8.30 am. For the first time in the week, I’ve caught up on my emails. Our home internet access is slow. It’s a problem with our line, we’re told. An investigation is underway over the next few days. Slow upload and down load speeds have, periodically, dogged our system for a year or more. BT’s ability to effectively solve the problem leaves much to be desired. At the moment, calling data down from the web is like trying to strain blancmange through a sieve. I need to adjust my plans and work on non-internet dependent tasks. I managed to lever a number of module-related emails over the side of my outbox, before returning to the post-production process:

9.30 am. I begin each session with a full review of what has been accomplished thus far. By reminding myself the whole album’s character, I’m better able to comprehend the needs and identities of its parts, as they develop. One cannot hear all the problems at once. Flaws and inconsistencies — to which I was oblivious earlier — become painfully apparent (or whatever the aural equivalent) on successive auditions. Listening attunes the ears. But repeated reviews engender familiarity also. The sound works becomes progressively stale. In visual art, one often inverts the work — by either turning it upside down or viewing it in a mirror — in order to see it afresh. There is no parallel strategy for sound composition and recording production. Inverting the composition (that is to say, playing it in reverse) creates an entirely different sound — another work altogether. The best I can do is to change or vary the context of listening: playing the sound over the domestic Hi-Fi, the desktop computer speakers in my study, and different qualities of headphone. (In principle, one can do the same with visual art: look at the work outside of the studio, at home, in a gallery, or in the open air.) By lunchtime, I’d auditioned all but one of the already composed pieces.

2.00 pm. On with the final piece. That done, I go through them all again, starting at the beginning. Phase by phase, the same decision making process, problem diagnosis, and application of solutions is applied evenly throughout the body of works. Continuity and consistency are, thereby, ensured. 2.45 pm. A final mixdown of master tracks. Not all will remain the masters; in due course, better versions may be produced. But, for the time being, they mark my best efforts at completion. 5.15 pm. I have sensations of nausea, a headache, and a developing cough. I’ll take to the couch this evening.