Enhancing my depth and breadth of awareness; this is what I’m aiming at.

WFH: DAY 121. 8.15 am: A communion. 9.00 am: A scan of the inbox and planned prevarication. (I’d deal with them tomorrow.) 9.30 am: A postmortem on the weekly shopping expedition: ‘I don’t mind low-sugar Heinz baked beans.’ ‘How about no-sugar baked beans?’ ‘Never tried, but I’m sure I’d get used to them.’ ‘Shall we talk about the trifle now?’ 9.45 am: Studiology. Back to ‘Seen in the Air’. The aim was to insert cries and groans into the composition, in such a way as to allow them to be simultaneously present but unobtrusive. In effect, what would normally serve as foreground is made background, and vice versa.

11.30 am: Back to the ‘manufactory’ table. There are aspects of this and other compositions that are representational. I bend the source material (my reading of the text) to mimic an audio phenomenon that’s mentioned in the text. In one sense, I use electronica to produce sounds that appear to be natural.

1.45 pm: After lunch, I inserted selected sub-samples into the compositional session. Too few or too many?; I could err on either side. On the one side, there was complementarity and contrast and, on the side side, conflict and chaos. The sub-samples were a kind of seasoning — enhancing the food, without drawing attention to themselves. By 4.30 pm I had done as much as my ears could bear to hear.

4.30 pm: Outward:

Signs of the times:

5.30 pm: I listened again to the day’s work on the monitors rather than over headphones. Some noises are less emphatic or present over speakers. You cannot mix on ‘cans’ alone, unless the sound is intended to be heard on ‘cans’ alone.

7.30 pm: I tentatively returned to a sample that may yet belong to ‘The Singing in the Air’ composition.