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.