August 9, 2017

8.30 am: I flushed my inbox as far as I could, confirmed medical consultations, and reviewed yesterday’s engagements and achievements. 9.00 am: For the remainder of the morning, I recommenced my review of draft submissions from two completing PhD Fine Art students.

Uncomfortable and consoling advice from the seat of self-loathing:

After lunch, I returned to the studio to finalise the system set up that I’d begun yesterday evening. Before nailing down the tent pegs there were several alternative configurations that needed to tested. Periodically, one ought to assume that there’s still a better way of doing things. No harm in trying. But I’m always suspicious when a change either introduces an additional level of complexity or unseats something worthwhile in the system or requires additional expenditure. Clarity of intent is key: decide what you want the system to do, and incorporate only those devices necessary to do it.

6.30 pm: Practise session. 7.30 pm: A more radical but less intrusive approach was required. (This was a classic case of lateral thinking.) I treated each turntable as a separate signal source (which they were). However, now, each had a distinct effects path. The right-hand turntable was routed through a pitch-changing effector, and the left, through a delay effector. Their distinct sonic characteristics and potentials were interleaved when they entered the turntables’ mixer.

By the close of the evening, the modified and partially extended system was mapped, connected, and tested. This was as good as it gets within the confines of the network:

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