A cold Thursday waiting for whisky

 Must be a sign of getting old but I've taken out a subscription on my favourite whisky, the blended malt in sherry cask one, and am awaiting my first delivery. Pat's headed out to Chorley, still not quite sure what to do with her freedom; I recall a similar experience after we lost Jasper. No walk this week as Tony is waiting in for the carpet man today and I already have plans for tomorrow; at least the Weed Fairy is coming, which will make the weekend altogether more pleasant and hopefully productive.

I found a bank of my Virus sounds - on my own website! Amazing that there are still things on that. Might not necessarily load them though, again could be healthy to start with the synth as it is as I hardly ever do that. Blimey, the Microfreak doesn't respond to MIDI volume (CC7). 

Blissed-out Friday, recorded things of this type 
https://wilyepeyote.bandcamp.com/album/freakiness
with Pat away, gettin' drunk and watching shit things I've recorded. 

On Saturday, Tim and I were on stonking form. Weaving an MPC delight into our spontaneous madness worked a treat. Feel a bit rough again this morning but off to see mum...

It's Sunday afternoon and I'm going to do some writing if I can summon the mood. Drank quite a lot of the new whisky already and definitely abstaining today. 

Update, I mostly abstained - one G&T while writing hardly counts, right? Went through parts of the novel trying to see what its eventual shape will be. I appear to be approximately half-way through and can tell the parts that need fixing, writing, replacing, whatever. Realised the end of the Expanse was on Prime and that I'd simply forgotten it - shame it's all so rushed and many strands left unexplored. I mean, they brought a kid back to life on an alien planet then... nothing. Very frustrating considering how well it started and that they cancelled series 7 so that's it. Getting a wee bit fed up of these streaming services that only follow through on populist crap.

Monday morning, Pat coming back today. I have eaten a lot of curry and probably stink. Will be glad to see her though. Listening to the thing Tim and I did and it's yet another brilliant day's recording, much enhanced by prepared stuff on the MPC. I promised a different version of the one from Friday for Paul to work on, will remove the drums and leave him lots of space to play in. 

Updates and some gloom

 The gloomy part is that Caspian is no longer safe to ride or even walk - Pat hurt her back yesterday when he slipped on the yard. Poor thing's co-ordination is gone and I think the vet's coming on Monday to put him down. Will be a major change in lifestyle for Pat and pretty heartbreaking all round. I went to say goodbye to him this morning. 

It being Friday I am going to start thinking about my ambient set - moved the SH-101 into setup 1 and drafted in Plaits as an extra oscillator. Seemed worth doing as I was already using the little modular case to provide delay - the DLD module - and of course Steppy is in there to split up clock signals. Other things to be bolted on as necessary - Touche is a nice tactile control to tweak delay times and some Plaits parameters, for example. 

Some updates to do today - alternate Plaits firmware removes that stupid coarse tuning and gives quantized octaves, glad to see that exists without me asking for it. It makes the module far, far more useful and safe to gig with and the SH-101 provides CV input to drive it. Then I need to try the new GR-1 firmware, which doesn't immediately seem to have things I need but I haven't read all the details yet - may try using the Digitone as audio  interface for it as that seems potentially very useful, especially given I have the 101/Plaits/looper signals going through it. If I get time I'll put on the new 0.30 firmware for the Super 6, although this seems primarily there to fix issues with the desktop. I was amazed to see it released with no mention of its existence on the beta list, unless there's a higher level to it that I'm not privy to. 

Next week I'm off to see Dave Sherwood and swap a few things I'm not using for a few things he isn't. The JX-03 and Microsampler are going and the Virus B and Microfreak are incoming - the latter most interesting due to its wacky oscillators (some of which are sourced in Plaits). It's small and giggable and even though it has a 2 octave keyboard, could be handy. I'm going to try and take the absolute minimum to this Plau thing - several synths, several loopers, the GR-1 and the BB. 

Recorded a fun thing yesterday (OK not yet given it the Sober Saturday listen) and today might do another or work on novel, which I've been neglecting. 

A couple of shots of me gazing enigmatically into the distance

Monday now and the deed is done. Very sad and has left me not feeling like doing much. 

Found some music from the guy I'll be supporting at the Plau - really good stuff, reminds me in parts of a more lively Carl Matthews or a less lively rozz3r. 

Now then, it's Wednesday and I got back from Dave's yesterday having done the swap. Haven't touched the Virus yet but have spent a few hours with the Microfreak. First impressions are that it could have been a really excellent thing with a few more quid spent on it - everything is so tiny and I was getting eyestrain trying to work with the screen, which unfortunately you do need quite a lot. The connections feel a bit flimsy and I've had a few power cycles due to slack power supply connection. It doesn't seem to have a way of quickly initialising a patch, despite the manual's claim you can press the encoder three times to do that. I think I'm going to leave the patches in and tweak them as I go, rather than try and big reprogramming campaign - don't wanna go blind! 
After saying all that, it does sound quite nice and all the different oscillator types are fairly flexible-sounding. The filter's pretty decent too, although it doesn't sound anything like an Oberheim, at least not the SEM. Think someone said it was meant to so I guess I'll have to dig further. Sequencer seems easy enough on a basic level and offers more depth when I get round to reading that part of the manual.The keyboard is awful. Don't think it'll be useful for gigs after all - just too small and enigmatic. While programming a few patches in the conservatory I discovered some dull brown text that needs strong daylight to reveal, revealing the functions of some of the buttons. I guess I'll learn what they are by the icons soon enough. 

Pat meant to be heading south on Friday for a few days - could be called off by wee man's covid scare so fingers crossed there. Not sure if walking tomorrow or not, awaiting word. RC-505 mk2 incoming for review, yay! It's all go. Should replace the one in my OT setup so no more fuckups forgetting to send OT output to Cue during record. We'll see. The old one can slip into the Digitone setup. 

Busy busy!

Mid-week Haweswater wonders

 The track I did yesterday seems pretty unimpressive, which I guess is hardly unprecedented. I was starting to think about the gig and doing some weirdy noises on the GR-1 and possibly went off at a tangent - got fascinated by a Jupiter 6 arpeggio which doesn't sound anything special today, oops. At least the thing I did with Paul (20 min piece for THC2) sounds good. I tried doing something with setup 2 yesterday and gave up, switching to 1 despite the dice roll. I need to do something with that area to make it more inviting. Task for today would maybe involve tackling the Eurorack again and finding a context in which it could be useful.

Mum discharged herself from hospital so will see what she's up to today, giving her time for a lie-in though.

Today I will fit a new battery to the P3 and then perhaps leave the studio alone in favour of some writing (since the ideas are still flowing). Last night Pat and I cooked another impressive meal, I think it's a chickpea curry tonight, what fun! Ah, update - Dean sent a track for some Synthi wibbles maybe. Turns out changing a P3 battery is much, much easier than doing it on my Cirklon. 

Sent Dean some noises - granular squeaks, MS20 wibbles and even some bland electric piano and truly terrible theremin. I should feel bad but I'm anticipating he'll either autotune it into something or ditch most of it, as usual. Was hard firing up the computer and even harder knuckling down to working with an arrange window. 

It's Monday morning and we're anxiously awaiting the vet's word on Caspian. I can't seem to start anything, been wandering around the studio looking at all the things I hardly ever use, the majority being in the center and the modular corner. Issue seems to be that I've put all my favourite things in two places - at the far ends - but it's hard to know quite how to fix it, especially as I've had these phases before. Would be lovely to get rid of the bulk of the Eurorack - may try advertising on Facebook as there are at least three unnecessary cases and dozens of modules I doubt I'd ever use again. I could get an input module or two and use the various filters and effects with regular gear. Dunno really, seems like time wasted even thinking about it; same conclusion I always reach when I think about my Eurorack. It ties up cash and space and resources that would be better allocated to other gear. 

Not good news re: Caspian. 
Tax man owes me £1k - for that mad and greedy grab he did last year. I suppose that's something.

I may finally be tiring of Jasper Fforde, or at least his Thursday Next series appears to have run out of steam and I find myself struggling to finish chapters. 
This morning I discovered a recording made by Tony Sawford of our (JIC's) gig in 2007. Quite a bit went on to be Book of Roach but I'm tempted to release the whole thing as is. What's strange is that both Tony and Phil are gone but I'm still here. 

Anyway, walked near Haweswater and it was spectacular. Saw and photographed a Brocken Spectre effect.

New Year's Day - t-shirts, blue skies and time to change the Volcano bag...

 I've meant to replace it for a while - it leaks a bit and it getting quite sticky and falls off a lot. I suspect it'll still fall off a lot after I clean it but we'll see.

Pat's decided to get another dog. Knew it was brewing but hoped she'd wait for a while, given the horse is a full-time hobby already. I didn't offer to help with it, although it will inevitably eat into my time and be tying and all that. Can't decide what to do today so will open some beer...

Pah, Sunday and absolutely pissing down. Dunno how much of this I'll keep - recent things for free
https://wilyepeyote.bandcamp.com/album/2021-bin-gon

Well, it was Monday and my mum was admitted to hospital, chest infection. 
Back still aching. Decided as it was Bank Holiday I'd have some whisky and smoke (from tiny bag) and wrote some novel sections I'd meant to do for a while. It fleshed out parts I should maybe have done a lot earlier but I'm happy enough - it lets me sort the pacing of the sections that already exist and do a bit more on the edges. All in all, good. I added Tony's pic of me as my new fb profile pic. 

Thursday mum still on hospital, pneumonia they're saying now. She's hoping to be home tomorrow.

I agreed to do another gig - at the Plau gin place in March. Will do something gentle and ambient I think. 

This week's walk...