Sea of Skyscrapers

I never thought I had anything in common with Barbara Streisand but apparently I do.

Listening to The Grid ... not the Philip Glass track from Koyaanisqatsi.

Beautiful painting-like sky out of the window this morning. The sun lit the last remaining tower-block on Sheil Road so that it stood out from the rest of the city around it and now we have a delicate collection of clouds in the far and middle distance like tentative brush strokes to test colours - mauves and pinks and wispy oranges. A single seagull is wheeling over the site just enjoying itself like Jonathan Livingston. It makes me think of the sea for some reason. Maybe it's the music, maybe just the clear air like at the coastguard station. Suddenly the sun has lit the long building opposite us and the whole thing looks like the Paul Nash (I think) painting of planes and vapour trails.

Looking for the painting I wanted to link to, I have found this one by him which reminds me of a short programme in the Homeground series which last night was about the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster of 1943 when 173 people suffocated as they tried to crowd into the station during an air-raid alert. The programme found that the panic was increased by the strange sound of Rockets being launched from a Z-battery in nearby Victoria Park. These were like katyusha rockets but seemed to be ineffective. It is even possible that the launch on the day of the disaster was purely a test firing and that there were no enemy planes in the area.

I have now dug out a really old Ambient House collection which has Last Train to Transcentral and An Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain that Rule From the Centre of the Ultra-World (though only a 6 minute version of it). Using the long title as a search phrase I came up with this page which being from 1995 must now be considered a very early piece of the Internet. This record is what made me think that I could make music with a drum machine and a DX11. I now have the computer and this suits me fine now. I am in the middle of upgrading the PI play program from a single instrument to four channels with complete control over pan, volume and instrument. I got the basics working last night and seem to have produced part 1 of a Steve Reich simulator - the addition/subtraction. Part 2 will be the phasing simulation and then we are onto the Philip Glass simulator. I never got around to the computer version of In C but now I can control all the channels and instruments, maybe that will come in time. All this has made me realise how simple it is to fit notes together to form pleasant chords in any key. There are no complex rules other than addition to the base note. My wife will hate it!