The best fruit often takes longest to ripen.

Sunday. 6.00 pm: A winter’s evening:

Monday. 8.30 am: A communion. 9.00 am: A full-on week of marking and assessments, PhD business and pastoral matters, furthering research projects in the spaces in between, and the ‘slings and arrows’ that being human necessarily engender. Which is why keeping a firm steer on each day, and on each hour of each day, is an imperative. 9.30 am: I was writing four emails on entirely different subjects in parallel. It can be done. The next few days will be decisive regarding my next sound project. Can my selection of wax cylinders, take from the National Screen and Sound Archives of Wales, be digitised? Is the British Library’s wax cylinder recording, purporting to be of a famous art critic, the real McCoy; and I can I work with it, please?

Over the weekend, I reconfigured and upgraded the sound system and power supply for the ‘small white table’ (as it’s known), in readiness for processing samples for the ‘Wisdom is Better than Weapons of War’ suite. I also drew up a wish list of equipment for the year ahead: items that would enhance the live performance aspect of my work and the portability of my gear. Turning up at gigs with a domestic suitcase full of bibs and bobs is insufficiently professional. You have to look the part. And, I’m obsessed by miniaturising the equipment as far as it’s possible too. Size does matter, when you have to carry equipment over land and sea. In this realm, small is preferable.

10.15 am: I set up a rig to modulate the sound samples for the ‘Whetstone/Cormorant’ and other compositions in the suite. Once established, I can pop into the studio and process samples as and when time allows. So, while I may not be building any walls this week, I can, nevertheless, prepare the bricks and mortar. [Note to self: Always set the Apogee Duet output to ‘mixer’. I invariably forget so to do, and puzzle for too long over why no sound is emerging from my headphones.]

Alas, the British Library’s recording wasn’t what it appeared to be on the can, as it were. Old recordings rarely are. Too good to be true. I’d anticipated the disappointment. After lunch, I began processing samples through the modulators – pushing the faders and twiddling my knobs – while fielding assessment admin.

I don’t want to colour the source out of all recognition. But do want to evoke a sound that’s congruent with the aftermath of a nuclear blast. I was intent on exploring as many alternative processing method as I’d at my disposal. There are times when the simplest and most straightforward effector proves to be the most effective (in all senses of the word) solution. Doom-laden rumblings – a speciality.

Finally, ‘Let’s go “Naked”!’ My trusty, if incorrigibly suggestive, OTO Biscuit (bit-crusher) can do appalling damage to a sample source:

6.30 pm: Having exercised the hand on which surgery was performed some months ago, I returned to my guitar practice with enthusiasm. Playing is an enormous source of pleasure for me. The cognitive, emotional, sensual, and physical are brought together in a single and co-ordinated motion of the hands. There’s a commitment, a delicacy, a tenderness, an intimacy, a conjoining, expressed through the act, so like an exchange between lovers. (See: September 21, 2018 (a slight return)).

7.30 pm: An evening of postgraduate administration and marking preparation.