More musicians

Several musicians, who have been somewhat peripheral to my music collection, have died in the past week or so, and it would be remiss of me not to mention them.

First was Norma Waterson, of the Watersons family singing group, whose husband is Martin Carthy. I have a disk of hers somewhere but have listened to it maybe once. The Watersons tended to be strictly traditional and at one stage unaccompanied, which is why our paths haven't crossed very much.

Then there was Ian McDonald from the first line-up of King Crimson. I have both the first KC album, where he dominates, as well as 'McDonald and Giles'. He promised much but disappeared early from my radar.

Finally there is Gary Brooker from Procul Harum: apart from their first two singles ('Whiter shade of pale' and 'Homburg'), I also have their 'A salty dog' disk. The eponymous song is excellent but the rest of the album pales in comparison.

The power of regret, and a proto-song

Astute readers of this blog may have noticed that some of my lyrics have been influenced by books - 'You should have known', 'What Alice forgot' and 'Normal people' (in my defense, I note that Kate Bush wrote songs inspired by films). At the moment I am reading a fascinating book,  'The power of regret' by Daniel H. Pink, and I'm fairly sure that by the time I finish this book, I will have some ideas for song lyrics. One possible title that I noted is 'Rifts and drifts' - regrets about friendships that were torn apart by some extreme event (rifts) and friendships that simply slipped away (drifts - note the Hammill reference).

As opposed to the other three books that I mentioned, 'Regret' is a non-fiction book. It's the type of book that I very much enjoy reading: simplified psychology. Most (if not all) of Pink's books lie in this area - I have on my shelves a book called 'A whole new mind' that dates from the days when I used to buy real books. This is a book well worth reading.

I used to think that I was full of regret (as are the people appearing in the book, naturally), but I've been thinking about this for the past few days and there doesn't seem to be anything that I regret not doing since I emigrated to Israel, although there are a few things that I regret doing or saying. Most of the regret (if any is left from those days) is to be found in my London period. I don't regret emigrating, I don't regret living on kibbutz, I don't regret marrying my wife, I don't regret leaving one kibbutz to live on another (a very good move, in fact). There was a time in about 2008 when I spent a weekend seriously considering whether to leave the company for which I worked (and still do) and move to a Priority consulting company; I didn't leave but I don't regret doing so. 

Anyway: there is a good chance that lyrics will arise from this book. This is just as well as the other day I played some ideas on the piano and recorded them. On Thursday evening I made a bare bones sequence of these ideas that I improved greatly on Friday morning, although towards the afternoon and evening I was beginning to have second thoughts, not only about this emerging song but about other songs that I have written. The tunes seem to be too dense - I don't know how exactly to describe this - not leaving much room for instruments to punch through, or even to breathe. I heard something on the radio during these hours, noting how few notes were sung to a bar, and I realised that I don't do this. This train of thought crystallised when I read how John Lennon had to add extra beats to 'Across the universe' because he didn't have enough time to breathe between lines.

So before I went to bed, I tried playing a new version of this proto-song where there is one chord per bar and the melody is more spread out and starts on the second or third beat of the opening bar of each phrase. I have yet to sequence this version but I think that it will sound better than the first version. It starts with a sequence in E Dorian (Em D Bm A) but then there's an interesting sequence of secondary dominants - Gm C F BbMaj7 Bm7b5 E Asus4 A. Obviously BbMaj7 is not the secondary dominant of Bm7b5 - in fact, the two chords contain almost the same notes: the Bb of the first chord is sharpened to B - but makes for an interesting change.

No doubt I'll be tinkering with this proto-song during the coming weeks. And no, I have no regrets about changing the harmonic rhythm.

[Note: I had literally finished writing the above and formatting it when there was a power cut. Fortunately everything has been saved.]

Welcome to the urologist

The specialist doctor to which I alluded in yesterday's blog is a urologist. Nearly two years ago I was suffering from swollen feet, and one of the varied tests that I underwent was an ultrasound scan of my lower body, to see if there were any leaks in the blood vessels that might cause liquid to build up in my legs and feet. The scan was clear but it showed that my prostate gland might be enlarged.

On the basis of this, I visited the urologist: his opinion was that there was no problem but he also said that men aged 60 and over should have a yearly (? I don't remember now) checkup. As my father had had prostate cancer in the 1980s, my chances of having prostate cancer are slightly higher than the average man. Fortunately the blood tests showed a low level of PSA and that topic dropped off the radar. 

Several years ago I discussed the topic of the PSA with our then family doctor and he was inclined not to pay too much attention to the results. There are many false positives and false negatives, and so the result on its own is not an indication of anything. As it's only a blood test, the cost (not monetary) of the test is low and so it's acceptable to do it. More demanding tests with false positive or (worse) false negatives are a different story.

Last September I did urine tests and also had the dubitable pleasure of undergoing a digital rectum examination (or as someone less polite than me would say, a finger up the bum) that showed that the prostate indeed is not enlarged. The urologist asked me to repeat the blood and urine tests in six months time, which is now.

The blood tests were fine as far as the urologist is concerned but the urine test shows two problematic values: the RBC (red blood cell) was 25 and the erythrocytes count had increased slightly since my previous test. These two tests indicate the presence of blood in the urine - a microhaematuria. I had been diagnosed with this during my army days but the condition had seemed to improve. The urologist wants to get to the bottom of this and find out what's causing the condition  (as does my nephrologist) , so now I have to undergo a CT and worst of all, a cystoscopy. Just saying the word makes me shrivel. It occurs to me that this is the final body orifice to be invaded, after the mouth, anus, nose and ear. Maybe this will be like the adrenal venous sampling procedure as far as I am concerned: local anaesthetic and no ability to move nor see what's happening.

Mint chocolate ice cream comes to Bet Shemesh!

Before I get down to business, I want to note that we were promised rain from yesterday afternoon. We actually had pleasant sunshine until about 5 pm, then it became relatively cool. Only at 10 am this morning (Friday) did it actually rain a little. When I was doing national service in the army, I made a bargain with the weather: I didn't mind if it rained all weekend as long as it didn't rain during the week. I remember that the weather actually kept this bargain for quite some time in 1980.

Yesterday evening I had to go to the local mall for a specialist doctor's appointment (maybe more on that later in a separate blog). This gave me the chance to go to the new ice cream emporium that has opened there. There's a branch near where my son lives in Tel Aviv and he has brought us some ice cream in the past: very tasty. It seems that every branch can choose which flavours to sell (obviously this is dependent on the local population) as the flavours that he brought us weren't for sale yesterday.

But the first thing that I saw was mint chocolate ice cream! I should have taken a picture of it yesterday in order to display here, but I will have to suffice with a picture of someone else's ice cream. I asked for a taste, just to ensure that it's the mint flavour that I like and not the local favourites pistachio or spearmint (nana). So I immediately bought a half kilo package, and to be fair, bought half a kilo of vanilla for my wife. They also had limoncello sorbet on display, of which I had a taste: very refreshing. This will be good when the weather gets hotter.

I am slightly surprised about the choice of flavours on sale here; apart from the Moroccans and Russians, Bet Shemesh has a fairly large minority of American religious Jews, and it may be them that are driving the choice of flavours.

But what is the ice cream like? It was much softer than I expected, though this may change the longer the ice cream is in our freezer*. There don't seem to be any chocolate chips: the chocolate seems to be chocolate ice cream mixed with the mint. There is also a synthetic note of something in the aftertaste that is slightly off-putting. But still: mint chocolate in Bet Shemesh! Despite my minor carping, the ice cream is much better than the regular commercial ice cream - and much more expensive: a kilo of regular ice cream costs about 30 NIS, whereas half a kilo of Golda ice cream costs 60 NIS (the ice cream is weighed so the cost depends on the actual weight, i.e. how much the server managed to cram into the container). That's four times as much. I don't think that the ice cream is four times as good, but it is much better.

The raw materials of the ice cream are apparently sourced from Italian manufacturer Guiso.

 

* Indeed it did.

Finishing "You hold me"

As I wrote last week, I intended to rerecord the vocals to this new song and also change the instrumental track slightly. During what turned out to be a very hard week I only found enough time to make the small changes in the backing track, further improving the song. On Wednesday night I felt that I needed a complete break from work (both 'the day job' and my consulting gigs) and decided to have a go at recording the vocals again.

Familiarity with the tune meant that I was able to nail the singing in one take (possibly with an edit at the end when I garbled a phrase). I changed the phrasing in the first line of each half verse, leaving a quaver break before the first word then singing the second note early. I'm not so sure that this was a good idea, but anyway it didn't matter. I had difficulty trying to find a reverb setting that matched what I wanted to hear - the vocal is supposed to be intimate but with a reverb tail - and several times I converted the vocal file from mono to stereo (some plug-ins only work on stereo files) and back again. As a result, somehow the quality of the vocal became downgraded and I decided to abandon the evening's work.

Thursday was a very trying day, so again I needed a diversion in the evening and resumed work on the song. This time I reduced the amount of syncopation on the first lines and was able to produce a good take the first time around (possibly with an edit at the beginning). I also sang with a more throaty and whispered voice instead of singing naturally: this is hard to describe but it changed a quality of the singing. I was determined to save every version of the vocal file in order to prevent the sort of problems that I had the first night. So file 1 was the original vocal, file 2 the small edit piece, file 3 the composite version, and file 4 the tuned version, File 3 was in stereo albeit with two identical tracks so that it sounds mono; as file 4 was created from file 3, this too was in stereo. I did not add a little silence to one side as I tend to do: this creates a double tracking effect, but I wanted an intimate vocal with few effects.

I then aligned file 4 with the music and started once again the difficult process of getting the desired tone and reverb. I had been cutting the bass entirely from previous mixes, resulting in a somewhat lacking treble tone; the breakthrough came when I restored most of the bass. This led to a very natural sound. I quickly mixed the song once again and was pleased with the result. I let my wife listen to this mix on headphones and she thought the song/performance was very good.

On Friday morning, I listened once again to the previous night's mix: I felt that there was too much bass in the vocal that was also a touch too loud. I reduced the bass slightly - also affecting the vocal's volume - until I had a good, round, sound. I mixed the track one more time and deemed this song complete.

This was actually a very fast turnaround, as the music was written only eleven days previously and the words seven days previously. Most songs take about a month from conception to completion.

Now what? I have no ideas and no suggestions (e.g. a simple song in a minor key). I started fiddling with something on the piano yesterday evening but I don't know yet whether this is going to lead anywhere. I want to listen to all the eight songs that I have written and recorded since the summer and see whether there is a style missing from them, such as a waltz.

Too much potassium in my blood

I did a blood test yesterday for a few specific items; I asked that potassium be included. As I wrote four months ago, it's been four weeks since I started taking the potassium-sparing drug spironolactone. I was very interested in seeing how my diet has been influencing the potassium level in my blood. Some sources say that the maximum recommended level is 5.1 mEq/l, whereas others say 5.0 mEq/l. My level yesterday was 5.2 mEq/l. Too much potassium in the blood causes a condition called hyperkalemia; whilst this is often symptom-free, it can cause problems with the heart's rhythms.

What can I change in my diet that I haven't already changed? I drink about 3.5 litres of rice 'milk' a week which is probably quite a lot; that's what comes from working at home. As there is no requirement to state how much potassium is in the 'milk', one is forced to get data from the internet, and here the information is mixed. One source says that rice milk is lowest [in the various 'milks'] with a range from 20 to 80 mg. The same source says that the potassium level in almond 'milk' ranges from 150 to 250 mg. On the basis of this information, I've been drinking rice 'milk'. 

Whilst writing this, I've discovered that I misread another internet page and confused the phosphorus level with the potassium level: I thought that this site was saying that the potassium level in almond 'milk' is only 20 mg (per cup, 240 ml) whereas in fact it has 20 mg/cup phosphorus. Oops. The potassium level is quoted as 160 mg/cup. So the rice milk stays. That's unfortunate as I've just bought 2 litres of almond 'milk', one carton each from two suppliers.

The only other item that I can think of that could be replaced is the yoghurt that I eat in the morning. 100 g yoghurt contains slightly less than 200 mg potassium, about 4% of the recommended daily intake. As I eat 250 g a day, that's 10% of the recommended daily intake. I am going to replace the yoghurt with apple puree which would seem to have about 150 mg potassium per 100 g. Thus apple puree has about 25% less potassium than yoghurt: not a great saving but it's still less. 

It appears that the puree costs less than the yoghurt, thus offsetting the additional cost of the rice milk. Alpro rice 'milk' costs 14.30 NIS when I can find it, whereas 2% fat low lactose milk costs 7.50 NIS. I've been buying the rice drink from Italian supplier The Bridge at 9.90 NIS, so this is significantly cheaper than the Alpro product and not much more expensive than ordinary milk.

[Edit from a few hours later] The solution to the 'tea problem' is simply to drink less tea with 'milk' and increase the amount of infusions, that have no calories and no potassium.

You hold me (yet another new song)

About three weeks ago, I wrote [A]bout this time last month, I had finished working on and recording a new song. I felt that I was out of ideas and that I'd never write another song (this happens quite frequently). After finishing "Blind as a bat", I felt this emptiness again for a few days but I knew that at some stage a new song would come. I was busy at the beginning of the week with meetings, but on Tuesday evening I managed to find some time to sit at the piano, and almost by magic a new tune appeared, that I recorded onto my mobile phone. I had decided in advance that I wanted a simple song in a minor key, to act as a contrast to some of the more complicated material that I have been writing lately, and this new tune did not disappoint.

In contrast to most of my songs, this one is almost completely diatonic: in the key of A minor, the chords are Am G | F | F Em | D | F | C | Dm | E | Am G | F | F Em | D | F | C | Dm | G | Dm | G G# dim. The only chromatic chord is the D in bars 4 and 12; the G# diminished chord at the end can be seen as E7 without the root, that leads seamlessly to the A minor chord. I was pleased by the fact that the 'chord rate' was not one chord per bar; there are bars with two chords and there is a chord that is held for one and a half bars. The song actually is very slow (66 bpm), leading me to suspect that each half bar is really a bar, meaning that the tempo would become 132 bpm. Due to this slow tempo, this simple song lasts over four minutes.

It wasn't until Thursday evening that I had the chance to transcribe the tune into the MIDI sequencer; apart from the tune itself and staccato chords, I added an extremely simple bass part and an arpeggiated part for a Rhodes piano. On Friday morning I finished my programming duties early and so was able to devote a few hours in developing the piece. The staccato chords were thrown out and the Rhodes part became the major accompaniment. I developed the bass part in the second verse, then added a few more parts. The biggest problem was deciding on which instrument was going to play the solo: originally I wanted a French horn, but this sounded too synthesizer-like. I tried a variety of instruments and it wasn't until this evening that I settled on a piano.

Originally I had no ideas for words, but as I was reading Sally Rooney's "Normal people" (which we saw dramatised a few months ago), a few sentences jumped out at me: For a few seconds they just stood there in stillness, his arms around her, his breath on her ear. Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone (in the April 2011 chapter). I thought that I could write something based on this: it's free verse with no real rhymes. The tune and the free verse made the phrasing slightly awkward. 

This is the second time that I am reading the book; I think that the first time around I got bored towards the end and never finished reading it, a rare event. The same thing happened with the tv series which became less and less interesting as it progressed.

I realised early on that A minor was too low a key for me to sing (the tune runs from G below middle C upto A above middle C); shifting it up to B minor seemed on paper to be sufficient but this was still too low for me to sing comfortably, so in the end I transposed the song once again to C# minor.

The vagaries of the phrasing made singing the song quite difficult, even though I had a comfortable key, and I ended up creating a composite vocal track of three different takes (basically each verse comes from a different take). I thought that this was hard enough, but mixing the track, or more accurately, obtaining the vocal sound that I wanted, required many different attempts until I found the settings that were not too bassy and were clear. Tomorrow I'll probably decide to change the equalisation settings once again.

Additional comments from a few days later: I'm going to rerecord the vocals as they should be more syncopated. Until I get the chance to do this (probably Friday or Saturday), I can also get more familiar with the tune, meaning that I'll sing it better. Certain lines should have been syncopated which again would improve the quality of the vocals. I've also changed a few lines in the words and I am mentally debating whether I should change the short instrumental link between the first two verses.

Completing a new song ("Blind as a bat")

Slightly over a week ago, I wrote about demoing a new song and the conclusions that I derived from this pilot study. Last Friday I implemented those changes: dropping the song by a tone, slowing it down slightly and changing the instrumental fills. In light of the criticism from The Auditorium, I also removed the hi-hat parts from the drum track. I then sang the song a few times and created an almost complete version.

It had always been my intention to add a harmony vocal to the bridge; this I did by pitch shifting the appropriate vocal track by means of software. I also decided to add a harmony to the final verse; this I sang live and as such is more organic (as opposed to the exact, but also more robotic, harmony of the bridge). For the first time that I remember, I also found myself singing the vocal tag ("Blind as a bat") over the coda.

Over the next few days, I went through the usual phase of being underwhelmed by the song, disappointed that it didn't sound as I thought it would sound. But that soon passed, and I found myself making a few final changes to the musical track. The song began with four bars of Fender Rhodes vamping on a C minor chord; this sounds reasonable in the middle of the song where it acts as a space to breathe, but seems wrong at the beginning. I changed this to a synthesizer 'bloom' over three bars; as it dies out, the tambourine rattles, and we're off! Somehow another synth 'cameo' at the beginning of the solo section had changed; all my efforts at restoring this piece failed so I left it out. This doesn't seem to make much of a difference. I also dropped the rimshots played on the drums in the first verse and replaced them with a conga loop. The vocal on the first verse now has what might be termed 'extended reverb', a new technique that I am trying.

The trouble with this kind of sound production is that it's so easy (and tempting) to make changes. I never know when to stop. Last night I made the FINAL mix! No more changes will be allowed!