8.30 am: Adjustments, additions, advice, and advocacies: a little tidying of next week’s schedules, so that I could clear my desk in readiness for this day’s work. 9.15 am: Off to School to attend a Special Cases meeting in advance of the Examination Board Meeting. 10.45 am: Back at homebase, with a cup of tea to hand, I embraced the studio once more:

The computers and their software needed updating, cables labelling, and devices reattaching and energising. The aim, initially, was to get two sound systems up and running. They weren’t designed to operate together, but at some point they may collide. I was setting up a possibility rather than orchestrating a probability. The floor assembly (for guitar) was complete, and needed only a final test; the table-top devices would have to find one another.

I’d been fortunate enough to secure two original, identical, and complete vinyl versions of The American Bible Society Recording of the New Testament: The Talking Bible (part of the so-called ‘Scourby Bible’):

The 10-inch discs play at 16 2/3 rpm — half the speed of a standard  33 1/3-rpm record. My DJ decks have the capacity to play at 50% of the faster speed. The slower revolution enabled twice as much information to be recorded on each side. And since a solo voice only had been encoded, the quality of playback didn’t need to be high fidelity. These records are the starting point for the/a next major project.

1.40 pm: After lunch, I tested and optimised the simplest form of the system: two decks > one mixer > stereo monitors (with a digital line out to a computer, for recording purposes). There was a very faint, high-pitched whine perceivable over the speakers, although not over headphones. It shouldn’t have been there. I went through my established procedure of turning off each computer (which can often be the culprit, particularly if its attached to the sound system) in the room, before rerouting the system’s power supply a common mains filter/conditioner. The latter did the trick. Silence!

The immediate objective was to prepare a sound system suitable for the proposed 24-hour open studio workshop in the Spring. The last event of this nature took place at the National Library of Wales in September 2015. On that occasion, I composed voice-based material for the ‘Image and Inscription‘ project:

5.00 pm: Once the system was completed, I was ready to attach effectors into the mixer’s ‘send and receive’ loop. How, then, to reconcile a mono  (send) signal to a stereo (receive) signal without losing a dual output at the monitors?

5.15 pm: A simple response, using only one effector. Question answered. Problem clarified. And, what works for one effector will work for many placed in series. By 6.30 pm, all the computers were updated and installed with the same software (but not an identical IOS). Just preparing the ground for work takes a great deal of time, attention, and energy. I was, now, ready. But I’d not a clue how to proceed. Which is how it should be. No plan. No pattern. No policy. Only many possibilities.

8.00 pm: An evening making Alexander Scourby — the reader on the records — sound like Davros. The Gospel according to the Daleks.