Schizophrenia and insomnia

I'm leading a schizophrenic life.

During the stay, I'm doing all kinds of weird and wonderful things at work. I"m inventing new ways of doing things which save time, I'm instructing, I'm building a website which we're going to use for direct sales to the public, and I have an ISO quality audit on Tuesday. As it's also the holiday season, several people weren't at work this week, but they all assume that I can replace them. Whilst it's flattering to be considered the 'go to' guy in the back office, it's also time consuming - time which I don't necessarily have.

When I get home, I'm in a different world altogether. I'm helping my wife preparing the exhibition for the bar mitzva show which will take place next Wednesday. We've been doing a pictorial history of the year; I've been sorting out the photos and printing them, whereas she cuts them up and makes the actual displays.

My last post had me 'released' from my commitment to provide music for the show. A few days after the bust up, the director called me and asked for a new version of the closing song. Her demeanour was as if nothing had happened, and in a sense, for her nothing had happened. She wanted a big band, swing version of the song. At first I was doubtful, but after a few hours researching jazz MIDIs on the Internet, I found something which could act as a guide (big band isn't exactly the sort of music to which I listen). Two or three evenings of hard work, and hey presto! An excellent big band arrangement is ready.

True to form, I don't hear another word from the director about this. From my son, I gather that they've heard my demo recording, but no more.

Today the parents gathered to record vocals for this closing song. After the first run through (without the music), two things transpired:

a) the parents have no idea how to swing

b) the arrangement needs to be shortened (I did it for four verses and chori, along with a modulation and solo in the middle; we only need three verses with no solo).

I rushed off home, fired up the MIDI file, chopped out the extraneous material, revoked the modulation, imported the file into Reason, created a wave file then burnt it to cd.

Then we went to record. By this time, the director had disappeared, leaving me to teach the parents how to swing. I don't mind doing this - in fact, I'm probably the only person who could do it - but I would have preferred to have been prepared beforehand. Anyway, we went through the song several times during which I pulled out most of my hair in desperation at those who sang straight on the beat.

Once we actually got to recording (in three groups of about eight a time), the singing went a bit better. Every time the first verse got mangled, generally by people singing too fast (despite my feeble attempts at conducting), but the other verses were ok. I decided that each group should resing the first verse, which went much better the second time round. The final recording was just a few people who can sing quite well; I hope that the engineer mixes this take higher than the others.

To add to the schizophrenia, I also have my own life to lead. Someone posted the notes to the opening riff to Van der Graaf Generator's "Scorched Earth" in the Peter Hammill mailing list and I got intrigued ... so much so that I started trying to sequence the song. With hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have started. Harmonically, most of the song is played with parallel fifths and so it sounds like it's been played in two keys at once. But that's the least of the problems: it's metrically weird! It starts off with a four bar sequence repeated maybe eight times: the first three bars are in 4/4 and the fourth is in 3/4. The verse starts off in 4/4, moves to 5/4 for a few bars and then returns to 4/4. The main riff at the end is in 5/4.

The song is also an earworm. I worked on it for a few hours last night, until 10pm when I broke and watched 'The West Wing' (which as far as I'm concerned is the best thing the Americans have done in television almost ever). Afterwards I showered and went to bed. All night the riff from 'Scorched Earth' was echoing around my head and I found myself counting the beats. Just before two I finally awoke from a not very refreshing sleep and found myself unable to get back to sleep. After a while I got up. went to the computer and started googling insomnia. Whilst most people agree what can cause insomnia (and none of them seem applicable in my case), there isn't much agreement in how to cure it, apart from the universal condemnation of sleeping pills. The lifestyle changes which are suggested won't help, because my lifestyle has already changed. The only idea which seemed worth a try is putting lavendar on my pillow; apparently this helps one sleep. At around 4am I went back to bed, and whilst it took some time, eventually I fell asleep. Only to be awakened at 5am by the alarm clock for my wife. Trying to sleep a little more, the alarm went off again at 5:50am for me. I wonder how much I'll be able to sleep tonight.