Tetra

it arrived on wednesday, while A was here trying to fix my rhodes (to no avail, although he brought us closer to knowing what is wrong)...

i took it into work on thursday and played with it after teaching, with old friend D on the drums... lovely to play with him again, and lovely, if new & a bit odd to be playing with the Tetra...

it's basically 4 mopho's in 1, and in protest at being outmoded my mopho has been behaving strangely ever since i ordered the new beast...



i booted up the old computer, to speak to the mopho, and i think i can fix it... but it will take a bit of time, and of course my old computer died the very next day so i have to wait until i get some MIDI going in & out of my laptop before i can do the fix on the mopho...

once upon a time i would write bits of tunes or sounds on the mopho and dream of having just a little more control and sound possibilities and using the mopho live to give me a rhythmic pattern to play over... in particular i was frustrate by the notion of being able to set up a lovely groove on the mopho, but being unable to change to the next groove (verse => chorus) during the song...

the tetra is currently balancing in my mind between being clearly much more able to deal with that dream of performing with it, but perhaps not solving that specific problem... not that i know this, and i'm going to try and get it to work how i want it, i just have to think quite a lot about the situation and what i now have at my disposal...

loving the possibilities x

early morning

late notice cover asked of me today, for tomorrow, so i'll be rising @ 6, leaving the house around 6:45...

nuts... for me of all people...

but at least it means i won't sleep in on tuesday, something i was a little concerned about,

it's for M, M who i mentioned a post or 2 ago, who's been round to look at my rhodes & my moog...

it'll all be over by 2.00, and although that would be stretching it a little, on a normal monday i could sleep until 2... alhtough generally i'm up by 1...

i committed the error of supermarket shopping while really hungry earlier today, and now i have loads of food... i'm sandwiching tomorrow, and probably tuesday as well... i packed tomorrow's lunch & it's 2 chicken sandwich's, a cox's apple and a cookie...

in theory, in order to get 8 hours sleep, i should go to bed in 10 minutes... but i can still feel the food in my stomach and even if i went to bed, i don't think i could go to sleep very easily, however i will be in bed by 11... and hopefully i won't spend hours tossing and turning...

oh and i started writing another tune today, based on 2 notes from my moog that have been playing since thursday, quite possibly it's for baby bird, who officially has a name now, courtesy of a text from Kwo earlier (they told me and josiah on friday, and once josiah knows, it's safe to assume it's not long before everyone knows)...

Robin...

hence baby bird...

x

baby bird

7 days have passed since it ended with me & emivore and i'm trying to slightly ritualise this moment, kiss the memories as they pass so as not to be haunted by them...

i saw baby bird yesterday, i didn't have to work over in homerton so after CM in the morning i went over to SP of stepney and Kwo's to meet with the 2-week old...

grace, josiah & M came up as well so it was quite a big visit, grace was irrepressible and i found myself bearing the brunt of her while the grown up's talked...

the baby is wonderful and sp told me a story that i love - that perhaps one day i'll retell here, but not yet...

me & dinah are in communication again, i don't have a huge amount of space for her in my head just now but at least we're talking...

and the sons of anarchy are in my life... i got hold of the 1st season, thinking that the series currently on 5 USA was the 2nd... i was going to catch up with them and then watch them weekly...

they arrived on thursday and i've watched everything but the last episode now,

just checked though, and 1stly the 5 USA thing is this 1st series, so i've already over taken them, and it's shown on wednesday's @ 10, which is when madmen is shown over on BBC4, so that's not going to happen, it looks like i'm going to get hold of as much SOA as i can and consume it madly...

it has helped me this week, what with my small but definite heart break...

also i'm buying the thing i wanted... retail therapy which for once i can afford... but won't be able to afford anything else for a little while...

x

the fog

& lo & behold,

TV let me down, then the BBC came to the rescue...

i watched the fog on the iplayer just now and it almost made me cry...

it really is very good TV...

& i am sad, as my screensaver tells me...

last week it said "i am in love"...

the day before valentine's day it said "i have my eyes open"

and today it says "i am sad"

and although i am a bit sensitive to the thought of a certain ex-girlfriend of mine reading this and being pleased by it... i hereby announce, once more, that me & emivore are no more...

it happened on saturday, the day before valentine's day...

one of the 2 reasons i had for not going to work yesterday was in order not to see her... and as it's halfterm and weirdly, that place respects half of halfterm, (i should have worked yesterday, i'm not expected to work on friday), i don't now have to see her until next tuesday...

i began this current period of singleness quite relaxed and remarkably calm, but, unsurprisingly i am actually quite angry and sad...

at the rehearsal last night there was drum stool right next to me, covered in dust (the drummers studio where we rehearse is constantly shedding dust, it is below a railway track and stuff is shaken from the ceiling all the time...)

anyway, at a certain point i drew my initials into the dust on the drum stool and then i wrote "is sad"...

a bit weird because the youngest SJP (G - trombonist) was walking up to me just as i was doing this, in order to look at the lyrics i had on my music stand, and he might have seen it, i considered rubbing it out straight away but i realised that i wanted it to be said so i left it there...

later on M (baritone) sat on it, rubbing my sadness out with his arse...

at one point in this episode of madmen a character says to another character:

"you're a house cat, you're very important and you have little to do"

x

things

things are bad...

mad men is right now on bbc4, but in the 1st 11 minutes it froze up about 5 times, each time lasting a couple or perhaps 3 seconds... tiny bits of dialogue lost that in a lesser program i might not mind, but in mad men?

i had to turn it off...

also my internet has been a bit odd recently, i put it down to the cheap wireless router i bought, and it still could be that, but it's still a bit rubbish even when i plug in directly, still plugged to the router, so it could just be that...

(still using that still word)

but if my TV is being weird too then maybe it's virgin?

anyway, i'll catch mad men tomorrow on catchup whilst i'm not working over @ hammersmith - it being halfterm...

and in other news, the mobile phone money came through, and the RAM has been bought and installed and i can see no clear evidence that anything's improved...

it's always the way, when i installed the new ROM in my phone i wanted to see an immediate improvement but it just seemed the same...

i trust in both cases that it is better...

my studio is coming on... slowly but surely... A from the SJP's (bass player) is coming round next week to have a look at my rhodes... possibly fix it... another lovely man in the tradition of MM who's been round several times to look at the rhodes... the moog.. etc.

and i'm developing a longing for a Tetra, a small box of heaven... like my mopho but 4 notes at once... chords possible...

& i love my cat

rescued by the 1930's and 2009

missed work today, for a couple of reasons, and i was feeling low...

and i was listening to the album nuclear war by sunra on spotify...

and the song "smile" came on, written as an instrumental for the 1936 charlie chaplin film, modern times, words written for nat king cole's version in the 50's,

it very much helped me, i've learned to play it on the piano and i may well do a version of it, in the same kind of way as stardust effected me back then and the plan i had for that tune, i don't know if i'll ever get to where i wanted to get to with that tune (it only got some of the way...) but this one would belong with it...

and then i watched moon, the 2009 film, which was really good... made me feel good...

so, thankyou, 1stly the 1930's, 2ndly the year 2009, and 3rdly, my day off, which is costing me money, but which i clearly needed...

spanner jazz punks rehearsal later...

x

no tits please

evony...

it advertises on chess.com so i've seen many of their adverts, and i've always thought they're a bit breasty for a gaming website...

but yesterday i was on chess.com and an evony ad came on which was a picture of a woman with large breasts wearing a tight white shirt, that scrolled down so that only her breasts filled the frame, then back up to her face, then down to her breasts...

to be honest, i could do without breasts being pushed into my face... i am a man and as it turns out i don't mind looking at breasts if i've chosen to do so, but whilst playing chess?

it's a bit page 3 and i'm not after it x

old phones for sale

one of the things this current cleanout is doing, is bringing old things into the light of now...



so here are my 3 last phones, the most recent, the motorola v8, on the left, (£22)
the one before that, in the middle, the motorola v3i, (£7)
& the one before that, the motoralo v500, (£1)

along with their SIM cards and the memory card from the v3i, which i have taken out because the people i'm selling them to don't want these things...

the picture was taken with my new phone - the htc hero, and the old phones are resting on my lovely new laptop - the asus eeePC 1005H...

assuming that it all goes through, i'm going to use the £30 selling these phones will get me, to buy most of the new RAM i want for my laptop... (£35ish)

ok, techy, named things post over... x

frank sinatra

young at heart is on film four, i'm eager to play my piano, i would really like to know when frank sinatra is going to sing a song...

he just sang someone to watch over me...

i've heard of websites which tell you at which moment in which films you can see some flash of female flesh...

what about a website which tells you at which moment in which films you can see & hear frank sinatra sing a song...?

this film was made in 1954, at the height of frank's capital recording period... doris day is in the film too...

i've got an observation tomorrow (someone observing my teaching) and i have a little paperwork to do also today...

the tune i'm writing got a possible tap in a different direction yesterday when C (silver fox to some) was playing the chords with me, but said it sounded to him that it started on a different chord than i had it starting... it made me think of it as a 4 chord thing in a 6 chord pattern... the 4 chords repeat 3 times, and 2 different 6 chord phrases go over it...

as chance would have it the melody i wrote the other day breathes in naturally after 6 bars, the remaining 2 bars are lovely and i wouldn't want to lose them, they'd probably come sometimes later...

anyway, a cup of tea and some piano playing...

x

a tune

i suppose it could be a baby tune, either for spski & Kwo's little one or for charlotte... but it's got a sadness to it, so it might not suit the baby project...

i started writing it in the runup to B's gig @ core arts on friday night, B being the artist who was having his opening view thing, and the singer who was fronting the band made up of mostly staff & volunteers...

i was on stage playing around with some chords, i'd taught the devils interval that morning over @ CM and i was checking out beginning the tune with a chord jump with that interval...

B came over and starting singing a gentle jazz thing over it... it was lovely...

so i've been playing those chords on my piano today and they're starting to work in my brain, a melody has come which works over 2 times round the chords...

it could be a spanner jazz punks tune... it could be a me tune...

loving the piano where it is x

piano moved

emivore & me, over the last two days, began work turning this flat into something lovely again...

when me & dinah moved in we (well, i say we, it was largely her) made it lovely... then after me & dinah broke up and she moved out a little later, it drifted back down into something i loved, but let's be honest, it was not lovely for anyone else...

i had been letting it drift down, partly to do with getting over dinah in my own way...

anyway, the move to get it lovely again, (partly to do with me wanting to have grace here, and making it nice for her, partly for emivore), began this weekend...

and part of it for myself was getting my beautiful piano out of the room where it's been since it moved in (that day a couple of years back, when landlordE, spski (now dad), floopy, dinah, me... movingM & his sidekick... struggled for many hours getting it up the stairs and round that corner)...

getting it from that room, which is above my downstairs neighbours living room and therefore not a very friendly place to play my loud piano, through the seemingly very thin floor boards and straight into their TV watching room...

into this pink room which dinah used to use for her uni work... which is above my stairs and their front hall...

emivore left a few hours ago, after much work clearing, sorting, cleaning... we ate @ lava's and i took her to the tube,

i phoned spski (now dad) on the way back to the house and i had a lovely chat with him, he's in great place, sad not to be with KWo & the little one, (she's in the hospital still, nothing dangerous, just resting after the birth), but drifting in the clouds in a hallucinogenic, childish way as he described it to me...

30 minutes on the phone with him, then i put on Aja, the Steely Dan album,

there was a little preparatory work to do still, and i set to it, moving lesser things, dinah's (now my) wardrobe, with all kinds of floopyness on top, clearing a path...

then i started moving the piano from there to here, shedding clothes as i did it... a mad energy within me as i pushed it, pulled it, shoved it, lifted it, many trips from one end to the other, midway through doors so the only way was over the top of the piano...

balthazara watching in cat bemusement...

after the album finished the spanner jazz punks demo came on, (i'd forgotten that i'd accidentally put it in the same playlist in itunes, before noticing and putting it in the right playlist but obviously leaving it there also)...

at this point the piano was half in the hall, half in the living room, having turned about 10 degrees and was about to change direction, heading into dinah's (now my) room...

so the last part of the move came with the 1st 2 tunes on that demo (which may or may not have made it's way onto the SJP's myspace by now...?), and as the last 2 tunes played i smoked some and sat at my freshly moved piano, not playing it, just sitting @ it, smoking...

when Punk Jazz Spanner came to it's nutty "band going mental but being slowly driven away" ending and gradually faded to nothing i was left with a lovely silence, as i contemplated the piano in it's new place...

still no playing of it, it is the middle of the night and i don't yet know for sure it's not going to bother somebody...

naturally, midway through the move i thought i should have set up a camera, filming the whole thing, speeding it up afterwards... but it was too late then, so no visual record remains of that mad dash...

strange, i just got a skype phone call from someone in russia, strange but kind of nice... not someone i know (i don't think) perhaps he found me because maybe he calls himself longcat as well...? not sure but... anyway...

my piano moving story is told, i still have the post moving settling back from the chaos to deal with, but maybe that's tomorrow now...

ok, laters x

imbolc

being a pagan festival to mark the 1st signs of spring...

and although people generally place it on the 1st or 2nd, i have seen the odd thing putting on the 4th...

yesterday, being the day she was born, was a lovely spring day, unlike the day before or indeed the day after, a rare glimpse of spring...

the festival is a fire festival, out with the old and in with the new, and what is newer than a baby's birth..?

the name is as yet undecided and i'm going to try and find a fire related name for her imbolc nature...

grace says she should be called violet or indigo, (although she also says that if she's called violtet she might turn into a blueberry)...

barbara or bridget maybe...?

x

baby girl

spski & kwo became, this morning, the proud parents of a new baby girl...

in fact, just as i started blogging, he phoned me, he's talking to me right now...

9:31 am this morning x

mixing & one more reason to avoid facebook

jai bound any minute now...

me & DSpanner found ourselves locked in to OTR studios last night with M, the guy mixing us, who had recorded the band on sunday...

some muppet had padlocked the door on leaving, without checking to see whether anyone was still in the building...

this was discovered around 12:30 am with 3 out of the 4 tracks mixed...

anyway, aside from a few mad moments - M considering climbing over a razor wire fence - M considering hot-wiring the goods lift - we got all our mixing done and the muppet returned to let us out...

interesting experience working with a hard disk recorder, no computer screens to interact with, the whole thing taking a touch longer in certain situations, but an experience all about the ears and not the eyes which is refreshing...

so DSpanner drove me home, he had to get up for school in the morning, glad i didn't...

at a certain point i realised that it was a bit like the day before, walking around kew gardens with emivore, really not wanting to look at the time because time had expanded and i didn't want to return to normal time yet...

yesterday i'd been working, 11 through to 7, then a stroll over to the studio, then mixing from 7:30 to 2:15...

we looked at the time when the drama happened, (12:30 ish), but even this i resisted...

i was sat there pushing through, not knowing what the time was, not wanting to know, just knowing that we had to get the mixing done...

everything always takes longer than you think it will in the studio...

ok, and then facebook... i'm a fan of the SJP's on facebook, so i wrote on our wall just now, reporting on the mixing... and it disappeared into the "just fans" tab... so it's not on the wall, unless you click on that tab...

i'm not just a fan...!

just one more reason why i personally should not try and interact with facebook, it is set up to upset me... i see that now... i don't know how they did it... but they definitely had me in mind when they set that thing up... "no wait, hang on... if we do it like this it'll really twist his mind up"...

i wouldn't be surprised if they've got access to the little camera in my laptop, everytime i log on to facebook it logs the video taken from that camera, so they can see the irritated looks on my face... and laugh...

x

kew

she woke in a blue mood, i peeked behind the blind and it was a beautiful morning...

so i suggested she not go to work and instead we go to kew gardens...

which she agreed to,

so we got the bus here to feed the shmoosh... i shaved, finishing the job i'd started yesterday before the recording session... i picked up my camera which has been laying dormant for too long... we ate in the cafe by turnpike lane station then travelled to kew on that little train from highbury...
a train journey i love, passing by all sorts of memories... kensal rise where i lived for years, the view from willesden junction, on the train not quite as nice as from the platform but still lovely (a very different kind of lovely to the lovely of kew a little later)...

got to kew @ 2.30, with just less than 2 hours before it shut, and only 75 minutes before the glass houses were shutting, luckily emivore's science museum volunteers card got her in free... we raced over to the palm house...
basked in that amazing place...

wondered over to the treetop walk...
strolled over to the temperate house...
the sun, having gone behind clouds for much of the afternoon, came out again just as we were walking in the park, down vista's, the sunlight coming in low, lighting up the trunks of the trees... we saw a few green parrots...

it was heaven...

we ate in a much more expensive cafe by kew garden station, then got back on that little train, now full of commuters... i got off @ highbury and braved the rush hour tube north, she stayed on until homerton, where she went to work for a few hours (she's there now)...

loveliness x