent a few hours today looking at my Flatspace 3 plans, though the challenges are significant. A first step is at least updating existing games with my latest engine.

I've spent today updating Prometheus, buy only basic parameter settings, changes to the default dial graduations and default values. Nothing that affects any aspect of creation but that.

What next for me and my rock? What's that it says; that there's something special at the summit? Indeed yes, such are its thoughts. Such is its eternal soul.

American Lawyer Production

A full day of production work on American Lawyer and Excessive Consumption, with vocals and guitar parts for both. American Lawyer is finished I think. It's a very strange song, I'm not sure if I love it or hate it, but consider that sentiment a good thing. I can't like every track equally, and should not aim to do so. Ultimate creativity necessitates a wide gamut, and growth can only occur by charging into new and unexpected areas. Sometimes disliked or odd artworks can be bridges to new and beautiful things that nobody has thought of or explored before.

The verses are fixed in E-minor with staccato organ chords, very flat and electric. The bass line shudders as though it were written for a troupe of zombie dancers. The chorus grows in alarming semitone climbs, remaining minor, and the words are barely melodic, more like a chant. An angst-ridden guitar solo breaks scales all over the place. The song is blues for electronics.

The sequence was started in 2020, and was pretty much written then, so it's taken 4 years to finish, almost all completed in the last 48 hours.

The overall effect reminds me of two of my older tunes: the skeleton dance from Burn of God, which I always liked due to the emotion in the vocals and guitar; and the theme to my old game Antz, due to the heavy vibrato. I didn't really like that tune, but that too was a deliberate push to something different in my game music of that period. For Antz I wrote a tuneful alternative but rejected it for not being exciting or different enough.

Here are the words to American Lawyer:

American lawyer
With your fancy suitcase
American lawyer
With your fancy words
American lawyer
With your super-slick hair
American lawyer
With your super-slick mind

Are you gonna save my skin?
I hear that the richest guy wins?
Are you gonna nail my case?
I hear that you're the best
human in the human race

Dance with me
American lawyer

Are you gonna make my day?
Make the jury weep and say
"Praise the lord!" and "Praise the law!"
Will you make crime pay?

American lawyer

Cycles III Single, American Lawyer Production

A slow and tired day yesterday. I wok later at 9:30 after a long sleep and spent the day feeling unproductive. I completed my monthly back-ups a day early, and worked on a new arrangement of the blues song 'Pictures on my Telephone' but all in minor keys to transform it. I rather like the idea of recording it twice, once minor, once major. I keep hearing Paul McCartney's shouty vocals to songs like 'Why Don't We Do It in the Road?', and can see now that the performance was influenced by Heartbreak Hotel.

Today I decided to release Cycles III as a single. I'd almost forgotten that I'd made a music video for it, such is my memory and turnover of new material. I quickly made a new cover:

Then did the basic admin and queued up the single for release on March 1st, so Cycles III: Perpetual Motion will by my 73rd music release. I have more admin to do, as with every release, but this is minimal, the music being an exact track from the album.

Then, I did more work on the photographs to print from 2023, and got started on music again. I must finalise this new album, which will be a collection of various songs in the surrealistic style, rather than directly themed. The music is certainly surrealistic in the way that Dali's paintings were. Sparks' music is the same, and much of Brian Eno's, although that ventured into Dada too, with his random cards.

I've been a little creatively lost due to work on too many things at once, so I'll focus on one track at a time. First, a really old one called American Lawyer.