Dadd

Song production today, an unusual song about Richard Dadd and fairies. It sounds rather weak at the moment.

I think today that the best way to write songs is the same as developing painting ideas, poems or anything else.

First ensure that you have stock material. So listen to lots of music, ideally random melodies and certainly NOT anything you've created before (this is one reason why bands that perform a lot become poor song writers). Then one evening, exercise (I find this is much better than meditation/relaxing) and you'll probably hum and write the whole song, the important parts anyway, one verse, a chorus, and the other magical third bit in the middle, enough original material. Then, some days later, expand it in the production phase.

For lyric ideas, as with poetry or literature, it's best to picture a scene and describe that image. It makes the process easy. You'll find that the music fits the picture and the mood you're feeling naturally and well. Use of the unconscious is essential.

R.B.S.A. and Prints

On Saturday I collected the above painting from the R.B.S.A. gallery, it was one of the two paintings I submitted and this didn't make the show. It had a chalk mark on the back that apparently meant that it nearly made it, so that's a good sign. It's called Depression Caused By The Selfishness Of Hiding Selected Personality Traits and think it's a good surrealist artwork, if not as visually appealing or grandiose in subject as the other.

I had a brief look around the place and it was an good display of work. I'd say that most of it was either well painted pictures of relatively "ordinary" scenes; (landscape, still life, etc.) and very abstracted, paintings often using mixed media that were in essence pretty patterns. There were a few that were inbetween though, and the show included sculptures that varied from heads, to steel flowers to felting and fabric craft.

I collected a picture from the framer today, and made a birdcage and a chessboard as props for a new Floob film - a puppet film for children which I'll have to make quickly as the children are keen and pestery (yes, pestery is a word). Generally though I've been working on music production and will do that in the coming week.

I'm wondering what to do regarding prints of my work. The easiest way to do it nowadays is to order photographs from an online photo processor, who print large formats cheaply in very high quality. This would make selling prints of any painting at a reasonable cost instantly feasible. Anyone have any thoughts on this, from either an art owner or artist?

R.B.S.A.

Genesis of Terror will be at the R.B.S.A. Gallery in Birmingham from the 9th of this month, priced at £905.

It's one of the first major paintings I tried, creating studies and putting more work into it than the other paintings of the year. It's not really been shown in many places since I painted it at the end of 2006. I should have submitted just that one for this exhibition I think, submitting two means I was likely to get one rejected and that means a trip to collect the unselected work this weekend which means a hefty train fair and a day of travelling.

On the plus side though, I've now submitted work for five R.B.S.A. exhibitions and got at least one painting in each so I'm pleased with that. This will be the last one for a while because only new work can be submitted. I'll wait until I've painted something more impressive.

My music programming is complete but the generation sections are on hold while I rethink the problem. There are many strategies. The two main ones are "instant" creation, creating the whole thing then fleshing it out like a fractal, and "step" creation where a series of simple rules are stepped through until a time limit is up.

I'm listening to Carl Nielsen's symphonic music and liking it much more than the rather boring Sibelius. It's high time I wrote some new music myself.

Music Generation Thoughts Part 1

I've been working on a simple artificial intelligence to generate music. I use my own software for music and this has lots of advantages (beyond cost, which was the original motivation for programming it!)

My original idea was based on frequency analysis, that is of notes as in letter-frequency analysis, not of the frequencies of sound waves. The aim is to analyse existing music and produce original music based on it using probabilities. This is quite complex though.

Music has several components, pacing and timing as well as melody, chords which go with the melody, counterpoint, and lots of repetition. A tune is more creative at the start, with the initial idea or theme often being repeated later, so any artificially intelligent composer must mimic these features. I decided to give the tables self-feedback which should help with this. Music is surprisingly repetitive when analysed, but it can also vary in key, which could confuse the computer. To a human, the notes might even sound the same, although in a different key. As music is designed for humans, there are also issued of boredom, if the same features repeat too often.

Also creativity can back-feed. I write music forward to back, I guess most composers do the same (although I can see that adding bits into other movements, here and there, bits and notes from previous ideas might also work). Sometimes a change made at the end would add more structure to the piece when some changes are made to the beginning.

The ultimate key to artificial creativity though is analysis of existing forms, self-creation, then self-criticism and analysis, evolution even, until a desirable form is reached. The computer will have to know what is good and bad music.

There are lots of ways to analyse music. Currently I'm looking at timing and have built tables the the frequency of note on the beat, half beat, quarter beat etc. Then there is global patterns, the computer must have some scope beyond the local to see the shape of the whole tune. Then very local patterns, the patterns in repeating themes.

The ultimate goal should be to identify these patterns, and be able to generate and recognise them.

My plans so far are very simple and involve just one voice. More would be a matter of seeing more patterns beyond a single track, and more instruments or volumes would really complicate things!

Anyway, today I've build the basics into my software and added a simple set of analysis tools with the ability to create any number of analysis tables, save and load them, and perform simple calculations on melodies. As the software is essentially my virtual studio I've got no end of tunes to feed it. The ideal would be to feed it some Mozart or something and have it generate an original tune in the same style.

This blog entry is a definite ramble! And like many such rambles partly designed to flesh out my thoughts.

The Old Dutch Masters Reborn!

A few years ago I wrote a small set of songs for an album about old Dutch/Flemish masters and their paintings (it wasn't too exact; I just had fun!). Recently I've decided to record at least one song album this year and I liked that bit of fun so I've been writing the odd track for it. Most are very light hearted and not at all serious. I wrote one last night about Bosche, and it's a bit like Maniac from Flashdance or a Laura Branigan pop song because I recently heard Self Control and like those synth stabs that 80's music was full of! There are bits of Live and Let Die in it too though! Quite an epic here are the lyrics!

Jeroen Anthoniszoon Van Aken

I like to paint in the danger zone where the world is in my eye.
I see it all through a ball of glass and this is what I spy.
I spy a drunken midget and I paint him in the nude.
How rude!

I see a warty tree outside and I draw it full of ears.
I go to church each Sunday morn and suck up to all my peers.
They call me mister master,
and masterful I am

I am Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken
I am Superman awakened!
I'm silver rocket blue!
I'm a piece of mind and mystery.
It's true!
I'm you!

I see an orange pricked with cloves and I pick it up to smell.
I put it in a dark alcove with a burning skull of hell.
I dangle broken holly to add a bit of spice.
How nice!

I live alone but with a maid and we have lot of sex.
I paint her naked bottom red like everyone expects.
I never drink on Sunday,
a pious man I am.

I am Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken
I am Superman awakened!
I'm silver rocket blue!
I'm a piece of mind and mystery.
It's true!
I'm you!

I remember what my mother say.
She say be good and kind.
I remember what my father say.
He say by smart and hide
away,
away,
away,
your mind!

(rock solo)

I see a clown in a tartan vest and imagine him in tears.
I see my mother weeping for a son consumed by fears.
I see plaster fairy queen drinking from a can
She blinks and calls master, and masterful I am!

I am Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken
I am Superman awakened!
I'm silver rocket blue!
I'm a piece of mind and mystery.
It's true!
I'm you!

I've been analysing music a lot recently. Most artists are more creative at the start of their career and this creativity can be quantified in terms of melodic variety. I'm a fan of Kate Bush and her early music has a lot more variety than the later stuff, although the mid-career album The Dreaming is perhaps her most creative. It's not easy maintaining creativity and I'm certainly no Kate Bush when it comes to complex melodies, most of my earlier songs dwell on very simple chords and melodies. But like all art it deserves monitoring, working out what you like, what you don't and then, changing (hopefully improving). A new friend should help me. More on him or her in a week or two...

Art Support at The Cubby Hole

My art group Art Support is holding an exhibition at The Cubby Hole, Crewe this month. The opening is at 7pm tonight and admission is free, so if you're in range you might like to take a look.

The Colours of Cheshire

I finished this simple idea today. It's taken just under seven days overall; two days to underpaint, two to glaze, the rest with drawing, planning, preparation and that sort of thing.

This is for a competition, the theme is The Peaks an Plains of East Cheshire. I originally rejected this idea because it lacked sufficient depth of meaning, but changed my mind later after painting an ancient landscape which was full of meaning, but perhaps only to me. I'll finish the landscape too later.

Points of inspiration for today!

1. It's better to do anything badly than not do anything at all.
2. Your gravestone must read "Here lies a kind genius!", and your grave must contain a fresh rose laid by the queen.
3. It's better to fail at something ambitious that succeed at something simple.
4. Recognise that you'll probably live to one hundred no matter what you do. Take care of your teeth! Brain! Hands! Eyes! Skin!
5. To rest is nobody's destiny!

Now I've got a few minutes to catch up blog browsing. Let's see what my blog friends have been up to...

Quest

Tracing today! And the transfer of the Quest For Pity painting, one for which I have foreseen great things. Using oil paint on the tracing paper has worked well, and is best scrubbed very thinly. Almost none transfers onto the canvas accidentally, even when leaning on it quite hard, yet it transfers exactly on the lines using an embossing scribe. I need to find a smaller, tiny weeny scribe though. This smallest one is still a bit big, despite the ball on the end being approx 0.6mm diameter, and this makes the lines much thicker than when transferring drawings onto a panel. I'm using Schoellershammer 92gsm tracing paper on a roll. I reasoned that thinner paper would curl less, and it has, although tracing paper is so hygroscopic that wrinkling is always a problem. The sheet I used notably expanded overnight making the lines inaccurate by morning.

I was anxious two days ago and wanted to draw a peaceful scene to calm me. Instead I drew this:

It's a cowering rabbit, and a door closed over a peaceful landscape. It seems that peace was closed! After that I drew a hand holding a tree that was springing greens so some progress was made. I'd like to paint both but tick tick tick! Time is so short. Perhaps I'll paint a quick idea today on this glorious sunfilled day, the first of a new spring towards a golden age.