Dave's Little Bit On the Side: December 2007
31-Dec-07: Happy New Year
I would like to wish all of my readers a Happy New Year. Thanks for sticking with the blog over the last year and a special thanks for all of the feedback received. It was (mostly) fun to read and I'll look at including your comments in next year's version.
30-Dec-07: Universal
The re-recording of the recent gig at Newcastle University has been finished - for the moment. This, like Species/Hybrid, will be another internal-only volume and therefore not for public consumption. In other words, it's just a 'milestone' (or a 'gravestone' depending upon your point of view) rather than a formal release, something intended to illustrate that, yes, the project is still alive and running and not gathering dust or pushing up daisies as some have suggested/suspected.
The disc has been given the provisional title of Universal. Although it's only 18 minutes long, I feel that there are elements that work and, with a bit of a polish, could end up as a formal release. However, there are some sections that have that unmistakeable clunk about them, which (privately, at least) indicates an idea that doesn't work or a concept that could be better handled.
I had pretty much decided to close this ambient, noodly, self-indulgent chapter for good though the ability/desire to do weird stuff is still very strong.
The running order is:
1. Altitude 2. Sancho Panza 3. Garden Party 4. Aurora 5. Waving at Mono
I do like the cover image and the title and my gut feeling is that both will almost certainly be re-cycled later.
20-Dec-07: Yuletide Joy and the view from our window, part 2
Jules corrected me on the wording of the Christmas Card mentioned below. The actually wording is:
"To No 3., with Love from Jayne, Rich, Emily and Sarah"
... not to mention the 4 'kisses' pegged onto the end for good measure. I feel so full of Christmas Spirit. Not.
The saga of the skips is on-going. According to the Highways Department at Sunderland City Council, the skip that has been dumped in front of our house has been left at the wrong address. The documentation states that the skip belongs to No. 2 whereas it really belongs to No. 24. Whether this was a genuine mistake or a case of "Oops! Silly me!" remains open for debate. The Highways Department say that the skip will be moved on Friday morning, as will the other skip, which the council claim is parked illegally. I spoke to my other neighbour, Steve, who assured me that his skip is legally placed and he has all of the permits to prove it.
However, if the offending skip isn't moved and remains in place after 25th December when the license expires, we still can't do anything about it, even if it's parked illegally because there won't be anyone in the council offices over the break to fix the problem. So, one remains less than impressed with our neighbours and considerably less than impressed by the Highways Department.
Anyway, on to things musical. I have more or less completed the re-recording of the University gig from last week. The recording made on the night wasn't of sufficient quality so it was a simple case of remembering what I played and dubbing it over the original backing. Not difficult when you consider that most of it was improvised in the key of A minor or C major. I decided to stick to just the material I played on the night and didn't pad it out with the extra piece I improvised on the Friday morning before I took the setup down or any other pieces I had lying around.
This will be another private release and therefore won't be available for public consumption. Sorry, but this chapter of my life is over and it's time to move on to other things, whatever they might be.
I've also been contacted by a photographic agency who want to talk about doing some soundtracks for future exhibitions. This is terrific. I've done my research and they look like a pukka organisation so I'm seriously up for it.
As a slight sweetener to all of the problems we experienced with the new iMac, John Lewis fessed up and admitted fault. They have agreed that we were given misleading and inaccurate advice and that we were spoken to in an unprofessional manner when we complained. In an effort to make amends, they also sent us a gift voucher for £25. The letter seems genuine and the gift voucher is welcome but I doubt very much that we will buy anything from them again.
Another sequencer will go out the door tomorrow. This will be the second retro desktop unit, the first with the new Sloan boards inside so it will be a nervous time. The machine has been on test for several weeks and it looks good. I'm optimistic.
2007 was not a good year for us. We seemed to lurch from one production problem to another and, just as we got one problem licked, another popped up in its place. For example, a circuit board manufacturer, who was personally recommended to us because of the quality of their work, delivered 100 PCB's on Tuesday and not one of them is right. They all have areas of the ground plane exposed and so will need to be re-manufactured, which is another delay. It means that my Christmas break will probably be spent attempting to build a working system out of the collection of scrap boards we have put to one side for testing purposes. Either that or my precious development system will be canabalised for working parts.
This is what it's like doing business in the UK at the moment. Fucks ups are endemic, they're part of the system, part of the British way of doing things. And, of course, we're at the top of the chain. We carry the can for all of these mistakes and we're the ones who take it on the chin when customers get pissed for their machine not turning up.
However, it's that time of year again when the world shuts down for two weeks and nobody gets anything done. My usual Christmas habit is to throw myself into a good book and ignore everything else until the festive season is over. I won't be doing that this year, partly because I have more work on my plate at the moment than I can properly handle and I need to crash various projects if they're to see the light of day next year.
So, this may be my last blog entry of 2007. I would like to take the opportunity to wish all of my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
So long until 2008.
19-Dec-07: Yuletide Joy and the view from our window
"Christmas is coming,, The goose is getting fat. Please put a penny in the Old Man's Hat..."
I make no secret of the fact that I think most of the residents of this estate are selfish, unthinking morons, motivated by nothing more than material wealth and social standing. But then they're probably no different from the vast majority of the population of the UK, having been seduced by the marketting men into believing that they too can "... just buy the product and be happy.".
Nice people though they are, they tend to look down on us. This is because we don't think we're stupid enough to be seduced by their throw-away lifestyle and the advertising illusion. We drive an old car, grow our own vegetables and generally give a shit about the planet. We don't have a patio, 2.4 children, a tiled driveway or two gas-guzzling 4 x 4 off-roaders parked in front of the house.
A couple of nights ago, the letter box clattered with that familiar Yuletide rattle - the arrival of a Christmas Card. It was from one of our neighbours. Awww.... How sweet? I opened the card and, inside, it read "To No.3, Happy Christmas from Jane, Rich, Emily and Sarah".
Now, we've lived here 9 years and so have they. We see them pretyy much every day. Most days, we speak, except when Robot Man is in one of his weird, silent moods and doesn't speak to anyone. Now, don't you think that in all that time, they might just be able to remember our names? Are they so wrapped up in themselves that they don't even remember our first names? I guess so. Then again, this is something called manners and robot-man, like so many of his peers, seems to have forgotten his.
The next day... This arrives. What a nice seasonal gift for the whole family to share.
It has been deposited in the Public Parking Bay at the front of our house. I make no claim over the public parking bay. It's a public area for parking cars, there for everyone to use. It says so in the deeds of the house. Now, the parking bay borders on our property and the offending skip sticks out into the middle of the road where the contractors have thoughtfully placed an illuminated bollard on the protruding corner. However, it's just asking for someone to come along and smack it with their car.
The skip sat there most of last week. It was casually filled by a couple of labourers the first two days but has remained largely unused since last Thursday. The only people to use it are other residents who have taken the opportunity to dump their excess rubbish in the skip.
Yesterday, another skip turned up and was deposited in the other public parking bay opposite our house. Someone else having a spot of work done. The access road running through the estate was then obstructed by another set of contractors, who dumped their van opposite the entrance to our driveway.
I called the Highways Department at Sunderland Civic Centre. They looked into the matter and declared that one of the two skips was parked illegally. They confirmed that they would be sending an inspector out within 24 hours. In fact, he was there within 30 minutes.
Later on, the Highways Department confirmed that one of the skips had been dumped illegally though insisted that it would be moved by the end of the week. Great. That's a result.
However, the other skip, the skip right in front of our house, the one piled high with other people's rubbish, is there legally and, this is the best bit, the license is in place until December 25th, Christmas Day.
That means that we will have to spend Christmas with this great, stinking pile of refuse right in front of our house because there will be nobody in the council offices to enforce the law regarding the illegally placed skip until the New Year.
What really pisses me off is that the family in question have a large driveway, which is vacant most of the day whilst they're out at work. Why not dump the skip on their own doorstep and leave the public parking bay free for others to use?
Maybe you think I'm being a bit anal about this. You're probably right. But the house opposite is having their driveway widened and the labourers are now cutting up bricks with a bandsaw. Ever tried recording music with that sort of noise going on? Ever tried testing a sequencer with 110db's of external noise rattling the windows? Regular readers might remember our experiences with the neighbours from hell and their noctural bandsaw activities from several months ago. Essentially, you can't work with this sort of racket going on. How can you?
Worse still, we've since learning that the extension currently being built across the road will take roughly 3 months to complete. Do Jane and Rich honestly expect us to put up with that thing parked at the front of our house for the next 3 months? Guess again.
Later.
The Highways Department have not returned my call as they promised they would. Hence, I've just written to our local councillor requesting that she get involved. That should put the cat amongst the pigeons.
18-Dec-07: Eyes
When I worked as a astronomical mirror maker at Sinden Optics down in sunny Byker, there was a running joke about the optician who fell into his lens grinder and made a spectacle of himself.
Ah, yes. The old ones are the best.
I've always taken great care of my eyesight. I've always made sure that there was enough light available to read properly or that I wore protective goggles whenever I was doing something slightly risky, essentially because getting something stuck in your eye hurts like a bastard or, worse still, can occasionally blind you.
I worked in industry for a lot of years and I was always amazed at the number of men on the shopfloor who would casually ignore basic safety rules and regulations and then cry like an infant when a lump of metal got jammed in their iris. Some years ago, I saw my friend Brian F. hard at work with an angle grinder, sparks flying off in ever possible direction. And yet, even though he was a teacher and therefore supposed to set a good example to his peers and pupils alike, he shunned the pair of protective goggles I gave him "because they weren't very comfortable". Go figure.
Anyway, in recent months, my eyesight has started to suffer. I've found it difficult to focus long distance. I've started to find it difficult to focus on closer objects too. I went off to Boots the Chemist for one of their Free Eye Tests, which incidentally, cost me £22.50 because I opted to have the retina scan and that's extra. Fair enough. They couldn't find anything wrong. My eyesight was normal for a male of my age. The optician did say that she was reluctant to recommend spectacles because once I go down that route, I'll never be rid of them. That's a commendable attitude, in my opinion. She lost a sale but did what was right for the patient.
Well, yesterday, I'd had enough of not being able to handle the close-up stuff anymore. Part of my job is to solder surface mount devices to PCB's and, for that, you need to be able to work close up.
Rather than fork out an arm and a leg for a pair of bespoke spectacles, I went down to Bookbarn in Houghton and bought a pair for just £3.99. They're fine. I tried them out on a new set of circuit boards and the results are excellent. I can see again though I'm not yet used to the whole world swirling around my ears whenever I turn my head.
So, after years of taking the piss out of Jules and her glasses, the boot was on the other foot last night. It would have been so easy to pay me back for all of the specky-four-eyes, jam-jar bottoms comments etc etc etc over the years. But she did not.
I really don't understand people.
17-Dec-07: Year Zero
Hardly anything in this blog in nearly two weeks! This isn't good, but there are reasons.
A couple of weeks ago, I received notice of the Man and Machines symposium at Newcastle University, a 3 day event dedicated to the interaction of man and machine to create music. I mailed the organisers and, after a bit of discussion, was invited to participate. Could I give a lecture/presentation on Software Techniques for Improvisation? Certainly.
Now, apart from ZEIT and a few other packages like Audacity, I don't know that much about software for improvisation at all and almostly certainly less than my intended audience. Hence, I changed the subject of the talk a little, renaming it Developing Software for Improvisation, which I do know something about.
The organisers also wanted a performance - roughly an hour of improvised music. Frankly, I freaked because there is no way that I could have produced an hour of improvised music at such short notice. Much as that sounds like a contradiction in terms, improvised performances always require a degree of preparation. At the very minimum, you need a roadmap of the performance so that you have a vague idea of where you want to go and what you want to say. You also need to know what to perform and how you're going to perform it using the available instruments. Then there's the issue of practicing so that you're sharp, gig ready and able to deliver the goods. Hence, a degree of planning is essential if only to avoid looking like a complete bell end.
Mercifully, a few days later, the organisers mailed me again to let me know that my slot had been reduced. Instead of 60 minutes, it was now just 20 minutes. 20 minutes sounds easy. It is easy. I can do 20 minutes standing on my head. But just 20 minutes? Was it in fact worth the effort and the disruption? In the end, I stretched the performance somewhat. It was nearer 25 minutes, I think. It would have been 30 minutes if I'd felt like chancing my luck a little further.
Anyway, the talk was scheduled for last Thursday, 13th December, and it went ahead as planned. As usual, nerves were a problem the night before and I didn't sleep too well. It was alot of stress and effort but it went off fairly smoothly. The audience were mostly students and all seemed to be more than a little sleepy right until the end when I invited them to come have a closer look at ZEIT. Such was the rush to have a play with the beast, I was nearly knocked over in the stampede. Better still, it didn't take long for one or two to become addicted. Many, many sequences issued forth and I was quite delighted at the response of the delegates.
The gig itself was scheduled for the following evening and I prepared around 30 minutes of material, including a sequencer piece I worked out on Friday morning, about 30 minutes before I broke the rig down for the trip into Newcastle. Gigs like this have a habit of being stretched so I wanted to make sure that I had a spare piece just in case. I picked a simple two-part sequence that I'd played with before but was able to add a half-decent arrangement complete with the usual verse, chorus, solo structure and it came close to what I actually heard in my head though I decided that I could have played far more, given a bit more time. Maybe later.
The audience of around 70 souls was easily the largest since the Classic Rock Society concert in 2003. Actually, I think the largest audience I'd played to since 2003 was just 20 people! I was also first on stage, performing just as David Hughes and not under any of my band names such as Ion or SkinMechanix.
The performance went okay though, as usual, my mind went blank as soon as the first backing track kicked off. I played a modified version of the track Farscape from Ion's Future Forever, layering in 'tron choirs and breathy voices. After that, I added PPG keyboard riffs and a Vangelis-style solo over a truncated version of Sancho Panzer. Layered strings, choirs and another Vangelis-style solo were added to a new piece, Garden Party, which was an up-tempo sequence I found last weekend. Finally, I had ZEIT play a dreamy music-box like riff over some atmospheric drones before ripping into Waving at Mono, one of my favourite ever pieces.
Yes, you heard that right. This bit wasn't improvised.
Now, that sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it? I mean, playing a pre-arranged piece at a gig specifically aimed at improvisation. Haven't I played Waving many, many times since it was first aired publically in 2002? That's right. It was a deliberate and pre-meditated contradiction.
I played it because I am tired of improvised electronic music. I don't like it. I don't like doing it and I don't want to do it anymore.
I'm tired of boring, hackneyed, easy music trotted out to pleasure boring, hackneyed, easily-pleased people. I'm tired of dull, lifeless music with no heart, no soul and no passion. I'm tired of music where there is no real technical skill involved, no real performance, no real energy and no real attention paid to the needs of the audience.
Worse still, I'm tired of hearing music where the technology is used as a crutch to support performers who just can't or won't learn to play anything except masterbatory junk. I'm tired of being ignored by a scene who calls 10 or 12 people an audience. That's not an audience. That's a bunch of mates coming round for a couple of beers. I'm tired of being pushed in that direction by a musical scene that says it loves my stuff but, truthfully, isn't interested in what we're doing. Never has been. Never will be.
After the gig, I went outside and hid myself away in a stairwell. I wasn't disappointed with the performance. It was okay, average, functional rather than good. The kit held together well, nothing went horrendously wrong and the applause at the end was loud and positive. Job done? Yeah. Sort of.
However, just like the Awakenings gig in December 2006, I came away with the feeling that the music was hollow, empty and meaningless, as though it was surface deep with no real emotional core to it. What was the message? What was I trying to say? Was I, in fact, trying to say anything?
I know, deep down, that this isn't the music I want to do. It's isn't the music I hear in my head and it's not the music that I truly love. It's not what I enjoy, both as a listener and a performer. Truthfully, it doesn't engage my imagination, paint pictures in my head or make my heart soar. Truthfully, it doesn't inspire me to do anything except turn the noise down and read a book.
So, rather than compromise any more, I feel that now is the time to say goodbye, that it's time to break with the past and move on to pastures new.
Now, I am also deeply, deeply aware that I've said exactly the same thing before. In fact, I've said it many, many times and yet, somehow, every time, I got pulled back into the scene. How? Why? I don't know. Really.
Sitting in the stairwell, I decided that, this time, the split is/was permanent, that this phase of the adventure stops here and it's time for a fresh start.
Welcome to Year Zero.
04-Dec-07: Rock God or what?
I received a rather nice e-mail last night from Jan Hanford of Magnatune to let me know that the debut albums from Ion and SkinMechanix both went into the Magnatune Top ten charts over the weekend.
Naturally, I was kinda thrilled. It's nice to think that a little lad from a scruffy part of Newcastle with no musical education whatsoever can find an audience on the other side of the world.
Don't worry. I won't let this success go to my head, I promise. No, really. I won't. Okay, I might. Mmmm...... (Looks up number of nearest Aston Martin dealership...)
03-Dec-07: Easy Like Sunday Morning?
There was an advert on the telly a couple of years ago wherein some high flying dude would gaze out of the window of his renovated loft apartment, whip up some fresh croissants before nipping down to the shops for the morning paper, backed by The Commodores' "Easy Like Sunday Morning".
Don't ya just love advertisments.
My Sunday mornings are usually pretty relaxed - up at 7:15am to get the dogs fed and watered before settling down to watch a tiny indulgence - Pinky and The Brain on BBC2, then breakfast followed by either a business meeting and/or various less challenging jobs around the house. Sometimes this is DIY, sometimes it's just hoovering the carpets or tidying the house under my new job title of Tidyness Tzar.
Today was a little different in that I had a couple of new toys to play with - a new compiler for the as-yet-unannounced Project X2, a front-panel to spray-paint for the as-yet-unannounced Project X2 and a lecture to prepare for Newcastle University. More on that later.
However, I had also set aside a couple of hours to go through the OSX Leopard upgrade. There's some baggage with this installation so, if you're interested, just have a read through November's entry for the full story.
Today's episode of Pinkie and The Brain was up to the usual high standards plus there was the added bonus of finding an undiscovered diamond - GMTV2's Sunday morning book review. This really was a shock to the system. Here was me thinking that GMTV's entire output was nothing more than cosmetic fluff for born-again airheads but this was a minor revelation. Politics and the literary genius of Omar Khayyam discussed without reference to a single celebrity! Wow! Proper telly.
So, lots of good vibes all around, right?
Well, not quite.
For reasons I won't discuss here, Jules and I ended up having 'a domestic'. Such things happen. People disagree. It's part of life. She has her own mind. I have mine. Sometimes points of view cause conflict, sometimes a serious disagreement. Not quite a storm in a teacup but we'll get over it. In time.
So, that event put paid to the good vibes. The advertiser's vision of an ideal Sunday morning with hot croissants over the morning papers was just that, a vision. And, frankly, I should have known better than to embark on the next adventure.
According to the instructions, the Leopard upgrade should have just run on its own, with no intervention required on my part other than to point the installer at the right disc and click Continue. Great. One less thing to do. One more tick on the never-ending list.
However, as has become customary with this Apple iMac, things didn't go according to plan. Frankly, I was being either optimistic or naive - take your pick - but more or less as soon as I put the disc in the drive, the installer crapped out on me. As a precaution, I removed all of the external devices - USB hub, keychain disc, printer, ethernet port - and then rebooted. The Installer kicked off again and began checking the integrity of the source DVD. I left it singing to itself and then settled down to start another job - spraying the new front panel for Project X2.
Ten minutes later, I went through to check on the iMac. It was dead. "Weird", I thought and rebooted. The disc span up, the DVD drive clicked and clacked. And then it died again.
Rude words issued forth.
I rebooted again and, this time, the installer kicked off. Only to die 20 seconds later.
More rude words issued forth.
Had I screwed the machine completely? The only solution was to try and get the Leopard DVD out of the drive and see if the machine would boot from the internal disc. I tried the obvious - pressing the Eject button on the keyboard. That didn't work. So how do you get the DVD out of the drive when the Eject button doesn't work and you can't get access to any help because the installer dies before you can click on the menu?
The answer is.... you start up your PC laptop and go look on the Apple Web site for technical support. And, of course, there isn't anything that relates to this specific problem. Instead, I tried a couple of the Mac forums and, straight away, found several references to similar problems. The solutions range from jabbing the Eject button as often as possible as the machine reboots, to sticking a piece of double-sided sticky tape into the drive and removing the DVD manually.
The least worst option seemed to be to jab the Eject button like a loon. That worked - though I bruised the tip of my index finger in the process - the Leopard DVD ejected and the iMac went into its normal boot cycle.
Phew.
So, once again, I have cause to feel that I wish I'd gone with a PC instead of the iMac. Once again, instead of removing a job from my never-ending job list, I get to add two more. Once again, I've wasted precious time on this thing and, worse still, dropped a couple of karma points on the Great Wheel of Life because of this pox-rotten machine.
The spray job for the new X2 front panel went well. I used to loath spray-painting stuff but, these days, I've learned a few techniques and, critically, patience so the results are pretty darned good, if I might say so myself. A nice even coat all over and without a single drop or dog's hair stuck to the front panel.
I'm still waiting for confirmation on this next event but it looks like I've been invited to give a talk at Newcastle University on Improvisation where I'll get a chance to talk about the ideas behind ZEIT and what it can do. I'm thrilled, frankly, and not even the crap with the iMac was able to spoil the good vibes over that one.