September 13, 2016

8.30 am: Off to School. High temperatures and humidity are anticipated today. But, first, fine rain — like catching the wispy thin edge of a lawn sprayer’s plume. 8.45 am: Arrived at Old College for two PhD Fine Art tutorials:

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11.30 am: At the School, the double gallery awaited the MA Fine Art second exhibition:

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12.40 pm: A research group meeting with two colleagues from English and TVFS, in which we speculated on the possibilities and dimensions of a fascinating project that’s currently being conceived.

2.00 pm: A five-minute lunch before returning to the sound hardware project in the studio, at home. I’m stripping more items (an equaliser and compressor/gate) from the main rack and decanting them into a second mini rack — one which will sit between the table-top effectors and the analogue/digital interface leading to the computer. This arrangement will compensate for the sometimes muffled dynamics of the filter’s analogue outputs. (The test rhythms required considerable re-equalisation after recording.) I’d prefer to correctly equalise the source prior to its recording. I see, now, why Brian Eno had adopted this strategy on the Discreet Music (1975) album. And, he was recording to two linked analogue Revox A77 reel-to-reel tape recorders:

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The remainder of the afternoon was set apart for inserting, wiring, plugging, and testing, while stamping down on emails as they stacked up in my inbox. Everything took so long to get spot on. Build and demolish; build and demolish; build and demolish; built.

Evening. I put my workmanship to the test. All connections functioned, but there was, now, a hiss (white noise) in the system. To discern the source(s), one must switch off each component contacted to the mixer in turn, and discern the difference (if any). The Moog MURF was the culprit. At the close of the working day, I made up another cable and prepared the original mini-rack to receive its on-board power conditioner, which should arrive early next week. As I worked, I listened to a low sine-wave drone treated through a chorus modulator, phase, and the new EQ rack — training my ears to perceive below the level of surface audition.

9.30 pm: Practise session 2.

Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

  • Most of us are capable of producing more than one type of work. This is both a blessing and a curse. Because, at the fork in the road, you can’t follow more than one route at a time.
  • Some of our ideas recur, like an obsession, at different points in our career. Their persistence should not be ignored.
  • ‘What’s the point?’ is spoken in the ear by one of the ‘demons’ that sit upon our shoulder as we work.
  • You cannot take the credit for what others do for you.
  • If a job is worth doing well, it’s worth doing twenty-times over.
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