synthtastic

st L came round on saturday to drop off his NORD rack synth which i'm checking out with a view to buying off him...

i was deep in editing the improvisation then and didn't get a chance to check out the sounds until later and when i did i couldn't work out a few things... so it remained beautiful but very much not used properly...

i saw him again yesterday where he is a student of mine... in fact the last time i'll be teaching that whole group which is a little sad, they were great... they include S from lucky elephant, G from Show & Prove, and of course st L himself to name but a few...

as it was the end of my teaching them we went out and drank and in fact i drank more than i've drunk for quite some time, me & st L were counting drinks by intervals, the last time we'd been drinking in the summer we'd reached the perfect 5th... this time we reached past the octave... although i was drinking less of each drink the later it got...

me & alcohol don't really mix well, not in large amounts...

so today i woke earlyish with dinah making me a tea, i didn't feel too bad, it could be still on it's way... and i've relooked at the NORD in light of what st L said to me last night, and also i've found a manual online...

so today i am in synth heaven...

i've got to pop over to W(floopy)shaman's in a bit to get the camera but other than that i think i'm going to be synthing all day... x

electronic intifada

i went to the anarchist bookfair on saturday and whilst i was struck anew by the amazing uniformity of most of the people there, (black or logo'd T-shirts, jeans, a certain "crusty" look) i was also pleased to reacquaint myself with AK books & the palestinian struggle, i found a group in haringey who run a cinema club right by where W(floopy)shaman & T live, i also bumped into an old friend who works for the freedom press, i bought a book called live from palestine from AK and i've just dipped into it and found the electronic intifada which is a wonderful resource...

i think i'll be putting ei over there in my links section...

tomorrow i've got a mad afternoon assessing 2nd year teaching students which will be the end of my teaching for that group and so we're drinking afterwards...

was going to meet my sister and my dad this evening and i rearranged a rehearsal for T's band to do it and then in the end my dad didn't come to london today, we've rescheduled for next monday...

ok, well, in search of lost time continues to be great, me & dinah continue to feverishly plan our next big thing, news of that on thursday when we announce it to those that need to know...

yr2wk19 rhodes & voice

just me & the rhodes, filtering going on, recorded yesterday x

lurgy trying to get in

one of those days where i got a lot done, house chores, my own stuff, all before i left the house for work in the afternoon, now i'm home and i can feel a cold type thing settling into me...

i've just had a couple of vitamin tablets and i'll be drinking alot of water tonight and over the next few days, i suspect that i'll go to jai krishna one day soon that often helps...

i finished the end of mr Y and it was great, i've got the 1st book of remembrance of things past waiting for me, not that it's called that now, in search of lost time i think... there's a train ticket in between two of the pages as far as i got last time, it's dated 1998... better luck this time...

i'm moved to read it because we saw onegin the other day, hungover as we were on saturday after a monster friday night with W(floopy)shaman, it was slow and irritating but by the end it had got good... it made me want to read the book it's based on, and then i realised i just wanted what literature can do but film can't... so it's my intention right now to give proust another go...

x

yr2wk18 rhodes & cello

currently rendering the 2nd version of this, i'll be checking it out and probably uploading over the 1st version later tonight, couldn't tell you which version you can see, depends when you're reading this...

i had a disaster with both camera's recording this yesterday, Hcello played beautifully and i really like the improvisation, but my camera didn't film my fingers (almost certainly my fault) and W(floopy)shaman's camera ran out of tape a few minutes before the end, that was definitely my fault... so the video is a little odd, almost no me in it... but that's not so bad... i think i comes out well...

W(floopy)shaman & T are coming round later to have shabbat with me & dinah which will be lovely... x

she's in the troposphere

i'm reading a great book these days, the end of mr Y...

i'm also teaching application of number for the first time in my life tomorrow morning so of course it makes sense to simply print out the thing i'm meant to teach without really reading it while i go off with a glass of wine to watch march of the penguins with dinah even though it's a dawn project night and i have to be up hella early in the morning...

sure it does...

x

yr2wk17 piano & voice

x

dawn project videoblog week 31

apparently it's not a green man, it's a spriggan... x

DayWatch & T.E.E.D

last wednesday night (well last thursday very early morning) i foolishly stayed up to watch nightwatch on filmfour...

foolish because i had the dawn project the next morning and also dinah's birthday, but not so foolish because it was really great, i loved it, i loved the main character anton, i loved the story, i loved the production...

so anyway, today i cycled into town to catch daywatch @ the westend vue managing to get charged £11.75 for the 3.00 showing which outraged me but i paid up because this was the time i needed to see the film...

during the trailers i noticed that a piece of curtain was hanging down over the screen and i was impressed when, after the trailers, everything stopped for awhile for a vueman to come and fix this...

and the film was great, very pleasing, when i saw the 1st one on filmfour the announcer said it was the 1st of a trilogy, can't wait for part 3...

and then Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosoars... they asked to be my myspace friend and i checked them out as i do all friend requests, and they rock...

their "Dinosoars having a p..." is just wonderful, it fades after a few minutes, i don't know if there's another longer version out there at all, and i also don't know what the P stands for, although it probably is Party... myspace often cuts the last letters off my tune's names, must one day work out just how many characters you can have...

so there you have it, if you can see nightwatch do so in the next few days and go catch daywatch at the cinema and check out those funky electro dinosoars... x

cycling moment

i was cycling home today from work, my apprentice P came back today and it was great to have him the class and chat with him afterwards, so anyway, there i was, cycling north on hornsey road as i do and on my left, just on the road side of the fence there were quite a few things covered in plastic and i thought to myself,

oh, that's sad, they must be flowers left for someone who had an accident here...

months before i'd seen flowers by the road at that crossing although on the other side (where seven sisters road meets hornsey road)...

but when i got close to the things they were plastic bags full of bottles i think...

not a sign of an accident but of haphazard recycling...

deep in the editing of a video for T's band, using the shots & video from the photo shoot a week ago x

yr2wk16 rhodes x

recorded last night before dinah came home for her birthday giggles x

not as hungover now as you might expect x

dawn project on dinah's birthday

love you boobelah x