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.