Instruments in a White, Dusty, Plastered Room



Too many ideas to choose any single one for detailing but maybe I should make the effort. Trouble is nothing ever comes of anything - I get home and just want to flop, though at least reading the Eno book makes me feel like I am actually doing something improving. Maybe get some phasing done though as with my version of Piano Phase the single millisecond difference between the two tracks seems far too big to give a meaningful progression. However this has made me wonder if the tiny delay that the few instructions between the start of each phases would be enough - like the computer equivalent of the tiny construction differences in the speeds of the motors on the original Steve Reich phase tapes which started the whole process off. There is also the possibility that the event triggered by the completion of one cycle of the loop could be made to fire slightly differently by making one copy of the phrase just a few microseconds longer. I'm not really clear on the physical manifestation of the various behaviours of the actual instructions in the CPUs. This analogous behaviour between the real physical properties of a reel-to-reel tape player and the actual time taken by a computer program to handle tiny events is fun.

As I said before I just need to find a phrase that makes interesting patterns when played against itself. This has made me wonder if I can amend the application to allow me to vary the portion of a loaded media file on the fly. This I suppose brings the selection of the phrase within the creative process - it becomes an instrument of some sort. I suppose that this sort of variation is already part of certain music programs.

Snake Guitar and Chips Please

This morning was filled with many big ideas, mostly sparked by reading this :-



However, it did make me realise that I was just recycling Eno's own ideas. However since I managed to get a VB version of Piano Phase working I have been wanting to do something like Come Out and have found out that it is extremely easy - simply two media player controls running on timers with an interval 1 millisecond apart. I just need to find a decent phrase to play - I did try "Daddy Daddy" from the end of the Plath poem and though the process works there is just not enough variation to get any interesting interactions. When Reich did the early phase shift pieces he had to either find recordings or make them himself. Now, like for image making, there is the whole Internet - millions of recordings to use as source and that is probably why it is actually more difficult to settle on a source - the fact that something seems OK is tempered with the idea that something better is just around the corner. Which sounds like how My Bloody Valentine make records.

While Searching for the Come Out Link I found this video of one person playing both parts of Piano Phase.



It makes me wonder if this is just the latest in the line of Honda robots. I always thought that two players need to be at the top of their game but to play both parts is just breathtaking.

There Ain't No Medication



It has been a long time since I played a recently-purchased record over and over again. I would suspect that the last time it happened I actually wore out a needle or two. Replica Sun Machine by The Shortwave Set has me back to those heady days and the song Sun Machine itself has been re-started many, many times. Not sure why but cool it is and cool it remains despite straying close to earworm territory.

Other culture this week is my first Morse book which has revealed that not all the breadth of character that Colin Dexter gave to Morse has made it into the TV version though maybe John Thaw was given the part because the Morse of the books has many character traits in common with DI Regan. The book in question is a battered library copy of Last Seen Wearing which is the second in the series and maybe indicates that stride was still not quite gotten into. I'm still guessing despite nearly all the plot having been revealed which is always a good sign in a detective novel. I was also much taken with Alan Yentob interviewing the notoriously prickly Doris Lessing on the Imagine programme. Prickly she was but not unpleasantly so. On to Doctor Who.

Many, Many Oxen!



Thanks to Mike Lovemore of UKSKYDIVING for the photo. How he managed to take photos and video and remember when to pull the ripcord as well is a mystery.

This is my aunt, beating John Sentamu by several days. She was on the local news and everything. The tandem jump was at Skydive Weston and was so slick that nerves were banished in the excellent instruction that she received beforehand. I would have done the jump myself but I had a terrible pain in all the diodes down my left-hand side. If that was actually me in the picture you might well have heard my scream - as it was my aunt smiled all the way down. It was a sponsored jump in aid of Age Concern OXON and various other causes. Free White-Water Rafting for all Pensioners!

I Point and Laugh at Archaeologists.




They're the same person - you never see them in the same room together.