I Hope They Were Sultannas

There is a strong smell coming from the canteen just across the office from where I am sitting. It reminds me of the meaty smell of the Vesta Curries which my brother used to eat when he lived at his flat in Malvern. They make you mad with hunger and then full of guilt at having eaten something which you might suspect was more akin to the waste products of a chemical factory than to real food. They still make them I think; I made my wife buy me one some years ago and of course I was disappointed. Never went for the chop-suey though. What were those little squares made of? Some of them seemed like mini-oxo cubes and tasted like them as well but the meat was something else.

My brother’s flat was in one way like John and Yoko’s country estate, with loads of big white rooms. However, it was a mess, with bits of strange kit and records all over the floor and a strange smell which probably took the various aromas of every occupant since it was built and combined them into one big crusty-like stench of yukkiness (If you’re reading – sorry Bruv). Maybe it wasn’t that bad. He was a New Romantic at the time though maybe of the strangely-sensible trousers and tank-top variety. He had a small drum machine which only had four pads and could probably remember no more than about 4 bars. Despite that I would spend hours creating loops and then regretting that I had no way of layering any music over the top. As soon as I got any spare money it went into various bits of kit, starting with the old Casio keyboard and going up to various Yamaha and Alessis racks. Now I can do it all on the PC.

Talking of which, I managed to bring myself to revisit drag and drop and now I can define the bars of Six Pianos just by pulling notes onto a stave. I found the little pamphlet which is the score (£11 from Boosey and Hawkes) and have started programming the full thing. I know I could buy some software but that’s no fun (and costs money I don’t have).

Elements to do are :-

Define data structure for storage of bars

Define method of assembling bars into the full piece.

Define the method for fading in and out the various bars.

All this has helped me to re-awaken my shaky ability to read music albeit in the style of one-finger following the words – very slowly. I think I mentioned being surprised at being able to follow the score of In C in real time. Again, its proof that seemingly difficult things are really quite easy and the reason that more people don’t do them is because they are afraid they will look stupid. Still, having just re-read some of my old school magazines, it is clear that few of us at that particular educational establishment could write very well. We might like to think that our school days were something like The Rotters’ Club when in fact they were spent flirting inexpertly and giggling at “art materials” and that was just the girls – ho ho. Maybe that’s just the rural place I went to. Looking back, it wouldn’t have taken much to fire my enthusiasm in some more intellectual directions. Our physics teacher was good and the replacement for her we had during her maternity leave was a hoot. However, I am afraid to say that in other disciplines, we were not inspired often. English was not helped by having Where Angels Fear To Tread and Henry IV (part 1) as set texts. I only passed Eng. Lit. because we got A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the live exam. It is still my favourite play. Where were nineteen-eighty-four and Animal Farm and Lord Of The Flies – all of the books we think of as set texts? Maybe I should sue.