comparison between youtube & googlevideo

the audio and the video not matching in the youtube version does irritate me... so i uploaded exactly the same file to googlevideo and it works perfectly...

?

me & balthazara playing piano + dawn project 7

the middle 4 minutes of this weeks improvisation... the audio and the video not sitting together right... which is irritating, not my end i don't think, youtube being typically rubbish, but that's where the audience is...

oh to have this vain notion that i want to be popular on youtube and for youtube to be so shaky...

oh well,

watched a program about robyn hitchcock last night on BBC4 and i was delighted to see Gillian Welch & David Rawlings being interviewed... robyn hitchcock was interesting but not always to my taste... anyway the program finished and i'd finished my wine by now, dinah asleep curled up against me and to my surprise there was a BBC4 session featuring gillian welch & david rawlings straight after...

i was in heaven, they did a song i'd never heard before - title something like "what you made" - and a killer version of revelator...

heaven on a stick x

week 45 longcat piano, voice & cat improvisation

from yesterday morning, with balthazara joining me x

sunshine

once again i'm not working and it's beautiful but unhealthy for the bank balance...

i'm about to off to manolis's where i'll eat my repast and then spski will meet me there and we'll pop over the road to see sunshine @ the holly O...

listening to lakshmi shankar which is a joy...

my practise of overtone singing to a drone continues and coincides with teaching about scales in the last couple of weeks and finding an indian mode called bhairov, 1st in a lesson, one of my students had it written down... then in the book harmonic experience which i'm working through at the moment...

then in the track listing for lakshmi shankar's the hours and the seasons...

anyway, must dash, beautiful things are afoot...

(and dinah is at this... - click on towser TV)

x

dawn project videoblog week 6 a little late

i just noticed i hadn't made this and it's almost time for week 7, so here it is, week 6, last thursday, very bleary eyed... x

week 44 with a drone - rhodes - voice

andrew hill

this week's improvisation is rendering and i was pootling around on the web where i found out that andrew hill died today... this morning...

very sad, genius piano player he was, in the offcenter not quite free still jazz world...

had i known i would have mentioned him in the improvisation, which i recorded against a drone a few hours ago...

i brought my copy of harmonic experience into work on tuesday to read a quote from it (which i didn't get round to in the lesson) and i was talking with y1mk1n about it afterwards and it struck me that maybe after all this time now would be the right time to start the singing practise it asks for...

i bought it years ago, back when me & P were together, she spilt nightlight candle wax over one of the pages the night she moved into the squat near waterlow park, a huge wind was blowing and her room was right at the top of this immense block... i was scared the roof would come in or something...

i'd just received the book through the post, $45... i'd met with D the D shortly before then and he'd told me about it...

anyway i read through th first section fairly quickly and skipped the exercises but at the end of that section the writer advices not to proceed until doing the singing exercises, so i held off, and held off...

over two years later and i might get round to doing it...

we just had a brief power cut which set my rendering improvisation back an hour or so, so not there yet...

bless andrew hill, what have i got to hand by him...?

x

haircut demon

shops in slippers

i hadn't made it out of the house all day and i was strolling to the shops to get some halloumi for tonights meal and i was wearing slippers...

i'd noticed just before i left the house and i hadn't ever done it before so i wondered what it's like... i now know what it's like to go the shops in slippers...

anyway, i was coming back, with the halloumi, rubbing at my eye in that hayfeverish way and my left contact lens came out and tumbled to the ground...

so i've just been down in the kitchen, somewhat complicatedly washing my lenses, putting them in 2 glasses, washing the container in boiling water, and transferring the lenses to the now clean container...

all to the not distant enough sound of one of my least favourite housemates practising voice movement therapy in the bath... much howling and singing at the top of her voice, a voice i don't really like listening to at a normal volume...

a touch of gillian welch now before going downstairs to eat our meal...

a strangely creative day i've had...

my last free day before returning to work tomorrow...

x

Quaker Quest

quakerquest

ok, so we laughed at an advert in timeout a week or so ago... maybe longer...

and we decided to make the advert... as a video...

and i was round W(floopy)shaman's earlier with dinah and we sang the closing part...

just fiddling around with it while she & he play hogs of war...

i'm going round there in a little while with the finished product for the grand preview.. on a real TV...

today i also did a version of a film i made a little while back... because in my improvisation yesterday i was reminded of how much i love the vibrato on my rhodes and the extreme effect this can make...

so this eerie film now has an eerie sound track to it...

i love it...

film making is so my thing these days...

oh... and while i'm at it, click on the picture below to subscribe to my youtube channel... it would make me happy... go on...:

week 43

recorded early evening on friday, before a wonderful evening of debauchery with the watts...

one of those late nights where it makes sense to go film the moon @ 6 in the morning x

she's wise

i came in 20 minutes ago and i had her on my lap...

purring away...

but when dinah came in it became clear that something was up and she scarpered...

so now she's outside... i've locked the catflap to only let her in and we have a small window of opportunity when she next comes in, she's already suspicious but if she tries to leave again and realises she can't it's going to be more difficult...

---

ok, well that was alright... she came in nosed about a bit, i tried to ignore her, she seemed nonchalant enough but i couldn't get to her in time and she did try and get out...

but it turned out ok... i picked her up with her being all i don't like this... and dinah put the stuff on her neck... we're done...

one hour before she's allowed out again and 24 hours without going in the rest of the house...

and a couple of days before she loves me again... oh well... she was really lovely this afternoon when i was napping...

x

dawn project videoblog week 5 + blossom + wet place

no moon - new series

finally turned off my alarm this morning @ 5:56 am...

it would have been 15 minutes past by the time i got up to the park and got the camera ready...

so i stayed in bed.. beating myself up...

not sure what to do... just to take the 4 shots i have and call it a day... carry on having messed the order up...?

i suspect my getting out of bed at 5:15 are over for now...

irritating but better for my sleep...

and i was reminded today of the great song by shelby lynne: black light blue...

and learnt how to play/sing it and started a new series today, youtube based: other people's tunes...

so black light blue is now uploading as no. 1 in that series...

and me, dinah & spski watched double indemnity this afternoon on film4 and it was great...

x

week 42 upright piano

dawn project videoblog week 4

too bright moon

a perfectly clear sky this morning with the moon blazing away, a little too bright to be honest... but beautiful none-the-less...

it's such a wierd and beautiful thing to be doing...

pre-dawn... great time...

tomorrow i've got my year-long dawn project 2 & a half hours after the moon shoot so for the first time i'm going to stay awake directly after the moon shoot...

tempted to stay where i've been filming the moon, turn the camera the other way and video the sunrise... without the direct sun... i bought another couple of miniDV tapes today so i have the space...

but how long after 6 will the sun rise?

6:30 according to voyager... the software Wfloopy(shaman) put me onto for mapping out where celestial bodies will be at any time...

so 30 more minutes in that cold?

maybe it's time to break out the flask...

ok, anyway, i'm off to check out the marks in the concrete for the dawn project, set up the shot with this different camera & tripod that i'm using, then i hope me & dinah are going to see inland empire on an orange wednesday in a little while..

x

moonless

i was cycling up to where i shoot from @ around ten to 6 and i looked behind me to check the moon was there and it was hanging in the sky, partly covered in cloud, looking beautiful...

as i set up the camera the moon quite quickly got swallowed up by the cloud that was in fact covering most of the western sky...

so i shot my video @ 6 with no moon to look at...

so that's not particularly hopeful... it had been an amazingly clear night before the first morning of filming and the sky was empty... it didn't take much cloud cover to knock out the moon this morning...

but we'll see... i'll do it at least until thursday when i'll be doing the dawn project several hours later... if i don't get another moon tomorrow or thursday then it's not worth doing...

that first shot from yesterday... slowly zooming out, with the sounds of the birds and the occasional train... and the moon, red and full in the middle...

that's what it's about...

x

1st morning done

i didn't see the sun rise, but i saw the full moon set, red against the lightening sky, in fact it faded before it hit the horizon...

i settled for a weird, almost industrial place for the filming, in finsbury park, close to where the disused meets the park...

i cycled out of the house @ 5 and checked out a few possible spots but i'd been to the park earlier on and i'd noticed that this particular place had a good west view... back then i didn't know i wanted to look west... so i didn't waste much time looking elsewhere and in fact i knew where i wanted to shoot from @ 5:15am, 45 minutes early...

so i went and got myself a kitkat and a lucezade in the absence of a hot baigle, the happening baigle bakery not being 24 hours as i thought it was... shame...

the dawn project has that cafe right by it and i could so use a cafe right by the moon project, but it's not to be, not at that time in the morning anyway... maybe the flask that dinah got me for christmas...?

i'm tempted to also film the moon rising tonight, but i'm not up for filming every moonrise in this 2 week period, not with getting up for the 6 am shot as well, the moon rises @ 7:50pm tonight, 2:50am in a week, 6:30am the week after... the moon sure does have crazy hours when looked at from our sun based time...

so maybe i'll do the next couple of nights moonrise but certainly not the 2 week thing...

this morning in bed, getting the few hours i was getting, dinah woke really disturbed and needed calming, this 6am shot is going to be weird enough, filming moonrises is a job for a single person...

full moon

and lo, it became clear to me that this 2 week film project should be about the moon...

because it's easter...

a 2 week break from teaching centred on easter sunday, which is always on the 1st sunday after the 1st full moon after the spring equinox...

so i realised today that this means in the week before easter there will always be a full moon...

and so close to the equinox (well, a week or so) with the moon being full that means the moon & the sun are pretty much at opposite ends of the planet right now, so when the sun rises the moon sets and vice versa... the equinox giving us a fairly close night / day ratio...

so i'm staying awake until 6 when i'll be out there somewhere filming the moon pretty close to the horizon, then @ 6 every morning for 2 weeks,

the moon will be moving quite alot in that space of time...

from almost due west this morning to almost due east in 2 weeks...

a challenge catch it...

then i'll get a few hours sleep, getting up when dinah does around 10, my body will hate me for that after this 1st shock it should be fairly easy setting up the rising @ 5:15 am routine that i'll be doing every day...

then two weeks of that and i'll be set that way...

i still love my improvisation from thursday... i'll be glad of my shuffle out there on the streets when this tea is drunk...

x