July Backups

A long and tiresome day. Quarterly backup day, this took a few hours. I had a short time, the all to brief time alone to sing. How perfect In Dreams is as a warm-up, then Runaway. I then recorded a new take of 'Smashing My House of Cards'. I may need some new 'aah' vocals for 'Breakfast Of Delight'.

The gas man arrived at 14:30 or so, and the noise and disruption hampered any progress elsewhere. I need to finalise this album, but it's very nearly done. Then, I feel I must paint something, so must find motivation to do this. Today's life has been somewhat lustless; lack lustre.

In June I started daily exercise and now do 52 sit-ups every other day, and am moving to the same number of other exercises. As one gets older, muscle mass tends to fade away, and stiffness beckons. It's important to stem this tide now.

Onwards we roll our heavy rock. Heave at it we must. Creak forwards on the dry desert floor it must. The gods will thank us for our efforts.

Violet Transcription Complete

Completed the sheet music transcription for Another Violet Night today, so another step of the admin work on a new album complete. Each of the 13 songs has a 'full', or close to full version with many parts, plus simpler versions. The Piano Version has a backing piano, plus lead vocal stave, and a Piano Melody version has the melody on piano (typically at an octave higher than sung) with other elements. From these complex scores it's easy to maker simpler ones. All have the chords marked for possible live playing.

I fondly remember my childhood playing of Beatles songs on my little Yamaha PSS-790 keyboard, the simple sheet music from my How To Play books. I had memories of this as I worked on my scores today.

Also today, two more albums moved to the new distributor, about half have been moved so far. A good day overall. Temperatures across Britain and Europe are high, but we're spared here with a mere 25 degrees or so.

Backup day tomorrow, and perhaps new and better vocals for two tracks.

Another Violet Night Transcription

A full day of work, 9am to 9pm, transcribing the scores for the songs from Another Violet Night. Most of the scores, when free on my itch channel, have had zero downloads, and the work is physically and mentally hard, punishingly meticulous, yet for me, one of the jobs or life is accurate storage and preservation of information. Weeks, months, perhaps a full time year or more of my life has been (or will be) spent meticulously transcribing my music, for no reward or thanks from any soul, yet this is part of the job of music publishing. I can't call myself a self-publisher (song writer, recording artist, piano player, guitar player, singer, music producer, engineer, audio software developer, graphic designer) without this.

People neglect this job today. More music than ever is being made, but how much of it is transcribed or published as sheet music?

This takes me a few days per album, as does the artwork, yet this is part of the job of art. Perhaps my labour is as unrewarded as the work on the engraving plates made by William Blake in his day, perhaps as the work by a now forgotten print maker; but for the work to be remembered at all, it must exist.

A month is nearly at an end, and the album nearly complete. I must push that much harder to paint in July, August, September.

More transcription work tomorrow.

Beatles Dream, Prometheus v3.74, Pianos

Last night I dreamed of meeting The Beatles. I went back in time, and the c. 1970s group, were playing themselves in a documentary film about their entire future lives. Someone played the start of 'Imagine' on a piano and John Lennon like it, saying he could almost imagine how the song continues. I brashly, perhaps even braggingly, said that that happens to me too. I suddenly felt slightly ashamed at the boast, not least because I made John lost his train of thought with Imagine. I feared that I'd porlocked him, changing the future and stopping the song from ever being written. Oops.

In a second dream, I dreamt that Andy Stubbs was offered a record contract to record a single by a Dutch record company owner, after playing live. One song was one of his, the B-Side due to be a cover, I thought 'Runaway' at first, but it was actually a Sam Cooke soul song (I can't quite remember which). I tried to warn Andy about retaining ownership of any songs that he wrote, but he wasn't interested in publishing or owning the right to his songs at all; his focus was on the record deal and getting it sounding right.

Dreams led to a long long day of programming, trying to crawl forwards a tiny step while working on 'Another Dead Morning'. The piano wasn't quite right, so I wanted to adjust the MIDI velocities. One easy way is to set these at random between two values. I really needed two actual floating point value settings for this. Argus has this exact option and uses three generic values (FX, FY, FZ) for use in many editing features, so I thought I'd add it to Prometheus today.

Another upside is that these utility numbers can be used elsewhere, such as when scaling all events to a specific timing, such as when moving from say, 120 BPM to 109. Until today, fractional scaling (like 120 to 108.5) was not possible.

So, this was added, plus a host of other minor features connected with MIDI velocities. At 16:00, work on the new piano for the song began. The old, sequenced, piano sounded like an ape-robot hammering the keys like a monster. It did have a somewhat nice, and very bright timbre. I read somewhere that when mixing, pianos should retain their bass (most mixing desks have a high-pass filter switch) - complete nonsense! Pianos in most records are bass-cut, sometimes to the extent of sounding very little like actual pianos. Today, even piano-centred artists like Elton John use synthesized pianos, and those are often bass-cut and treble enhanced. The reason for these EQ changes is that the piano and the human voice span about the same frequency range.

I tend to not do much at all with pianos, except cut the bass a bit, but here I've added a bit of a notch at 450hz as the song has a lot of mid-range sounds.

Notation Day 1

Listened to the first draft of the mastered album late last night and made a few notes. The piano in 'Another Dead Morning' needed redoing. I was sequenced, but the 'real' (digital!) piano in 'What You Could Have Won' was much better. There was a problem though, the tempo modulated gently, and with everything else set in the song (like the vocals), I'd have little hope of playing the piano exactly to time, I'd normally start with the piano, as it's the fundamental core of the song.

So, I used the sequenced piano, which naturally varies in time, then fed this to the keyboard. It sounded much better than the original piano. Then, a few other changes to the other tracks, little things.

Most of this increasingly hot day has been spent notating the music for the album, something I now routinely do. The music isn't finalised, but the composition and words are.

Good Vibrations, Another Violet Night Mastering, Pariah Teabags

Yesterday, the 4-weekly music playing in the library, a delight. Somewhat hellish at home with work in the house, and my brother filling a room, a brief visit before my aunt's lonely funeral today. Deb is just recovered from her short illness.

I've spent today mastering Another Violet Night, awaiting a proof, then basic working out the tracks and lengths, and the design of the lyrics book and the iTunes Digital Booklet. I'm tired of the music now, eager to move on. I wrote a poem about our pariah tea; herbal, gifted at Christmas, untouched.

Pariah Teabags

Exotic herbal teas
gifted and received each
Christmas, and forever
languishing in the cupboard's
vault, in hope and despair

If hell is to be unwanted
hell is there

Oh to steep
as we were promised
when green-tipped, plucked
dried with comrades
to await, and wait

If hell is to be unwanted
hell is our fate

Fennel, rose, mint julep
chamomile, hemp's must;
sage, lavender,
forgotten mugwort, burdock
bitter bitter green

Unwanted horrors
Untried, unseen

Steep for 3 minutes: no
Add sugar to taste: never
Swamp smells, no taste
Good for you: no
Sartre? No

Our life is Camus
Sans brew

Album Finalising, Vocals

More work finalising the album over the past two days, with a little diversion to fix that problem with the MIDI import in Prometheus. Rather that use a 'long long', I decided to upgrade the system to use floating point timing, which increases accuracy due to better rounding.

Then, my regular weekly transfer of more albums to a new distributor, and today my weekly singing practice, plus recording the vocals for 'What You Could Have Won'. The song is somewhat like a Pink Floyd track, almost Wish You Were Here by proxy. For this, the track uses a filtered echo on the lead vocals (one of my favourite effects, as much my signature as John Lennon's tape delay). I usurped the effect in the chorus by adding answering vocals in that register and location.

The first draft of the album is complete! There are lots of listens and little changes to go, plus actual mastering, then breaking up tracks, the technical registration, sheet music... well, a lot more to do. Today I completed the first draft of the album artwork too. Here are some pages:

By amazing luck, all of the album lyrics fit into three pages when written in compressed paragraph form like the page above.

I've practiced playing 'All Controlled by Someone' on guitar for the open mic tomorrow, but Deb will need to rest, so we must miss this beloved event. The song isn't that hard, A-minor, G, A-minor, E-minor for the first part, with A-minor, D, E, for the chorus (all on capo-3, so in actual C-minor). With luck, we can attend the library in the morning. I also practiced 'Annie's Song', which looks hideously complex on guitar, but I'm certain uses 'near-chords' that make it much easier (if not better), and actually great fun to play. In singing, I sang 'In Dreams' several times, now my favourite singing practice, if not favourite song of all time. I seemed to know the words without looking. Annie's Song, In Dreams, Runaway; these are now my mainstay warm-up songs, in that order.

Solstice, Quantise To Group Mean, What You Could Have Won

A lovely morning yesterday at an outdoor gathering with poet friends at the Bridestones. The area is very small, little more than a few boulders in a very wooded area. There's little indication of its historical significance. The day was tainted by the sad absence of Deborah who remains ill.

I returned in the afternoon, but it was too hot work work. The album needs a new track I feel, between 'All Controlled' and 'More'. The latter ends in C-minor, more starts in A-minor. Both a a little too similar in audio mood (not in theme) to tie together, so a slower intermediate track is needed. I started with those chords and played something small on the piano. I then came up with some words that play on the themes of the album generally, and act as a prelude to the satire of 'More'.

What You Could Have Won

Here's what you could have won
Here's what you could have taken home
Here's what you'll never have

Here's what your life could have been like
If you'd done what you're supposed to do

I spent yesterday playing it on piano, the backing is simple.

Today has been a little frustrating. I started with adding (well, enhancing) a useful feature in Prometheus: quantise to group mean time. Most quantisation of notes do so to a fixed rhythm, the main tempo, well, ALL quantisation does this, except mine. The problem with this is that most of the time you don't want a fixed 'perfect' beat in any song ever. The strongest case is in electronic dance music, but perhaps even then the tempo could be slightly changed for dramatic effect.

Anyway, all rhythms since 1984 and the invention of the sequencer have been robotically fixed, compared to all prior music. My feature quantises notes not to the nearest beat but to the average of a bunch of notes. It has the effect of unifying nearby-notes (like chords, like the bass with the drum etc.) but not changing the (human) pace of the music. Here's an extreme example of averaging in action:

The lines are notes. The upper track is unquantised, the bottom one the averaged notes. You can set the width of the effect window. This is an extreme example, but even here it can be useful to simplify a MIDI track for example.

After this I discovered a bug in the MIDI import. At tick 129000 or so, the MIDI import stopped. It was because that multiplied with the wave frequency of 44100 caused an overflow. I needed to multiply it because it's not a normal import, it imports to the exact speed of the sequencer, so backwards calculates the final rendered song in samples, then works out where to place the note! The problem was fixed by using a long long, my first use of a 64-bit variable.

These things have taken all day. I must makde more progress.

How I miss my darling Deborah. One of my happier jobs of the day was going shopping for her on this much cooler day.

Brigid The Corn Dolly

A punishingly hoy day here, 30 degrees and the hottest of the year so far. I started by updating the music pages on my website with some new code, then making small changes to the Violet Night music, small things based on a first full listen yesterday. I may need to add another track, or at least work on the transition. By 12pm it was too hot to work on the computer.

At 1:30pm I started to pack for the solstice event tomorrow. Deb and I, and a few friends will perform a few things outdoors. We'll have no power, so no keyboards, but I'll bring a guitar, a battery powered amplifier, and a backing track for 'Sunchild'. After 2pm, in the blazing sun, I worked on the lawn on the Brigid the Corn Dolly, sponging it with yellow and orange-browns.

The paint dried in seconds. The card had curled due to the paint, so I wetted the back to curl it back, then added some grass, which has already started to dry out.

It's too hot to work much on the computer, still 26 in here. I'd like to work more on the album art, but am forced to pause.

Another Violet Night Cover

An appropriately sleepless and restless night leads to a day working on the cover art for Another Violet Night. I started with some photos, and chose one I liked...

Then started to work on designs based on this... working, changing, adding, subtracting... experimenting with text and placement...

Then I took some summer garden photos for the other booklet pages and the rear. I wanted to clash night and day, so lots of day images to be warped into the nocturnal. One result is a change to the top left when I added some inverted ivy there...

I've got lots of colour and texture combinations to play with already, the greys and oranges, the white/red/blue. This will make it easier to work on the booklet (and digital booklet!) pages. The ivy theme was applied to the CD rear too. I chose orange to contrast with the violet of the album's title, though there isn't much violet in the imagery itself, the purples emerge from the inverted greens.

I've made full CD artwork for all of my albums, often rather beautiful (if I say so myself), but only a tiny minority actually get made, primarily due of lack of sales and money, but also lack of my pushing them. My most popular CD, for example, is probably We Robot because I worked on selling and handing out copies at every opportunity. But I've got through lots of The Spiral Staircase and Cycles & Shadows too.

Another reason for not making many CDs is that since the explosion in my music began in 2020, my albums were temporary experiments. I knew it would be a learning process and that my vocals and production abilities would improve. The albums weren't good enough or ready enough to promote wildly. We Robot was the first I thought was good enough, hence the recent explosion in remasters as I revisit and fix-up my art-pop canon.

I'm not actually sure if the tracks (never mind durations) are finalised yet, but that can all be changed with ease. Onwards I charge.

Another Violet Night, and Remixing Radiation

A strange day. I'm making good progress on the album, very keen to get it complete, not worry about details or quality too much. The key thing is to stick to the original vision, there are no right or wrong songs; no writing is right or wrong, so that must be raced though BUT there can be a right and wrong mix and master, those are skills not arts. Overthinking can sometimes produce good results, but is often less efficient than moving on quickly and simply making something new in future, should a new idea or option present itself.

I must remember to push onwards and avoid being tied by the tar-trap of perfectionism. It something will do, it will do, but there are always exceptions and complexities to this rule! It seems that as I become more skilled, I want better and better results, but 'quality' is so subjective. I find at times that I can get better results by not trying to get better results.

Today I did a little more work on 'Daytime Teevee', paring back the complexity, and deciding to largely stick with what was there with the first version. Then, a similar change to the last track, 'Walls (And How To Hit Them)'; which now includes parentheses! I always imagined a megaphone-like voice speaking here, so today added that and discarded the other harmonies that were there. The album so far, with it's 12 tracks and 38 minutes, is complete, though I may add more if there needs to be more structural unity. This takes listening back - ah! This process, this proofing, is that very tar-trap!

The title will be 'Another Violet Night', which was my original title idea, no need to think more on it. I need to finish and move on quickly.

I also started work on a new EP, though I plan on moving to painting as soon as I can. This was inspired by the recent wars. Step 1 is a new version of the Radioactive theme, 'Radiation'. It sounds like a new mix, but actually it's a total re-creation, moving instrument by instrument, effect by effect to duplicate the Noise Station 1 sequence in Prometheus. It's amazing how the algorithms are theoretically the same, saw waves, filters and other code that is so similar, yet, the result is really different. There's no way I can duplicate the Noise Station original, though, of course, it sounds close. One of the hardest things to match was the high-pitched darting notes that zip up and down the frequency range. It's saw-saw-pulse combination fed though a flange, then peaking filter modulated by a sine wave, but even though the filter should be the same, the way it processes the parameters is very slightly different, so it sounded different.

The biggest problem with the Noise Station version is the overpowering bass, but it's not at all bad, it's one of my best sounding sequences from that era. I've turned the bass down by 25% and will include this version on the album too. The new version isn't intended to be identical, I've limited the bass, and changed that peaking sound a little, used more of a hollow-phaser type effect (with negative feedback on the flange), and added more stereo to the instruments. Overall, it sounds similar but cleaner, particularly with the fizzy high-frequencies which are a bit ear-jangling in their distortion.

I'll also include 'Written On Rice' here. This song is a bit sleepy and boring in pace, so I need to work on it. I can't and won't spend long. Onwards!

New Album Work

A day of work on the new album. It seems that the final tracks and order are complete, the titles now are as follows:

Violet Night
Another Dead Morning
Breakfast Of Delight
The Parents In The Walls
Daytime Teevee
How Lonely
The Tainted Pain
Smashing My House Of Cards
Fear Is Everywhere
All Controlled By Someone
More
Walls And How To Hit Them

Structurally, my plan was that the first 9 tracks form a group, and three groups of three, but this is much less apparent now, and today I added an extra minute-long intro to 'All Controlled By Someone' which plays on the imagery of that song, and some of the primary thema of the album; the music in 'Fear Is Everywhere'. 'More' can thematically link too, as it's about commercialism, and there are lots of classic television clips in here, so the structure spans the entire album, with 'Walls' as a scherzo-like epilogue.

Most of the day was spent balancing tracks (bless my 'relative, tuned spectrum analyser'! This Prometheus feature has transformed my music more than almost any other), adjusting, musing. A lot of work had gone into 'Daytime Teevee', which it proving troublesome to mix and get quite right. The darker and more complex tracks are my favourites, though all are rather short and disparate. At the moment, it's very much an art-pop album, almost in the style of Sparks, but with a unified theme and limited fun or joy; the mood is darker. More work and more musing is required.

All Controlled By Someone Solo

Sigh, another day flies past, tiny fragments of progress made in the art of muisc. Tiny fragments.

First, work on 'All Controlled By Someone', and some backing vocals. I tried up-tuning them to sound 'female' but the results were not very good, so recorded some simpler ones, which were then band-limited in a nice way. Then, some general balancing to the track.

In the afternoon, another regular batch of work on album distribution transfer, then work on the All Controlled solo. I decided to use the MODX, and recorded 3 or 4 solos in MIDI with different organs, all were adequate, but none quite right. Then, I recorded three solos with a flute-glockenspiel instrument, again fine, then some solos with upright piano, this time simple live recordings rather than MIDI. These were more relaxed and jazzy, they seemed to fit better; but none of the 12 or so solos seemed right. I then created a new instrument from a raw 'strings' sample, with instant fade in and out, and high pass filter to create a stark and synthetic sound. This sounded good, so I recorded a MIDI solo with this, then exported it.

The solo was recorded at 120 BPM but at the speed of the song is 140. Some programs complain about importing, I needed to simply change the tempo, not the actual speed of the music. Fortunately, Prometheus can import and ignore the actual recording tempo. I did this, then quantized the result, then recorded it as it played back though the MODX. At this stage it sounded fine, but I thought it might be better to bypass the synth entirely, so I loaded the MIDI notes into the song and recreated the MODX instrument in Prometheus, thus came full circle, and created a sequenced solo which is based on a live play; notably the timing was 'repaired' in the process.

This made me think of the Beethoven, as performer and composer, and the difference between the two. He would improvise lots of possible starts and directions, and notate those improvisations. I could have used my live recording and not cared about the notes, or the 'perfect' timing, but I notated the result like a composer rather than stuck with the recording like a performer. There was, here, limited advantage in expressive quality, as the instrument had no sensitivity to the keys. Still, I feel more a composer than performer at heart; at least in this case. Perhaps, at times, I feel more performer than composer. Today's experiences illustrates the border between the two.

Corn Dolly, Prometheus v3.70, Art

An artistic get together at Linda's; inspiring and delightful in every way. Like the old art group meetings, I felt pressure to bring some artwork to actually do. It's ironic that I didn't particularly feel like doing art, feeling pressure only because it was described as a drawing/painting day, yet in the end I was the only one who prepared or made any art.

Deb and I will be performing something in a casual way on the solstice, so Deb had the idea of making a 'life sized' corn dolly. In the end it was about 1M or 1.5M tall, and made from a cardboard core, with lots of cardboard strips glued to it to emulate hay. Today I painted it crudely, with cheap paint. I was reminded that a lot of art in medieval times was made for special one-off events, religious celebrations or parades, and so the art was primarily cheap rather than high quality. This is certainly the case here, though of course I did my best given the few hours of time and budget of zero. The dolly (christened Brigid) is intended for one day of use.

I aim to film the Solstice event, so the world can see Brigid then.

I managed a few little jobs. The filing of the remastered Finnegans Judgement EP is complete, and today I updated Prometheus again to fix a bug in the Noise Station 1 importer. I had an idea of releasing the Radioactive theme as part of a war-themed EP. I'd much prefer to remake the music in Prometheus than use Noise Station 1. Technically, the results should sound identical, but there have been years of updates and changes in Prometheus, and it has a less harsh, less tinny sound than Noise Station. I don't mind this, but the limiter and spectrum tools are hugely useful for mastering, and those don't exist in Noise Station.

When updating to v3.70, I added the option to view and change sample loops in either seconds or samples. Until now, all units were in samples, and the boxes were primarily for informational reasons, not really for hand editing.

The days are slow. Being around other artists for a rare time was nice, but reminded me that I'm as unknown and obscure in the art world as perhaps I ever have been, that compared to other full-time artists I barely ever sell paintings and can't seem to find anyone who will exhibit my art in any capacity. I must be doubly grateful for my friends and those who encourage me. I've been far less proactive in visual arts since 2020 when music became more of a passion. I am, I feel, better at painting than ever before, and better at music and every other creative discipline. I must remind myself of these things.

Onwards we roll our heavy rock.

Finnegans Judgement Finalised, All Controlled Electro-Jazz-Blues

Most of today was completing the Finnegans Judgement remaster, mostly the many filing and archiving processes. I have found tome to work on 'All Controlled by Someone'. The rhythm is somewhat like a bossa-nova, but I'd like to bend it more towards jazz and blues, and a song like the Zombies' 'Time of the Season'. That was jazz, with its organ and bass-led beat. My song started that way but I experimentally tried an analogue synth bass and organ, and it sounded better, perhaps because it was deliberately alien and unusual.

Finnegans Knots Score

long and eye-strainingly hard afternoon to evening notating 'Finnegans Knots', the 10-minute piano piece which acoompanies the speech on the Finnegans EP. I can't imagine anyone actually playing it, but the first stage of this being possible is a score being made, in at least some basic form.

The music was orignally improvised, played live and recorded via MIDI. It is from that I can piece together the notes, though it's painstaking to neaten and order them all. The 11 pages are just about done, though there is no expression; no tempo, dynamics, but the score so far is at least 50% of the work, and will suffice for now.

Music Catalogue Filing

More album refiling today, as I modify my system a little. Two days ago, an album had a new code unless it had the same tracks with same duration, yesterday I decided tat the duration didn't matter so mcuh, but last night thought that an album should have the same code evne if the tracks change; it's the album itself that matters, whether it is the same title, same artist, and same album.

Plenty of albums are reissued, some with bonus tracks, and these, I reasoned should have the same code as the original with a modifier, a letter in my case. I also thought of fighter aircraft, how the F18 Hornet is updated with letters, rather than given a new F-number.

For me, this change in logic only applies to a few albums, The Spiral Staircase (old version R4A, 2008 version R11A), Synaesthesia (many versions, old R1A, 2002 version R57A, 2015 version R26A, the latest 2020 version R52A), and the new Flatspace Soundtrack. So I updated all of these today.

This is a lot of work, but can be done perfectly. The source records are moved. The websites udpated (the images and database all use album codes). The Cornutopia Music Catalogue updated correctly. Then the main folders renamed. The files for sequences and sheet music needed updating to point to the new folders, and finally the labels for the CD archive copies needed updating. I don't have CD archive copies for all albums, but do for most. I burned three new ones today; one for R1B, R1C, the mid-versions of Synaesthesia, and one for the Fall in Green single 'Who is Afraid/She Floats'. I don't generally burn a duplicate CD for a single unless it has a unique B-side, and this one does.

I re-rendered the source sequence for that. It's quite different due to the high-pass filter in the reverbs which was not present in the original. I can turn it right down, as good as off, but the default is on (a 12dB high pass at about 220hz).

Here's my complete catalouge: AL = Album, SI = Single, GC = Game Content, BK = Audiobook, * = Commercially Replicated CD available, + = hand-printed CD available.

  AL R1A Mark Sheeky, Synaesthesia (2001)
  AL R1B Mark Sheeky, Synaesthesia (2002)
  AL R1C Mark Sheeky, Synaesthesia (2015)
  AL R1D Mark Sheeky, Synaesthesia (2020)
  AL R2A Mark Sheeky, The Arcangel Soundtrack (2001)
  AL R2B Mark Sheeky, The Arcangel Soundtrack (2025)
  AL R3A Mark Sheeky, The Incredible Journey (2002)
  AL R4A Mark Sheeky, The Spiral Staircase (2002)
* AL R4B Mark Sheeky, The Spiral Staircase (2008)
  AL R5A Mark Sheeky, Flatspace (The Official Soundtrack) (2003)
  AL R5B Mark Sheeky, Flatspace (The Official Soundtrack) (2025)
  AL R6A Mark Sheeky, Animalia (2004)
  AL R6B Mark Sheeky, Animalia (2020)
  AL R7A Mark Sheeky, The Four Seasons Of Dance [EP] (2005)
  AL R8A Mark Sheeky & Tor James Faulkner, The End And The Beginning (2009)
  AL R8B Mark Sheeky & Tor James Faulkner, The End And The Beginning (2025)
  AL R9A Mark Sheeky & Tor James Faulkner, Gunstorm [EP] (2007)
  SI R10A Mark Sheeky & Tor James Faulkner, Gunstorm (2007)
  GC R11A Flatspace Music Pack 4 (2025)
  AL R12A Mark Sheeky, Stupid Computer Music (2008)
  AL R13A Mark Sheeky, The Twelve Seasons (2008)
  GC R14A Flatspace Music Pack 2 (2008)
  AL R15A Mark Sheeky, The Infinite Forest (2010)
  AL R15B Mark Sheeky, The Infinite Forest (2021)
  AL R16A Mark Sheeky, Pi (2010)
  AL R17A Mark Sheeky, Once Upon A Time (2010)
  AL R18A The Harlequin Kings, Fear Of The Thing Itself (2015)
+ EP R19A Mark Sheeky, The Sky Disc [EP] (2011)
  AL R20A Mark Sheeky, Flatspace II (The Official Soundtrack) (2011)
* AL R21A Mark Sheeky, The Love Symphony (2012)
  GC R22A Flatspace Music Pack 3 (2013)
  AL R23A Mark Sheeky, Bites Of Greatness (2013)
  AL R24A Oldfield 1, Art By Machine (2014)
  GC R25A Flatspace Music Pack 1 (2005)
    R26A Unused (formerly Synaesthesia 2015)
* AL R27A Mark Sheeky, The Anatomy Of Emotions (2016)
  AL R28A Mark Sheeky, Cycles & Shadows (2017)
  AL R28B Mark Sheeky, Cycles & Shadows (2024)
  AL R29A Mark Sheeky, Finnegans Judgement [EP] (2017)
  AL R30A Mark Sheeky, Genesis (c.1996) (2017) [2017 Remaster]
  AL R31A The ArtsLab Collective, I, Leviathan (2017)
  AL R32A Mark Sheeky, The Modern Game (2018)
* AL R33A Fall in Green, Testing The Delicates (2018)
  AL R34A Mark Sheeky, A Walk In The Countryside [EP] (2018)
  AL R34B Mark Sheeky, A Walk In The Countryside [EP] (2020)
  AL R34C Mark Sheeky, A Walk In The Countryside [EP] (2024)
  SI R35A Mark Sheeky, House Of Glass (2018)
  SI R36A Fall in Green, Who Is Afraid/She Floats (2018)
  SI R37A Mark Sheeky, Masculinity Two (2018)
  SI R38A Fall in Green, Time Falling (2018)
  AL R39A Mark Sheeky, Tree Of Keys (2019)
  AL R39B Mark Sheeky, Tree Of Keys (2021)
  GC R40A Flatspace IIk Music Pack 1 (2019)
  GC R41A Flatspace IIk Music Pack 2 (2019)
  GC R42A Flatspace IIk Music Pack 3 (2020)
* AL R43A Mark Sheeky, Music Of Poetic Objects (2019)
  AL R44A Marius Fate, The Modern Game (2019) [BOOK]
  AL R44B Marius Fate, The Modern Game (2022) [BOOK]
  SI R45A Marius Fate, Masculinity Two (2019)
  SI R45B Marius Fate, Masculinity Two (2022)
  GC R46A Future Snooker (2019)
  GC R47A Future Pool (2019)
  AL R48A Mark Sheeky, Burn Of God (2020)
* AL R48B Mark Sheeky, Burn Of God (2022)
* AL R49A Fall in Green, War Is Over [EP] (2020)
* AL R50A Fall in Green, Apocalypse Of Clowns (2021)
    R51A Unused (formerly Animalia 2020)
    R52A Unused (formerly Synaesthesia 2020)
  AL R53A Mark Sheeky, The Dusty Mirror (2020)
  AL R53B Mark Sheeky, The Dusty Mirror (2025)
  SI R54A Fall in Green, Jabberwocky (2021)
  AL R55A Mark Sheeky, The Myth Of Sisyphus (2021)
    R56A Unused (formerly The Infinite Forest 2021)
    R57A Unused (formerly Synaesthesia 2002)
  AL R58A Mark Sheeky, Nightfood (2021)
  AL R59A Fall in Green, Wonderland (2021)
  AL R60A Mark Sheeky, Secret Electric Sorcery (2022)
* AL R62A Fall in Green, Lou Salome Empathy With Daisies
  AL R63A Mark Sheeky, Heart Of Snow [EP] (2022)
  AL R64A Mark Sheeky, Remembrance Service (2022)
  AL R65A Mark Sheeky, The Golden Age (2023)
  GC R66A Flatspace IIk Golden Age Music Pack (2023)
* AL R67A Mark Sheeky, We Robot (2023)
  SI R68A Mark Sheeky, AI And Celebrity (2023)
  GC R69A Flatspace IIk We Robot Music Pack (2023)
  BK R70A The Intangible Man & Other Strange Tales (2023)
  AL R71A The Electric Sprout Foundation, Snow Business (2023)
  SI R73A Mark Sheeky, Cycles III: Perpetual Change (2024)
  AL R74A Mark Sheeky, A Drive Through The Town (2024)
  SI R75A Cat Covid! (2024)
  SI R76A Excessive Consumption has Laxative Effects (2024)
  AL R77A John Lindley & Friends, Crossfire (2024) [MASTERING]
  GC R78A Flatspace IIk Music Pack 4 (2024)
* AL R79A Fall in Green, Letters From A Square Spoon (2025)
  SI R80A Fear Of The Thing Itself (2025)


Finnegan and Filing

Sigh, a slow and tedious day. Have worked on improving the production of my (rather avant-garde) EP Finnegans Judgement. The original mixed the long (10 minute) vocals externally over the track, which was tedious but necessary as Prometheus back then couldn't handle large files. It can now, giving me more control. My motivation here is preparing the album for its future new release, so I thought I'd update it a little and create new canvas videos. The recording quality isn't ideal, the source audio was 16-bit and peaked to distortion at times, which is annoying, but I can improve on the current version at least.

After a few hours of endless tests and listens I've improved the music a little. The audio now uses a 32-bit master (the old album was/is undithered 16-bit), and the volume is 25% louder without any deterioration.

The track lengths have changed a little, as the original started track 2 with the end of track 1. Not much of a problem, but it would sound odd (and sounds odd now) if playing just track 2. This meant a new album code. I code albums with a number and a sub-letter. If the album is the same and has the same tracks and track lengths, I simply upgrade the sub-letter; but here the tracks are the same, differing by only a few seconds. It seemed to make sense to update only the letter, so I changed my catalogue system such that albums with the same artist, title and track names use the same code with a different sub-letter, even if the track lengths differ. This normally occurs for replacements, like a remaster.

A few older albums, specifically Synaesthesia, Animalia, and The Infinite Forest have, in the past, been remade and assigned new album codes because the track lengths were different, so today I recoded those and moved everything in the catalogue. Thus R26A Synaesthesia 2015 is now R57B, R51A Animalia 2020 is now R6B, and R56A The Infinite Forest 2021 is now R15B.

So, a slow filing day.

Land Of Destiny

A perfect day! Sang first, a needed new take for the last two verses of 'Smashing My House Of Cards', then the complete words to 'All Controlled By Someone'.

Then dived into a painting Land (not hand!) of Destiny. Only a small panel, created for the annual Bickerton Village Hall exhibition and sized to fit a spare frame:

Hand aside, for which I used a photograph of my own hand, the other details were 'invented' from the store of images in my memory. I was pleased how quickly I painted the mountains here. I'm more pleased with them that some of the slow and painstakingly painted mountains in older paintings. I painted no colour study for this, so it was more improvisational that usual; this a consequence of the need to paint quickly and cheaply. I could glaze if needed though.

I'm a better singer than ever before and better painter than ever too, though my eyes are starting to fail. My head is now pounding with eye strain, and focusing while painting was difficult at times, and impossible to maintain at all times. Still, this is the second painting day of 2025, and it's nearly mid-summer. I must strive to paint more.

Album Admin, The Dusty Mirror Stream Version, Argus v1.56

Most of today was work transferring albums and singles to a new distributor; Testing The Delicates and The Love Symphony. These will transfer over the course of the next week.

One side effect of all of this was a new look at The Dusty Mirror. If I want to use the new high resolution (higher than CD quality) uploads, I usually need separate Stream and CD versions of an album. CD version tracks can fade and segue, and all in Sony CD Architect which can export in CD quality at most. I need to use Prometheus to export the (higher quality) master files, which I can then convert down to CD quality, thus having both hi-res and CD quality versions.

Separate Stream/CD versions of an album also has other advantages. A CD album benefits from tracks blending into each other, and changes in volume and pacing from track to track for emotional effect. Streamed tracks are usually heard alone, like singles, isolated from the other tracks on the album, so they work best at the same volume level, with a definite start and end. Another advantage is that people who stream or buy a download don't get the same album as those who buy the CD, so fans can buy both. For me, the CD version is always the definitive one, so the stream version acts as promotion for the (better) CD version.

This meant that today I've made new edits of the first two tracks of The Dusty Mirror, as these fade into each other on the CD version. The edits were easy, most of the work was registering their data, and creating new videos with the new waves. It also means a technical re-release of the album; it's a new album now, even if only slightly different. The new version is already live on Bandcamp, but elsewhere it is pencilled in for a July 11th release.

All of this took until 4pm. At that point, I updated Argus a version to fix a small bug regarding the scroll bar when deleting tracks. I improved the time stretch and insert/delete routines too.

Prometheus v3.69, All Controlled By Someone Organs

Sigh, another day has flown, and so little to show for a hard attack at the rock face of art. I updated Prometheus to v3.69, making the new per-track EQ more efficient. I realised that even tracks that were 'off' due to extended silence were being processed, which is why the calculation was so slow, so I fixed that and removed the other 'non-EQ' elements in the calculation; I know I don't need those now. The result is that rendering is now almost the same speed as without the calculation, about double the former speed - yay!

Then, long work on 'All Controlled by Someone' production. I started with sequenced organs, but thought these would be better played on the keyboard, so played some live instead. These were quantised and placed in the sequence. Then, in a third iteration, I re-sequenced everything per-note but based on the live tunes/chords I played. The result sounds rather like the live recordings but with a few advantages; at a fraction of the memory, plus the advantage of being able to change or slur the speed (a live recording would be fixed in tempo), and the notation easily transcribed. So, this organ part has taken all day, and I'm still unsure if I really want to use it.

I listened to the whole album too, and made a few tweaks and little changes, all for the better. Only this one track remains, I think.

Tomorrow, the next stage of moving music to the new distributor, but I really need to get painting this week. I've had only one day of painting this year.

Here are the song lyrics so far:

All Controlled By Someone

Strings from your fingers
lead to my limbs
The stage of the theatre of life
Everyone is here
to delight

We're all controlled by someone
Isn't that so?
Where did all that freedom go?
Down to our minions below

We're all controlled by someone
Isn't that so?
Do you feel you're in control?
Who tells you where to go?

Slave and dictator
Fool in the wild
Teacher, preacher, and child
All must answer
To their master

Here in the theatre
Laughter and sighs
Strings from the limbs shoot to the sky
Those who pull get tangled
then they die

Yet still controlled by someone
Isn't that so?
Where did all that heaven go?
Down to the minions below

We're all controlled by someone
Isn't that so?
Where did all that heaven go?
Pray for a little control

Pray for a little control

Music Work

Guitar recording on 'Tainted Pain' and 'Smashing My House of Cards' yesterday. Today, writing the melody to 'All Controlled by Someone', the last planned track for this album, one of the three 'reflective' tracks at the end, those which are not part of the narrative as such.

The new per-track EQ has already proved useful. This enacts 10 new filters per track, it more than doubles the render speed on the rare occasions I request it. Spectrum analysis really makes mixing easier, and a per-track spectrum analyser helps in a way that no system lacking it can compete with.

Videos Complete, Vocodes

Completed, compiled, and uploaded the Cycles videos today. I've held off on the string quartet one for the moment. After that, some recording of vocoder parts for 'Smashing' and 'Tainted'. I've ordered an old Ultravox CD (well, a newish remaster), Ha! Ha! Ha!, from the pre-Midge Ure era. I like the art-rock punky sound, it seems to have more grit than the electronic era. I still primarily listen to music on CD. All of the Amazon review are in Japanese, which is interesting.

Every day I must battle on. Time is short.

Cycles Videos

A day spent working solidly on videos for the Cycles part of Cycles & Shadows. I've made videos for each of the main Cycles tracks (1,2,4,5,6 - 3 has already been made), plus one for 'The String Quartet At The End Of The Universe' from the Shadows part.

All use Argus and the music data to export the frame numbers when each instrument is triggered. For most of the Prometheus instruments this is easy, but the piano is a little more tricky. It was recorded with MIDI, but the piano on Cycles I and IV was recorded in lots of little sections, and the song tempo changes between these. This makes it a little tricky to match the MIDI sequence with the actual music. I managed it, importing each section bit by bit, but had to hand-tailor the notes to show, so not all of the piano keys are seen in the video. We don't really want that anyway as the piano has lots of bass arpeggios, so only the melody will be visible here.

For the 'raw' piano of Cycles II, I could use the actual MIDI data to good effect, and all of the piano sounds are used (well, near duplicates are not sounded, there is a merging of two sounds which are very close). I also exported the velocities/volumes here, and used that for the size of the object. This looks rather pretty.

All of the videos are pretty, actually. The String Quartet uses lines for each of the quartet instruments, which makes the video look like an animated light-sabre duel, or game of 'Ker-Plunk'.

The camera movements add a lot to these videos. The camera sways a little up and down, but it regularly spins clockwise in a nice way. It's also angled back a little as standard compared to Cycles III, so the shapes seem to fall down as well as away into the distance.

I've noticed that my Tuesday premiere videos get a lot more views than the Friday ones. It will take another day to compile and upload these. It wouldn't be so hard to make a video for every Cycles & Shadows track. How badly mixed Eternal Cycles seems to my ears now! Well, maybe I'll create yet another remaster in a future decade... but, as Telly Savalas famously sang, not today.

Prometheus v3.68, Smashing, Tainted Vocals

Two busy and steady days of work. Prepared two paintings yesterday, listed two new albums in my regular distribution move, and started some changes to Prometheus. I noted that there have been 103 updates since 2020, but only 60 between 2002 and 2020, so this software has changed a lot recently.

This change allows a special track-level spectrum analysis render. Sometimes a song peaks in certain frequencies. It's fairly easy to work out which elements cause the bass to be high, but it's less obvious with other instruments, so I wanted an overview of every track's relative spectrum so that I could see which tracks were doing what in the mix. It's much better to EQ a track by mixing, lowering the volume of some element, or tweaking the timbre of that element, than doing anything to the whole song. Here's an example output, from 'Tainted Pain':

It shows, for example, that 113hz is the peak for the bass drums, and that the flutes are strong in 450-900hz. If the song had too much there, I could lower volume the flutes rather than messing with equalisers. I pretty much never use EQ.

Today, I completed this code and recorded some vocals, for 'Smashing My House Of Cards' and 'Tainted Pain' (which was called 'The Tainted Pain'). These are both fine I think, though the ending of Smashing may need improving, it sort of tails into a joyous flight up that stretches towards a Icarus-like forlorn hope. Both of these tracks need electric guitar work. I've not sung for some time, though I sang one song in Congleton last Wednesday. My voice was surprisingly good today, perhaps a result of other fitness work. I wonder if a heavy and dense vest, like a bullet proof vest, would improve a singing voice? More torso muscle and perhaps general size, I surmise, would grant greater vocal resonance. The evidence is in the build of opera singers.

Backups, Ray Davies, Frame Decoration

Monthly back-up day. Found an old frame in a charity shop yesterday, and a copy of the short fiction anthology Waterloo Sunset by Ray Davies, so I read this while the computer chugged. The writing is so-so. Later, I did some online reading about Ray and The Kinks. The stories are generally character descriptions, and I realised that the same is generally true of his songs. My songs are more visual; like my writing descriptions of scenes or images, which chain to form a narrative. With Ray, the characters and their behaviour drives the story.

After this, work on the frame. It was a lovely find, must be 100-125 years old. The very rusty attachments gave way to a very faded print and some even older holes; this frame was made for more than a print:

It has a beautiful aged patina; those brown stripes are genuine age in the gold, an effect that modern frame makers aspire to emulate. Some parts had a few flaws though, the gold scratched off, and all of the gesso on the corners flaked away. Today, I tried to fix those a little, and filled in the wider gaps in those front corners. It's difficult to preserve the patina, but I did my best, and the frame is certainly better than before. It's hard to find a filler that fills well but is very smooth, with tiny particles. Most filler that fills well is too thick, but that is hard to sand or smooth.

After that, work on the song production for 'Smashing My House Of Cards'. Small steps made today.

Smashing My House Of Cards

Back to music and art yesterday after a month of largely remastering and documenting old music. I must strive to make new things as much as possible. There are 10 tracks on this as-yet untitled album, but I've worked on more than 10, including one for the 'Light Bulb' concept (which has 3 penned tracks, perhaps these can be a future EP) and a re-recording of the very old 'Written On Rice'. I may not find a use for Written On Rice.

Of the current tracks, I've divided them into groups of 3, and the last 3 will be an aside, not as linked as the first 9. The first 9 are linked musically to the last track 'Fear is Everywhere'. One remained, so I've visited one of the original songs planned for this rather darkly themed album, a song called 'Smashing my House of Cards'. I started with a gentle, almost sleepy rolling theme with a Bossa nova-like beat, that moved gently between C-Major and E-minor. This was a bit too sleepy though, I needed more energy and 'funk', so I changed the rhythm for the 'chorus' part into a more standard rock-blues rhythm, and change to the tempo to compensate. The chords are simple, and drop to F-Major, but later revisit A-Major and F-minor in ways which jar expectation.

I'll keep working on this. The last of the 12 songs will be a general one I wrote originally for the Bob Dylan night in Congleton, but didn't use. I only have the words so need a melody. That can come after this. Here are the words to 'Smashing my House' so far. The last verse is an essential reflection and conclusion which takes us out of the song to a 3rd-party space.

Smashing My House Of Cards

Smashing my house of cards
I've been smashing my house of cards
I've been building my house for years
With gentle hands
Giving it kind attention
Hoping one day to see
Heaven or something like it
From the top

Of my royal house
But it's fallen apart
Like dried up twigs
Like windows of tears in shards
I've spent the day crying
Dying and raging
Smashing my house
Smashing my house of cards

Sorry for the disaster
Sorry for all the mess
Sorry for years of work
And wasted love

Isn't it often so
That our fears become our foes?
Blowing down our hopes
As they go

Good Vibrations, Springsteen Night

A lovely, though exhausting musical day yesterday starting with a sing-along (and guitar-along) in Congleton Library.

Later, the 'Look Out Here Comes The Boss' event which had a large array of performers paying tribute to Bruce Springsteen. Most of the night was musical, people singing Bruce's songs, though there were a few original poems read, including a new one by Deborah about Tom Joad from Grapes of Wrath which included Springsteen lyrics, and two poems from Cherie. I sang the song I wrote for the night, 'My Guitar'. My performance wasn't quite how I'd rehearsed it, it was somehow much better, a little slower and more considered. I rarely play guitar live, I rarely play guitar at all, but this was certainly my best live guitar and singing performance so far. I have a long way to go regarding guitar playing. Are all performers always learning? I, at least, am always learning and striving to improve in all things.

There were many highlights of the evening, and actually every song and performance was very good, yet it was the overall warmness and welcomeness of the evening as a whole, the inclusive nature of John Lindley as host which made this, like all of his evenings, so nice.

We returned home at about 11:30 and I slept until 10:30, feeling somewhat weak and aching everywhere. I just don't seem able to digest enough or rest enough to recover these days.

A busy month is ending; one turbo-charged with admin work on older music, but I can't see an end to the treadmill. Changing distributors is an opportunity to change things, remaster old works, and a good many, 10 albums perhaps, could do with this, and all without really much work per-se. Most of the work is the administration side rather than the technical music work. That is now easier than ever.

Yesterday, between the morning and evening events, I managed to schedule the new Flatspace videos, so those are now ready and that release is now ready too.

My 'new album' is still waiting, and when that's done I must remaster or re-record parts of The Myth Of Sisyphus, which was the next in line. Yet, the summer sun is flying and I've not painted a thing, and my book on painting techniques has stopped at 20,000 words. I barely feel I'm doing anything artistic or new or brilliant. I feel trapped in a quagmire of this older music, and I may feel so for a year or two while I re-order it all. Perhaps this is the inevitable 'shoring-up' of the charging forwards with vocal music, which began in 2020.

What can I do but my best? What can I do but the most I can do? What can I do but obey my nature, to order, perfect, improve, neaten?

Onwards I must roll my rock, towards that nest bend in the road. Towards that next ridge. Towards that iron horizon of twilight.

Flatspace, New Guitar Lyrics

The new Flatspace soundtrack remaster was lined up this morning, and Letters From A Square Spoon submitted to a few new channels. Then, work finishing the Flatspace videos.

In between I've been practising my 'Bruce Springsteen' song for tomorrow. The link to Bruce is loose, it was inspired by his 'Used Cars', but that's it. Tomorrow will be a full day, performing in the library first, then back for the Springsteen evening. Here are the words:

I'm waitin' in the music shop for the man to come around
My dad is gazing at the sky, his head full of clouds
My brother's not allowed to touch the tambourine
Oh how he wants to touch it
I wish he'd let him touch it

I'm strumming easy Ds and easy Gs
The salesman is a staring at my prayer beads
He's hoping that our clothes are just a sham, but they're for real,
sorry man; because he knows we can't afford it
And I know we can't afford a new guitar

One day I'll get a song that is my own
One day I'll find a hidden chord that only I know
One day I'll strum a piece of luck
Upon my mind guitar
Today we have a used car
So I know we can't afford a new guitar

We're walking down the street, in october's lonely rain
My dad is telling me that santa claus is lost again
My brother's tapping rhythms with his cane
And how he loves to tap it
Oh how he loves to tap it

I'm humming easy Ds and easy Gs
When we get home I'll sing my frail old mum a melody
And I'll tell her of the instruments I saw this magic day
beyond that door; but she knows we can't afford it
And I know we can't afford a new guitar

But inside I have a song that is my own
Inside there is a hidden chord that only I know
One day I'll strum a piece of luck
Upon my mind guitar
And today will be a memory
And today will be the memory
Of the day I found a new guitar

Practice for Springsteen, Flatspace Soundtrack Videos

A full day of work. I need to learn to play the guitar version of my new Bruce Springsteen-inspired song before Wednesday so have been practising throughout the day. I reasoned that 10 mins of practice every 2 or 3 hours is more efficient than playing the same thing constantly. My finger tips and arm muscles can't play for long.

Most of the day has been spent working on new videos for the new Flatspace Soundtrack remaster. I've put lots of work into these, even though they are relatively simple animated videos. Each pushes things as much as I can given the time budget. These will never be stunningly popular, but they are better than nothing; pretty, and more interesting to watch than blank screen. Artistically, they are something like animated versions of the album artwork. Here are a few screenshots:

The track 'Conversion' uses an innovative spinning letter-box type shutter, which looks rather nice. 'Virtual L1', below, uses decals which flash to different instruments, the same sort of thing I did years before with the 'Challenger' video. I won't be making videos for the new Spiral Staircase tracks on there, I'll save those for the future Spiral Staircase remaster...

Will history ever wonder why I bothered making these videos? I sometimes wonder myself, except for the feeling of neatness, order, and completion; those essential qualities that define life. Most of my music, 40 original albums-worth (over 90 albums if you include remakes and unreleased albums), is unheard by anyone but me; though the odd track gets the odd listen by a few fragments of the 9-billion souls on this earth at this moment.

Perhaps one reason is that my family brought me up to know that being ignored was normal and to be expected, and that avoiding the terror of other people's attention was a vital survival skill; but another reason is that I've made about half of my total musical output in the last 5 years, at a time when the entire world seems to be making music. Music is now the most dominant form of art made by humans, due to technology and the ease with which music can now be made. The 5-year comment is of vital importance. My most popular music is the instrumental music I made 15 years ago. It takes a long time for music to gain traction. I've not promoted the new 'half' much and it still needs remastering and perfecting before I'll be happy enough to do so. Perhaps in 15 years, the things I'm making now will begin to become popular.

Onwards!

Success

To be successful, you can either be spectacularly better than others for an instant, or consistently a bit better than others over a long period. The latter is worth more.

Booklets Part 2

Another manic, and mammoth day. I feel so tired that my eyes are spinning spirals, yet I've managed to complete most of the technical registration work for the new Flatspace album, update all (50+) of my album data on a certain listings site, while registering the Flatspace remaster (or most of it, some data is pending upon pre-release) with PPL - PPL the worst and slowest music website for editing or administration. The PRS and Musicbrainz are a joy to use by comparison.

Most of the day has been spent creating the last 12 iTunes Digital Booklets. These were hard work, harder than yesterday as the source material is older, less standardised, and I felt the need to re-standardise it and update things like the track data, copyrights, bleed areas etc. etc. Stupid Computer Music, that old album from 2009, has never looked better. I re-mastered the album art while assembling the iTunes booklet. Other albums (like the Finnegans Judgement EP) have been reworked too. Here's the new Stupid Computer Music art:

Small changes, but important ones to bring the resolution and quality up to standard. This album, like The Twelve Seasons and other early (pre-stream) albums, had 20 CD copies pressed once. I'd like to do that again one day.

Now I must desperately try to relax. I slept 10 solid hours last night, and I feel yet more exhausted now, but elated too. It feels good to have completed the 44 iTunes booklets in record time. A few remain, but those are for forthcoming albums... like the up-and-coming Gunstorm remaster and The Modern Game. My back catalogue, at least, is more ordered.

One thing I'm facing now is a new system for filing older albums, those which have been or are due to be remastered. When is a remake a new album? Synaesthesia has 4 versions, but all are quite different, not really 'remasters'. Most of my remasters to date have had new vocals or new instrumental parts, but now I'm entering an era (starting with The End And The Beginning, and the new Flatspace album) where the mixing, track balancing and mastering (volume and limiting; I never compress tracks, never albums) are the primary differences. I must be careful to ensure that remasters are always better. Some by established artists are almost criminal, like the pitch-corrected remaster of Queen's debut album! Of course, I'd never do such a thing, remaster or not!

Onwards I charge.

iTunes Digital Booklets

An absolutely manic but productive day, creating iTunes Digital Booklets for the following albums:

Letters From A Square Spoon, The Anatomy Of Emotions, Christmas Smells, Lou Salome Empathy With Daisies, Heart Of Snow, Remembrance Service, War Is Over, Apocalypse Of Clowns, Animalia, Synaesthesia, Jabberwocky, The Myth Of Sisyphus, The Infinite Forest, Nightfood, Testing The Delicates, A Walk In The Countryside, Who Is Afraid/She Floats, Time Falling, Tree Of Keys, and Music Of Poetic Objects.

Most use the existing CD album art, but that being square means that pages frequently needed some sort of adjustment. Any text needed repositioning or re-rendering in the correct size, and some albums or singles now include lyrics. Many of the singles (Jabberwocky, Who Is Afraid/She Floats etc.) needed new pages creating as those typically have only one cover image; a booklet requires at least 4 pages.

I'm now spiral-eyed and very headachey after 11-hours work on these.

I can now say that 'there are less than 20 albums to go'.

Some, like the Marius Fate ones, don't need doing as I'll have to re-master and re-release that album (again) under my name. At that point, though, I'll need to redo the artwork and make a new booklet. Why do all of this at all? I am reminded how pretty the artwork is, and how important it is; how much I've done on these over the years. These albums, like everything I do must be the best I can do. Yes, many albums have sold very few copies (some perhaps none at all, digital sales are so ephemeral; I still aim to press many more CD copies), but I must target and assume ultimate success. For the past 5 years, my music has been in a hibernation phase. I've released lots of music, but not wildly publicised anything, I knew and know that things were growing, refining, improving; an essential part of the learning process. This is still is progress, but soon I will be ready and brilliant. Not quite yet, but soon and inevitably.

Some highlights from the 120 or so images I've been working on:

Flatspace Canvases

Another full day of music admin, how overwhelming it seems! Yet I know I'm charging though things. Today, completed 11 Spotify Canvases for the new Flatspace album. These are simple loops, a mix of slow fades which used the album art effectively, and some simulations of the intro tunnel, which works well for The Spiral Staircase tracks. I wanted to unify things with the album art, although the Snow track is more generic, a fall of snow which is similar in operation to Bleak Forest from Heart Of Snow.

Last night I updated my online albums to first person (a change back, this has pros and cons, I rather prefer first person).

I needed to make a change to Argus for the canvases, a feature to control the lens flare intensity, so I added this and have updated Argus too. I'm charging though these albums at pace, though it remains a multi-year project.

Time is pressing and I feel a sense of constant pressure, constant frenetic energy. I must make some visual art soon, I need to paint a new series... this I must do in June. I also need to write the Bruce Springsteen song.

Onwards I run.

Music Musing

I can't help but feel somewhat overwhelmed with the music admin, this is more about being neat than a critical necessity. I must avoid taking this to an obsessive degree, this is not efficient; but it can sometimes be more efficient to be prepared, as making lots of things in one batch takes less time than darting between jobs. New releases should, ideally, be of the best quality and have all materials, more than ever before, so my priority is making materials for new releases or re-releases. As I remaster old albums, I can make the materials then.

This new release regime is what has inspired my new desire to reorder and re-examine my back-catalogue of music. I wanted to change distributor, to try another experimentally, and to benefit from a few new features. Listing my music back on Spotify, for me as a perfectionist of order, means creating new canvas animations. I also need new iTunes booklets, as these are a new feature too. Looking at the totals of my back catalogue, the albums, EPs, and single releases, the items needed are:
Sheet music: 22 (albums-worth) done, 18 to do.
Spotify canvases: 23 done, 27 to do.
iTunes booklets: 16 done, 33 to do.
Full videos for every track on an album: 12 done, 36 to do.

Of course, these vary in priority and importance. None are strictly necessary, though the sheet music and physical publication of it is a long term goal for me. You'll notice that the totals don't add up. This is because of small technical things, like a single usually having the same sheet music and canvas of a parent album (but not always, some singles have B-sides). Some releases are old and deleted, but still have materials, some are to-come and may or may not have materials.

Sheet music takes 3-4 days per album, as do full videos (or a lot longer, depending on the time budget, one video can take a few weeks if required). Spotify Canvases take 1-3 days for an album, again depending on complexity. iTunes booklets one day or less, depending on the quality of the album art, how much I want to include. All together, this adds up to 1 or 2 full year's work; all on old albums. This drains time from new music, new art. In the past I've made these things for albums that have never been released, or were-so only for short periods; so those materials were of limited use. Of course, these things are stored, documented. They are an odd artform, as valid as any other.

This evening I've completed to booklets for Burn Of God and The Golden Age, so that's enough for now. I'll try to create new work next. Most pressing is a new song for the Bruce Springsteen night next Wednesday.

More Music Graphics

More music admin today. One last album of Spotify Canvas animations to convert, then work on creating iTunes Digital Booklets. Today created some for Cycles & Shadows and Cycles III, Secret Electric Sorcery, The Dusty Mirror and Fear Of The Thing Itself, A Drive Through The Town and it's two singles, and Burn Of God. For The Golden Age, I hit a snag in that I was never quite happy with the cover, so today, reworked it a little; yet those little changes, for me at least, made all the difference. Here are the two versions (so far...):

Subtle to most, but the red/green in the second seems to have brought the image to life somehow. That painting itself was always about battles between things; red and blue, lifelike and abstract, nature and artifice. Here the cover moves a little more towards the same. More booklets to do, but I'll do the last today and move on to more pressing creative matters.

We Robot Release, Huge Spotify Canvas Updates

A hugely busy day of non-stop computer admin. We Robot and it's single AI And Celebrity is moving distributor and appearing in new places. Due to my inexperience with the system, the iTunes Digital Booklet I've created for We Robot will not ship with the release, but there is a new booklet for AI And Celebrity. A future remaster (!?) can restore the booklet. I could include it with the Bandcamp release. This is a lesson for me to take more care when submitting. Both releases will, however, include high resolution audio on Apple, that is 24-bit.

Most of the day was spent converting my existing Spotify Canvas animations from 30 FPS and 240 frames to 25 FPS and 192 frames, to take them under 8 secs. I did confirm that their new system won't accept exactly-8-second animations. This, for me, involved editing each Argus animation, then re-rendering, recompiling the animations from scratch; this for Gunstorm, A Walk In The Countryside, The Modern Game, Masculinity Two, The Myth Of Sisyphus, Nightfood, Secret Electric Sorcery, Heart Of Snow, Remembrance Service, The Golden Age, and Burn Of God; 91 videos. It is/was exhausting work, charging through the conversion and rendering process.

I still have Cycles & Shadows to do, and more canvases to create, for the new Flatspace Soundtrack, and for the Excessive Consumption single. I also have lots of iTunes booklets to create, but my plan is to do those in small batches as needed.

Still, I'm elated at having done so much today. Onwards I must push.

Music Admin

A manic day of audio admin. For each album I want:
-Well volume balanced and mixed audio (though this standard is constantly upgrading!)
-Full CD artwork
-Jewel Cased CD release
-Sheet music
-Lyrics booklet
-iTunes digital booklet
-Spotify Canvases for each track
-A music video of some form for each track

For 40 albums, this is a lot of work, certainly over a year considering the time to takes for some of these jobs. Some jobs can be done more quickly though, and today I've created the iTunes booklets for We Robot, and updated the Spotify Canvases for that and the Salome album to fit below 8 seconds. Modifying the 10 album's worth of existing, but incorrect, Spotify Canvases is my next job, all because the Spotify limit of 8 seconds is now 'below 8 seconds'. Still, I prefer the 25 FPS, 192 frame format: 7.68 secs.

SFXEngine v2.06, Prometheus v3.67, Argus v1.53

A full day of programming here. First some updates to SFXEngine to add the new dithering support as included in the latest Prometheus. I discovered a small bug, forgetting that dithering could push values under/over -1/+1, so I limited that. Testing took all morning. Then, adding the limiting fix to Prometheus and a feature to increment names by text value, eg. "Chorus 1A" would be incremented to "Chorus 1B" automatically. A small improvement to editing ease.

Then, an afternoon of work on Argus. Lots added, including long planned lens-flare support, so I can now more closely replicate the Flatspace intro:

Lens flares were always there, but not turned on. I needed to make a few custom changes, like fixing them to the same aspect on any screen, and allowing some film-level options; in this case a global 'size' setting. The style of flare or its relative brightness can't be set (brightness is 20% of the object it is attached too). Those things are easy to add in future.

I also added accurate frame scaling. It turns out that many of my albums, 12 or so and 10-20 tracks per album (in other words 100+ animations), all have the 'wrong' Spotify Canvas length, but if made in Argus, these can be automatically scaled and rebuilt for 25 F.P.S. with relative ease. My second change was improving the rounding accuracy of this automatic frame scaling.

Then adding support for line-lists (like that Flatspace Tunnel) or point lists (though I have no point objects, and they may not render anyway).

That's it, a full day. Lots to test and file.