You are allowed to enjoy this…

The recent visits to see Robert Fripp perform have been very inspirational. Hearing the music in the proper context had a profound impact on me and I still stick to my judgement that performing Soundscapes in a rock context (i.e. in front of a boozed up, jaded and cynical audience expecting balls-out rock and roll) is like throwing your pearls to the swine.
Anyway, I’ve been noodling about with looped music for a quite a while – since about 1994 when I got my first guitar synthesizer, the Roland GR-1. Again, hearing Fripp made me realise just how much one can miss a piece of equipment. In those days, I didn’t have any delay or loop devices to help me get the sound I wanted. A delay pedal is a piece of equipment that basically acts as an electronic echo and duplicates the sound played into it, gradually decaying over time – The Edge from U2 is the biggest exponent of the delay pedal I can think of. A loop pedal is a bit more complicated and just plays back whatever you put into it and you can overdub sounds on top of that.
But I had neither, so I came up with a novel way of achieving my own soundscapes. What I would do is create a sound on my Roland GR-1, usually based on a string pad, and make sure that the decay of the sound was really long, so that when you plucked the string, the sound would continue for ages before dying out. This way I could play long deep notes and try and solo/add melody with the higher pitched strings on my guitar. The earliest example of this was a track called “Angel’s Tears” and actually it used a Yamaha MU-50 as the sound source, so it has a rather unique sound to it. Here it is:

Direct download: CLICK HERE
Over the years, I’ve purchased delay pedals such as the Line 6 DL-4 and the Boss DD-20 digital delay pedals, both of which allow you about 20 seconds of stereo looping time. With equipment like that, you can set down some synth pad noises and solo over the top. They are quite effective and work well despite not really being looping devices. Such examples of the DL-4 and DD-20 can be heard in this next piece, Shard of Indecision:

Direct download: CLICK HERE
Since then, true looping pedals have come to the fore and I’ve been using a Boss RC-20XL. Despite being only a mono device, you have an awful lot of delay time to play with (around 50 minutes, I think) and the sound quality is superb for such a compact device. I’ve been salivating over the new Boss RC-50, which is a stereo looper, but alas, I have neither the space nor the money to purchase one. But I’m not bitter, I am making the most of what I’ve got.
I think looped improvisation is a really interesting musical form and, for me anyway, it gives me the ability to tap into my subconscious creative mind. Once you set things off, you don’t really know where you are going to head and it is both nerve-wracking and extremely liberating at the same time. Seeing Robert Fripp perform with his banks of equipment was a real inspiration and it gave me the metaphorical kick up the rump to go back to my pedals and get playing. This morning I came up with this live improvisation called Cloistered Spaces 1, inspired by my visit to Norwich Cathedral yesterday. It’s not particularly good as I’ve not been ‘scaping for a while, but it is a start:

Direct download: CLICK HERE
The Missus quite enjoys my ambient noodling and reckons I should try and play this kind of stuff live. I always reply that if RF has such a hard time of it whenever he fires up a soundscape, what chance have I got. You’ve got to admire her blind faith, haven’t you?

Awww crap. Being a self-confessed stat slut, I noticed that someone or something had downloaded my video podcast directly from this site. Of course, it is a very popular item – people like to see my pasty Uncle Fester face looming into view and plonking away unconvincingly on that rubber bass doo-hickey. But on 11 June, there were over 460 downloads of that particular file – this means that already I have used 13Gb of my monthly traffic quota and if traffic continues as projected, I am going to shift 37Gb of data this month and have to pay for it. Pay in blood, my friends. Pay in blood and sweat and tears and other bodily fluids. It’s not going to be pleasant. Oh what to do? I’ve already removed a load of unnecessary files from here – but I don’t want to take down the stuff I do – that’s the whole point of this place. I am in a right ol’ quandry and no mistake.
The weekend consisted of more sitting in the garden quaffing vodka. It’s an interesting drink. It’s not the slow descent I get with whiskey or pints of cider or pissy lager – one minute I am fine and the next, when I am least expecting it and usually three or four drinks down the line…whammmo…I can begin to feel worse for wear. Of course, it could be that I am just a big ol’ pansy. Who knows?
I also discovered that trying to squeeze into an old pair of shorts discarded many years previously is not conducive to one’s reproductive health. As I sat on the grass, strumming me geetar and terrifying the neighbours with looped improvisations (heck, it was a free concert and they should be grateful), the strain on my undercarriage was too much. Eventually I exclaimed “ooooh me ballbags” and ran inside to slip into something a little more comfortable. Damn the Missus for washing my favourite and only pair of shorts that actually fit me. The swine!
Today, I am back in the garden trying to get work done in time for the Missus who is having a break from her work over the next few days. We intend to do exciting stuff. Stuff that is so amazing that your brain would crawl out of your nose in sheer apoplectic exultation to escape your cranium and dance around in front of you singing songs of wonderment and joy. Tomorrow we are heading into town for some fun – shudder – and then we’ll be casting our net further afield later in the week. Don’t worry, I’ll take lots of pictures so you won’t feel left out. Of course, I know that’s there is only three regular readers left. I blame that sunshine…making people want to go outside.
Rant and rave, rant and rave. Just going on to make it look as if something is actually happening here. It isn’t. Back to the vodka, the work and the sunshine. 😉

A dream last night:
So me and The Missus were eating out – it might have been a restaurant, it was a dream and so hard to be specific. During the meal, I get up to use the bathroom and on the way back, I notice a fellow diner polishing bullets with his napkin. After the meal, we are outside and I discover a large hold-all containing more bullets and guns – it belongs to the guy inside. I use a mobile to call the police, but as the armed response team arrives, our gunman makes his break for it. He shoots his way out and I am left to dodge bullets alone. The police are outgunned and ineffective and so the gunman escapes the narrow London street. I follow him to a bathroom supplies shop, where he makes his base.
I want to get inside, but can’t go through the front door because he will kill me. It is now dark, but the light from the shop illuminates every in front of it, making it an ideal hide-out for the gunman. I go around the back of the premises and look for a door. I am in luck – in the darkness is an unlocked door. I quietly open it and descend into the gloom.
Immediately, I can hear the splashing sound of a large volume of water and the empty acoustic reverb of liquid on tile. As I walk down the stairs into the darkness, the sound of women’s voices become clearer and more apparent. I turn the corner and there is a large swimming pool. In it, are three young women swimming. They do not notice me as I hide in the shadows and walk past them. One of them sees me and asks me into the pool, but I decline saying that I have no swimming trunks with me. They giggle at me and their laughter continues as I find another staircase leading out of the swimming pool area.
I ascend and as I head upwards, I can see light. At the top of the stairs, I am stopped in my tracks by Peter Sellers in full Dr Strangelove regalia, except he isn’t moving. His head is slumpt forward and he appears lifeless. All of a sudden, he sparks to live reciting lines from the movie and waving his arm around in a sub-Nazi salute. I talk to “Dr Strangelove” but he doesn’t respond. He appears to be some kind of automaton. As I work my way past this obstacle, I see Peter Sellars again as Inspector Clouseau. He asks me if I have a licence for my minkey. Again, he is an automaton. I see Christopher Reeve as Superman and many other Hollywood stars. They pace around the well decorated apartment, reciting their lines, then moving on. Their performance repeating ad infinitum.
Suddenly, I come across an old man. He is the creator of these beings and explains that he loves movies and that they are his only companions. He is very lonely and has spent his life building up his bathroom fittings business – the shop space below us, containing the gunman. I tell him my predicament and he takes me to one side.
“Take this,” he says, handing me a very small fruit knife, “You will need to be armed.”
I look at the knife and even though I know my quarry has many guns, I know that this is all I will need to defend myself. I thank The Creator and he leads me down another set of stairs to the shop floor. The area is huge and well lit – almost too well lit as the light hurts my eyes. There are bathroom sets and shower units and the way each section is laid out is like a maze. It is a small rat run between the various bathroom suites and there is nowhere to hide. It is like a labyrinth and I fear that I will soon become the hunted.
In the distance, I can hear the gunman. He is firing out into the night – shooting at the police who are stationed outside the premises. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose and the police storm the bathroom shop. I duck down as bullets fly from all directions. I worry that I am going to be mistaken for the gunman and that I am going to get shot. I keep down low and scurry through the network of pathways, listening out for the taunts of the gunman and using them to locate his position.
I turn a corner and there he is crouching down, reloading his weapon. I take the fruit knife in my hand and slide it into him, into his back, in the general kidney area. He turns around in shock, drops he weapon and falls to his knees.
“You can’t do that!” he exclaims in complete surprise.
“But I just have,” I reply.
With that the focus of the dream changes and my foe has already been taken away. The Missus return and the shop is suddenly filled with familiar faces, people that I have known, many of them existing work colleagues of The Missus. There are also celebrities in the throng as well as faces that I am not too certain of. I can hear the clink of glasses and smell alcohol. I feel thirsty. This appears to be a party and everyone wants to talk to me about my vanquishing of the gunman.
That was as much as I can remember of the dream. Good one, ain’t it? I like it when they are cinematic.
So what’s been happening lately? Not much, been sitting in the garden in the sun, just chilling and discovering the delights of vodka and soft drinks. Lime cordial is my mixer of the moment. Tasty. Don’t worry, I have been working too – very slowly. Not felt like doing any recording at the moment – not inspired.
Not inspired at all.

On TV the other day, I saw an advert for the BBC’s New Talent strand and this time around they are looking for budding musicians to write soundtracks for their nature programmes. Of course, I don’t stand a chance with this because I lack the musical talent, but I popped along to the website to see what the deal was. The BBC gives you a short piece of video to download with the idea that you write specifically for it. As I wasn’t taking this seriously, I looked for a suitable piece in my back catalogue that would fit and entered anyway. Nothing will come of this…but here’s the video and my music to accompany it. Of course, the video is copyright of the BBC and I am probably breaking the law showing you this, but heck, let them take me away. The whole point of this is to see how a random piece of music can fit a piece of video footage. I think this track works as the cymbal splashes seemed to match the birds diving into the sea:

Direct download: CLICK HERE
Meanwhile, my Internet is still iffy. Despite numerous calls and exasperation at their incompetence and the fact that the engineers can’t seem to do anything, I am stuck on getting by with 121kbps – remember folks, it’s mean to be around 4500kbps. Now I am no speed willy waving type, but since this ferrago, I’ve got into the habit of checking my download speed to an almost obsessive level. The Missus thinks this whole incident is having a nasty effect on me. No – it’s just if and when BT Bombay phone me up, I need to know the exact crappy download speed for them when they ask.
At the weekend, we took advantage of the good weather to sit around the pub, get slightly toasted in all senses of the word and generally chill. This is only the second time we’ve done that this year – due to the poor weather so far. Later in the day, I spoke to my mother about something that had been troubling me. “You’ve got to forget it,” she said. And so, when the trouble seems complicated and all consuming and eating away at you, the simplest advice is the most obvious. Sometimes you just have to let go.
I am my father’s son and there’s nothing I can do about it. I cannot deny this or rewrite history. I have to be comfortable with who I am and embrace those parts of me I don’t necessarily like. If I can embrace those parts of me, I can understand them and work on them. I have to like myself and that’s the toughest part. I have to learn to ignore the past and continue on my own way. They owe me as much as I owe them: nothing. My father had his chance back in 1993 and he threw me away for the second time. I realise now that should have been the end of it. After a night’s sleep, I am over it once and for all. If my mother can be over it, then so can I. I feel a lot better and 2006 has been an interesting year for making changes and putting things right.

So while eating a late breakfast, the phone rang and it turned out it was the BT engineer who wanted to check my faulty broadband connection earlier than expected. Of course, the house was a mess (as the Missus was away and me and Alex The Wonderdog had been having lots of male time on the sofa surrounded by empty pizza boxes – joke) and the engineer would be over in ten minutes. So again, my meal was spoilt. The cereal dumped, the tea down the sink, I set to work trying to move the bookshelf away from where the main phone line comes into the house.
So the engineer tests things. Phones colleagues. Looks clueless. Apparently, my line can accept speeds of up to 6.5 Mb – but I am getting 230kbps. To put this in lay terms, I should be getting 6500kbps but I am getting 230kbps download speed. He takes a look at my self-installed extension line and reckons this could be the problem. I am told to keep my router connected to the main (which I have been doing since Monday) and everything will be fine.
So after an hour of faffing about, the engineer leaves and my connection is still 230kbps. I am not sure if anything is fixed or not. I am perplexed. Confused, somewhat. Is it fixed or not? Well, the engineer confessed that the new Broadband MAX! system is confusing to them and that they are in the dark. My connection is still at a crawl and if I don’t get any improvement in the next week, I shall consider going somewhere else for my broadband. During the whole experience, Alex The Wonderdog was shut in the kitchen and proceeded to bark and howl for the full duration of the engineer’s visit. Now I am feeling a bit exhausted and have a headache. I feel knackered but I haven’t done anything. I always get stressed when strangers come into the house and generally don’t like the experience. I guess the adrenalin rush and the sonic attack from Alex has worn me out.
Now the rest of the day will be dedicated to cleaning Chez Lock for The Missus impending return from Frankfurt sometime this evening.

And so the woeful tale of my poor Internet connection enters the endgame. Today, after I sent a rather aggressive email to BT Broadband Support, I got a call from another friendly Indian call centre chap. Now I know their job is to just take the calls at a fraction of the price that a local competing call centre might do, but the whole language barrier thing is a real drag. I say “My speed is 121kbps” he says back to me “Your speed is 155kbps”. And so on. It gets annoying and I got annoyed with him, before apologising for my abruptness. Of course, one of the reasons why I was so grumpy is that I had just cooked myself lunch and had just taken the first mouthful when BT Bombay called. When I returned to my lunch, it was cold. C’est la vie…shouldn’t have complained in the first place, should you?
Anyway, I later got a call from Paul, the BT engineer located somewhere in a bunker in England, I presume. He tells me that my connection is running slow and that according to their logs, it has been like this for a week. I tell him my setup, he goes away and does another line check, and then calls me back 10 minutes later. There is something wrong and they can’t figure out what the problem is so an engineer will be dispatched for tomorrow.
Despite the slow speed, I can still surf and you can adequately negotiate most corners of the World Wide Web on a 95kbps connection. The only fly in the ointment is when you try and access any kind of multimedia content – they you realise that you don’t have the broadband muscle you once had.
Today, I visited Friendsreunited and looked upt the profile of my half-sister again to see how she was getting along. Some pictures had been added to her profile and there was one picture that upset me greatly – it was the graduation picture and it reminded me just how feeble and weak I am. You see, after doing the degree, I never had the strength to attend my own graduation – something I still regret. What a complete and utter fool I am.

And so this afternoon, when the rain showers had stopped and the sun had come out, I went back into the garden to investigate the fallen birdbox from this morning. Immediately, I was aware of a very bad smell and it was obvious that something was not right. I gently prised the roof off the box and inside was a perfectly crafted nest. In the nest, were four or five dead chicks. Despite the smell, they were still in good condition and hadn’t completely decomposed. So I reckon they’d been alive a good few days previously.
My heart sunk. What was exciting and fun to watch turned into a tragedy and now I am feeling miserable. But that’s nature and life, I suppose. There are no happy endings. I put the bird box in a black bin liner and tied it up tight. Already the smell was attracting the flies.
Here’s a picture of the nest and the dead chicks:

I wonder if the parents had been scared off by the cats? But if the chicks had already hatched, surely they wouldn’t abandon them? Perhaps both parents had met their end while foraging for morsels for their offspring? We’ll never know, I guess. And there I was hoping that I would see a family of Blue Tits flying around the garden. Fate is merciless…