But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy (Book of Common Prayer (1662)).

7.15 am: An awakening:

8.15 am: A communion. 8.45 am: A reckoning:

Back, then, to the marking regime. I took up the exhibition review submission for the Abstraction module. How important it is to read the project’s instructions before embarking upon a response. (In the background, I began catching up with BBC Radio 3’s excellent Late Junction show. In particular, it’s a helpful index to contemporary experimental and world music and sound. Over the years, it’s been a good education too.) In between submissions, and in order to give my brain time to recover, I wandered into the studio to review yesterday evening’s solution to a low-level hum that had suddenly beset Pedalboard I. It was caused by two metal connectors touching one another beneath the chassis. That realisation had come after two hours of prodding, pulling, and installing alternative volume pedals:

2.00 pm: Back to the desk. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has a ‘well-endowed’ collection, wrote one student. (Comment: ‘A better word, perhaps [?]’) In between marking submissions I continued testing other pedalboards for the presence of background hum. No analogue board is ever entirely silent. If you string together in series so many effectors, with unmatched impedance and capacitance, there’s inevitably going to be some electrical noise in the system. I’m eradicating any preventable noise caused by, for example, poor cables, bad connections, earth loops, inadequate power draw, and inappropriately ordered effectors:

As I’ve no doubt said before, when you work alone with sound, you are not only the composer but also the engineer, technician, and roadie. ‘Know thy kit!’ 4.15 pm: Another project submission on the marking block. The last of the day.

5.00 pm: ‘Off’.