You're My Candy Cane Production

A full day of production work on my Christmas song for the Christmas Tails album, 'You're My Candy Cane'. A song I dreamt on Oct 20th 2023 (dream music composing happens to most song writers, it's fairly rare for me), there's an old post here about it and the original song lyrics. I've made a few small lyric changes. The chorus was simply 'You're my candy cane, my candy' repeated 4 times. Now it's:

You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy cane

You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy cane

So, two iterations. The song starts with this catchy melody without vocals. In some ways, the song is similar to my first ever song (well, of the 'new', post-school-days era), 'I Love You For Your Money', which also featured repeats of the line, and was also dreamt.

I could make you smile If only You would stay a while

Has been changed to:

You could make me smile If only You would stay a while

To match the song's perspective, and the 'When you call' line is repeated only once.

In production terms, I began with the drums and aimed for an electro pop song. Despite my dance orientated plan, the song doesn't feature regular bass drums, few of my songs do. I seem to favour shuffle beats. I added saw-chord stab fairly early on, to match the rhythm of the melody, then added a pulse-wave lead, as imagined. In my head, it was close to the track 'Zoot' from the Flatspace soundtrack.

I added a few more experimental layers, and a second lead. Arpeggios there seemed to work well in the chorus. I expanded this lead, and made it converse with the pulse lead, one finishing the other. The basic tracks are pulse 1, pulse 2, pulse 2 quieter for the chorus, bass, bass drums, snare, hi-hats, toms. I added a Casio VL1 click as a sort of metronome pre-emptive click, evoking the beeps on the starting grid of a racing game, and added a white noise filter sweep, a classic 80s sound.

This is mostly it. The structure is as penned, but opens with a melodic chorus, and has an additional chorus for a guitar solo after the refrain; the refrain is the climax, the essential sweet-spot, and the solo is the coast down from that peak.

The next step is working on the vocals and arrangement. Songs like this benefit from layers and backing vocals. I already know I want a vocoder for 'my candy', but layered vocals may work there too. I'll certainly need layers for that climax.

I'm constantly amazed how many tracks pop songs seem to require, mine are positively frugal by comparison. Here's a shot of Prometheus with the intro, so far.

Make Her Sky Makeover, October Priorities

The migration to Substack is now complete. Blogger and Substack have different pros and cons, so for now Make Her Sky will be on both platforms for dear readers to choose their preference.

Many other jobs are pending, perhaps the most urgent is completing my Christmas song for the second Electric Sprout album. 12 artists are now confirmed and two songs, 'One Star' by Paul Parish, and 'Solstice Carol' by John Miller, complete and ready for mastering! Mike Drew of The Forrest Dick Band have also sent a few possible tracks, though more may come. My big hope is that Andy Stubbs will manage to complete his song, which sounds brilliant even in the fragment I've heard.

As it has a deadline, this must be my first priority. Perhaps, concurrently, I can work on the two shelving projects. I'm tempted to start that woodwork today, but it is too damp due to rainy Amy, today's named storm.

Two painting competitions report this month, and I've been informed of a new Nantwich Museum Open Art Competition, which is now open for entries on their website. There is a theme of 'heritage', one of those hugely boring words like 'community'. Such a theme is perfect as it will inspire something exciting and daring, and we're blessed to have a few months to develop and pain something new, even if the judging is by a 1500-pixel jpg (sigh, what would Vermeer, what would Leonardo da Vinci do when faced with the degradation of something visceral and ultra-delicate like an oil painting being judged by a coarse digital photograph?). I can but hope for the sympathy of the judges.

Backup Duties, Substack Migration Continues, Computers and Cells

Backup Duties, Substack Migration Continues, Computers and Cells

Woke early, after a worrysome and sleepless night, worried about my darling Deborah and her insomnia and work stress. How I wish I could help.

Today was a full day. October the 1st, so a quarterly back-up day. Another task was disabling Bytten, the game review website I founded with Andrew Williams. We found fellow gamers and reviewed a game a week for 10 years, from 2003 to 2013, and today the site was switched off pending the lapse of the domain. I must, at some point, publish the reviews as a book, partly because nobody does. So many websites and web-magazines form a transient culture. I am critically aware of this point.

Backups took the first few hours, then a call from Galleria Balmain; I needed to write some new information about myself and about the paintings on sale there. This took the next few hours.

Then, the long job of the Substack migration of this blog. Yesterday I managed 60 pages, each page 25 posts, so hand-tagged 1500 posts, each opened, clicked edit, saw which tags were needed from the Blogger blog, then added them. I really needed to be a web-machine to do this, with 25 tabs open at once, and the Ctrl-Tab shortcut to dart the next tab after memorising the tags for each post.

Today, at 7pm, I approached the end, the last of the 3,032 posts; but then I noticed another anomaly. I had already discovered that any blog post with the same title was overwritten, forcing me to hand copy-and-paste about 149 posts, but today discovered that posts with multiple images were auto-deleting images. Not only when editing and submitting changes, but the very act of clicking 'Edit' and viewing the post makes the images vanish before your eyes!

I suspect this is due to formatting differences between the HTML of Blogger and Substack, and I hope that it only applies to a limited number of posts, perhaps ones where images appear after another in a row, without text between. This should be a minority of posts. But, sigh, this will mean again traversing the 3,032 posts one by one, comparing them with the original on Blogger and perhaps re-uploading the images.

There is much to do this month, so much. Of key priority is promotion of the Christmas album, as well as work on my song. Lots of other music work too. Well, I can do but one job at a time.

I must focus more upon making good art, seeing and presenting connections; this is the essence of art, and science. Already I can see that there is a connection between the Substack migration and cellular activity. Both are about replication and error correction. If I do this digital task well, my cells will act in a similar fashion and extend my youth. It seems clear to me that this is the case, that exacting computer work and filing trains many subsets of the body to behave in similar, exacting ways.

Copying Labels from Blogger to Substack

A long process is in progress as I migrate my 19 year, 3000+ post blog to Substack. Alas, this is not easy.

As first, it seemed that I managed to import all of the posts, but the labels were not there. So the first step was hand editing each post to add the labels.

This can be done relatively quickly with a few cheats, I say relatively meaning that it will still take many days, work, but not many months.

In Blogger, I searched using the 'index:xxx' feature to find a subset of posts to work on. I used 'sort:-published index:0' at first, to start with the oldest post. I need to use the index feature because I can't simply scroll on. It seems that 3000 posts makes Blogger (or Chrome) break eventually.

In another tab, I made Substack to display posts, sorted from older. Then ctrl-clicked each of the 25-per-page posts to open each post in a new tab and edit. The list always defaults to search from newest to oldest, so you need to preserve these first two tabs: one from Blogger, one from Substack.

This, however would be relatively easy, taking a mere 2 or 3 days, except that I discovered that about 150 posts were not imported - agh! This seemed to occur at random, yet there were clues, such as posts with the same title/name were excluded (foolish me for making more than one post entitled 'Dream' or 'Monday', for example).

This complicates things. When finding a lost post, I had to make a list of the missing ones, then add them as new posts in Substack, one at a time. Then, open the post, edit, and set the new correct (old!) date. This was not easy either because the date entry field is broken and takes (no joke) 5 or 6 times of typing the same number -every time- to set the actual date and time. It would have helped enormously to be able to set the publication date when first posting.

Yet, it is possible. The process will probably take me 5 machine-like days of constant action, and all because of a buggy Substack importer. So much work stems from badly programmed systems by other people! What can we do but sigh and do our best to correct, and stoically continue in our task.

It was, it is, a delight re-read my older posts. I must remember to delight and inspire with each new post.

At time of writing, about 750 of the 3000 posts have been edited. Onwards we roll the heavy rock of art.

Another Violet Night Videos Complete, Dowel Joints

A tedious day of computer chugging. Converted all of the new music videos to 8000kpbs and checked them. Some finished early or late, it's amazing how many small errors can creep in to any project, amazing how much proofing matters. I've noted to add a new feature to Argus to warn about events beyond the final render frame. For every error, some preventative action must be taken. Here's a shot from 'Smashing My House of Cards', which uses a card-like vertical flip for the video. I know that a true card flip is a 180 degree rotation, which I experimented with, but that looked ugly at the joint point.

I've also looked up gizmos to guide drill bits. There are one or two metal blocks with holes in made to ensure a perpendicular drill. I'd have liked one that fitted for 2.5mm bits, as I use this for screw pilot holes often. In the end I've ordered one for drilling for dowels, which is what I need this for, for the joint in the mantelpiece shelves. A screw is easier but the aesthetics matter. I considered another option of fitting a dowel haphazardly, then drilling a bigger socket, then to be filled with hot-melt glue. This may hold better than a conventional dowel joint and be simpler too. A plug which was cone shaped, zigzagged, perforated biscuit, or other holes may make a better joint still.

Most of the hours of the day were spent waiting for FFMpeg to build my 13 new videos, then proofing them all, uploading them to YouTube with the appropriate text, rebuilding in archive (lower) quality, and other such tedious tasks. I recall that in the 1990s, computers would often take hours to render and calculate things. The waiting gradually reduced so that rendering time was not at all a problem. Now, long waits for computers are back in vogue.

Thus, the videos are done. Only a few more jobs on this album left. How much work each release is, and I barely do any promotion or performances. Soon I can move on. Tree of Keys is perhaps next. I also need to fully update the sheet music distribution on itch, separating free and basic sheets with full and paid sheets, plus adding tags to this blog on Substack. 3000 posts mean 300 a day is still 10 days of solid work.

Onwards we hack at the rock face of culture, crawling forwards towards a better future.

Music Videos, Protests

A full day completing the music videos, plus new loops for Spotify Canvases. Charging though new videos for 'Daytime Teevee' and 'More', but everything was tweaked a little bit. 'More', like many of these, is something of an animated placeholder, like 'Breakfast Of Delight' or 'How Lonely', yet I've managed to add a few things to make them more interesting and linked to the song. At very least, the whole video should sing and dance.

I went out for more shelf supplies in the afternoon. Passing the railway station, a man was huddled in a corner, facing away and trying to dress his lower half in a Union Jack with all of the awkwardness and embarrassment of someone changing into a swimsuit in public. I thought that this was connected with the football match, the roar of the stadium and scattered police officers indicating that a match was on. Then, on the corner opposite the Crewe Arms hotel I wandered into a tiny far-right demonstration, with an equally sized counter protest opposite. There were perhaps 20 people on each side, and two blue-clad community police officers to 'keep order' on a protest which was Lilliputian in every sense. One counter-protest placard said 'DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING' - an amusing copy of a protest sign in a Father Ted episode. The real scene match the mood of that mock-scene exactly.

Still, the sentiment was concerning. It's a busy junction. Occasionally, rarely, a car would beep support for the proto-Nazis. As I walked home a car screamed its horn and the passenger shouted an expletive to us pedestrians about 'paki's'. I wondered what the 1930s was like in Germany, for ordinary and concerned citizens. I wondered about the rise of such anger, the trickles before a third world war. Trickles seen as valid and just, as though a forthcoming cataclysm is somehow a good thing. I have two sides to my personality, a full gamut of extreme emotions and ideas, and a narrow, controlled centre of logic and reason. Politically, I'm moderate to the core.

For me, all protest is violent. The very act of opposing is a tiny violence. Peace is to ignore, be passive, to go with the flow. This I gleaned from my meditative, Buddhist-like, years of my 20s. I grew tired of fighting, and became content with surrender. This is, perhaps, the message of Buddha, yet I was never quite convinced of the philosophical truth of it. Is the Dalai Lama content to have China now own his country? No, he protests. Without any protest, we are rocks tumbling in the void. My protestations are in art, and hopefully sharing ideas or revealing truths. Most protesters never change the world (have any?), their actions primarily serve to make them and their peers feel better.

At home I continued to work on the videos. All are now done in draft; excellent. I can now charge on.

Music Videos Continue

Another full day of music video work. I must scale back my ambitions a little. Patience is often seen as a virtue, but one of my flaws is that I'm too patient, and will doggedly and time-consumingly pursue something to its end, when my time might be better spent doing something else.

In the late 1990s I worked for two years on a game design, The Heart of Aorkhan, which would have been the world's biggest role playing game a the time, bigger in monsters and artefacts than even Final Fantasy VII, yet with an utterly boring plot, and just about unplayable on computers of the era. I perhaps completed half of it singlehandedly in two years, but gave up. This is one of very few projects I've given up on, I almost always finish everything. In this case, I should have given up earlier, its mountain was too high.

Here though, I can merely scale back. I can fairly easily make basic videos for each song, but of course, I want to add more, make them more artistic, human, better than basic. The eternal balance is between time spent on one project and time taken from a future one.

Today I compiled the new video for 'I Can Heal', 'Smashing My House Of Cards', and 'Fear is Everywhere'. Of the others, tweaks and small changes were made. 'How Lonely' is a simple lyric video. 'Breakfast of Delight' is similar, but I've added a few little bonus elements to match the mood changes in this joyous song, then again a related video for 'Walls (And How To Hit Them)' which uses Lego characters to augment a basic loop that mimics the album artwork.

'Tainted Pain' echoes the themes and look of 'The Parents in the Walls' and uses a healing cross (from 'I Can Heal') to match the drum beats; this is one way I can easily add to these. It's extremely simple but looks rather nice.

I also hurriedly made the Spotify Canvas animations for today's new releases, and quickly announced them. This album, and this single are my best mixed and mastered, I humbly think, than anything before. Hopefully, everything will get better and continue to do so.

In other news, I've worked out more of the cabinet designs. I'd thought about bolting the brackets onto the MDF, but I think that 4mm pan-head wood screws would be better, as strong, and look neater than trying to drill lots of holes for bolts. I tested rawl plug and screw sizes. I think plans there are complete.

Of the videos, 'Daytime Teevee' and 'More' are the only ones that are untouched. These will also be simple animations based on the album art I think, though I have a more complex idea for 'More'. I had always planned, I always plan, for future and more complex videos, should I ever have the time and incentive. An 'Official Video' doesn't have to be the only Official Video, there were two for George Harrison's 'Got My Mind Set on You'.

In culinary art, I'm making an experimental cross between Staffordshire Oatcakes and a famous New York breakfast pancake, a mix of yeast-batter and beaten egg for an ultimate light batter. I rarely mention food in public, but I love cooking and treat it like my other arts.

Onwards with joy.

Violet Night Video Work, Fireplace Shelves

A steady day of music video work. I started on the final edits of 'All Controlled By Someone', and, for some strange reason, everything was now one frame out! I don't know why, but it meant going through the film section by section and correcting it. One frame matters because it made the video part out of sync with the animations.

This made me think that life, life as an anti-entropic force, is about correcting errors. We are born. We work. We die. All life works tirelessly. Humans now perhaps work with the aspiration to make enough money, to earn enough social power, to afford to stop working, or to afford to work 'voluntarily'. Most animals (and plants!) don't, they merely keep working, for their social good (yes even plants work!) and their job is ordering that which is chaotic, because those beings which do not are destroyed by calamity, and those beings which are ordered can endure disasters due to informational resilience.

The video was fixed and the single version edit created, then work on other videos for the album. Most of these were half complete.

'Smashing My House Of Cards' is primarily an edit of falling playing cards, but I wanted to add more, so I did some filming of singing the verses. I had to do this without my darling Deborah to operate the camera, so it took longer than normal, but the results were adequate. This uses the simplest mix method of a mask with addition to layer the video with the animation.

'Violet Night' and 'What You Could Have Won' are wholly animated, and use a simple effect of flight over the sea. I recorded an initial startled face for 'Fear is Everywhere' but it didn't work, so I made it entirely from public domain stock footage from a film about preparations for nuclear war.

At 13:30 I went out for wood and brackets for more building projects. One is a cabinet integrated into the mantelpiece, making a shelf-rack where the fire used to be. It will feature Z-bend doors with a seamless wallpaper covering to make the cabinet appear invisible when the doors are closed. There are a few complicating factors. I don't want to permanently damage the mantelpiece, so it must be removable and have minimal effect, it will be fixed by two thin (but very long) screws. The shelves don't have to bear much weight, but enough so that it will need to rest on the floor, or else those two screws would hold all of the weight, because the shelves are fitted only into my section via slots; that way I can avoid adding shelf supports into the mantelpiece alcove. Finally, my frame will have to fit exactly, sub-millimetre accuracy, or it won't look pretty. As I work on the videos, I'm occasionally thinking about the challenges here.

Several music videos need work from scratch, but I can't spend long. I often have problems with what I think of as the 'best' songs. 'Style Guru Fashion Queen' from my last album was one of the best songs, with real hit potential, and I had really clear images in my mind of drag queens and Diana Dors-type glitz and glitter, and all sorts of things, but all of that is for the future. In the end, the video became a placeholder, almost a looping animation while it rests in the slumber of potentiality.

'More', 'Tainted Pain', 'Daytime Teevee', 'Breakfast of Delight', and 'Walls (And How To Hit Them)' remain to do. I may end up using simple animations.

So much other news. Three songs are now complete for the charity Christmas album 'Christmas Tails'. I noticed in the local news that Parveen Smith, who I interviewed on my radio programme, and she in turn interviewed me about my art and music on her radio station, has won a United Nations award for humanitarian causes. My sound effects set for SFXEngine, Army Sounds, has been released. Plans for Deb's poetry book launch on the 7th are moving ahead. So much to do. I must finish all of the music videos in 5 days.

Onwards we charge.