Summa: diary (December 1-6, 2024)
December 1 (Sunday). The first Sunday of Advent. 7.30 am/5.30 pm: Proof of presence.
December 2 (Monday). Wind/rain. 7.45 am: Writing. 8.30 am: Studiology/studyology. Building. With the studio now choc-o-bloc with equipment rigs, I’ve commandeered part of my study to set up an electric guitar workstation. Again, the delimiting principles are: on the one hand, portability, economy, and ease of assembly; and, on the other hand, breadth of palette and potential for expansion. I began with Pedalboard I (boost/buffer > compressor > fuzz > bit crusher > ring modulator > wha-wah > volume > looper > feedback emulator > buffer). Either side of it are sustain, pitch, and modulation pedals.
2.00 pm: Onwards. A sectional testing of, and making ‘tidy’ (as we say in South Wales), the array. In this context, ‘tidy’ means ‘durable’, ‘safe’, and ‘dependable’. 4.oo pm: An ambulation.
7.15 pm: I completed the guitar rig by the close of the evening. What, now, can I exclude? ‘Pare back, John!’, my sternest critic challenged.
November 3 (Tuesday). I awoke, keenly conscious of those whom I know no longer. 7.00 am: A communion. 7.40 am: A courier delivery. [7.40 am, mind you!!] 8.00 am: A GP telephone consultation booked. I was first in the queue. [I’ve got this beat!] 8.15 am: A cull of my X [formerly Twitter] ‘following’s and ‘follow’ers. Too many toxins. Too much hysteria. Too much division. Too many sex-bots. [One is too many.]
8.30 am: Writing. 9.00 am: Studiology. Back to the Aberfan [working title] project, and a review of my industrial sounds. In my youth, I knew the sounds of the colliery winding house (which housed the engine used to raise and lower the cage of miners in the shaft); the clash and clank of the cage’s gates; the grinding screech of its descent and ascent; the whirr of the winding gear on the pit’s surface; the hum of electrical generators; and the spit and churn of workshop machinery.
11.30 am: A slow and tentative approach towards composition. ‘Plaintive and euphonic, John!’. 1.30 pm: I continued in the same mode, while repairing samples of quality-capture taken from poor quality sources. I was in the realms of sound restoration. 2.00 pm: Reaching towards the logic of structure, while simplifying brutally. When I hear something that, at one and the same time, is unlike anything I’ve encountered in my work, and yet reminds me of something I’ve done before, then, encouragement is justified.
December 4 (Tuesday). 7.15 am: Yesterday, I’d accidentally and irretrievably erased a Photoshop project, which had been under development — in the background of everything else that’s been taking place — for the last week. In a pre-digital age, loss would’ve have occurred as a result of a tea spill or an explosive sneeze … something like that. Today I began the project again, with the confidence (accrued from a lifetime’s experience of forfeits and failures) that the second attempt will be an improvement on the first, and take half the time.
9.00 am: Studiology. I continued adjusting samples comprising the plaintive and euphonic section. ‘Let feelings surface, John!’, my inner-tutor whispered, softly (like a lover). As I proceeeded, my heart and mind’s-eye, was elevated above my home town (which I always recall in monochrome), decades ago, when the vestiges of mining were still a feature of the landscape.
Often when composing for a themed suite, I don’t know either where a given piece fits in or what it may allude to. The present composition will find its own subject. Of that I’m sure. 2.00 pm: I continued re-equalising each sample to eradicate any trace of their origins in a dirty and worn 78-rpm record. Silencing frequencies around 800-1000kHz improved the profiles considerably. 4.00 am: In order to give my ears a rest and honour the passing of Frank Zappa 31 years ago, I played his ‘Peaches in Regalia’ from the Hot Rats (1969) album. In one interview he was asked: ‘Do you consider yourself a great guitarist?’ Zappa replied:
Well, I’m specialised. What I do on the guitar has very little to do with what other people do on the guitar … My theory is this: that I have a basic mechanical knowledge of the instrument, and I have an imagination.
Knowledge and facility without imagination are sterile; imagination without knowledge and facility is fettered.
December 5 (Thursday). 8.30 am: Studiology. The first composition of a suite is indicative of at least of the spirit of the whole. After a little minor tweaking, I set it aside and commenced another. A different type of ‘clay’ on this occasion: voices rather than instrumentation. I endeavoured to do things that I’ve not done before, in order to find things that I’ve not found before. A morning sculpting volume, uncomposing the composed, and recomposing the uncomposition.
1.30 pm: Editing and splicing; shaping and voicing; raining and blowing. 4.30 pm:
On the wind in the gathering darkness, I could hear the distant haunting hoot of ‘The Polar Express’ (the annual, seasonal morphing of the Vale Rheidol Railway steam train), either departing from or arriving at its station.
December 6 (Friday). 7.30 am: A communion. 8.00 am: Writing. These days I dream far more often, and my dreams seem now to be in a different medium (digital rather than analogue, as it were). I also see myself as a character in, rather than the observer of, my dreams.
9.00 am: Studiology. A review of yesterday’s composition, giving attention to equalisation and overall volume. ‘It should sound like a quiet hymn carried on the wind from a far’, advised the inner-tutor. One witness present in Aberfan on the day of the mass funeral heard the distant singing of hymns coming from the cemetery while she was drawing water from a temporary standpipe set up in the street.
There’s a British Pathé news-clip of the funeral online that includes only the sounds of the context: the murmurs, coughing, and conversations of those who looked-on from afar; coffins being transported; the wind on the microphone; the whirr of the camera; a plane and a helicopter far above; the closing prayer, spoken through the public address system; and a rendering of ‘Jesu Lover of My Soul’, sung to the accompaniment of a brass band. In between these sonic events there’s a relative silence — a sacred silence of dumbfounded disbelief, profound grief and yearning, and unalloyed love, in response to what had taken place the week before.
11.00 am: A cultured conversation over homemade biscuits and good coffee with my friend, the artist Susan Forster. 1.30 pm: I scurried to the School of Art and, afterwards, on to town to undertake a secret, Christmasy mission before Storm Darragh hit the western coastline of Wales, with projected wind speeds up to 90 mph. 2.15 pm: The calm before the storm:
On the way home, I recorded the relative silence of my neigborhood, during a period in the day after the couriers and Royal Mail vans have come and gone, and before parents drive to pick up their children from school. On this occasion I omitted a wind shield, so that the microphone would ‘pop’, just as it had on the Aberfan recording. (Thus, a deficit was turned into a positive capability.) 2.30 pm: File sample processing for the remainder of the afternoon.
See also: Intersections (archive); Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021); Diary (July 16, 2014 – September 4, 2018); John Harvey (main site); John Harvey: Sound; Facebook: The Noises of Art; X; Bluesky; Instagram; Archive of Visual Practice