Monday 8th of February, 2010
I've been missing my toenail cutter.
Something gets me up, which I'm grateful for, but slightly surprised by. Still, it's nice to know that there's someone responsible in charge. Sit, breakfast, etc.
I start going through the stuff looking for the debit card. When I've moved a lot of it, I call the camera hire company, and find that I did leave it there. So. I do various small things (including continuing my explorations of notes) and after lunch walk up to the camera shop, collect the card and use it to buy several DVDs from Fopp and a toenail cutter from Boots. I've been missing my toenail cutter (it will be coming the slow way from Japan along with the other toiletries), and they're difficult to bite.
H makes dinner, after which I do some more work on the recording from Saturday before last (it feels like the pause button was on for last week) as well as transferring the video from the secondary camera.
Sunday 7th of February, 2010
rapping myself on the forehead
The theme for the day seemed to be "obstructions" - certainly there were a lot of them on the way to and at the supermarket, so I just spent the day at the keyboard identifying the harmonisations of different scales, finding chords in common and modulating between them. All the different types of chord found in the diatonic scale ( major 7th, minor 7th, dominant 7 and half-diminished) are found in the harmonic minor scale, but not in the same order (so while Dm7, G7 and Cmaj 7 are all in the C Ionian mode, Dm7 is in A harm minor, G7 in C harm minor and C maj 7 in E harm minor. Or something like that). Making life much harder for myself and I wonder whether it's one of those things that will just result in me rapping myself on the forehead and exclaiming "D'oh, of course!"
Anyway, I make a curry for dinner and we watch Being Human, Screenwipe and a doc about TV pathologists.
Wednesday 3rd of February, 2010
hair clippers (of all things)
Up.. sometime.. woken by the sound of the phone ringing, though I don't get to it in time. My lurgi seems to have segued into Haru's lurgi.
Have late breakfast (H is also at home, with her own lurgi), then I go into Walker (it seems that the phone call was a message that there was a problem with the files I did last week). So in, then back on the bus and drop in to the shopping centre - Tesco and checking out hair clippers (of all things) at the hardware store. Home.
H is now up, so I use the opportunity to work on the files from Saturday night - lots of cleaning up to do, ending up with hopefully useable files. Most of the pieces are untouched, but knowing that there are those bursts of noise in there somewhere makes it seem slightly dirty. Ho hum.
I make fairly special fried rice in vast quantities, the only quantity I seem to understand. We eat it, then watch the rest of season three of The Wire. Only two more seasons to go, perhaps we should slow down.
Monday 1st of February, 2010
Nothing, thankfully, on the Violin Sonata
Up early to return the camera. H goes to work, despite obviously coming down with a cold. I catch a bus up to Dean Street with the camera and tripod (would actually have turned out to be quicker and less uncomfortable to walk, but what the hell), and walk home.
Begin work on trying to remove the three or four patches of iPhone intereference on the recordings. Nothing, thankfully, on the Violin Sonata, which is probably the most important bit, but terrible stuff during some of the quiet passages. Generally don't have good feeling about this - I wonder if I'll successfully get back the money I used to hire the camera, if I can't produce a decent video. Ho hum. At least I'll hopefully remember in future to keep the phone away from any recording device.
Lie down. H comes home again, ill and lies down in the bedroom, going to bed very early. I watch sarcastic reviews of Star Trek movies on YouTube.
Sunday 31st of January, 2010
some nefarious reason or other
Up early-ish. Sit, then walk to the Bennett Group meeting. Great fun, tremendous Movements session, lunch, then I walk home again.
I transfer the footage from the cameras. It looks like not only are the majority of shots badly framed, but they're also overexposed. Arse. The recording sounds good, though, except that there are bursts of iPhone interference - the phone sends out bursts of digital signals for some nefarious reason or other, which is picked up by electronic devices such as, for example, video cameras. During the Passport Sessions I needed to be sure that the phone was well away from the mixer. Last night I did the same - I left the phone in my coat pocket, backstage, but retrieved the phone to turn off the ringer after Elan mentioned it from the stage, and absentmindedly put it in my jacket pocket.
I have a shot at de-clicking the recordings - there'll be dozens, if not hundreds, of clicks that need to be removed individually. I try this for a while, then quit for dinner and decide to leave it until tomorrow. Actually quite a depressing turn of events. It would be nice to not cock something up once in a while.
Toast, then bed.
Saturday 30th of January, 2010
distracted and slightly panicked
Up early, sit, then walk to Smith Square. Peter is already there - I unpack the camera and try setting it up. The performers arrive after a while. I decide to set up the camera on the far side of the building (on the right as you're facing the stage), behind a pillar so it doesn't act as a distraction for the performers. I shoot some video while they're rehearsing, then walk home.
I check the footage I've shot - the framing is pretty good for the two performers, they audio is very good, but the quality of the video itself is less than I might have hoped for, considering it's quite an expensive camera. Ho hum. I read the manual for a bit, lunch, lie down then go out again to set up for the evening.
I get there at 18:00 and set up in the same place. Slowly the performers and audience arrive. I also use the small video camera to catch shots from the back of the hall.
When the show begins - Elan playing alone - I realise that although the composition might be very good for two players, for Elan alone (which is most of the show), it's lousy - can't really see his face behind the music stand some of the time, and the prop that holds the lid up is in front of it the rest of the time. Not sure where the ideal place would have been to video solo piano - probably in the middle somewhere, but there's nowhere there to put the tripod out of the audience's way. If the camera was in the same location on the other side (I tested it this morning) I'd get nothing but the backs of both performers. Perhaps nowhere. Bah. Very good performance, but I'm distracted and slightly panicked, and at one point possessed by the need to cough, or rather the wish to suppress the desperate need to cough.
After the show, pack up and go home. Get sausage and chips and watch the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie on the television.
Thursday 28th of January, 2010
Some pattern there
I wake up but don't move for a while. Hum. Eventually get up and breakfast, clean my teeth, shower and upload the fairies to the publisher's FTP server (Halleluiah!).
To the dental hygienist where I get a serious scrape (although after half an hour she stops and I have to ask where the other half is, then she reads the notes more carefully. The receptionist tries to charge me for half an hour, too. Some pattern there).
To Walker, where I try to get the current tranche of the job I'm working on done, although the underlying cold-or-something combined with my body's reaction to the scraping (which must be a bit like being beaten up or something for it), mean I'm not terribly responsive.
Get home at about 16:30, lunch, clean my teeth again (current obsession, teeth), lie down and then out to the Bennett group. I walk there, get very damp and bus it back.
Dinner by H and cake courtesy of her office.
