Dark Thoughts

I did this huge great big blog entry at Singapore Airport and for some reason it didn't post, and got lost in the internet ether somewhere which if very very annoying. I'm going to try again with this post, to talk about what I was talking about 5 or 6 hours ago.

I feel like I've been living on Aeroplanes of late. The amount of travel that I've had to do over the last 6 months has been incredible. After this trip I'll have somewhere in the vicinity of 180,000 miles which has been accrued mainly in the last 6 months. I wonder if you can list your address as Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-400 or c/- the Silver Kris Lounge, Singapore Airport. It might be a bit tricky, because strictly speaking, once you are beyond immigration you are not actually resident in any country. You are a person of the world (or at least transit lounges).

Normally I'm actually looking forward to these business trips, but this time it's different. Maybe it's because I know all about the bitter welcome that the Mongolian weather is going to give me, or maybe it's because of the six weeks of long, hard days that I'll be doing when I get to Turkey. One thing is for certain though, this is no holiday.

I know that Jodie finds it difficult when I'm away. She puts on a brave face, but I know that she really misses me. I miss her madly as well, though it's difficult to put into words exactly what that absence means to me. It's not like an empty feeling, but more like I've left my right arm somewhere.

It was Valentines Day a couple of days ago, and I really, really enjoyed my Valentines day this year. I swear that Valentines Day was designed for people in relationships. If you are single, Valentines Day is depressing and lonely time, as you see all of your friends running around, poisoned by the sweet nectar of cupids arrow, and wondering why you aren't getting any.

I bought my beloved a large set of Rembrandt Soft Pastels as a gift. I got her the box of 150, though I've since learnt that there are 203 colours total, so I'll have to find out which colours are missing, and get these for her. There were no full boxes available in any case, the largest being the 150.

I also sent her a big bouquet of roses, which arrived at her work. She told me that she doesn't like these kind of surprises, but I think that she was secretly happy to be able to show off her flowers at work.

Jodie also sent me flowers to work, which I was so stoked about. I've never had anyone send me flowers before, and everyone at work was soooooo jealous. Only one other person got flowers this valentines, and that was from her ex, ex boyfriend. I'm not sure if she was more miffed that her ex seems keen to give things another go, or that her current boy didn't send her flowers.

It's a difficult things being a single ex boyfriend during Valentines. In my experience, if you were the dumpee, then the loneliness really does get to you, and you find yourself considering a whole bunch of silly "what-if" scenario's. And it's not as if you really feel like there's any chance of getting back together, but there's this kind of feeling of "well she fell for me once..." I think that's where my cow-orkers ex boyfriend is coming from.

They are quite good friends and I think that he's throwing the line out even though he's not expecting to get a bite. He can always pass it off as "just being a friend", but I think that there is some sort of ambition in the gesture, even if he's accepted that it's a pretty pointless gesture.

Anyway, despite the pain of others, I had a fantastic day. It's a nice feeling to be one of the have's on Valentine's day, rather than one of the have not's.

In other news I've finished the first song of my upcoming LOST album, and am well into the second song. This CD is being planned as a CD right from the start, rather than a collection of tracks or one great big long monster track that I chop into smaller parts, and I'm dedicated to releasing this album.

The music is ambient, uplifting electonica. Some have called it new age, but whatever it is, I'm actually pretty happy with how it's turning out. I've turned away from the sawtooth waves that is so generic in electronic music for this album, and have featured a bunch of more aesoteric instruments, such as Xylophone and Rhodes Piano. I've still coupled this with some full-on VAST programming and some very detailed KDFX programming to give it a synthetic feel, but using the new sample sources is like expanding a painter's pallette.

While there is a lot that you can do to shape a sawtooth wave, actually changing that wave is one more parameter in the ocean of parameters available to Kurzweil users. I'm particularly happy with the reverb programming that I've done on this last track. I think I'm finally getting the hang of reverbs. The kick drum is naturally a pretty big, ambient type kick, but with the KSP8 reverb the tail is fathomless. It's not muddy or bassy in a loud way, but the way the reverb decays makes the kick sound impossibly big, even though the frequency content is quite tightly controlled using EQ.

I'm really happy with what I've done with it.

I've had to stop work on my music while I'm away, and this has provided me with the opportunity to get my studio fixed up. I've got the Jupiter 8 in to have the keyscanning looked at and the filter retuned, I've also taken the K2600 in to have the mix out's repaired. Ond of the sides is silent and one of the op-amps or muting relays will need to be replaced. Not a huge job or one that stops me working, but it is annoying at gigs where I want to use the mix outs, and have a headphone feed.

The DP4+ is also in to see if the inputs can be fixed. Unfortunately it seems to be an exercise in futility to obtain some schematics for the inputs of the unit, so my tech's hands are somewhat tied.

I'm also taking the opportunity to repatch my studio, and will shortly order $1400 worth of high quality cables (despite being quoted $700 and then having the shop loose my order - Grrrrr!), and I'll also buy a Yamaha i88x and an ADAT card for my DMTi to allow me to have multi channel digital I/O connected to the K2600.

It will be a seriously sweet studio once it's all hooked up and running. I'll be able to patch anything, pretty much anywhere with either balanced cables, or digitally. I'll still need to get some good DI's to allow my unbalanced equipment to play nicely with everything else, but it's a small price to pay for massive improvement in quality that I'm experiencing.

I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth back into some music after the time spent programming ONYX for sonikmatter.com.

Well, I've got about 7 hours to kill, some of which will be spent on the start of my novelly thing, which is tentatively called "The Array". You'll be able to read it developing on this blog, though I'm not sure if I'll be able to publish one today, because I want to keep all of the text on my laptop, and I can't get an internet connection here at the Korean Airlines Lounge at Seoul Incheon Airport.

I'll see what happens.