A full day of Snow Business admin. A few more tracks arrived and more work on the few I'm busy with. Recorded 8 takes of Sky Robes of Celeste but not happy with them. They are fine really, but I must play it all perfectly through in one go and express every bit of feeling as I go!
Some more updates to the cover artwork too after feedback. Big cover reveal tomorrow, I think.
More days working on the Christmas album, yesterday and today working on an arrangement of Maggie Shaw's contribution. I also re-recorded a few of the guitars for Christmas Smells and changed the finale a little. I think this is all complete now.
I also registered with SongKick, which is a website for listing live music shows which integrates with Bandcamp, Spotify and other platforms. This may be useful in spreading the word with any of my, or our Fall in Green, music performances.
Indeed, there are some in the pipeline. We are set to perform something at John Lindley and Mike Drew's People and Places event in Congleton Library on November 22nd, I've been offered the chance to perform five We Robot songs in Kings Place Macclesfield on the 29th, then the live Crewe Library event on Dec 12th, which is the book launch of Deb's latest book (I Slip into French like Tolstoy) together with performances of some of the Christmas album songs.
My live songs have been inconsistent in method and quality, primarily due to the need to play and sing at the same time; due to the complex multi-layered music; due to the lack of a band or any collaborating musicians; and the need to memorise all of the lyrics as well as the music. Song performances could be either involve singing to a pre-recorded backing track, or performing a cut-down version with a single piano-like lead instrument (a so-called 'unplugged' version - even if I ironically use a synthesizer which is 'plugged in'). Regarding backing tracks, I've never done this completely, adding a live synth over some elements, as done for the Marius Fate performances in Wistaston Memorial Hall and All Saints' Church. The cut-down versions can be a worst-case of being very technically difficult and sounding poor.
The live music that doesn't involve singing, such as piano playing, or the Spiral Staircase synth performances could involve multiple instruments I'd dart between. These sounded very good, at least as good as the studio recorded versions and sometimes better. The Spiral Staircase used backing tracks for the repetitive arpeggios, so these too were a case of augmentation of that pre-recorded music, though many (if not most) of the other parts were played live.
I would be a good time to start investigation and improvement of these live performances.
A full day of production work on 'Christmas Smells'. I started by updating my new EQ plug-in a bit, using sine-wave tests to find the ideal bandwidth for positive and negative gains, values which are surprisingly unpredictable. This is now done. My 50-or-so hours of work on this is now, I think, complete.
Then, I recorded the Christmas Smells main vocals, and lots of possible extra vocals for layers, and some vocoder too. A backing singer may make things sound better due to variety of timbre, so I may recruit Deb. There are plenty of places where enhancement may work, so lots of listening, testing and experimentation, is needed. I have time to work on it and it must sound its best. I also added a synthetic wolf-whistle and beefed up the ending a little. I started the day by listening to all of the different Dr Who theme variations since 1963, and perhaps the 80s theme rubbed off because I decided to add a big explosion at the end, though not as big as that famous (and not very Christmassy) 'ftooom'.
Here are the full lyrics:
Come and take a ride.
You and me and the snow outside.
Santa's waiting for us on his sleigh.
Whistle up a tune.
Let's draw rainbows on the moon.
Come and make tonight a special day.
Christmas smells
of cinnamon and wishing wells,
of hope and dreams and angels up above.
Christmas smells of
of gingerbread and jingle bells.
Christmas smells of
love sweet love.
Put your hand in mine,
a one two three four step in time.
That's the way a magic spell is done.
Make a wish and see
a cup-cake world of you and me,
a firework of fun fun fun fun.
Shake it make it roll it.
Don't try to control it.
Feel it heart and soul it.
Relax and let it go.
Christmas smells
of candy canes and caramels.
of little baby Jesus and his dove.
Christmas smells
of snakes and ladders and cockle shells
Christmas smells of
love sweet...
Christmas smells of
love sweet love.
Another full day yesterday at the Snow Business cover design day event. I set out for Crewe Heritage Centre on a dreary and dark morning, half-expecting a quiet day. I arrived and set up a couple of tables. I had brought some basic materials; some papers cut in the shapes of Christmas Trees and Stars, some brushes and a few other things. I needn't have worried about materials. Almost everything was supplied by Creative Crewe, including a great 60x60cm square of card. One thing I'm pleased I brought however was my easel to display the result, it really made a difference to have that there, and a roller to add some colour to the plain white background:
Deb arrived at 10am or so, she was hugely helpful. I'd not have been able to do this without her as the day was really very busy. The event was supposed to start at 11am, but families started to knock on the door from 10, to take part in the many workshops in the room from Poppy Making to Lantern Building, to Face Painting, to the making of huge wicker sculptures for the light trail.
My table gradually got busier. The main creative task, I worked out, was for children to decorate a star or tree, then choose where it fitted on the result, creating a pop-art collage of Christmas. This worked well; I had just about everything. I was aiming for felt-tips and pencils, but paint rapidly became the medium of choice; the glitter glue especially treasured. The results were decidedly messy, but the PVA managed to hold everything in place for long enough.
I stuck artist images on there fairly early, and the image grew:
In the end 30 to 50 children took part, and I barely had time to pause. Deb was a huge help introducing the parents and children to the activity, and generally keeping things going. I spent a lot of time guiding or sticking the results. It was really quite a factor of creativity.
Mike Drew and John Lindley joined us, which was lovely.
By about 2:30, the canvas was full up and everything was close to complete. Here's a photo by Mike:
I'm amazed by how well it all went. I had just about everything I needed, little more, little less. It was hectic, messy, chaotic but it all worked. I will wait a day or two for the image to dry, then flatten it and photograph it. Then the complex design work can begin.
And today, We Robot is released after months of preparation!
As such today has been filled with admin work associated with this launch. Website and links updated, preparations for the YouTube premiere and the album-length video of 'AI and Celebrity' set live. This, plus lots of filing of yesterday's event, adding that to my website, and documenting it for future reference. Sending out and receiving photos of the day. Tim Lee has sent his song, and The Poachers are about to send theirs, so over half of all artists have already completed their contributions, a month ahead of schedule.
I've also updated my master album list with a new format for credits. Each album now has Creation Credits (composer, lyrics), Production Credits (producer, engineer, recording), Performance Credits (each instrument). Sequencers count as instruments, so Prometheus, and other software, is credited as an instrument. Everything is much more ordered. The credits for I, Leviathan were the most time consuming to administer. Until now, that was my biggest 'community' project.
It's past 4pm and I'm still very busy with this admin.
A full day yesterday working on Christmas Smells. Lots of production work can be attempts to see if something works, only to find it doesn't quite. Spent an hour adding new organs to the chorus, but in the end, the original ones sounded better. Much of the time was wasted due to Windows not really working; the coquettish MIDI connection. I added some choirs for the chorus though, and re-recorded electric guitars with a different timbre, the others were too thin, so used an 001 setting rather than x01, the rightmost pick-up on. It's no wonder that Brian May said that 80% of songs use 011, as it simply sounds the best, but I want to push for variety.
Also, lots of preparation for the vocals, but I need to right time and space to record them. The first track has been sent in, a lovely solo-vocal song in the Taizé style by Maggie Shaw. It would be nice to add more to it.
I also did lots of preparation for Thursday's album cover design day. In retrospect I'd have done that differently as anything community related involves inefficient bureaucracy and publicity is restricted or banned. Paperwork for that complete today, and lots of printing of the artists' images - just over half of the artists sent one.
I've also written out another song, one which was in my dream as I awoke on the morning of the 20th. The words and melody of the chorus was clearly in my mind and I was sure that I'd heard it before, but can't place it. The words were "You're my candy cane, my candy, you're my candy cane, my candy". The melody as simple and as catchy as that of 'P-L-Astic' from We Robot. I wrote out the rest of the words and music on Friday and typed them up today:
You're My Candy Cane
I wake up and know
you're with me
with the special glow
you give me.
It's a fantasy
pink and sugary.
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
I could make you smile
if only
you would stay a while
I'm lonely.
Will you promise me
That you'll always be, my
honey in the summer.
Cinnammon in fall.
Glitter in the winter
when you call.
When you call.
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
You're my candy cane, my candy
In other news: We Robot has has a nice write-up in John Hopper's 100subtexts magazine, and all is set for Friday's release day. I've released and announced the update of SFXEngine. It might be that I'll be recording and producing a song for Andy Stubbs. Deborah has been invited to be guest poet at Joy Winkler's poetry evening at The Button Warehouse in Macclesfield next Wednesday, which is exciting. Deb asked if I'd like to play some music to accompany her. I think it's her special event but we may perform one or two works as Fall in Green. Tonight, we're going to the ballet to see The Nutcracker.
An enjoyable trip to Bristol for a birthday party. The floods on Friday resulted in a difficult trip down. We were set to arrive at 1pm, and actually arrived at 7pm after needing to find a National Express coach in the heavy rain. No alternatives were provided by the train companies, all of the many passengers for Bristol were simply told that travel isn't/wasn't advised, and that nothing could therefore be done. This was not helpful. We explored alternatives. Deb was amazing in this crisis, and slightly enjoyed the adventure. We hooked up with a student who was fairly new to the UK and hadn't been to Bristol before and we found him a coach too. The lady at Birmingham National Express was the star of the day, and went above and beyond to find us a place on a coach two hours before our ticketed time. Without her we would have arrived at 9pm. National Express were brilliant on every level.
The party was great and had everything; good food, lovely people, games, star performances by most of the guests, a 1970s disco, and all set up, enjoyed, and tidied up by 8pm. I spent much of the time talking with electronic musician Leo, also known as Widespoon, and I hope that he can contribute to Snow Business.
Today, the first day of recovery has been busy and joyous too. First, more admin work on the Christmas album. It might be that there's a performance of the music in Crewe Library, but we will see. The logistics of such a show is not easy and the work considerable. I answered a few questions for the local Nantwich News.
Most of today was spent working on my 1-band EQ plug-in for Prometheus and it's largely complete. Here are two graphs; two -6dB dips at 450hz and 3600hz (incidentally, ignore the 'scribble' at the bottom of these, that's junk from the live white-noise):
You can see that mine on top has a smooth result and the Sony plug-in is more 'precise' in that intermediate bands are not touched, but I rather like that they are in mine, that the result is a smooth 'flow' between settings. Of the many changes I made today, the first was realising that positive and negative gains needed radically different bandwidths to give equivalent results. Testing on sine waves gave perfect results, so, after about 7 or 8 full days of programming this, I think it's complete. There are two overall 'gain' controls too; one a master boost to all levels, sort of like a 'contrast' control, and one a post-EQ volume, sort of like 'brightness' (to continue the image processing analogy).
I've done this mainly so that it can be applied before limiting, rather than after. All future songs should be better balanced and better limited. Over time, each update, each improvement, becomes harder and harder for smaller gains, but we must improve. I must improve with each song and each result. There's no point in doing the same thing twice.
Next, I must finish Christmas Smells. Crucially, the vocals are needed, and perhaps a new take of the electric guitars. I sang so much on Saturday that a day of vocal rest today is beneficial. Onwards we charge!
Lots of admin work today on the Christmas Album project. The first hour or so was spent trying to get my camera to connect to the computer with a wireless set-up. Everything said yes, that it was connected and working - yet, nothing. The same with the secondary Bluetooth connection: not detected. I prefer using cables for this reason but it still makes the process slower than it should be.
Then, an album page was set up on Bandcamp, setting the album on pre-sale. Deb in her infinite kindness instantly bought the first copy and I created a public accounts page to track each sale and the total earned. Then I contacted the artists with the page update, a reminder about next week's cover design day, and prepared to share the artist and track details bit by bit on social media. I must start that soon.
By about 3:30pm, all of this was complete. Then, I got back to working on my 10-band EQ, and revisited the concept of a rank of band-pass filters, but now with the low and high shelves, the results were good to the effect that I think I've finally completed this time consuming project. It will take lots of testing. One crucial part was to make the filters apply in series.
Here are some comparisons between my EQ vs. the Sony plug-in. Here's +6dB at 900 an 1800hz:
Mine has more of a camel-hump, but not much, and perhaps this is better as it will give smoother results over a long space. The peaks are at the exact frequencies specified. Sony's applies a general gain between the former and next frequency band. Here's a more complex pattern; a -6dB dip and two +12dB climbs:
The most stark difference is this complex layout. +3dB at 225hz, -6dB at 450hz, +6dB at 900hz, a -infinity at 7200hz, and -infinity at -15000hz. Here's the Sony plug-in:
Hardly -infinity, and a few odd bumps, such as at 800hz and 1100hz or so. Here's mine:
The 7200hz fall is a stark 'spike' due to the band pass, though one could say it's correct, even if the frequencies near it are touched less. At the top end though, it works much better.
I have some tweaking to do to the gains I think, but it seems to work.
Now I have 3 days away in Bristol before I charge into a busy next week. I need to launch the new SFXEngine update on Tuesday, an IndieSFX sale on Wednesday, the album cover creation workshop on Thursday, and the big We Robot launch day on Friday; and through all of this I need to record my Christmas song vocals and completely finish it. To be ready for a potential single release it needs to be done before November 1st.
A manic, and magic time of busyness, partly because of a three day 'break' at a time when so many plates are spinning. Today, working on an update to SFXEngine. There were few visible changes, but I've fixed two small errors, and created some new sounds for customers of the Analogue VCF Sound Pack.
The biggest change, which took most of the day, was checking languages and replacing 90% of the text in the program with data read from an external file. This allows the creation of many files, and thus multi-language translation. This is a complex task. Lots of string processing is needed to assemble messages rather than simply print them, and there must be a back-up message in case something isn't found. Well, it's largely complete.
I'm also thinking that I'd like to restore the band-pass filter array for my EQ, and have had thoughts of a new transform for the frequency curve, but I'm unsure if such a thing is possible.
In other news, Tim has recorded the basics for his Christmas song, and mine is about 75% complete, and I hope to complete it before November to release it as a single.
The London pop-up exhibition I was set to take part in is evolving into something else.
There are 9 days to go until the grand release of We Robot too, and two publications are covering it. More is needed. More, more of everything!
Onwards we charge.
