A morning of undergraduate dissertation reviews and essay marking. I’m still not convinced of Turnitin’s (the on-line marking programme) expedience. Any system that mitigates against one’s instinctive mode of mark-up is to be mistrusted. For one thing, it’s not possible to review my comments without opening up each comment box, one by one. Thus, composing the summation of commentary is a feat of memory, as much as anything.

Students are never more at sea than when it comes to essay writing. In part, the problem derives from not reading academic material either sufficiently or deeply. For, we absorb the principles of construction, argument, persuasion, illustration, and citation, etc., more by osmosis than by instruction.

Writing is difficult. And, like anything that’s worth doing well, it remains difficult no matter how good you get at it. Of course, its not writing that’s the root problem; its thinking. Think clearly, and the sentences will be congruent with your thoughts (give or take a little fumbling with, and stumbling over, grammar and syntax). Which doesn’t mean that ideas necessarily precede words. On the contrary, they often occur at the same time. So, if you can’t think what to write, then write what to think. Just start joining together words on the page, and thoughts will emerge like improvised melodic phrases blown from the horn of a saxophone.

Evening. A new mixdown of the sections  was produced. This will form the basis for the final mastering. At that stage, I’ll attend to the overall tonal distribution of each section, and ensure that the volume and perceptible loudness is equalised across the whole composition. In many ways, sound production has more in common with printmaking and photography than painting, insomuch as the ‘image’ is developed in a phased and sequential manner.