Jabberwock

A busy few days. It's time to prepare for the release of Jabberwocky.

Deb recorded the vocals for the B-Side, 'Humpty Dumpty's Whimsical Semantics', which is (unusually for any music single release) a play for two characters. This will be an unusual piece all round. The subject material is in the character of Humpty Dumpty as in Through the Looking-Glass, who is quite an ascerbic character - many of them are a bit negative. Here Humpty discusses the nature of English and the philosophy of language and how one word can mean anything because each of our vocabularies are unique to us, so any word can be swapped and mean the same thing, to us.

Musically this is a challenge because the material is highly cerebral rather than emotional. The music can't easily compliment the mood, because there isn't much of a mood, apart from the uppity and patronising tone of Humpty... so I've decided to be equally cerebral. I started with a simply 6-note theme, the notes 'BADEGG', and at the end, made an anagram of these in the same way that Humpty does with his words, thus musically illustrating the theme of the text.

After Deb's vocals (she plays both Humpty and Alice), we took some photographs for the Apocalypse of Clowns album. We have several good ones.

I'm also still singing daily, working through various exercises. This, if anything, is my new fad and passion. I started to do this with guitar at the start of July, and I regret not doing this years ago, yet, I didn't feel I knew what I was doing until now, I seem to see the path and what is needed. I've started to create some exercises for myself, generally different forms of scales and vowel sounds. I can see/hear what is needed, which are useful, where progress is made and where progress is slower. I will rewrite some of the Sisyphus songs to better use my range.

Next, I must finish with the Jabberwock model and the cover for the single. We also need to create a video for this 6-minute single soon, probably next week.

Jimmy the Jabberwock

More work on Jimmy the Jabberwock today. I decided to break open my store of natural things and the seeds from pine cones looked particularly good...

...but I ran out. Not sure how many more to attach as too many could obscure the shape of the monster entirely.

Then vocal practice, and at 2pm I went to the park to hunt for more pine cones but could hardly find any. These must be very time of year specific.

After that, I did an hour of P.R.S. admin. There's no much admin to do in music! To keep everything correct it seems that each distributor and authority asks for duplicate admin, which is a bit of a pain.

Next jobs: To record the Humpty Dumpty vocals tomorrow, and take some Fall in Green photos for the album (and possibly single) cover.

I've decided to hold off on vocal recording for a few weeks because my voice is improving daily, so I'll write music instead, and record perhaps in December or January. I also have another album to remaster anyway... 2021 is already lining up to be a good year for music. I feel excited and full of energy and anticipation. I feel I can do so much and have a lot of new and exciting things to explore, create, and show.

We Shall See Production, Cheshire Art Fair 2021

A slow day yesterday, wrapping the last of my Christmas presents, and preparation for today's Steam Sale.

Today I worked on the production for We Shall See, a lovely song and focused in a higher vocal register in the key of F, with a high G (G4?) in there, Queen's Nevermore (by my ear) reached C5 for the 'see' line, though I might have got my octaves wrong. I can hit the final A 'youuu' in Roy Orbison's crying, which the sheet music lists as A6, but I would have thought it is A5, if C4 is middle C. Anyway, the 'We Shall See' backing is fairy simple piano with a few strings, a mix of Nevermore and The Invisible Man. I wanted it to relate to The Invisible Man to add more musical unity to the album; coherence and structure is always my focus - unity, unity!

The Jabberwocky model is still drying. I'll continue work on that tomorrow.

Days are slow steps forward, always taking too long. I keep being distracted by the desire to re-record my earlier songs, knowing that I could do a better job now. This may be a constant case. Perhaps I'll do this one day, but will leave it for at least a year or two as the next couple of years will, I expect, be a period of growth in singing, guitar playing and other recording and performance techiques that were only just beginning with Burn of God.

In other news, I had confirmation today that I'll be taking part in the Cheshire Arts Fair in Macclesfield Town Hall next September, which I'm excited about. The last one was fantastic. That will be my second exhibition of 2021, coming after the, long awated, Nantwich Museum exhibition, which I hope can be delayed for as long as possible, ideally until late summer. The impact of a forthcoming Covid-19 vaccine might, with luck, be evident in the second half of the year.

Song for Greta

I wrote this folk song a year ago about Greta Thunberg (remember her!?) and the words came to me last night. Will I record it? Who knows, but I will share the words now. Consider them a first draft.

Song for Greta

Jesus, John Lennon, and Kennedy said:
"Shoot Greta Thunberg! She's better off dead."
but nobody shot her, they ignored her instead,
except for publicity reasons.

And a million protestors clicked 'March' on their phones
then ordered a pizza, delivered by drones,
and a public opinion written by clones
for on Twitter it's hunting season.

And a high-horse in its ivory block-of-flat-tower
shut the door after bolting the city
It retired from the farm, and the circus, and track
to become a professional object of pity.

And the grass sang a song
to the stars in the infinite sky
and the melody was greener than the green that it had
and the only words were why, why why why why...

Well the birds shook their heads, for the early-worms died
when they urbanised countryside
and the scarecrows were booted off to the seaside
and their services sold and bartered.

And the herring argued fishing rights, anxiously red,
for the trawlers in power had to keep the world fed
and the rest of the fish thought they'd all end up dead,
and none of them shot and martyred.

And with an air of regret
the sun winked and set;
it had hoped for something better,
so it joined Instagram for free
and didn't notice the irony
when it decided to follow Greta.

Jabberwocky Modelling

Diverted from work on Sisyphus today as I realised the time elements for our Fall in Green Jabberwocky release. The single will be released on 27 Jan 2021, the 189th birthday of Lewis Carroll, so at least the B side (if we have one) and the cover art needs to be ready a month earlier.

So, today I've continued modelling work on a Jabberwocky model. I began with a wire armature (was it a month or so ago?) and added some Milliput (the horrid yellow stuff) to the big tangled bits that won't move. I like Milliput as a modelling material, particularly the smooth white type. It's not ideal; it tends to get very hard when not used, and it very difficult to mix on cold weather. I wish it were softer generally, yet this is probably my favourite sculpting material, the perfect mix of smooth and easy, yet hard and tough after a slow set of a few hours.

Today I applied two more favourite materials. Sculptamold, which is a mix of plaster and papier maché, and then plaster bandages. Sculptamold is great, it sets very quickly and is very easy to mix and handle, and it's strong. The downside is that it is rough and lumpy and always results in a porridge or lumpy-rock like surface. It's impossible to smooth, but this makes it good for some types of texture (like rock, like dinosaur skin). I used it for the 'volcano' frame for my painting The Bully. Plaster bandages are great too, and made a smoother finish, but you need a lot to sculpt with them. They work best when covering an sculpture, or an armature made of mesh, like chicken wire.

Here the model by mid-day:

And at the end, so far:

Sculpting a face or details is nearly impossible, but, as in painting, things can be removed later, and added too... when it's dry, more details can be added.

I had considered making the whole model poseable... after the wire stage I could have put the skeleton into a fur skin, or any other sort (rubber?) to make it pose, but I don't think I'll bother animating it - it wouldn't look as good as it could and it would be so much work to make that posable rubber skin...

This will move a bit (it may crack, but I can paint over those). My main aim is to pose it for stills for the cover artwork.

A lot more detail is to come yet.

Trivial Electro-pop

Despite the difficult morning it's been a productive day. The way I work to create is to learn and push, creating as I learn, so each new album (each new painting, each new film, book, or anything else) should hopefully be better and different. Burn of God and The Dusty Mirror already feel like creative tutorials and future work should see progressive improvements in vocal and guitar work.

The Myth of Sisyphus is themed around isolation and working in the wilderness. The original idea was to unify a few older, unheard but worthwhile, songs: The Invisible Man and Light Blue Evening, but also I think this is a contemporary resonant feeling, particularly in the social media era. Musically the album will rank along side my recent complex productions; prog-rock, art-rock, surrealist-rock.

But I have a bit of a problem in that I also have a new remix of the Plastic Superman song, and a re-recording of the Burnout Theme, both ready for some sort of future release. I've also got several sketches for similar catchy electro-pop songs, tracks in a similar mould to my (our) old Gunstorm music. The music is fun, but is very different from my other work, which is more like avant-garde rock now. Can you imagine if Pink Floyd, after releasing The Dark Side of the Moon, then released Barbie Girl by Aqua? I'm unsure what to do with them. Not everyone likes 'serious' rock or arty music, and vice versa. Showing off eclecticism is valid, and, of course, these songs too have emotion and artistic merit - if they lack anything it is that they are pre-sequenced electronica of the 'easy' sort that I don't really appreciate myself as 'art', they lack Romanticism, - yet, these tunes can be fun, can be catchy...

Perhaps the answer is to ensure that the music, lyrically and musically, is creative enough, new enough, add more live and emotional elements, or perhaps some unifying structure, perhaps other tracks that feel more 'real' (how I hate the fake-ness of contemporary pop). Another possibility is to form a new group... perhaps with Tor, and we could re-record our existing work. A new brand, name, band, is always an uphill struggle, but the music I made with Tor feels different enough from mine that it might be beneficial, and the idea of forming a Yazoo-style band is attractive (Tor's voice is so like Alison Moyet's that we could even release a cover version).

I've written a melody for 'We Shall See' today too, a simple sketch in F. I must keep working on this Sisyphus project and get it done quickly, yet, I've decided to hold off on the vocal recordings for a week or two to ensure that they are as good as they can be. I rarely rehearse, train, or practice my instruments of voice academically but now is right the time to do more of this. No shortcuts. There are merits in spontaneity, being arty, avant-garde, different, but things must also be done correctly, masterfully and professionally, the best we can, never easily. What is difficult is good. Everything that is worthwhile must necessarily be hard work.

Stomach Pain, Nevermore

A terrible night of abdominal pain. Ate at 6pm, a stodgy stew akin to salty cement. My stomach soon felt like I'd eaten golf balls or lead lumps or plasticine. By midnight I was pacing in pain, drinking water constantly, while listening to an interesting podcast about Billy Wilder's film Fedora. By 2am my pain was still strong but I took the risk of going to bed and trying to sleep while sitting up. Ay 6am, my meal was still being digested, with occasional kicks and twitches earthquaking through my torso. This is a standard occurance of my I.B.S. which seems to be of the blocking and twitching sort. Drinking and waiting is my only option, the only medication that seems to help is occasional magnesium citrate, taken tentatively as this can sometimes do more harm than good.

I barely feel able to work today, but have penned a simple melody inspired by the Freddie Mercury song Nevermore, one of my favourites. It's a vocal tour deforce with a high C on the 'see' line. I wonder if those vocal chords in the backing reach beyond that?

Let's see what the day holds.

Humpty Dumpty

A quieter day today. Practiced vocal exercises and guitar, and some tweaking to the cover art for the Sisyphus, album which so far is only an experiment, but it already looks pretty.

I've spent a lot of time working on the B-side for the future Jabberwocky single. Deb has written a two-character script for it rather than lyrics. Have any songs used a script format? The material is very cerebral, about the meaning of language itself. For the music I had the idea of using vocoded vocals spoken over a regualr beat, like 'Strange and Unproductive Thinking' by David Lynch, so I've made some electronic backing. I'd like to add more emotion to the music somehow and will build in some sort of climax.