My brilliant plan was not so brilliant...

OK, so I havent been updating as regularly as I said I would. However, this does not mean I haven't been working. In fact, it's just taken me the best part of 3 hours to program 10 seconds of a new track I had an idea for this afternoon. It now sounds nothing like I'd planned it to, and this pleases me for no apparent reason. I've also laid down several basic ideas for tracks to be developed and have almost completed a two minute instrumental on piano, marimba and string quartet. It needs french horn.

The dreams of people killing me has ended, but I'm now dreaming vividly about other things. last night almost all of my teeth broke off during a performance of an experimental play I was putting on in a haunted venue in Edinburgh. Rereading that sentence, I think I can safely blame Amanda Palmer's latest blog entry for that little gem.

Kontakt 2...

...is awesome.

That is all for now.

Ding dong. Ding. Ding. Ding dong.

That is the sound of a piano being tuned. It goes on for what can be hours, monotonously over and over. But it's bearable to get your beautiful instrument playing well. Unfortunately, I have three of the buggers. Didn't dare ask him to do three at once though (strain on the ears), so he's just doing Henry Jane and Bertie (shiny shiny pretty nice) and I'll get him back after the festival to do Phillip.


I'ts a day of learning Kontakt 2 and ringing people today. Woohoo! In other news, no one tried to kill me in my sleep last night, so that's a definite improvement.

Not been here in three days, apparently.

I'm sorry, it's just that I've felt really shit for the last few days, and have no interest n pblishing blog entries saying "Something has yet again prevented me from doing x, which stops me doing y". I'm spending all night every night running from various people who want to kill me (every night a different plot with an uncannily similar aim), which I'm trying to hope isn't prophetic or portentous in some way.

The happy black pit is reopening, and I'm just the little pink ping pong ball rolling around the edge. Rolling. Rolling.

Stumbling block.

Having spent too many hours researching sampling software (and finally deciding upon one, only to order it before the cut off for postage before Monday), I find myself wondering what to do next. There are a wide range of things to do, many of which I need to wait for various bits to arrive in the post before being able to do, but it's very much a matter of picking one to start.

As I have not been feeling well today, I have contented myself with various household chores I've been putting off doing (though still ignoring the laundry) and continuing my Musical Education. Turns out I do know what the White Stripes sound like without even realising it. Oh, and Meg's a robot. And Paul McCartney's dead. And Thom Yorke's blind in one eye. I really do have a fun time with myself.

I must remember to go into town tomorrow and join the library. The CD collection for hire is bordering on awesome, considering it's a public library, AND (remembering I have spent the past three years in Coventry where the library has some short stories in Urdu and a lot of phone directories) it has fucking BOOKS. I have the sudden urge to read like I used to before going to University to be Educated. Being educated in the Word really hindered my need to learn. Methinks I shall dig out some mythology (particularly some Celtic and some pre-Roman Slavic methinks) and perhaps some books of art. I want to read some Neil Gaiman that wasn't co-written with Terry Pratchett (currently up to Friday, and appparently the apocalypse is coming. Who knew?).

I'm genuinely bummed that I didn't go to the gym this morning (you wouldn't believe how much I'm not sleeping properly right now, and how disinclined that makes me to get up and straight away head off to bounce up and down and admire the still-not-decreasing mass that is my arse). It turns out that I'll only be able to go twice next week, due to a range of factors which basically mean I have to be at home all the time for three of them and, besides this halting my return to Camp Skinny, means I'll probably miss Ross and the rest of the gang finding out about Chandler and Monica (yes, I schedule my workout around Friends - ever tried making yourself do something you hate whilst watching yet another fucking house makeover show?).

On the plus side, I HAVE managed to find a piano tuner who'll come over and make my C3 even more beautiful than it already is, and fix Henry Jane before she calls up the hit men to sort me out good and proper. She is an angry lady, not to be gotten on the wrong side of. Really, I want him to do Phillip as well, but calling someone and asking them to tune three pianos by ear in one go on 4 days notice seems a tad harsh. Relieved I found someone though - the other tuner in the area said he was booked up til September. Sheesh.

I believe I am best spending my weekend preparing to fall in love.

Lots of work = lots of frustration

So, you may think that the lack of update yesterday meant I didn't do anything work-related. And you'd be right. Instead, I went to the gym, came home, dyed my hair (when rinsing the damned stuff off takes upwards of an hour, it's a little time consuming) and went to the pub quiz (we came last, and proudly).

Today, however, is an entirely different matter. I've actually only just stopped battling my sampler/computers to try and make the fuckers work. Progress has been made on the sampler, but major setbacks have occured with the G4 - turns out that the version of mac os (10.4 - tigerrrrrrrr) that I spent an ridiculous amount of money on (though not as much as apple wanted me to) is the only release of mac os x currently not compatible with my digi 001 soundcard, which renders all the samples on my sample library unreadable as the editors wont start. Githats. Turns out that the ideal version of mas os (10.2) is only about £8 on ebay, but I have the horrible feeling the whole thing's going to involve formatting of some kind. And my computer gooroo is busy until Sunday. Wish I'd known that before I went through 3 hours of trying (failing, trying, failing, trying, eventually succeeding) to install 9.2 in order to provide the classic environment said editors require to start the fuck up.

In other, much better, news, the piano is arriving on Monday. Wahey! :D I had this whole post I wanted to do earlier about my addictive response to keyboard patterns, but I was too busy and now I'm too tired. Gotta be up early, as ever, for the fucking gym (personal trainer (just a random one, you understand. I don't have one) walked past me today while I was on The Machine That I Despise and said "You can go faster than that, surely". Bastard). Fortunately, two week anger with it is being displaced by amusement at Girl-With-Disproportionately-Massive-Breasts-Who-Must-Hold-Them-Whilst-Using-Treadmill.

Nite.

Bob Clearmountain

Whilst trying to track down where the samples I've inherited from Bart with my new (old) mac, I discovered Bob Clearmountain's homepage. Some of these actually made me laugh outloud. His whole self makes me smile, in fact. Plus, his piano is beautiful.

Today...

... is the first official working day of my self employed life. And I'm really looking forward to it. Just had a great workout at the gym (cross trainer, I mock you and your obligatory speed of 6+ and head straight for 9.6). Am in that half-knackered-half-refreshed state. It's a lovely (but not too lovely) day outside, I've just had one of my favourite kinds of lunch (Morrisons' salad bar, je t'aime) and I'm ready to get going.

Got a fair amount of annoying administration stuff to do (council tax, trying to get hold of the fucking piano removalists), but ce cera. Going to spend today trying to work out how to use the new sampler (button tastic, with a somewhat intimidating sized manual). Might even do some research into microphones. Gosh. :D

Sod's Law states...

The piano men rang me today, during the only two hours I've had my phone off in the last month.

On the plus side, The Tempest with Patrick Stewart was awesome. Fucking amazing music.

And relax...

Emergency mother-related house clear up complete. State of alert level down from 1 to 3, rising again to a possible 2 if I don't leave the house to pick her up really soon.

Still no word from piano men about delivery. Only seem to remember I need to call them AFTER they've closed. Will try to remember tomorrow.

There may be another few days' interuption of service whilst my mother is here. Please bear with.

Bad Dreams.

At last! I have some actual work related news to report! The studio has now been (mostly) put together and I am ready to get down to the task in hand and /make some fucking music/. And thus it should cme as no surprise to anyone that my mother is coming to stay tomorrow and staying until Monday. Ah well. Points for intention. I also need to arrange delivery of the new piano (delivery guys said last Tuesday that they'd ring me on Monday. They lied) and get the other two tuned. I don't know how many of you have experienced the joy of listening to one quite out of tune piano being sorted. Those of you who have, imagine that, but times three. Ja.

For those of you who are demanding that this be a more interactive service, perhaps with a few audiovisual displays and some kind of large jigsaw puzzle which eventually makes a working clock mounted on one wall for the kiddies, let me now inform you that as both of my macs have been moved upstairs for "logical" purposes, by reading this you are effectively sitting in my studio. Say hello. Try not to make too much noise or break anything.

I'm knackered, so I'm now going to crawl into my big bed and hope that I don't have yet another epic-like nightmare tonight. Last night's was about being herded around in a group by a Japanese man in a big leather coat who was killing us off one by one if we failed to please him in whatever tasks he set us. This sort of thing is happening nightly, atm. Makes me tired, but not at all sleepy.