editing well

so today was all about the editing of the film and now, at the point where i'm about to go to bed...

i've got the thames footage to about 2/3rds of the length of the film... just at the brink of the improvisation section...

so today i completed the intro, the 1st 2 sections & the middle breathing section...

i need to work out how to achieve the last improvisation section but the way i now have of working will stand me in good stead tomorrow night when i come back to this...

in other news i went down to producerG's music forum where we performed 3 of the tunes from the electric set, interesting comments from listeners (including mars),

i also spoke to E from hammersmith (who i'll be seeing tomorrow) and he told me he has a projector that i can borrow, which is a huge weight off my mind...

and finally i've made a little progress in both of the songs i'm writing this week...

so it's going well, deadline central...

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tired

i'm pretty tired right now...

taught all day and then went to producerG's house to practice the electric set...

it sounds great...

getting the projector for sunday is going to be hard, do you have one?

also, i spoke to josiah and she can't do the gig on sunday, (she was just a hopefully) but she asked me to do a couple of covers for her & grace and that would kind of solve my acoustic set worries... but i have another solution - the weekly improvisation - so i'm not sure what i'll do...

but look, i'm way too tired to make much sense right now, tomorrow is all about the editing...

bed now x

words done

just a quick one to say i'm on schedule, the words are written and recorded just in time for me to get going to the rehearsal...

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schedule

so i've got this gig on sunday @ which i'm doing 2 sets and showing my film...

one of those sets is ready..

for the other i'm writing a couple of songs this week...

and the film is far from finished...

which means i've got quite a tight schedule to get everything done... the 1st item on the schedule is getting the voice for the film recorded today... so i've recorded the sung part, i'm now getting together the script for the whole thing...

ready to record in about an hour, maybe sooner...

then @ 6 i'm strapping my keyboard onto my already not right back and heading down to a rehearsal with T's band, tomorrow i'm working all day, followed by a rehearsal for the electric set @ producerG's,

wednesday i'm back on the film treadmill, editing together the video from the shape of the voice (that i'm recording shortly)... then off out wednesday night to play @ producerG's music forum @ londonbridgework, a chance to run through one or two tunes from the electric set...

working on thursday and friday morning, back to the film on friday afternoon, by which time i should have got hold of the projector for the film...

at some point within all this i'm writing the songs i need to write...

hectic but good...

do come to the gig if you can,

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double vision

strange day...

woke late to discover my glasses had broken in the night... i know i moved around a bit and i guess i must have knocked them to the floor and maybe trod on them...

anyway the screw and the lens and the frame were all there, just a question of getting it all back together again, so i spent a fruitless 20 minutes or so, just having woken, without tea (dinah had made me one before leaving in the morning but i'd slept through it's acceptable temperature)...

no luck... i was already late... so i decided to put in the one contact lens that i'd found on saturday night looking for my lenses... just one... new, in it's packet... i was sure it meant there had to be another one around but i couldn't find it...

so i put it in and i cycled to hammersmith with one good eye and one hazy...

the journey was fine...

working proved to be a bit mad after a few hours but i got through it...

coming back was madder still...

on the way there the image from my right eye (focussed) was in charge... i had to close my left eye every now and again but mostly the focussed image reigned...

but on the way back the unfocussed left eye started to throw it's weight around... unfocussed lights are much bigger in darkness... i like it actually, walking along without glasses or lens at night, appreciating the different way that points of light appear to you...

each point of light is a splash instead of a point... and so the image from the unfocussed left eye, with it's splashes of vivid light was more prevalent than the focussed right eye and this was pretty psychedelic...

i got home safely though, just a bit inwardly confused...

i got back to the glasses issue and found a slightly bodging way of fixing them that got me through this evening and hopefully tomorrow morning then i'll take them to the opticians after work...

but once they were fixed i just curled up and hid in my bed until dinah got home... really odd day having taken it's toll... dinah was lovely...

i somehow want to right a song from this... but i don't yet know how to begin...

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longcat piano improvisation week 22

this being the piano that arrived here yesterday...

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piano

blogging with my head tilted back, because my monitor is on top of my piano...

now how great is that? to be able to say a statement like that?

my piano...

my piano.

my piano!

i raced home from my morning session of work because they said they'd be here by 2 (finished work @ 1.30) and of course they didn't arrive until 2:45...

3 of them, it took them about 20 minutes...

and now it's sat here...

it's a tiny bit out of tune... but i only notice that when i play it with the rhodes, certain notes...

and it's probably going to get a little worse over the next week or so while it gets used to being where it is... then i'll get a tuner in and it'll be nothing short of beautiful...

i'm going to have to lose quite a few bits of furniture to make room for it and i'm going to use freecycle i think - that and the landlord...

and...

and nothing...

tomorrow's improvisation will be with it and you can check it out yourselves...

...

very happy

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still stupid but changing

the party was great in the end, i sang my song with the help of elphara playing just one note all the way through and he's interested in doing some more playing with me which is nice, the very 1st gig @ the landlord's back in january 2003 had him involved... Hcello can't play @ my gig there in a couple of weeks so it's tempting to get elphara involved (violin) but i don't think i will, keep it simple...

i found some energy from somewhere and me & dinah made it to bed finally @ around 5:30,

the watts rocked... me & M, gordy, T & Kwo moshed for all our worth during their set which set me up nicely for dancing afterwards...

most of T's band showed up, along with D whose mad recording session i did a week ago today... nippy was there... me & nippy, me & T, and just me... we all at times performed in the impromptu performance space... at one point while me & T were jamming, nippy got up to join us and then variuos people who were listening got up until the entire room was joining in...

afterwards someone who i still don't the name of told me it was like a cross between a chart song and a knock about in the park...

so it all worked pretty well... spski wasn't there but that's becoming a regular thing these days sadly...

and tomorrow i'm receiving delivery of the piano at long last and so today i'm making this room ready, or at least that's what i'm telling myself... i have to make space for it today but i've so far done nothing at all towards that goal... stooged around on the net, been to manolis's where he proved to be pretty grumpy... i wasn't so much more cheerful... the cold continues and i'm not quite all over the party so things are moving slowly..

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my naked flame

so tonight me & dinah have been officially together for 11 months...

and there's a party @ our house which i've had mixed feelings about but it seems to be really coming together...

and i'm going to sing a song at the party, in an early section, me, gordy, R, & M are each doing a small thing... ready for the watts to do their huge thing afterwards...

but i'm in the grip of a cold thing and i feel wiped out already...

don't see where i'm going to find the energy for the party, but i often feel this way just before hand...

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cycling

just a quickie,

i cycled 27.8 miles yesterday...

over to hammersmith to work, (which was pretty grim, i had to put someone on report and it shook me up)... then from there to london bridge to drink with M & producerG from londonbridgework... which included an indian meal...

then M went home and me & producerG raced (me on bike - him on tube) to nottinghill gate to catch goldielocks who had L (another londonbridgework tutor) playing synths for her and looking amazing in dark goggles and a guitar style synth...

part of my shaken state @ hammersmith had been because i got an angry text from a friend and it was pretty strange that that very same friend was @ the gig in nottinghill... slightly at arms length at first as she wasn't ready to speak to me and let go of her angry thing but it wasn't long before we were back to our normal laughing friendly status... i guess sometimes you know a friend is truly your friend when they are ok with letting you know that they're angry with you...

anyway i didn't hang around long after goldielocks's set, she was great, i skipped out and bid farewell to producerG who had been buying me drinks and food and had got me into the gig, last night before payday as it was...

and i found my way from there to my usual route home from west london and that is how i managed to cycle 27.8 miles in one pretty wet day...

oh and i bought myself some waterproof trousers today... (payday)

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longcat rhodes & mellotron improvisation week 21

cats distortion napping

i'm listening to this weeks improvisation, trying to decide whether i should do it again on friday, or even in the next half hour...

some pretty ugly distortion on the rhodes which i could hear when i was improvising but i thought wasn't being recorded...

to do it again would be against the ethos of the improvisations but...

?

so earlier tonight i was sat in jai krishna waiting for my food... i was just about to start reading this neil gaiman book of short stories... i'd taken off my glasses...

a scarf with something wrapped inside it hit me in the side of the head...

earlier on i got home and i'd napped... for a little too long... and i was in (still am) a bit of a strange headspace because of that...

mind you just before this i'd been cycling home and a falling leaf had hit me in the face and this had freaked me out a little...

anyway i didn't take at all kindly to this scarf hitting me in the side of the head and even when i saw it was C who used to live in this house, with her man E, who she'd met when she helped me & josiah load up E's van with all josiah's stuff which E was driving down to brighton...

i could barely raise a smile...

we spoke briefly and i went back to the book...

it wasn't until i'd read a short story that i could return to them and start talking normally...

amazing how vulnerable one can be when without glasses...

so in this neil gaiman book i read a story called the price which began with the idea that, just as tramps used to leave marks on gate posts to tell each other what kind of household it was... perhaps cats do the same thing...

and william burroughs had expressed exactly the same idea in the cat inside which i read on saturday...

nice confluence

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i've decided to keep the improvisation... it's uploading now...

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vinyl & mellotron

so i turned 33&3rd yesterday, and though i hadn't organised it we had my 1st vinyl party... W(floopy)shaman rolled up with a few choice disks and i carried some more of my records down to the basement and we played a couple of games of chess (which i won) then proceeded to play cards with dinah & gordy... playing shithead but with a joker thrown in and whoever lost (becoming the shithead) deciding on the joker rule for the next game...

progressively crueller rules coming out...

all to the sound of vinyl...

and then today D came round, who i'm doing some recording for tonight, i took the opportunity (and the momentum) to set up my vintage keys module and i'm loving the mellotron flute sound... i used to use the vintage keys for it's hammond organs and it's possible i may bring it out with me one of these days, for the organs and mellotrons...

and i'm over half way through gilgamesh in a translation by stephen mitchell.. floopy lent it to me ages ago and i've finally picked it up... lovely... epic...

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the longcat inside

woke up today and lazily finished the novel i've been reading for ages now...

your face tomorrow - part 1 - fever & spear

by javier marias, right near the end there was a long section that almost lost me but it closed well with a satisfying morsel, the 1st of a trilogy of which the 2nd is out in hardback now, waiting for it to come out in paperback and then it'll be mine...

this novel i read mostly on tube trains as used to be my practise, only it was slow because i only take the tube to ferry my keyboard to rehearsals and back with T's band these days...

i think it was the last band rehearsal last monday i was travelling to and i was walking along hatley with the keyboard on my back and duchess ran up to me, or if not duchess then the younger duchess like whitish cat that has superseded her...

i hardly ever see duchess these days (or indeed her younger self if there are two cats)...

the reason i'm bringing this up is that i've been reading the cat inside by william burroughs today... i picked it up and was reading passages to dinah this afternoon and i've just finished it, 2 novels finished in 1 day... it is a very short book...

william burroughs talking about the cats in his life, running up to him...

very moving...

reminds me of my song midnight that i wrote about duchess and balthazara, 3 years or so ago...

a lovely song but i've pretty much left it behind these days, somehow i don't like the chorus...

i recorded a blues this early evening called the in love blues, just my rhodes through the WEM copicat...

and i'm listening now to the last few weekly improvisations... starting with the grand piano 3 weeks ago, through the newly fixed rhodes piano last week and yesterdays effects laden rhodes, WEM & voice improvisation...

very satisfying...

oh and one last thing, T phoned up today and it seems he's hooked me up with a guy doing a recording on monday night who needs a pianist... a little money involved... perfect timing for my finances...

thankyou T, (& thankyou universe)

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20th weekly improvisation

rhodes piano, voice & WEM copicat x

reluctant musical theatre fan

spent the last few days feeling run down, not sleeping properly and not eating particularly well...

one of my hammersmith lessons was supposed to have been observed yesterday and i got all the paperwork ready (always a stressful thing for me), briefly checked the original email telling me about it only to discover that it was the earlier, rowdier class that was being observed... freaked me out a little, but in the end i decided it was better, having my boss in the room would probably make them less hard work...

so anyway, i cycled in.. passing through hyde park & kensington gardens which was amazing... all kinds of yellow leaves falling from the trees... some deeper colours as well...

arrived at work, finished my preparation and went to teach that session, expecting any moment that my boss would walk in but she never arrived...

on reflection this was one of the last days before OFSTED come in to hammersmith next week so she was no doubt rushed off her feet, madly preparing in a similar but much larger way to my preparation...

i left there as the sun was leaving and cycled home, feeling dead already straight to crystal kebabs where i ordered my customary half falafel half halloumi wrap and someone knocked over my bicycle which in turn broke my headphones...

raced home and consumed said wrap, me & dinah hit the streets very shortly afterwards and we tubed it down to her old workplace where we met felinity, her G & her new flatmate C...

& we settled in to watch the producers, the 2nd time for me, although the 2 leads have changed since i saw it last... reese & cory (first name terms, being as dinah dressed them as part of her job before she became a student) were really great, cory enlgish is a natural, powerful singer & comedian and reese shearsmith is also very funny, a groovy mover and less experienced a singer but still pretty good at holding those melodies...

it brought tears to my eyes at points and the combination of dance and singing/orchestrations was just magical, i realised i'm a sucker for good musical theatre, something i've resisted most of my life...

so today i've been into work in hoxton and on my return i popped into manolis's dinah joining me there, he had money on a horse and we got involved in the televised race... his horse (an outsider @ 14/1) was briefly the leader near the end of the race but no cigar...

and then home to record this improvisation which is rendering as i write...

denied

strange day so far...

cycled down to the south london pacific to practise backing vocals with T & B (drummer) O (bass) also rolled up... making us 3 backing vocalists with T being the lead...

it was good, it's going to sound great and i can't wait to gig with this band and invite people to see us because i reckon we are going to be rocking...

that was in the morning and by 2ish i was hungry, so i cycled to londonbridgework which was on the way home to grab a bite to eat, bumped into mars who teaches there today and spent lunch with him and his apprentice...

then skipped over to waterloo bridge for a few games of chess with G the book seller, that guy from friends was directing something and to do with running and once in a while i glanced over to see if i could see him but he didn't show his face... to me, playing chess 100 yards away... fool that he is... imagine the publicity he could have got here in this blog... foolish smalltime actor/director that he is...

i won 2/1 at the chess and then came home so that i could record my weekly improvisation or do the paperwork i need to do before tomorrow's observed lesson...

but i did neither because i found that i'd left my camera @ work yesterday (where i passed through today)... it took me so long working this out that i didn't get any paperwork done and now i'm going out again to see felinity who is taking me to the pictures...

oh well...

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copicat

spent much of today in delay heaven, setting up 2 different versions of the arcdev dubb box for my weekly improvisation, one for my voice and one for the rhodes...

then tonight i braved the cold to go south on the tube with my keyboard on my back for tony's rehearsal...

and i was talking to him about tape delays and he told he had a WEM copicat delay that i could borrow... so i carried it home from the rehearsal and there it now sits atop my rhodes piano... it's pretty simple, you can't change the speed of the tape so it pretty much only does one thing that i like, but it has a sustain (feedback) knob which is fairly cool...

the tape itself is really old it seems and i'm tempted to get another one to see how that would change things...

but all that aside my rhodes sounds great through it... i won't be throwing away my arcane device virtual tape delays yet (based,as they are, on the more sophisticated ROLAND space echo) but to have this beast that is even older than my rhodes is really nice...

the tape delay journey goes on...

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delayed fireworks

so me & dinah set off to ally pally last night but were let down by the W3 bus... rubbish service...

so we went to W(floopy)shaman's house and he lit a fire and we bought some sparklers... later on we did a zilch... i'd only heard about it before and i'd never seen or heard it...

pretty strange & wonderful...

i video'd it so i won't explain it here, but i'll be uploading that video and it'll make sense then... (it involves toxic gas and plastic bags... and fire)

so we eventually rolled out of there at around 2... a second night of debauchery with floopy...

then today after eating to our smiling faces delight @ the amazon he was round ours, trying to sort out dinah's printer troubles and meanwhile i was in my room, experimenting with a virtual tape delay made by this cat...

based on a roland space echo, it has kept me very happy for much of today, pausing only to accompany dinah out to victoria park to see walk the plank do another show, pretty inferior to last years burning of the houses of parliament but a great tiger and a monster firework display which had us both screaming with glee and even brought tears to my babies eyes...

before we went out to see the fireworks i'd been messing around with my rhodes going through the tape delay, once home from the fireworks i introduced my voice to the tape delay and it has been quite an interesting journey...

1stly having a copy of my voice thrown back at me is very interesting and throws a certain light onto my voice which is both scary and very useful, i intend to practise with the delay therefore until i can get rid of the less tasty aspects that i hear...

but also just experimenting with timing, having the same delay running (a set tempo), but playing in different ways that emphasise different pulses, basically swapping between a 3 and a 4 feel... cookie business and an interesting adjunct to the rhythm tree that i've been teaching along with my apprentice @ college recently...

so strange also that i've been playing around for hours and i go to save my work but i've recorded nothing... just twiddled knobs and sang to the air...

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me & george

it's now one of the tunes over on my pace... me & W(floopy)shaman traded some mp3's and one of the ones he gave me was george thorogood & the destroyers playing a tune called delaware slide... well he was coming round last night for the shabbat meal and i found a section in the middle of that tune that was/is eminently loopable... so i sampled it, found some crazy chords to go over it, solo'd over it and made a little tune, ready to play to floopy...

i love it... it will no doubt grow into something else at some point but for now it's just the product of that initial energy...

the mouse is still at large, thinking about it does my head in a little, knowing it's around and probably isn't alone...

me & dinah are meeting floopy to go up to ally pally in a little while for the fireworks, we 3 who were up until 4 last night drinking & smoking & laughing, a really good night it turned out to be... saw off the last of the bombay sapphire gin that he'd bought me sa a thankyou for the recording i did for him just over a week ago...

ah... there's my beautiful girl calling me.. must go.. later...

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mousing improvising

i've been really looking forward to today, the chance to improvise with my newly working rhodes piano (must remember to stop calling it a fender rhodes, they'd dropped the fender part of the name by the time they made mine)...

i got the room ready and then made some food for myself and then started improvising around 5... already getting dark...

it's rendering right now, turned out to be pretty long, 15 minutes or so, but that doesn't really surprise me, it's been a couple of months since my rhodes has been part of the weekly improvisations and i had a lot to say...

mostly spoken voice part, although sung vocals did creep in towards the end...

so i was editing it in cubase, putting on a hint of reverb and cutting the beginning and ends right when i saw a small shape scurry across my room...

really freaked me out...

a little later i saw this tiny mouse (i hope) climbing up a speaker lead to my shelves...

i didn't know i was scared of mice before this point, but it turns out i am...

so i shut down my computer and moved a few bits of furniture so i could get at the shelving and then for a tense hour or so (it could have been 30 minutes... my sense of time went) i was shining lights at it, placing cookie crumbs into a clear plastic box as bait, while it hid behind two piles of books on one particular shelf, occasionally poking it's tiny head out and looking at me...

the cookie crumbs were no good, it knew it was a trap, another clear plastic box had once been a minidisk store and that got pressed into service, and it had a lid...

it was looking good, mousy was venturing in there sniffing about... i chose my moment to strike and close the box but both times i tried it i was too slow..

the second time i think i caught it's tail as it eeked in pain before running back behind the books...

by this time i was gradually removing the books one by one, so that it would have nowhere to hide and would have to come out and be caught, i had no real idea how i was going to catch it mind you, the plastic boxes weren't doing the trick and i didn't want to touch it...

which led finally to it climbing on top of one of the few books left and staring at me, i was clicking my fingers at it to make it scurry back which had worked before but this time it made a run for it and leapt off the shelf...

making me scream a little...

so i went back to dealing with the improvisation, (which is now uploading to googlevideo), but was bothered every now and then by the sound of the mouse, rooting about... so i did what i should have done straight away... i went and found balthazara and sat her down in my room, gave her a little love and then got on with things...

once i'd dealt with the improvisation i looked up and balthazara had been feigning laziness but had just leapt up and chased into a corner of the room, seeing her prey...

and that's where she still is now, still not triumphant but now the mouse knows who else lives in this house and will hopefully go and tell all its little mousy friends to not return, wishful thinking there but it was a stressful hour or so and i think i deserve a little indulgence...

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