Nightfood Transcription Complete

Sheet music complete! I always underestimate the time and work this takes. I keep changing my standards, my style guide, which annoys even me and it makes all of the older scores invalid and in need of fixing, but these standards are written for a reason. Anyway, there are now 24 scores for this.

At 7pm, managed to proof the album. Two small changes were needed. Was reminded how much of a potentially huge hit 'Young, Attractive, And Physically Fit' is. I also noted that the CD version (of which only I have a copy, it's never been released) is different and better than the stream version, because the tracks blend into each other. The album is ready to split and file musically; the videos are the next big job.

Two busy days in Congleton beckon.

Nightfood Transcription Draft 1, Prometheus v396

Managed to complete the first draft of all of the Nightfood tracks yesterday. These are some of the biggest tracks I've transcribed; 'Burnout' for example had almost every part, only a few small effects like vast snare drums on the intro and some white noise effects were missing, but it has 14 parts notated including the drums. This took until past 8pm.

Woke early today and have been out with Deborah as it's her annual holiday.

Came back and updated Prometheus with a couple of new features which would have aided transcription. Two main things; first the ability to add kill events after a specific instrument rather than all instruments. Most notes don't need a kill (stop) at the end as they often decay naturally by an envelope, but for MIDI export these kill events are quite important otherwise notes are presumed to sustain forever. The new feature allows me to add a kill only to instruments which decay, and not those which sustain, on a track which has a mix of both.

The second feature concerns merging tracks, also something needed before transcribing. If two notes occupy the same time, merge will delete one and then inform me. This isn't very helpful. Now it will warn that a clash is occurring, point to where, and ask whether to proceed. This makes it easier to make adjustments before the merge.

My next step is to make lots of alternative score versions for each track. This, and the pdf conversion, publication etc., will take a day. The Nightfood remaster is nearly done... in this step, but it's a seemingly never-ending process. Making the videos is the next big job.

Nightfood II Transcription, Creating Art

Two days working on Nightfood II. Recorded a few harmony vocals for 'Plastic Superman' yesterday but ended up discarding 80% of them. Balanced more tracks. 'Theme From Burnout' sounds better than ever.

Today, the start of the sheet music transcription. It's faster and more thorough than ever before, thanks to the tools in Prometheus. The 'Dream of Wasps' has 13 instrument parts, 'Nightfood' 12. This is full transcription of so much of these complex songs; not the drums though, except for accents like tam-tams, cymbals etc. I tend not to score regular drums, perhaps because I'm not a drummer and have never had the need to desire to drum live. It can depend though. In this case, these epic songs are more orchestral in scope. Anyway, it's trivial to export drum tracks from Prometheus to MIDI if ever needed.

I digress. Much of the work today was manually entering the notes for guitar solos, and fixing up the loose piano and harpsichord solos. Both done on these two tracks, which are the most long and complex on the album. I need to add the chord symbols, which I like to do on every score.

I'll aim for two more scores tomorrow, but if I manage those by 3pm I may be able to fit in the remaining three.

After this album... then what?

Most artists create work because they are commissioned, they are asked, or they find a job and obey the client. If there are no clients or patrons, they may create something based on what sells, or what is popular, or what is acclaimed. I rarely have commissions for paintings or music, I love it when it happens, but people very rarely ask me to create anything. I sometimes sell paintings, I've sold a third to a half of everything I've painted, but hardly ever music, the listening stats are still dominated by ancient music like the Flatspace soundtrack, only because the game was and is more popular than the other things I've done. That music is nothing like my music of today (excluding general brilliance). Nothing is really 'acclaimed', I've not had any music reviews since before streaming existed, so my choices or what to create artistically are governed by myself. Hobby artists, those inspired and enthused, do this all of the time but it's perhaps rare for someone who has been creating full-time for many decades.

Still, in many ways this is the way to create the best art. Feedback, good or bad, can be unreliable, and we can't create with the aim of pleasing; this never works. Whether we are popular or obscure, we must be doing new things, and better than before, forward looking and pushing harder, to the maximum of our ability. I'd love to create something popular and acclaimed, a hit, but obviously only a hit I'm pleased with and proud of, like I am of Nightfood for example. Most of hit making is marketing, not connected with the quality of the content, and marketing is a factor of the social which I inherently struggle with.

Chord Code

Completed the complex instrument explosion code for Prometheus, here's a not very informative screenshot!

The top row of purple notes is a flute which actually plays a chord with each stab. The red notes below (3 tracks worth) are those notes, calculated and extracted from the notes above. The note calculation is different for each sound generating engine, there were about 30 which needed attending to, but overall this complex code didn't take as long as I'd expected. This should help hugely with certain types of sheet music transcription.

After that, updated my social media profile images with new ones for the new season of music, then more work mixing and toying with Nightfood II. The mix of the Burnout theme is the most tricky, but it's already far better than the first version.

Smile To Fall Video, Prometheus v3.95 Chord Explosion

A steady day of working on the video for 'Smile to Fall'. The song has a Gothic sort of feeling, and my mind upon hearing it filled with imagery of chessboards and black and white tiles, so I've made the video black and white and little more, not even glows. Black squares and white ones mask the simple film. A chessboard appears for the solo. The video is only of my simplest, yet it matches the initial plan. The highlight is perhaps the sheer smoothness of the movements due to Argus.

The subtitles presented a bit of a problem in that they change very quickly, so I needed to insert a rapid change. I've also updated the Spotify canvases for these songs. Then I updated the artwork for the Flatspace and Flatspace II soundtracks on Steam; the art there was out of date, a lower resolution than Steam uses today. It was also (worse!) not filed correctly with the album. I created the art for the up-and-coming Radioactive Soundtrack too.

Then, started work on a new feature for Prometheus to help with sheet music transcription. Sometimes an instrument plays a chord, it has several engines which each play a different note. This can make composing more efficient; one track for a chord instead of three, and it allows an effect (like distortion) to be applied to all three notes after they combine. This, alas, makes transcription of the music a huge headache though, if an instrument has three saw waves set to pitches of 0, 3, 7, then the note of C4 in the sequencer would play C, E, G, so I have to work that out by hand, note-by-note; and this is a simple case. Some chords use monotone samples, where the note is set not by the note in the sequence, but by the unity note in the sample list (which can vary hugely)... and some chords have 4, 5, or 6 parts! This process took about an hour just to notate the organ chords for 'The Eternal Dogma' in Burn Of God, so I want to program a feature to help with future transcription.

The new feature will seek every note in a track and 'explode' each element of the instrument across several new tracks, so the C, E, G notes as sounded will now appear in three tracks, exactly as they should. This will require specific coding for each engine, as each has different tuning settings, and there are differences between samples, analogue waves, and monotone samples; but this will help hugely for the tracks which use this form of chord.

Women And Wives Video, Cliff Richard, Marie Louisa Wain

A long sleep, close to 12 hours and many vivid dreams. I was watching a film, a dark and grainy black and white film in a square spiral-stair tower of concrete, something like an M. C. Escher print with a spattering of Ingmar Bergman. A group were ascending but it got darker and scarier, until it became near pitch black. They seemed to sense that they were ascending to hell, a place behind a distant door at the 'top'. They retreated and things grew lighter, but oddly, descent started to make things darker again after a certain point.

In another part of the dream I was shown a painting by ancient Blue Peter presenter Peter Purves, telling a friend that I knew he was a painter, and rather good, that I met him at an art group hosted by John Craven which I'd attended once or twice.

I awoke feeling slow and still somewhat tired. My throat is a little sore and dry, the October disease, this rawness which hits my throat and ears, upper chest when the days turn cold. I'd be tempted to think it was due to the dryness of central heating if we had any heating here, but it seems to be endemic.

I started work on the 'Women and Wives' video. My plan was to create animated masks to reveal the filmed components, then add a top layer of additive glow effects. This went to plan, a square pulses with the drum beat, this done by saving out a list of all of the frame numbers with a drum hit (exporting this list is a feature of Prometheus) then importing this as a list of Set Modulator events in Argus, each triggering the attachment of a modulator to the square's size. The same shape was duplicated in the glow track with a glowing object. The square slides side to side in a sine-curve, once every 300 frames. This is almost all of the video. The rest was done in AviSynth, first adjusting the lighting of the masked (revealed) parts, then inverting the mask and showing a dark grey outline of the video. For some reason, this plan was instant in my head before filming even began and it looked largely as planned.

So, this is complete. I have 'Smile to Fall' to do tomorrow.

I've been watching a Cliff Richard concert on television. He hasn't been 'cool' since the early 1960s, yet he's the epitome of a star and a brilliant singer. What is 'cool'? He is perhaps too nice, too passive, too smiley and subordinate for cruel society. Cruel society looks down on nice people; perhaps the element of 'nice' is designed to be looked down on, we smile and surrender, but what is polite or kind is oddly usurped, others leap upon the kind as 'weak' - an easy step up the ladder of hierarchy. We can tread on kind people for free, so despite their niceness, kindness, they are not seen as ideal citizens; unworthy because they paint themselves as such. When we are treated badly we want kindness, but when we are not, we want a degree of cruelty... a challenge which we can rise up to. So, perhaps Cliff is too nice to be cool again, and was cool only when rebellious. It was all down hill after ground-breaking rock song 'Move It'. Yet, star to the core he is. He can't escape his personality, nor can any of us. I loved his humour when he was jokingly mocked by Kenny Everett. Like any true artist, I hope he can and will keep going forever.

Last night I started to write a short song about Marie Louisa Wain, the sister of Louis who died in an asylum. I wonder if I can finish such a thing. If I manage it, it may be the only thing poor Marie has ever been given.

Women And Wives Videos and More Nightfood

Sigh, a couple of long days of hard work, to match the lifetime of similar long and hard days in isolation, poverty, and obscurity. Yesterday Deb came to film me for 'Women and Wives' and 'Smile to Fall', the single is out on Friday so I'd like a video. In these days of AI, which I largely hate and distrust, I think it's more important than ever to be 'real', to reject anything too digital or fake looking, so I thought that a plain filmed video of myself should be the core of both films. Deborah is a natural camera operator and photographer, she has a good eye.

I'll use Argus to mask and add top layers this week. Nightfood II is broadly mixed and complete. It's not vastly different, but the vocals are. My main job this week is to complete the Women And Wives videos.

Today was spent painstakingly rasterising the lyrics for this and the Nightfood tracks, creating them as images then making them appear in the correct places in the video using Argus. To add some interest and creativity, I've made the 'Nightfood' words yellow and shaky, anxious, matching the look of the words in the (unused) CD artwork, and the words of the 'Neon Sonata' (which I named the second half of the album) as glowing neon letters full of bounce and joy.

A new head of BBC news appointed today. Her salary is more than 200 times my income; not twice, not twenty times, but more than 200 times. How pointless I feel my life is. On my break at 3pm I saved the life of a honey bee which had fallen into the plate of water we leave out for the animals. So, to that bee, I at least made a difference.

I've started to watch the Louis Wain film again, this time with Deborah. It made me triply blessed to know and love her, and doubly blessed to have known and loved Cat. Louis Wain, Freddie Mercury, Myself, Deborah; we are cat people, we four, we happy four, we band of brothers, and sisters...

Nightfood II Vocals

Recorded all of the new vocals for the new Nightfood, so different from the first version. Rest of the day spend incorporating and mixing. The vast majority of the need for any re-takes are due to not exactly knowing the correct notes or correct words.

Nightfood II Begins

A full day working on the Nightfood remaster. First, making dubs for all new vocals. Most of the vocal tracks were mixed fine (so it seems, hard to know exactly until the final vocals are in).

Most of the day was spent remixing 'Young Attractive And Physically Fit' and the Burnout Theme, both of which were far darker and muddier than I'd mix today.

Burnout was tricky at the time. The key to mixing is often high pass, high pass, high pass! In a flat mix of infinite tracks we would have pink noise which is far too bass heavy, we want white noise, so just about everything is bass-cut (or high-boosted) to some degree. Burnout is tricky because it has a filter-sweeping constant sound, such sounds need containing, some strings, which are often constant, sometimes solo, and a piano. Pianos always need bass cutting. They tend to be sparkly in all dance tunes, but even in rock (like in most Queen songs), they're kept sparkly or tinny, above the guitars. Here I've used my Engram Firegate, a sort of 'fast duck' which monitors the piano sound and attenuates the strings and filter-sweep in proportion to the piano (and its echoes, which we also want). With only a 20% fade it makes a huge difference to the clarity of the mix without any evidence of the quieter other parts.

Young Attractive uses a similar trick on the vocoded vocal, such vocals are hard to hear at the best of times. I don't like using this effect much, the ideal is a mix which naturally makes way for every part, but it can work wonders, and the effect is ubiquitous in recorded music. It's not something I used back in ye-olde days of 2021 when I first made Nightfood. I had programmed the ancestor effect (Waterfade) by that time, then Watergate on 3 Oct 2022, which used a better formula, then the modern Firegate on 6 Oct 2024 which used normal millisec time slopes that are frequency independent. The 'water' versions used exponential multiplying gates which worked well enough but only in limited value ranges and were not quite as elegant as Firegate.

Dubs are ready, I'll need to wait until I have the time and space to sing the new parts. Can't wait!

Hello Autumn

Happy Autumn! A power day, like many October 1sts! My quarterly backups started the day, then de-clamping and varnishing the frames in progress, cutting glass and the spacer. My Toyo glass cutter has started to wain so I've ordered a new head for it. Plus, a trip out for supplies, and the announcements and promotion of the Steam Autumn Sale - all of my Steam software is taking part.

A good day overall. For me, this marks the official start of 'winter' and the start of music, writing and non-painting arts, the end of the 'summer' dominated by painting. The music jobs are already large. I need to make a video for Women And Wives, remaster and partly re-record (and notate) Nightfood and Remembrance Service, possibly create a Radioactive Soundtrack and a new Fall in Green single.

On we charge!

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace, Framing and Stains

A sleepless night of stomach problems, high blood pressure, and strange worries. I managed to dream, a strange quest which featured recounting reoccurring dreams of Arnold Schwarzenegger to a group, and being made fun of as a result! This may be related to the late night film of Mazed and Monsters, a rubbish Tom Hanks film from 1982 which is perhaps more of its time than any other 80s film, more 80s than Flashdance or Back to the Future or (the egregious) St. Elmo's Fire.

I also finished The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, an astonishing book. In most novels you are sure who the protagonist is, the character that the author himself/herself identifies with, the one the reader roots for and sees the world through; but this is subverted here. Of the other books I've read, this reminds me most of the haunting Hangover Square. I think both books will live with me.

Framing today as planned, for 'Can There Be A Refuge From The Terror?' and 'Love And Fragility In The Age Of Perfection'. In the past this would be most of the work of framing, but now I need to cut the glass, mounts, backing board, then measure, weigh, photograph, and record, so this step of sawing, decorating, and gluing is but the first step. The black frame was distressed with a lovely new wire brush, then stained with my diluted Golden Fluid Acrylic, a superb black. The other frame used Manns solvent-based red stain, which is no longer made - alas! All water-based stains I've tried have been terrible (apart from my Golden Acrylic). Morrells stain isn't as good as Manns was, but I hope to try a Mylands solvent stain. At least some people still make solvent stains. The old Colron solvent-based stain was brilliant; their current water-based ones are simply terrible.

A full day of backups tomorrow. My second biggest of the year as 6-months since the tax-year also includes some financial tasks. A time for reflection, a micro new-year.

Art Photography, Sheet Music Publication

A good day, starting with photography of paintings: 'All The Broken Hearted' and 'All Things Bright And Beautiful'. Then more work on publishing the sheet music on itch. Basic scores (generally at least one per track) are free, and extra ones are $2 each. Some albums only, or primarily, have these 'extra' scores, like the Salomé album, which has the music in print form.

I've also added the scores for a few single releases which have B-sides, for the Woman And Wives B-side, Fear Of The Thing Itself (pending), Excessive Consumption, AI And Celebrity. All apart from All Controlled By Someone (and it's B-side 'I Can Heal').

Most of the scores are way out of date regarding standardisation of various parts, but the standardisation will continue as I work on more albums. It's much more efficient to update them all when the last album is done (2027? 2028?).

Tomorrow I'll get to framing the two unframed works I've entered into Castle Park, as their acceptance (or not) of works is very close to the delivery date. Then on Thursday a full day of quarterly backups. In other news, it seems that the Fall in Green email problems have been fixed (pending testing).

I feel overworked but I'd much rather be exhausted than bored. There's always more to do, to document, to create, to discover. Onwards!

Burn Of God Scores Finalised

A full day finalising the Burn Of God scores, developing separate piano versions etc. For the most part I aim for a 'full' version of each track, with as many interesting or complex parts as possible, plus a 'piano version' with piano and main lead vocal, a 'piano melody' version which incorporates the vocal lead into the piano melody (something fun to play, not necessarily sing), and a basic version of the lead melody and chords (and non-lyrical elements if these will fit in a single stave).

Multiply these variations up and Burn Of God breaks down into 49 scores. Each album now seems to have more and more scores, but the crucial one is that 'full' one. I suspect that I'd get annoyed revisiting older scores and their few instruments, but I tended to aim for the full one and it's easy to make the lesser scores from that. This (and the final proofing and pdf conversion) is what I've done today.

There are a few single releases that have sheet music that is either unpublished (like 'Excessive Consumption Has Laxative Effects' and its B-side 'What Has Happened To My Dreams') or not notated at all yet (like 'The Games Played As Children, the B-side to 'Masculinity Two').

It's something of a mad obsession to work on these scores, but hopefully not quite the waste as the time and money that my father expended on his stamp collection or gambling, many thousands, probably tens of thousands, of pounds over the years. There are slight practical advantages to having the scores; there's no way I or anyone could perform this music live without them. It does help me learn the skills of music reading and writing, and it should add some layer of archival security to the music itself, especially if and when published in print. And, of course, it's the correct thing to do. From the dawn of records all music has had the sheet music published, and I must do this too if I am to act in a professional way. A week per album is not a vast amount. The time and work spent on an album makes each one a greater artwork.

Tomorrow, art photography.

Burn Of God Scores First Draft

Burn Of God scores finally complete in first draft - how long this takes! Also updated Prometheus with a slight improvement to a feature. Note events play a note, and 'tones' change the pitch without retriggering the note. Tones inherently lack an instrument, they change the pitch of whatever is playing. The option to covert Tones to Notes used to convert them to notes using the currently selected instrument, but really they should change to the currently playing instrument; so now this option does this.

I'll probably spend all of tomorrow finalising the scores. In the process of this I also update and refine the master Style Guide for scores, which means that many (most!) older scores are not as standard, not as polished as the later ones. It will take weeks of work to finalise and polish all of my existing scores one day.

Anyway, that's for the future. Once the B.O.G. scores are done I'll scan the last few finished paintings of the year, then it's quarterly back-up day on Thursday, then work on the next album remaster... and possibly a new Radioactive Soundtrack, and Tunnicliffe single.

Onwards we charge.

More Burn Of God Scoring

Yesterday's delivery went to plan.

A full day's work on the Burn Of God scores, 15 now done; 'Great Grandfather's Song', 'Confession', 'The Tree', and 'Lullaby' done today. Also changed the pricing on the scores on itch to $2 per score. Prior to this, most of the simple scores were free, with a charge for 'full' versions. A problem with this is that some albums only had one score, not simple/complex so the complete scores could be free. Some albums (like singles) had very few scores, some had lots, and some albums have complex and time consuming scores, for the more orchestral pieces. The simplest option is a fee per actual score supplied. Of course it may not be hard, one day, for others to work out these by ear, or using AI or in other ways, and perhaps today now nobody cares remotely about the scores whether free or not; but as the official publisher, my scores should be the definitive ones, and my work has value.

How this album needs new vocals! I can do so much better today; but I must wait.

Other jobs included filing and publishing the recent live events on my websites, memorising the early Roman emporers because I started to get them mixed up, reading about 'Melanie' who wrote the rollerskate-key song, and other planned distractions.

Wine, Women and Song, Prometheus v3.92

Day flown yesterday, dominated by the evening performance at the 'Wine, Women and Song' event at The Wonky Pear. Deb did a great performance of 'Harper Lee' by Suzanne Vega. My 'China in Your Hand' seemed to go down well but I think I could have done better.

Also did some chord notation for the Kyrie from Burn Of God. I updated Prometheus to v3.92. I added a feature to duplicate chord notes. If a chord, say CGE starts, then the G is later changed to A in the sequence, then we have an A-minor. It can sound prettier to 'glide' in the chord by only triggering the A, but it makes notation, seeing that as CAE, more difficult. The new feature would find that A and add the C and E in the track again, re-triggering the whole chord. This helps hugely when exporting to MIDI and viewing the chord.

I also added the inverse feature so that CGE then CAE would delete the latter C and E notes. In recent years I've started to trigger the whole chord every time, partly to make it easier to read and easier to transcribe, but with some sounds, like strings which flow and decay, it may sound better when single notes glide the sound from chord to chord. These options make it easy to switch between both.

Today, delivery of 'Punishment of the Sun' to Birmingham on the train. Only noticed at the last minute that white-painted mirror plates need to be fitted. It's nearly impossible to buy white-painted mirror plates. Fortunately, I have a small pack of some I've painted myself, although the paint work isn't brilliant. If I'm selected for the RBSA again I'll make new ones.

Lyric Book, China, and Other Jobs

Busy day yesterday. Managed to start the lyric book, made progress on the email problem. Visited the Crewe Create exhibition but spoke to nobody, a waste of my time, then some computer jobs for John. Practiced 'China in Your Hand', not too hard on the Microkorg, and printed and tried the chords on Deb's chosen song, 'Harper Lee' by Suzanne Vega. There's no music for it online but Google's AI suggested the chords, which appear correct.

I really need to make a 'Women and Wives' video. I've made a version of the song with a click track for more accurate lip-sync.

Now I have a bit of a raw throat, feels like the start of a cold. I hope not, this would be my first in years, and at the start of a busy few days; singing tomorrow, and the RBSA trip after that.

My to-do list is getting too small. Greater ambition needed.

Morecambe Poetry Festival 2026

Back, at last after a wonderful weekend and few days more at the Morecambe Poetry Festival 2026.

We left on Thursday at lunch time, arrived in Lancaster and took a taxi to Morecambe; a good way to travel by train as changing trains from Lancaster to Morecambe is a long wait and the place is only a few miles away. We arrived at The Kings Arms at 19:40 for our evening set, due at 22:30, but we already knew would be late... this is something of a theme for this fest, but the scheduled acts tend to run to time. Our pre-fest event was precluded by Janine Booth and Peter Buckley Hill, who had recently written a sonnet-a-day to match Shakespeare's count. We went on at 23:30 to a moderate but committed audience who remained at that late hour. Our set went to plan (and to plane, as our paper planes flew).

A casual open mic throughout the next morning led to the first official act of Robin Ince (and a packed out room), who we'd missed on previous years. Of all performers, Robin's interests and outlook were, are, perhaps closest to my own. He paid tribute to both Kenneth Williams and Elizabeth Sladen; something I'd also happily do. Perhaps Tom Baker's Dr Who runs deep as a cultural figure for those of my (our) generation. Even now he's in my dreams.

Well, I'll try cut a long story short, not let this blog-post become a boring holiday slide show. Let's think of highlights and unique moments...

Huge winds on the seafront causing ear-ache which lasted hours on Saturday, plus torrents of rain for a second year. Umbrellas useless, except for Deb's transparent dome, the only sort that works in a gale. My long leather coat and cagoule did a good job. Met many old friends, tenor and Newcastle giant Clark; Debra and her kin, Alan the metalworking stand-up in progress, Ryan the sound man. The 'word walk' was an organised event (by Anne of publisher Big White Shed, who was lovely; encouraging, an inspiration at our later meeting) that had different start times and placements in the programme to the website, but this error proved serendipitous as two groups met. We did our own word-free walk and met new friends in the process. It was nice to join Chris, who I met there, at a few events afterwards.

Each performer was inspiring in their own way. Henry Normal ever cosy. Kate Fox and Staithe performed poetry with (folky, acoustic) music, the only act close to ours. Although much simpler than us in words and music, both certainly improved the other and made it all much more engaging than it would have been. Nice to meet Rowland Crowland, a performer and poet less famous than John Cooper Clark, yet just as good in every respect. Brian Bilston was excellent, as was Nick Helm; a powerhouse. Katherine Ratzko and Deborah are two of the best poets I know; I could easily have become sexist otherwise as most of the female poets on the main stage were egregious.

This is, in a normal year, the few days where I become enthused by poetry, and for every act I thought 'I can do that!' - and 'I want to do that!' which is the essence of the fairy-candy-floss called inspiration. For me, it was also nice to escape the routine here, and stay with Deborah for few precious days. Our time when not there is so very fragmented, so very comb-toothed. In an average week we seem to share only a few hours together. Whenever we go to Morecambe, we think 'let's move here', 'let's live here', 'let's at last break free'. I love Morecambe and its people, and it's nice to see it slightly off-season. I expect such towns are very different in winter than summer, perhaps too busy for me in summer, perhaps too quiet in winter. I'm not even sure if there's a supermarket other than one Aldi (surely there must be!) and the precious internet and phone connections are apparently rubbish (noooo!).

Matt said that we, and Janine, and Peter Buckley Hill, can have full slots next year. That would be nice.

Now, back to reality. I want to finish my music notation. I want to make a book of Fall in Green lyrics. Ideally I'd make a music video for 'Women and Wives', but as you may discern, I'm already not feeling like it. The PRS seem to have rejected two prior performance payments; this worried me and I want to know why. The emails to Fall in Green, and all of my newly-server'd websites haven't worked in weeks and I've only just discovered this. I have to visit the Crewe Create exhibition, do a computer service for John, deliver 'Punishment of the Sun' to the RBSA gallery on Friday, perform 'China in Your Hand' on Thursday (oh, and learn to play it, I don't even know the music), frame 'Love And Fragility In The Age Of Perfection'... ideally all of this in 7 days.

Onwards.

Social Intelligence

Humans, as a species, are basically the same genetically as they were 100,000 years ago, yet we have changed massively in intelligence. We changed 20,000 years ago when nomads formed the first cities, and have changed, and become ever more intelligent in the last 200 years, and more-so last 100 years. There are far more geniuses alive today than in the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Each of us has far more capability, and at a pace far too quickly to be due to genetic evoloution. Why?

I posit that this is because intelligence is not personal but social, and specifically a factor of language and inter-communication. Our brain cells alone are not intelligent, it is their network which makes us so, and our human social network works in the same way to make society, not us individuals, intelligent. Today's animals and plants too are more intelligent than those of the past for this reason; they are part of our society. We can see that horses, for example, are trained by known and documented methods in a way that was not possible in ancient times.

Can we say that plants are today more 'intelligent' than before. In a way cultivation makes them so, even if they lack volition or much power over their environment, they are manipulated by us, by farmers and gardeners, because they give us something in return. It may be a stretch to describe this symbiosis as intelligence, but it is 'in a way', perhaps more of an intelligence than wild plants, those of 50,000 years ago.

Our electronic social media makes all of society yet more intelligent, for intelligence can also be measured by speed. Anyone can build a spacecraft with enough time, designed with pencils and paper, but speed grants us special abilities. Our speed of change and reaction is an essential part of the definition of intelligence, even in common parlance; 'quick witted' for example.

That intelligence is a factor of society, not of the individual is the ultimate retort to Nazism and intellectual elites. A small group of elites would, in isolation, literally be less intelligent than a larger mass.

Linen Lolly

Started today by adding a redirect for the old Fall in Green URL, as Google has yet to update it to the proper address, then design of some German 1920s hyperinflation-era bank notes with a Fall in Green spin for our performance of 'Velvet Gelt'. This alone took an hour and for a lazy fragment of time I considered using AI, but no! I want to avoid any use of it for digital art or in any connection with music. It was fun to do anyway, even if I accidentally deleted the source file just before printing and had to painstakingly re-create the layers.

Folded 30 planes in the afternoon and packed most of what's needed for the trip. It's always a time where I want two sets of shaving things, toothbrushing things, night lights! Looked at what we did and who we met last year and made notes. I expect I'll not have time for more work until after the festival.

Sixth Rehearsal, Burn Of God Scores

Final, 6th, rehearsal for the Morecambe Poetry Festival. It seems we're on at 22:45, the headline slot.

All went fine. Most of the day spent with a little admin on the single release, which is now all set for 9th October 2026, and tedious sheet music work, which always annoys me by its pointlessness and the time it takes, yet it does have some point.

The score for Kyrie is rough, all lack things like string strokes and many polishing touches. It has 6 choral parts alone (3 male, 3 female), 6 string sections, a pipe organ and more. It feels as epic as the Missa Solemnis or Brian's Gothic Symphony, and that was the aim, but of course it's very short and musically simple compared to those. It's taken hours of work on this basic score that will almost certainly never be performed or gazed at by anyone, which is one reason I resent working on it, but history is full of scores unperformed for decades or centuries. A first step is to write it out. I do it also because nobody else could or would. Of course, I'd now love to re-record the album, as I could do far better today, but Burn Of God can wait a good few years yet.

I'd hoped to complete the sheet music for the album before we go to Morecambe but this seems unlikely. I'm stressed, overworked by it all, and not sleeping, but it will feel good to complete it.

I've completed 632 scores since I began this mammoth project of documenting my music in 2022. I'm past half way, and extrapolate a finishing date of 2029.

WAW Music Admin

Mostly admin work on Women And Wives today, including completing the Spotify Canvas animations. Still more to do on this. No work on the Burn Of God sheet music. Watching a documentary about Buddy Holly, an eternal inspiration.

BOG Scoring Day 2

Another tedious day of scoring. Got down the complex 'The Ethereal River' and 'Epilogue'. Will anyone, can anyone ever play them? They are useful references anyway. I hope one day to publish in print all of my scores, so this is a necessary start.

Also rehearsed our Morecambe show, our 5th rehearsal, the second with full props and intros.

Burn Of God Scores

Gosh what a hard day. On my to-do list for the year is to score Burn Of God. I want to score all of my albums, and do this now for new ones. I've done over half of the older ones, but not this. I last updated the music in 2022, but of course I can now do much better, primarily in the mixing, balancing, mastering area, and vocals of course, as my singing has continued to improve. I digress.

I thought I'd scored all of the most difficult albums, those with live piano or orchestral parts. This includes Music Of Poetic Objects, The Anatomy Of Emotions, Cycles, Tree Of Keys; but many of the Burn Of God tracks fit this. Some of the tracks use 'expressive' piano with little sense of timing, tracks like 'The Eternal Dogma' and 'The Dark Nightwatchman'. Today I'd record and sequence these differently... using the 'lined up' timing as mentioned in a recent blog post. This makes transcribing much easier. 'Smile to Fall' could simply be MIDI exported, despite its expressive timing, but not these, and the chords were often embedded into single instruments. This too makes transcribing very slow. I need to hand calculate each note being played.

Sigh, well, after an 8-hour day 'The Eternal Dogma' is done, and most of 'The Dark Nightwatchman'. These are some of the most difficult tracks.

I've spent days, weeks of my life making this sheet music. There's zero 'demand' for it. I offer basic sheet music for all of my music for free on itch, with a small fee for the 'complete' versions, but even most of the basic versions have has zero downloads; and yet I spent weeks, months of my life transcribing it. Sometimes these have been very useful, when needing to play something live, and of course, there's little demand for anything I do. Nobody pays me for anything, so if no master calls the tune, I'm free to do what I like. Life is about order and record keeping, so I'm ordering and keeping records. It will be a joy to get this one complete and out of the way.

Women And Wives Cover and Admin

A full day of work on the endless admin of releasing a piece of music. First photography for the cover, and an hour or two of cover artwork. I spent ages working on a complex draft that aimed to match the futuristic, electronic sound of the music; and added pink!

And yet, I kept a much simpler, early draft, and after hours of working on the above looked again at the early version and preferred it. My recent purchase of The Polydor Years by Peter Godwin, and its artwork, perhaps inspired the lighter look. Many of his covers were photos with text, little else.

Other work today includes finalising the 'Smile to Fall' sheet music, registering the track as a composition, finalising the text notes and storing the image as an artwork, and starting the Spotify Canvas animation work. Ideally I'll make a video... this may have to wait.

Nine Eleven, Smile To Fall Vocals

25 years ago today I was working on the font designs in Imagine for my epic game concept, 'The Heart of Aorkhan'. My father called me downstairs to the news of the World Trade Center attacks. The shape of those letters on the gridded background and specific colours will always remind me of 9/11. The only game of mine that had been published then was 'Burnout' on Amiga, a flop for the world, but a triumph for me. 'Blade' then 'Arcangel' existed, both failures. It was 2002, after the year-long trawl of trying to make Aorkhan that I decided to quit and make some small games, and publish and sell them myself. That marked the first time I'd ever sold games or got anything back from them after 10 years of making games in isolation and complete failure. As well as starting to sell my games, I set up Bytten, the game review website, and IndieSFX, my sound effects library. 2002 was my great year of transformation, rebirth.

In 2001 I'd not painted a thing. My music software Noise Station was in its infancy. My prior music attempts used keyboards, first an Ensoniq ESQ-1 I'd bought from the music shop on the corner of West Street, Crewe, long since gone. I recorded a few tunes to cassette, driven by MIDI and OctaMED software. After the ESQ-1 I bought a (new at the time) Yamaha SY-85. I used the SY-85 to record the music for Arcangel, and the first version of the album later named Synaesthesia. This was perhaps 2000 or 2001. After this I decided I needed better control, so I programmed 'Noise Station', and produced The Incredible Journey and the first Spiral Staircase album using it. Perhaps, though, again 2002 was the start of my longer music journey as this was the year I started to program Noise Station 2, later named 'Prometheus', the software I've updated 191 times since to use for all of my music today.

For me, everything has changed since September 2001. The fast majority of my life seems to have existed after then, but a few things have stayed the same, such as my friend Andrew Williams. The late 90s, 1997 or 1998 perhaps, marked my crisis year, the year the Amiga died and when I was forced to buy a PC, buy books on C++ programming and DirectX5, and start again, learn from scratch. I had less than £200 to my name, no friends, no job, no future. I decided to kill myself and made full preparations, but at the last moment reasoned that I may as well wait until the money ran out completely first, which was perhaps 2 weeks away. I extricated myself from Income Support, the government benefit, and vowed not to touch a government benefit again. By some magic, I started to gain some income, drop by drop. I can remind myself that every dark year can be a restart. I can only hope that the next 25 years will be as bright as the last 25.

I spent most of yesterday on the Women And Wives single, recording the vocals for the 'Smile to Fall' B-side, then mixing and finalising that song. The singing and mixing was easier than expected, perhaps I'm better at mixing this style of songs today. I also transcribed the music to sheet. All that's left now is the cover art. I won't need booklets or CD artwork as this will be a stream-only release.

After two busy days I'm tired and slow today. Listening to a Radio 4 programme about 9/11 where survivors recall that day has made me reminisce. Time is precious and life is short.

Rehearsals, Smile to Fall Recording

Another rehearsal yesterday for the Morecambe performance, this time with full props. I think this is a lot of work for a short show, but Deb has a lot to remember and do, this is primarily for her benefit. For many performances I'll read from the music at least a bit, but this time I'm doing it all from memory to save the need to carry a music stand.

Today, recorded a few tracks for a song of Mike's, all good practice at the key of A. I then learned and re-notated 'Kingfisher's Handcup', which was pretty easy to play for the album but difficult to match live.

Then recorded the piano for 'Smile to Fall'. Prometheus can do a few unusual things, one is help with the timing of tracks like this. Recording a MIDI piano to metronome of say 120 B.P.M. is fine, but most actual playing is expressive and deliberately doesn't stick to a fixed metronome (in fact this is a curse of modern music, even my march of 'Women and Wives' is not strictly regular). As a consequence a recording will load into a sequencer and not line up right, some verses will be slower/longer than others, some beats longer or shorter, but this is 'correct', it's not something that should be or can be quantized because this expression is the whole point - but it creates a few problems when trying to line up other instruments; and of course it can't match the actual structure visually. Prometheus can import a pile of notes and treat these as a tempo guide, slowing or speeding up the player so that all of the notes line up and match the visual structure, thus giving a regular looking arrangement when the music moves at a different pace. I can also quantise notes to this 'expressive' metronome, some ticks of which might be half or double a regular tempo (if we're playing really romantically).

This is a huge help. It does mean, however, that I must play a guide version of the tune with one note per quarter-beat, the left hand marking time. I'd always need some sort of metronome. I could (and have before) hit a note repeatedly like drum-beat for this purpose. Well, 'Smile to Fall' is now recorded like this (the music is easy to play), and I've added a fretless bass and some strings, which are pretty but perhaps overkill for this simple song. It's a very gentle piano song, like an early Kate Bush song, or 'Is This The World We Created...?' by Freddie Mercury.

So, a musical day. More to do.

H Beam Piper and Empty House Framing

A few busy days. First completed the mixing of 'Women and Wives', it's now ready but I'd like to record 'Smile to Fall' as a B-Side. Spent yesterday morning filing and sorting some of the MIDI sequences on the MODX, all notes and ideas.

Today, delivered the two paintings to the PLATFORM gallery for their open, a walk of a mile or so, each painting weighing about 5kg, so something of a workout. Almost all of today though, and half of yesterday was spent framing the H. Beam Piper painting and 'The Empty House'. I've spent more time than usual here. Carefully selecting the woods and sections. Sanding before staining. Distressing and staining (a little distressing of the pine really helps the stain absorb, the result looks much better). Staining, then planing of 'The Empty House' one, but planing the bevel first on the other.

H.P.B. had black then red on top, creating a rich dark red which it enhanced on the grain, as the water-based black and solvent-based red absorb differently. This was varnished twice, sanding between coats, then the inner edge masked and sprayed with a subtle gold, exactly what I was aiming for. T.E.H. used brown stain, then red-shade-blue which resulted in a black with a very subtle green tinge. After staining the bevel was planed, exposing the pine, then the lot stained blue again, notably making the inner bevel blue. I wasn't sure how this would look, but it suits this night scene brilliantly.

Then gluing the frames, stapling, glass cutting, the spacer, backing board, labels, mirror plates, string, and finally measuring and weighing. Oh, I also gilded part of Beam Piper; the top left corner had an annoying gap where gold should be.

A frantically busy day then, but satisfying. I still have to photograph both frames.

Women and Wives Production, Smile To Fall

Mostly working on my cover of 'Women and Wives' today. Yesterday I updated Prometheus to v3.91 with a new feature to change the instrument on a range of notes to any at random between two values, and added the inverse function: to change a range of instruments to a specific one. This was because this song uniquely uses many 'random' bass-drum sounds.

Recorded the vocals today. This was a little harder than expected as I first needed to match the actual vocal melody. For my live 'Wonky' performance I used my own melody because I was primarily focused playing the chords, I didn't listen to the actual melody much. Interestingly I matched it in a line or two anyway. Anyway, today started by notating that. I thought the vocal takes were instantly fine, but tonight when listening back they sound flat and bad so I'll have to try again.

The production ended with a piano sound, a D-minor chord stab and reverse piano at the start to drive this steam-train of a rhythm. The mixing has proven difficult. I had two basses, the buzzy synth bass and a fretless bass because the synth was too thin, but I couldn't quite get it right. In the end I removed the fretless bass and beefed up the synth bass more, so this is the only bass now. The chords use filter sweeps, which sound good and rich, but these can often cause mixing awkwardness and the mid-range richness competes with the vocals.

For the vocals I added a 2 second (4 beat) echo, and a fast Heartbreak-Hotel echo too, which worked well. These are switched off the for the dramatic 'Chasing Tomorrow' line, which drops to near silence.

But there's more to do. I wrote a new song last night, a possible B-side for this release. I've adopted a few McCartney-isms. I'll repeat the first verse at the end, and mentally hummed the melody first to keep it simple and memorable. It starts in C-minor but plays with jumping from G to F in the pleasing chorus, before plunging back to C-minor for the key dramatic moment. Here are the words so far:

Smile To Fall

In the ballroom
Everyone is waiting for her
Black silk ravens
Everyone is waiting for her
Smile to fall
They're waiting for her
Smile to fall a-

Sleep on rainbows
Life is harder than your childhood
Sometimes fate can
Wave its wand and blow away a
Smile to fall
They're waiting for her
Smile to fall away

In the ballroom
Everyone is waiting for her
Black silk ravens
Everyone is waiting for her
Smile to fall
They're waiting for her
Smile to fall away

Other news. I've been notified that 'Punishement of the Sun' has been accepted into the RBSA Prize Exhibition, so my 4th juried exhibition this year. We, as Fall in Green, were mentioned along with the rest of the Morecambe Poetry Festival line-up by Matt on his Morecambe radio show, which was nice. At 2pm today, Deb came by for a third rehearsal of our set.

Onwards we march.

Good Vibrations, Women and Wives

Mike kindly gave me a lift to the Good Vibrations event yesterday. We normally attend every 4 weeks, the event takes place every 2, but Deb happened to be free which caused me to ask about attending; it was this which led to Deb's suggestion of a lift, so a somewhat unexpected participation. It was a nice event, as ever.

I've spent most of today working on a recording of 'Women and Wives', my cover of the Paul McCartney song in the form performed at the Wonky Pear, but I'm unsure if I'll bother releasing it. It seems, according to Emubands, I can do this relatively easily if I submit it to streaming-only services. My main reason for releasing it would be to test this exact mechanism.

My melody is a little bit different to the original, but I think close to be considered it the same song, 100% McCartney's, even if I added the solo that I think the second 'chorus' will benefit from. I wouldn't care at all at 'gifting' ownership of that, with the hope he wouldn't be offended at what I might do to his work.

Backups, Frame Photography, Gravestone Code

A routine busy day of monthly backups, then photography and weighing and measuring 5 paintings in frames. I have a scan or photograph of (just about) each painting I've made, but I also ideally want a photo of the work in its frame, plus all measurements and weights. I have much of these data and tend to take it when I need to exhibit a painting, so did a bit of this today, photographing 'Penalties', 'Punishment Of The Sun', 'The Lady With The Unicorn' (from 2006, which has been on my wall for 20 years but not on the website), the first Claire Luce portrait, and 'Home Life'.

I also updated my will and developed a new code which I'd like to put on my gravestone to tax any future cemeterians. The code is simple to decode, even mentally, when you know how the code works, but fiendishly difficult when you don't. I've not encountered a code quite like it, so I thought setting a puzzle would be fun. The message will indicate the location of a treasure, and I already have in mind what this will be and approximately where. Hopefully it will be a few decades before this is required.

All The Broken Hearted Complete

A night of worries, about the sudden crisis in my father's heath, the care costs and perhaps losing our home. His health is better today, perhaps he over exerted himself yesterday.

Of dreams, I recall a few things. At one point David Lawton was painting a miniature, showing me his process. Wearing magnifying glasses he used a single pubic hair for the finest of details, but seemed embarrassed at using a pubic hair, recommending only 'a single hair' and hiding away the one he used. I also dreamt that shares in a diamond mine which I owned shot up by £20,000, though this only enough to nearly break-even after years of being deep in the red. The feeling was one of neutrality, not joy of making money, not sad at losing; a shrugging of shoulders. Perhaps this is an indicator that worries can be baseless, that all will be, or can be, well.

I painted today but it was a chore and horrible. The first session was so very dark and rainy, and my mood low and anxious. I had to put the light on just to see, and at 10:30 had to run to the shops for house shopping as my mother is now too strained and too busy looking after my father for such things. I did so, one mile there and back in 30 minutes, and the sun appeared as I returned for the next session which was much better. The feathers were difficult enough without the darkness and anxiety.

Things, the light, my mood, gradually got better while painting and the result was adequate, thus the Heartbreak Trilogy is complete. Where to show it? Will it be seen at all, by anyone? I must at least prepare for it, so I must aim to make three frames.

Back to Painting, All The Broken Hearted

Gamer night last night. I've been lacklustre and distracted in August regarding painting compared to July, for a few reasons. The weather has turned duller and cooler, and I've had a few performance dates; the Macca Night, and rehearsals for Morecambe. Plus, I felt that the painting season was coming to an end, a grass-is-greener gaze towards music, but perhaps also a tiredness and general lack of drive for painting after many constant months of it.

Seeing my friends reminded me of how important art and painting is. I found myself in the night hours comparing my life with that of artists past at my age, Vermeer and van Gogh; Rembrandt and Beethoven. Life is short. Their lives a struggle in various ways, as is mine, yet art has a great power over time, over death. I suddenly became enthused with painting again, and decided to work on the paintings in progress today, starting with 'All The Broken Hearted', so for a rare time began a glazing day with enthusiasm.

The colours were simple, mostly burnt sienna and ultramarine grey-blues and browns, with yellow ochre light (a superlative colour by Winsor and Newton which I've used in almost every painting), and a few minor others like reds and greens for small areas.

My father's illness is difficult to manage and he fell twice today. Mum talked about care concerns, selling the house and other terrors, but these worries are I think excessive for now. An assessment of his needs is due.

Macca Night, Stockport, Exhibition Entries

A ram-packed Paul McCartney tribute night on Thursday. A great night of great music. My rendition of 'Women & Wives' went well. I'm inspired to record it as a cover, as my version is sufficiently different. This project has filed my mind but there are challenges. I'd like to play lots live, but I only have so much space for huge recordings, one track per song really. It's not so much a memory issue as ultimate storage space, I don't want to store massive songs because I have a large quantity of output, it's not efficient. The backing is quite repetitive so it makes more sense to sequence it. I've already created a few sounds on the MODX, I may sample those or re-create them again in Prometheus. I played it live with a heavy saw-synth bass on the Microkorg and it was a challenge to duplicate (well, a close copy) on the MODX.

I prepared an equally ambitious synth version of 'Live and Let Die', but there was no time on the night. A pity, as all songs bar one were Beatles songs, only mine and one other was a McCartney solo song, and there were no Wings songs. I hope to play 'Live and Let Die' at a future Good Vibrations event. Here's a photo by Deb of the 'Hey Jude' finale:

Slow days between. I feel lacklustre and not in a visual art mood. I've updated my websites today, and the IndieSFX licence, to explicitly exclude the use of sounds for AI training. The old licence (and all of the sounds) pre-date generative AI. I'm spending time each day tinkering with the MODX, making new sounds here and there, but this is often time wasted. When writing a new song it's best to think of the sound needed, then make it, rather than make a sound and then write a song with it.

Half of yesterday was spent going to Stockport to collect the 'Song of Innocence' painting. I've heard that two paintings have been accepted into the first Crewe Create Open Exhibition. Also, the biggest tribute website to H. Beam Piper, zarthani.net, has added my new portrait to it today. This has inspired me to contact a few other Beam Piper enthusiasts.

Telepathic Day 2, Rehearsals

A second half day of glazing the Telepathic Daisy painting yesterday, then treated the oak Blood of Winter frame for woodworm. There's no indication of woodworm apart from a few ancient holes, this is a preventative measure for the hardwood frame after advice from Zoe from the Oil Art Advisory.

Today, a second Fall in Green rehearsal for the Morecambe Poetry Festival set, and for the Paul McCartney night tonight. I decided at the last minute to have 'Live and Let Die' in reserve, so quickly looked and played/sang that through. I noted that in this and 'Women and Wives', the song ended with the first verse and chorus repeated, and Hey Jude too for the most part (the coda replacing the chorus repeat).

I'm also helping a lot with my father's name change. Everyone calls him Damien, buth this is his middle name and he's decided to make to removal of his unused first name official as he got really annoyed at its use during his recent hospital visit. This is causing me and my mother lots of work and stress for what we consider to be a trivial matter. Not a huge job, but lots of little jobs that take up and break up each day over several weeks.

Telepathic Daisy Glazing

A slow and difficult day. Glazed the sky part of the Telepathic Daisy painting but made many clumsy mistakes in my room including dropping the ultramarine, causing it to eject a line on the carpet like the result of a lunar meteor strike! This stain is now a permanent mess. I didn't at any point feel like painting, my energies here are slowing off, but I must and will continue until the season ends.

I mixed up some test wood stain but the ethanol I bought for the purpose didn't at all dissolve the oil paint I'd planned for this! I need bottles to test different solvents. I'd fully expected the paint to dissolve easily and quickly. I regret buying the ethanol at all. I should have bought either isopropynol (which I've used often and know to work well as, for example, a Laropal A81 solvent), or methylated spirits. I expected the denatured ethanol to be meths, but it's not.

Made a new sound for some of the Fall in Green tracks, how I love my MODX! 'We Used To Store Sunlight' has strings on the lower part for the left hand backing, with a wind-chime for the lowest note for occasional accents. There's a triangle-wave arpeggio on the upper octave which matches the one in the recording, and a melodic lead of a flute for the right hand. A press of the AF1 switch and the flute switches off and a piano appears for the second half of the song. If I light AF2, I get a second piano an octave higher for the initial piano appearance. It's a full orchestra at my fingertips!

Rehearsed for the Paul McCartney night and made some financial moves. A frustrating day that felt terrible at all times, yet I can see that there are positives. Nobody knows, in the long term, whether a day is good or bad. Things done today may be crucial to success in ways that only hindsight can determine.

Live Music Rehearsals

Today, rehearsed my songs for the Paul McCartney night on Thursday, and for our Fall in Green set for Morecambe, a full day for small performances. The McCartney song I chose, Women and Wives, is piano based but I only have a puny (in range and polyphony) Microkorg, so I've decided to do a synth version with distorted saw-bass playing a riff almost like a doom version of 'Smoke on the Water'. A fitting alternative version.

The Impossible Hopes Of Sisyphus Tracing, Aspirations of Brilliance

Frame completed yesterday. The painting is now framed, but ideally I need a (very large) backing board for the frame. I can't afford it.

Today, a full day tracing the large Sisyphus painting. This is close to the largest painting I can manage without upgrading certain pieces of equipment. Over 1200mm, I'd need a larger drawing board, and spend more on the Polydraw film, as it's width is 1016mm (of course, this can be the shortest side, but that is a bit wasteful, in this case I used a shorter 841mm roll, but there's not much left on that). So, 1010mm is a reasonable maximum for longest side. 'The Impossible Hopes Of Sisyphus' is 1097x740 visible, the canvas is 1117x760.

For these works on Top Gun canvas I trace with the Polydraw and use oil paint, pencil won't stick to the waxy canvas. I used a new technique today, applying the paint with palette knife which was far faster than the subby brush along each line. It still took several hours to trace, but not as long as some works. I recall 'The Art Of Painting' taking many hours spread over 3 days to trace. This is of comparable complexity and took about 4 hours.

I feel artless and uncreative. My instincts and cries are all for music. It's a tragedy that the things I could make are being lost; this feeling last night inspired me to work on the painting today. It's a tragedy that the things I am making are being lost or unseen or unheard or ignored.

I feel I could do better, that everything is weaker than it could be. Every time I finish a painting, a piece or music, a piece of writing, it seems far worse than planned, far worse that I feel I am capable of doing. It instantly becomes a failure, yet that shame of failure generates an inspirational energy. The anxiety of the failure induces an aspiration to make the artwork again, or make something new, something similar, something better, and trying to do it as well as I'd planned, as well as I know that I can; and yet everything I complete generates the same feeling, that it's good or bad, but never as good as planned, and I'm again filled with the shame and knowledge that I can do far better.

Today I'm tortured by that feeling constantly. That everything is a failure and yet simultaneously know that I'm capable of much more, much better, if only I could somehow prove it.

Two days ago I watched a film called The Killings At Outpost Zeta by Robert Emenegger, a man who is perhaps the Ed Wood of the 1980s. Actually, from what I've seen, his films are worse than Ed Wood's. 'Zeta' is a cheap copy of Alien that is so immensely bad that it borders on hilarious, though it's usually more boring than scary. By chance I've also seen Beyond the Universe, which is perhaps the worst film I've ever seen, yet so bad I just had to keep watching. In that film, the Earth is running out of oxygen. The government plan on sedating everyone to save oxygen, but the 'world's best scientist' decides to overrule their plan and build a giant laser-gun-like weapon to beam a message beyond the universe to 'God', to ask him for advice (that's right, asking God for advice was his entire plan). I mention these films because no matter how bad I feel that my art is or has ever been, it is still at its worst far better than either of these films.

Punishment Of The Sun Frame

A day of making the frame for 'Punishment Of The Sun'. A complex work, as the edge has to be bevelled and gilded, something I've rarely done, and not yet on plain wood like this. First step was working out the bevel depth. It's a matter of angling the wood lengths on the worktop and running along the sharp edge with a power-plane. Then planing that edge and sawing the 4 pieces by hand using a floorboard saw an an old iron mitre. The sizes were calculated using my Frameculator software to spare me the mental working out each time.

Then distressing and staining the frame. It's much easier to paint (sponge) each length before assembling the frame. I chose the colour to match the somewhat dried and cracked buddleja wood in the painting.

Then masking off the bevel and applying gold size and gold leaf.

Then peeling it off. The edges of the gold are a little rough. This can't be helped unless the gold is trimmed with a blade, it's impossible to get a 'perfect' edge. Often this roughness, and marks and gaps in the gold, is simulated on painted frames. The edge is rougher here because I didn't apply a framer's gesso ground beforehand, but I didn't want to; that's a whole extra layer of work, a few extra days.

I'll let the gold dry properly overnight. I have a few options for that rough edge. I could leave it (I'll tidy the gold a little when the oil is dry, rubbing it smooth now would create a sticky mess). I could add paint, or tape, more distressing, or a host of options. All of this took until 15:30. I'd often make a few frames in a day, but have none planned for the moment. I try to frame as needed now as unframed paintings take up less space.

Trips and Outfits

Three busy away days complete! Yesterday, collected a new lot of wood for framing - my next job is to make a frame for 'Punishment Of The Sun'. Then, a trip to the Good Vibrations event in the library followed by an overdue visit to the Oil Art Advisory. I took along the recently completed Kafka portrait and it was immediately hung on the wall. I wore more interesting clothes for the day and feel I should do this more. Couture fashion has always been part of art and is an important part of every artist as well as every art movement. My outfit, I think, improved Good Vibrations, made it feel like more of a special performance by all.

I'd like a head mould for my head so I can make custom hats...

Most of today was tidying and completing admin work for the past three days, plus an update to my framing software Frameculator, adding various preset sizes of wood, as I now often use two specific sizes.

Trips

Trip to Macclesfield yesterday to have my father's First Day Covers valued. Today, a coach trip to Gloucester. We met Kev Milsom, a long time writer for Ink Pantry.

Impossible Hopes Of Sisyphus Composition

A rubbish day of nothingness yesterday but I did manage to add social-media link 'previews' to my websites. My father arrived back from hospital. My mother is adjusting to becoming a full time carer.

Today, a full day's work on the Sisyphus painting, refining the outlines and adding more. The 1/3rd scale drawing was really useful for working things out. Another little job was woodwork, expanding two of my drying rack arms to permit much larger paintings, so another aid to painting large. I like this scale.

The next three days will be hectic with trips, so no free time until Thursday, which is set for lightning storms. I expect I'll need that day to rest.

Anti Digital Counter Culture

Listening to Stuart Lee's Radio 4 programme about Counter Culture. Thought it odd that he didn't comment on populist politicians being the modern rebels against the mainstream. I digress.

Stuart said that he hated the internet, and I thought yes I do too! - yet I have social media accounts, many websites which I use actively and enjoyably as an archive of my life, and I browse news and check my emails regularly. I hate computers, but love my computer too, it's the first thing I switch on every day. I use my software Prometheus to create music, even though it steals away some humanity from the result. I use digital photography and image processing tools to create my art, even though they steal expression too. What do I dislike? The easiness perhaps. Perhaps I remain embittered at the theft of so much of my life to those things, my decades of sole computer focus, my years wasted on making games (and a good many hours playing them).

Yet, does this mean I love the non-computer aspects of life and art? Not especially. Perhaps the digital world was appealing because it felt better than the real world.

Could I make music non-digitally now? I'd have to buy a tape machine, I expect, but I expect that I'd want or need a multi-track machine, and a mixing desk. Perhaps those things are already a bit 'digital', a bit easy and computerised, a bit controlled and artificial. Perhaps the only pure and organic way to create music would be play live and record the result in one take, or better still play to a live audience alone. Would this feel more satisfying? Perhaps, perhaps not. The music's record as a memory would be transient. The goal of life is resilience, and computers give us better informational resilience. Some aspects of the internet are not resilient, but some things are more resilient by being online. Computers and the internet are hard to ignore today. So much of daily use, official use, demands it. I had to pay £4 extra for real paper train ticket because I don't have or want a smart phone.

In painting I could paint from life. Ignore scanning my drawings, digital photographs, 3D graphics, AI tools. I could make clay models, as I do, and paint exclusively from those, or from my mind's eye. Would electric light be acceptable? Would the Amish of art paint by candle light? These pure results might be better for being more self-expressive, and occasionally I improvise paintings in similar ways, although I often use 2D reference material, like the portrait of Telly Savalas. I tend to be unhappy with the muddy results. These sometimes form a template for a new painting with clearer source material, as in the first Fly In Amber painting, as in the Sappho painting, and so the cycle begins again.

Ultimately, I use technological tools as any other tool: to make a better quality result. Without the internet or computers I'd probably find other aspects of 'real life' I'd dislike. There's a lot of technological interference in a lot of the music and art I like, but it must be a balance decided upon by the artist. Music from the 1950s to today hugely differed in tone by decade primarily due to technology. The muddy mid-range clang of the 1950s. The 'clean' low bass sound of the 1980s. The compressed and constantly loud sound of the 2000s. Perhaps now, we have control over this. We can sound like the 1960s-era Beatles if we want, but few, if any, artists do. Thousands strive to copy their song writing, none strive to have the same limited gamut of tone. We all want to sound like the future. If there are Amish artists, the key question isn't how but what do they depict? Perhaps both how and what have always been inextricably linked.

Impossible Hopes Of Sisyphus Begins

Work yesterday and today on 'The Impossible Hopes Of Sisyphus'. This was to be a small painting, a mere 40x30cm or less, as I thought the idea slight, but when working on it started to like the idea and saw more of an epic scale, so it's become one of my largest paintings at 109cm wide.

Due to the scale, I've used an involved and time consuming process of scaling up the 4cm idea sketch to a 1/3rd mock-up, then scaling that up using lots of A4 tracing sheets to the final drawing size, actually on the verso of the Lyceum Centenary painting from 2011.

There are numerous figures, each a different time snapshot of eternity. The visual themes are the boulders and scythes, for death and time (Kronos). The painting is ultimately about stoicism and the Sisyphean existentialism, the emotion melancholic, grave, accepting the eternity of work.

Live Music Settings Day 2, Solar Eclipse

A full and good day. Completed the admin of the 5 Fall in Green albums, noting live settings for each track. Then printed and practiced the new music for the Morecambe show, and developed a few new instruments. Then got to work on my albums, which also took a while. I remember performing quite a few We Robot tracks, and some A Drive Through The Town, and Secret Electric Sorcery! All in all, quite a few tracks needed noting, and I designed a few new MODX sounds for future live events (if there ever are any).

I made a crude eclipse viewer box for tonight's 90% eclipse. The results were rather poor, but I managed to glimpse the sun. The best shot was pointing my camera directly at it with minimum lighting settings (1/4000sec, F25, ISO100).

Websites still being set up. The new cornutopia.net, my first test site, is live!

Frame Photography, Live Music Admin

Started by photographing the newly framed paintings, plus singing practice. This took all morning. Then work on the Morecambe performance. I had hoped to rehearse, but 3 or 4 pieces haven't been performed live so I don't have the sheet music or know which instruments to use. Until now, I've recorded instrumentation and settings for each song we perform in the script, the set-list, for the show, but it's been a year since our last show, and I didn't, by chance, note those settings then, perhaps because they were relatively trivial and all on the MODX (no multiple keyboards).

Still, this was a wake-up call. It makes much more sense to store live performance information with each album, not with each performance event. We performed some tracks live many times, Janus Never Blinks, for example, and often used different instruments per performance, the P105 piano and a tubular bell first, and sometimes the little RefaceDX, but now the MODX almost exclusively; but what if we need to perform it again and need to see how we did it last time? It's a matter of looking through countless scripts of previous shows, and finding the best one for the equipment we'll be using this time. This takes far longer than finding the album. So I've made new 'live' text files for each album and will list there how we perform each track.

This though will take days of work, because it means going through 100 shows or so, every performance to get this exact data. I'll also update the MODX program names. All Fall in Green instruments begin 'FIG' but I have custom instruments used on recordings that it's best I keep too, and sometimes different ones for live (these may have splits or layers, or samples). I think I'll name my live instruments 'MAS' too.

Lots of admin, but it should speed things up for future live shows.

Failures and Victories, The Blood Of Winter and Kafka Frames

An awful day of drab failure yesterday. I'd hoped to use my router table to cut new channels in wood for the 'Punishment Of The Sun' frame, but at first my mother didn't want to help; no work on Sunday is her motto. The cutting was better than the disastrous first attempt, but still a failure, the wood rose up and was chewed. The machine was noisy and messy. The results would perhaps be improved with work and more modifications. I like making my own things, I like 'reinventing wheels', but my mother insisted that I stop, that she would pay for custom-cut wood from a local timber yard.

I updated my frame calculator software, but most of the day was wasted, a day of plans abandoned. There were also food problems. My breakfast was uncooked due to some sort of microwave failure, and the other meals failed too, in odd ways. In the evening, problems with my father's illness kept us awake and I barely slept. He spent the night in hospital.

Yet, today was a transformation. I ordered the wood and it was cheaper than I expected. We visited my father, who seemed to be doing ok. Perhaps this incident will lead to a revised care plan for him. I returned home to frame 'The Blood Of Winter', and the Kafka painting, both worked well. The hosting issues about my websites and domains seem to be resolving after nearly a week of waiting. I bought train tickets for the Stockport art collection, a mere £2.50 per trip, less than a bus ride. I ordered some Ethyl Alcohol to make wood stain, and this too was a bargain price (I expect the price of these chemicals will go up due to the issues around the Strait of Hormuz). And I worked out the dates and possible entries for several open competitions. A good day.

Deborah has been wonderful, too.

Surrealism and Magical Realism

I paint ideas and feelings. From the beginning, my paintings were compared to surrealism, and this term is familiar to the general public as a certain type of painting, a fantastical, dream-like and eccentric image. For the reason of succinct description I don’t object to my work being described as surrealist, but I don’t adhere to or care about the principles of that 1930s group. For me, I’m trying to represent the maximum gamut of feeling and concept.

Another related term is Magical Realism. The principle difference between the two is that surrealism is supposed to depict the unfiltered unconscious of the artist, although to many adherents of surrealism, including its founders, surrealism is not an art form but a tool of mental change which can be used to drive social change. Surrealism was almost a form of therapy, but initially a form of experimentation upon the mind without an external outcome, it was an internal examination.

Magical realism, on the other hand, is an art genre which includes imaginative elements. Surrealism is supposed to contain only unconsidered, unfiltered, unconscious output. To some extent, surrealism is designed to be unfathomable and enigmatic. Magical realism creates a realistic and possible world with elements which may be fantastical or beyond normal experience. Magical realism can be, perhaps should be, created consciously and understood by the viewer or reader, taken as normal. Its imaginative tools are used to create an emotional and intellectual effect; reality is pushed into the fantastic to enhance a narrative, to make a point. In this respect, perhaps all literature could be seen as a form magical realism with more or less magic, more or less fantasy, as all literature is an abstraction of actual reality. Actual reality, in all its wonder, can’t ever be portrayed in full by an artwork; the artist must abstract, parody, enhance and bend reality in ways subtle and otherwise to make a point, and light an emotion.

What makes magical realism magic is that it contains fantastical elements, so its reality tends to be bent substantially. H. G. Wells ‘The Invisible Man’ is not generally considered to be magical realism, although one could argue for its case, it’s more fantastical than a Charles Dickens work. A similar case can be made for fairytales or works of fantasy. For me, these labels may be useful for some form of genre categorisation, but there is another simpler metric, one from mundane reality, stretching to a strange reality of fantastical imagination, and that is all.

The unconscious is a problematical concept altogether which I explore in more depth in my book ‘21st Century Surrealism’. Setting that analysis aside we will consider the unconscious in the most commonly accepted way as a pile of ‘hidden thoughts’ which can impose themselves on our conscious minds. There is undoubtedly a constant dialogue between what is conscious and what is unconscious, and any creative act involves both of these factions of mind. We cannot say for certain that an idea is wholly conscious or wholly unconscious, a thought is a thought, and when a thought used to generate idea in a creative context, the origin of the idea becomes moot. It’s quite possible for a genuine and trained surrealist to output a stream of consciousness pile of words, and for a second magical realist artist to create the same words. The effect of a fantastical scene upon a viewer or reader would be the same whether the source was conscious or unconscious, or a mix of the two. This, more than any reasoning, explodes the boundary between art genres.

It is the job of an artist to communicate an idea, to communicate a meaning and feeling, and any and all tools are valid. A random act, like an ink-blot, an act by a machine, can do this; so the source of the information, the method of creation, is not important.

Reality, non-fiction, biography and autobiography, realistic fiction, crime fiction, fairytale, science fiction, fantasy, magical realism and surrealism. These labels may help a bookshop or critic, but it’s perhaps more rational to rate a work on a scale of tedious and ‘real’ to extraordinary, creative, different from the norm. It is the latter to which all artists aspire, but we can only go so far, or the result is randomness, nonsense. Science fiction uses tropes to build a structures which ground the educated reader in the mechanics of the world, and for more complex and creative works, these are needed as mental scaffolding to inform the reader, or viewer of art. The job of artist is communication, not mere expression. It is for this reason that fantasy is always, to some degree, grounded in reality. In nonsense, only those patterns of reality we see, become art; only a bad artist would consider those random encounters art. The task of the artist is to touch a known reality in new ways.