Saturday, June 28, 2008

rendering wigglyform

finally finished cutting up last night, then today i've been going through finding my mistakes, fixing them, and then, having cut everything up, and named them so they're in the right order already, i put them all onto the timeline... go through and push each little bit closer to the last bit by the right amount....

and now it's rendering and we'll see what it looks like... then maybe change one or two bits, then put titles on...

phew...

i so deserve this orange lucozade that dinah's just got for me from the shops...

x

Friday, June 27, 2008

almost 2 thirds

i'm midway through K,

i've cutup 68 of 104 improvisations...

very close to 2/3 of the lot...

i should have been paid on wednesday but i wasn't, N in the personnel department of hammersmithwork is franticly trying to get the money into my account today but it may not happen until monday morning...

like the last few summers i'm quite close to the edge financially at the moment and not being paid has taken it's toll on me & dinah... funny how it always seems to be when i don't have that buffer zone that this sort of thing happens... at certain other times of the year it doesn't matter if they are a day or so late with this money because i've not completely run out...

but in the summer, generally when i know i've got money coming in i have often got no money at all the night before it comes in...

so that's tricky... not impossible, but tricky...

BB has all sorts of drama going on for those that follow it... sylvia is almost sure to be evicted tonight... except that i've heard there's a rumour that dennis is going to be extracted for spitting @ mo... please, please, please let sylvia be going as well, i've so had enough of that woman...

ok x

Thursday, June 26, 2008

A - H

i've cut up to week 48, almost half way...

I through to O left...

x

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

ok go big brother MC5 John Sinclair

that made me ludicrously happy...

i so love that video anyway, and i was very impressed that they got it right (enough)...

also because felinity introduced that video to me (i think) and she is my favourite person (who isn't my girlfriend) who watches big brother...

i'm deep in the manual cutting up of improvisations...

in the alphabet, A through to O represent either 4 or 8 clips (104 in all), i'm just starting F...

(C, D, E & F are the only 4 ones, all the others are 8)

it's proper mental...

me & my beautiful girl went to the RFH last night to see the MC5, Primal Scream & John Sinclair...

our favourite bit was at the end where both bands came on together and it really kicked off... then a few tunes in our friend john walked on, bearded as ever... read "What is Jazz?" to a partly bemused audience and walked off again...

it was genius...

D & N, old friends who currently manage john got us the tickets and also got us backstage afterwords, i spoke with wayne from the MC5... also met a saxophonist from funkadelic who i hope to get into an improvisation in august...

it was quite a night...

x

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

yr3wk1 dirty synth & rhodes



from saturday x

broadcast2000

i emailed the competition and they said i had until midnight to upload the finished video to youtube and email them the link...

it's rendering now, i think it might take 30 minutes... i would have liked to have had the chance to change it once i've seen it, but that's not very likely...

once it's uploaded i'll obviously put it here so you can see it... i can't decide if it's great or not...

and also, i haven't yet put titles on it, so i'll have to title it on top of the rendered version...

a race against time...

-------------------------------

and right now it's 5 minutes to 12 and it's uploading to youtube... i can't believe how nervous i am...

what if gets past midnight and it hasn't finished uploading yet?

aaaaaaaaaaaargh

@ 11.59pm i sent the competition guy an email with my youtube page saying it'll be there any minute now,

@ 12.00am exactly youtube finally finished uploading the video,

@ 12.01am i sent the competition guy an email with the video address, even though it hadn't yet finished processing...

but it has now (12:30am) so here it is, my attempt:

Monday, June 23, 2008

busy busy busy

L was just round, we're gigging together @ her gran's 90th birthday do a week on saturday... it's coming together...

i just found that today is the last day for submissions in the video competition i entered and i haven't started mine yet...

you never know, that could happen still, but it would be mad...

the scripting... D came through almost straight after i wrote that last post and it works, but somehow it messes with something in vegas and makes vegas unstable, to the extent that i try and load a file again after the script has done it's magic and it won't load...

the weekend has gone and i don't know if D has time or indeed the inclination to fix it... i don't know how one goes about fixing it...

googlevideo is having one of it's spastic moments... and yes, i know it's not cool these days to use the word, as if it was ever cool, but i love that word so much and it fits so well in my mind when people/companies are not behaving in the usual way, and are functioning in an awkward/wrong way...

and lo i insult thousands of people around the world with learning difficulties... maybe the net is one place not to use dodgy language... the trouble is, not being supposed to use the word just makes the word funnier...

the upshot of the googlevideo thing is that year3week1 will have to wait for a little while...

the cutups are on the backburner until we either get the scripting right or i give up on scripting and do it the long way round...

i've got some paperwork i need to do for someone at work hanging over, i've got another batch of paperwork for another college later in the week... i've got a bit of net work for T i need to do also today...

how likely is it that i'll do that video competition?

who knows x

oh and zimbabwe, the election that won't happen, the killing and bullying, and israel last week saying they would agree to a ceasefire...

what's happened with that?

is it really true?

x

Sunday, June 22, 2008

synthesis

on thursday i played D's moog again and it's so, so sexy...

yesterday i picked up the NORD with a view to getting close to the moog but i got sidetracked into this almost corrosive sound that forms the basis of yesterday's improvisation, year 3 week 1...

i love it... i sometimes wonder why i do the improvisations, but week's like this when at the end of the improvisation i express doubt about it's interest for anyone else, listening (watching) back i really like it...

as if i get lost inside the sound, stop thinking about an audience and just play... i wake up near the end and my audience aware personality wonders whether it's been any good, but my floating non-language personality has been guiding the improvisation in a lovely way and there's nothing to worry about...

of course this is me that's really liking it, it doesn't mean that others will like it... but then i am really doing these improvisations for me... it's uploading now...

i've got D writing a script for me i hope, i can't decide whether or not to start cutting up the clips for the cutup wigglyform or whether to wait until the script is ready... cutting them up is the long way round, but just how long will D take? will he be able to do it?

i've got a number of other things to do, but i find it hard getting on with them while this is not finished, but then, this (cutup wigglyform) will either be days of work, or a couple of hours depending on the scriptableness of it...

x

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

dangerous script proust

last week i was carrying my cards around in the proust book, this on the days when i was wearing trousers with no pockets...

then i lost my oyster card on the day of the gig @ ULU, bought another that came with a plastic wallet, you know the type,

so now my cards are all in the plastic wallet, and what do i do yesterday?

of course, all those eggs in one basket, how could i not lose the wallet...

so anyway, i didn't have a crowd of money on me, no oyster card, no debit card... i had to get home, so i decided to walk from london bridge to where i could get the 29 bus... also i was kind of wistful and it was late in the day, the sun still up...

so i got onto the thames beach just past blackfryers rail bridge (i think) and i walked all the way to waterloo bridge down there, the sky beautiful... windy but lovely...

i reach the southbank and pop in to use their loo and i find a sound sculpture interactive thing called volume, that wasn't as good as it looked like it would be, but probably worth a second look one day...



in time got to the 29 bus and set about finishing this current proust book, at one point a couple got on and sat beside me, insisting on talking, so i had to recourse to the piece of rhodes music i'd recorded to shield me from my neighbour's sound, now shielding me from these inconsiderate fellow travellers...

anyway i reached the end which was lovely, volume 2, it'll be a little while before volume 3 comes round to play... we watched dangerous liaisons last night which - as well as being absolutely delicious - was also ringing several proustian bells for me, at one point keanu reeves passes a note to uma thurman saying "i love you"... just as albertine passes a note to our narrator (the young proust) saying "i like you"...

i was a little confused because i'd seen a korean version of dangerous liaisons quite recently and couldn't work out whether i'd seen the original or not... it is just simply wonderful...

ok and scripts...

this is a little bit techy...

i do certain things every week, or every time i make a cutup film, over and over again, and i'm finding out about ways to automate certain of these tasks... (like changing the velocity envelope in a certain way to deal with my old camera's waywardness)... it turns out that vegas (my video editing software) allows the use of scripts, taking a repetitive action and assigning it to a single button, greatly reducing time spent on these tasks...

exactly what i need, for quite a few different things i do...

but my needs as a video editor are (i think) different from other video editors needs and so i may have to create a script or several scripts for my exact needs...

but creating scripts is really a programming thing, they're programmed in C++ or Jscript...

so this is it, do i plunge into that world of writing my own scripts? am i not so special after all and the scripts i want are out there on the web somewhere? do i carry on in my labour intensive way without scripts?

i've emailed D - who i'm going to see on friday as we're gigging up in leamington spa,

(indiana jones music as i look upon this scripting mess in despair and all of a sudden:

"Do Not Fear non-programming brother, I, D, Programming Brother Will Help You!")

x

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

cutup straightform rendered

cutup straightform rendering

i've cut all of the 104 weekly improvisations into 3 seconds each... and i'm currently rendering the result which i'm calling cutup straightform... as opposed to the cutup wigglyform (i guess, hadn't thought of a name before writing this)...

it's reminding me of the process which will help me when i get down to editing the dawn project, (only 52 weeks)...

it's lovely watching it, for me anyway...

probably later on tuesday it will be up there x

PS - we saw the lives of others tonight which was simply wonderful...

x

Sunday, June 15, 2008

yr2wk52 hammond, synth, harmonium & voice



2 years of my life...

programmed beats and improvising with people in different countries via the internet... that's what year 3 will be i hope, along with the collaborative improvisations and the solo improvisations that i do already...

and thankyou to ganching & stringbeanjean, a fellow can get kinda lonely every now & again, this isn't the most commented blog in the world but i like it when i get the odd word here & there x

Saturday, June 14, 2008

goodbye stephanie

yes, i'm in BB land...

and frankly i'm disappointed in the great british public...

the way mario tends to use Mikey's blindness as a way or showing to the group how caring he is and how uncaring they are...

there, see how Mikey gets a capital and mario doesn't...

also i think lisa will be much more interesting without mario... and now who knows when he'll go...

it's so early in the show, i can't quite believe that i'm involved so soon... it's good for felinity, and it's both the boobelahs who are watching it, in fact dinah started it...

in other news i'm having a weekend of being quite taken with google things, both Opensocial, which is probably way beyond me but i'm wondering whether i can do something in relation to the improvisations, my website... not sure quite what,

and then google sites, i already use google spreadsheets in teaching, it allows students and me to both see where individual students are at... so google sites seem to be a way of collecting such google apps and bringing them together with other items, controlling who can look at them... i'm thinking i can do one for my keyboard class over @ hammersmith - which is where i use the speadsheet - have video's of the scales i want them to do, all the tasks laid out at the beginning of the year...

and if it works i can maybe do it for other modules / classes i teach...

this weekend i'll also be doing the last improvisation of the 2nd year x

Sunday, June 08, 2008

yr2wk51 Hammond Organ & Rhodes



with the beautiful new hammond organ... i'm in love...

x

Friday, June 06, 2008

yr2wk50 moog, voices, guitar, drums,



we recorded this one a week yesterday, i had it edited together by saturday, but googlevideo has been going through one of it's stupid patches and it only became available today...

glad it's here though x

Thursday, June 05, 2008

anniversary

absolutely pig exhausted...

the birthday of this blog, (which turns 4 right now) falls close to the anniversary of someone else's bereavement...

my thought's are with her, just as i'm glad that my dad is still around, and his birthday will be in a week or so...

i was intending to do something to mark this blogday but i have nothing...

proust is by turns too much and just right...

i'm gigging on saturday night with one of the bands i'm in...

i've got another round of marking/paperwork to submit tomorrow and that's all ahead of me...

my hammond organ is sex on a stick...

x

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

stop and search

so i was on the phone to N, he who helped me with the hammond organ thing, and i arrive at turnpike lane station, where i've decided to take the tube to work because i can travel and mark at the same time, and i see these two structures just in front of the barriers, and heaps of police, some community support officers and some regular police...

so i ask one of them what it is and he tells me they're knife sensors like at airports...

i go and recharge my oyster card and coming back i decide to film the strange structures while passing through and one of the police - the same man i'd asked about the structures before, asks me why i'm filming and decides to stop and search me...

this is my 1st stop & search experience and i ask about it, apparently it's under section 44 of the terrorism act... i also ask about the amount of police present and he says it's to do with boris johnson's new strategy to make people feel safe on the tube...

and it's makes me sad that i missed the party on saturday night on the circle line just before that other genius idea of boris's came into effect, the banning of alcohol on the tube system...

so a whole crowd of police randomly hanging around turnpike lane police station is going to make us feel safe?

i suppose it's good that a white, middle class man like myself was stopped & searched as opposed to the more traditional black folks, but still... boris just keeps getting lower and lower in my estimation...

x

Monday, June 02, 2008

B4000 fairy god mother

i can't believe it...

i'm really quite overwhelmed by this, but 1st my fairy godmother...

several years ago, i used to have a boss who was really mean - well, she wasn't really my boss, but certain things i had to hand in to her... i kept not bringing in some paperwork i was supposed to have done and in the end (and i did push it quite far) she got really shirty with me...

anyway, many years later, same time of year, same paperwork different woman who i have to hand it in to...

we were supposed to have a meeting about it 3 mondays ago, and hence have it all done by then, i procrastinated my arse off and hadn't done it and i phoned her on the day a little panicked and she said - "actually could we re-schedule for next week because i'm struggling with it?"... (she also had to do some paperwork of her own)

7 days to finish it...

so those 7 days pass and once again i haven't done it, i ring her and she says... "i'm really sorry but can we re-schedule again for 2 weeks this time because next monday is a bank holiday?"

14 days pass and now we're at last night, i'm madly getting it done - ineffectually - and i'm panicking once more, but finally i've started doing it, i ring her this afternoon and she says: "oh no it's not today it's tomorrow, do you remember we had to re-schedule, see you tomorrow @ 3" - which was true i'd just forgotten -

so for the last time i got extra time to do it - 24 hours this time... and i'm going to meet this last deadline tomorrow... i just can't believe how lucky i've been with this...

but nothing like as lucky as i also turned out to be today, because i've been in negotiations with a dutch company about buying a hammond organ (pretend)...

there is a german company (now extinct) who make it called "creamware" and they have two versions of their hammond organ (pretend) one called a klangbox with no dials or display on it (cheaper) and one with all kinds of dials on it - including the 9 drawbars which control the sound (more expensive)...

so for ages i've been sorting out buying the klangbox version from the dutch company who were the only people i could find who had one... it arrived this morning but i was in bed so i had to make a trip up to DHL in edmonton this afternoon to get it...

and i couldn't quite believe my eyes when i saw the box... once on the train back with it i couldn't contain myself and i opened the box to find... not the klangbox version, but the proper bells and whistles version...

i have no idea why... except that the box said demo on it... and in fact it is version 1.0 of this box, i can't decide if the dutch company are daft or not...

but it doesn't matter, i've got this absolutely heavenly sounding hammond organ (pretend) which i can't stop playing but which i'm going to have to stop playing in order to finish this paperwork by tomorrow...

i'm over the moon...

x