Studio B

Got to the end of another quick novel edit, which was an exercise in small trims, colouring in lines and clarifying a few plot points. When I looked, I'm not sure it was necessary but at least one reader either missed them or at least failed to grasp the whole thing. Several readers do seem to have spotted the deeper structure though so perhaps not all it lost.

I sketched my Tree and am starting to have different ideas for the cover. Had to go see mum this morning as she was having a weird one, which means tomorrow could be free (unless we go taking photos early). Had an hour in Studio B today and it was splendid fun.

Monday now. Had a walk and then grabbed an hour with the Elektron stuff. Still enjoying it but pretty sure I'd be happier ditching the lot and getting a Deluge :) Fortunately there aren't any around and the review model never showed. Maybe I'll get a Digitone, which I suspect I'd like better than the A4.

I took a lot of photos today. These are some of the ones Facebook didn't get.

Tomorrow definitely working on cover. Or that module review. Definitely something.

I have no decent title for this post so don't get excited about the content

So that's a good start. I guess I've been busy of late since I have forgotten this blog exists. Still, I've managed to get a review off that I've been struggling with and filmed a video with Tim, probably do another for the Birmingham guys. I set up the modular this afternoon to do a series of interesting things - but of course by tomorrow I'll have forgotten what everything is doing, the tuning will have gone, the bloody Quadnic will have reset its values. Hey ho.

Got some more novel feedback, mostly negative but oddly enough I still feel kinda cool about it. I resisted explaining or clarifying because I think the book does have the answers, at least to the things Tony struggled with. However, it does illustrate the need to read and think about the previous Bogus Realities. Oh well. Maybe I'll write something easier next. Or harder. :)

Wednesday, Jan16th and good in the sense I pottered more with Studio B, decided a 'standing up' studio might be a good idea, since I sit so much. May take out the Octatrack as I'm enjoying the Analogue Four and TT-78 more. Perhaps replace it with a Digitone.

I've been reading Huxley's Brave New World and have come across the idea of a 'soma-holiday', which somehow equates to eternity from a pill. So much for my Eternity Program idea, which I'd been quite pleased about. Are any of my ideas original, I wonder?

Oh well.

Studio B, dunno if it shows up here
https://www.instagram.com/p/BssuC9Ch64W/

Bye bye 2018

We had a good summer in 2018 but winter seems not to have happened yet. Insanity seems to be driving humanity to destroy itself at an increasing pace, and destroy everything else first if possible. Maybe these things are related? Anyway, it's a nice thought to end the year on. I used to think all these dystopian authors were drawing on their imaginations, naive fool!

Seems like a limbo day, and not the fun kind involving dancing under a low stick while drunk.

Recorded a groovy thing with just the Pipe and my RC-505. Don added to it and it's already becoming one of our weirder tracks. Today's Saturday and I think I might write a module review.

Seems to be Wednesday now, January, 2019. I didn't write that module review but the guys turned my Pipe track into a brilliant new ANT track, kinda ravey thing. Actually, we seem to have done two or three recently. I'm starting to lose track.

Contemplating turning Studio Two into the modular room. Lots of good reasons to do so but some questions to ask myself first. Have spent so long slotting everything neatly into that corner it seems a shame to undo it all... but since modular is a totally different process/mindset, putting it as a separate area for modular composition would seem to make sense. I could remain locked in indecision though, that also works.

Those were my NYE photos, posted on facebook but now here too as I've nothing else to bulk out this entry. There are guides to writing successful blogs, apparently. Don't worry, I have no intention of reading any.
Happy New Year! Please don't let it be ruled by cunts again!

New authors, some free time

Well, I struggled through Sheri S. Tepper's Grass wishing, all the while, that she had smoked some before starting. Still, I got to the end - but I won't be ordering any more of her work. David Brin, on the other hand, has begun well and I'm already much more intrigued than with dear flat, slightly sweet Sheri. See what I did there? Well, I wrote in cliche for a start. Next I'll be saying someone 'smashed it'.

Where was I?

Here, as always. Listening to some Nitin Sawhney, drinking beer and contemplating doing a module review. My Euro adapter thing arrived - so all those weird bits of gear with euro adapters can sit in it as if they were really in Europe, as opposed to this grim and angry little island obsessed with self-harm. Oops, I go all Brexit Crazy whenever I visit my mum. It's Sunday you see.

I think I have a few days free coming up. Should have thought about the video for those guys in Birmingham but haven't. Will wing it and see how it goes.

Don's new song is rather good. My modular sequences work well so it'll be interesting to see what Dean adds. I had an idea for a melody but left it off to give them more space. And I still really like the vocoder one, more so than 'Memory Foam' which is the one song out of everything we've done that never clicked. It'll doubtless be the one that earns us our immortality and hysterical devotion of old people who are missing Last of the Summer Whine.

But I digress.

Right, beer and modular noodles. Or beer and the little stand-alone setup. Decisions...

Monday. Strange. Almost fell into the online discussion thing with a rabid Brexiteer. I managed to get out before I wasted too much time by asking a simple question: which leaver minds have most inspired you?
Turns out to have been a clever move on my part as the answer included David Davis, James Dyson, Tony Benn and Margaret Thatcher. I kid you not. There was obviously nowhere sane for me to go after that.

Last night I solved the first of my problems for writing a time travel novel: I worked out how time and space really co-exist. Turns out Einstein was quite wrong, the silly old duffer. Anyway, it allows me to fit my skeleton plot around something so I'll start fleshing out the characters in my head. I'm starting with a couple of Time Ladies, an evil assassin and a Jeeves and Wooster-style pair of heroes, all of which I hope will develop personalities of their own once I start writing. I even have a title that I like, already!

I finished the first third of the David Brin and it's ... OK. I've started the next chunk but it's not really doing it for me. Still, of the people reading my novel, I've had only a handful of lightweight comments so I guess my writing isn't captivating anyone either. Maybe I'll keep music and writing to myself in future. Family meal type thing today. Mum still sounding a bit off so it may be fun. Can't fecking wait.

Studio B takes shape. Bought grey import Zoom R24 from a dodgy place called tobydeals.co.uk (a Hong Kong company in disguise). Octatrack not really fitting in there like I hoped it would. I've spent so long trying to make that thing fit somewhere haven't I? Time to put it in a box for a while.

Cold drags on

Yeah, it does. I wake up each morning with my eyes full of the gunk my body is expelling, I cough up a few green jellyfish and my head rings like the inside of a belfry. But as the day progresses I feel OK, weak and listless but OK, and then in the evening I start coughing again. Rinse and repeat.

Still getting slugs in the house. Gonna have to go around everywhere there are holes into the gap beneath the floorboards and seal them all. Not today though. Still writing, feel I'm perhaps 10,000 words from the end. I thought of a clever shift too, a fitting ending for my long-suffering female lead character who never got enough good lines and basically got shit upon throughout every novel she's appeared in. I'm very happy with this one, as I may have said before. Will need to start thinking about how to get a cover done, how to represent a mountain-sized tree presiding over the Elysian Fields, a Heavenly courtyard, a magical river and rainbow bridge without it all seeming a bit cliche. Getting the scale to look right is going to be paramount. Aiming for a 75,000 word paperback even those with no attention spans can get through so a pretty cover is essential.

Have not done owt with the 2 review modules I have. Well, I've played with them (good, fortunately) but not written a word. Barely going into the studio at all, except to do a few recordings for ANT. All I do is sit around being weedy and writing novel. Oh well.

Wednesday, may have spent too long writing but the winning post is drawing me. A lot of what I've written is unrefined but gets from A to B. Almost at the end but forcing myself to stop.

Wow, it's been some time since I started this entry!

Yeah, still done pretty much nothing in studio. Starting to tidy and clear out the other half as much as possible and maybe make a little setup in there of small boxes. I even ordered a Zoom R24 to serve as mixer and to record anything worth recording, loops and shit.

Mum has been wonky again. The usual: refusing to drink, getting kidney infection, raving down phone. Can see it's gonna be a long winter.

Have sent copies of novel to about a dozen people. A single comment back so far. I must really be working the magic.

At least the cold is pretty much gone. A last few coughs and my ear is still bunged up and whistling like a bastard, otherwise OK.

Fascinating PRS this time - not tapering off yet and all my top earning tracks are the new age and melodic ones I did quite early (and which always do well in Japan and New Zealand for some reason).

Some theremin, some simplification, the Octatrack pushed aside once again

I know, I know. It's weird because on Monday I did four Octatrack patterns that sounded great and I was planning to do more. Tuesday came and I tried to make the same patterns sound good again - and failed. Whatever Scene thing I did, I couldn't replicate and I got fed up and took it out of the system to show my annoyance. It made me think of further simplifications.
Today (Wednesday), I recorded a theremin part for the new song - the one I did the awful key messing in but which has become this brilliant thing because of Don's bass line and Dean's lyrics. Anyway, Dean made my theremin playing sound better than it was, the hero! May try some of my Night of the Demon samples on it.

Cold persisting. Tried some Albus oil which seemed to clear my nose a bit. Fed up that the only exercise I'm doing it coughing. Was gonna visit Paul but didn't really want to pass it on. What a crock.

Cold still fucking persisting. It's Saturday and I'm meant to be going out to see Mick's band play in Preston. Dunno if I will though.
Novel going well at the moment, largely because I've solved all the problems I had with it and just have a few scenes to write that shouldn't be too difficult. The ending has matured somewhat and I'll jot it down fully soon. In back-combing, I'm going through the fantasy short story that slots in rather well. I don't mind cranking up the Harry Harrison for that as it fits in. All the parts that seemed faffy or complex I've edited out. Anything laboured or drowning in adjectives has gone. I'm happy.

Nic Roeg died. So I wanna watch this again:

Jeez it's Monday and I'm still not great. Cracking on with novel is helping keep my mind occupied though, reaching the fun end stages where I've sketched out the start of the three last strands I'm going to run, ready to pick up on any as the mood takes me. Have formulated the Rules for Godly War, lifted a bunch of stuff from the I Ching and even managed to weave in some Brexiteer levels of stupidity. In another week I should have my first draft, which is a lot better than previous first drafts because this time I back-combed a number of times to get everything lined up. Still some editing to do, some chapter quotes to position, some other minor tweaks but essentially it's nearly there. I have one scene I'm not 100% sure which way it will go yet but that will just happen out of momentum (and a bag of smoke).

Started a new track in which Don sent me an mp3 and I overdubbed a sequence and melody. Could probably have done it better if both my ears were working but no guarantees.

Did a 2019 calendar too. Didn't have such great pix this year though.

Not well but stuff ticking along

Pat's been really ill with a bad chest infection. On antibiotics now and slowly recovering but not there yet. I have a bad cold but resisting getting more. Seemed to go downhill after dropping mum off at private health place yesterday.

Got through the next, hopefully last, roadblock in After Life. I knew the ending but not quite how I was getting to launch into it but now it's clicked into place. Might even be able to tie it up in just another 20,000 words or less (hopefully). Depends how many ends I ultimately want to tie up. Very happy with fantasy section, even though I still have that battle to write up. I may do it at the same time as the other one and do some fuckery between them, we'll see. Don't want to add too much complication at this stage.

It's a week later and I have done very little but fight this bloody cold. Some nice new concept stuff for ANT - the guys doing their usual creative marvels and me sitting grinning on the sidelines like everyone's favourite village idiot. Been working on After Life, went back to start in order that I fully understand it before writing the next section. Some edits leap out as needed but in general it's working well.

Today I plan to do some studio stuff. Turned down a gear review, asked to do one though as Duncan has been telling me for some time I'd like the Deluge. Has to be better than that other thing I've had a while and still is as mature as a spotty teenager with its hand down its pants.