Smart guitar SG7

Way back in September, I wrote¹ about my desire to order a soi disant smart guitar (SG7); requests from the family for items available from Temu have disappeared, so I thought that it was time to treat myself. I ordered the SG7 on 12 January and it came yesterday - only 18 days. Very good service. The SG is very well packed: it comes in a cardboard box, but inside the box is foam lining so no damage could be done.

SG7 comes with a shoulder strap (as if I'm going to stand up and play it) and a USB cable that is intended both for charging and for recording purposes. I wish that there was a soft bag in which to store SG7, otherwise I'm going to have to keep it in its box.

After charging it, I turned it on and starting banging away. For a beginner, this is not a bad choice (easier on the fingers than a real guitar and much smaller) but for an experienced guitarist, it is slightly problematic. Hammer-ons and slides don't work: sound is produced only when one plucks the strings with the right hand, not the left hand. Also it seems that I have a habit of resting my right hand fingers on strings, so frequently more than one string is sounding. 

I bought the guitar for recording purposes; after some fiddling around, I am pleased to say that both the old MIDI sequencer and Reason recognise the guitar without too many configuration problems. The MIDI that is recorded contains many phantom notes - probably because of my right hand technique - and tends to have a longer latency that I would like. But one can easily edit out the extraneous notes and fix the timing. I would prefer that the USB cable be twice its length, but that just may be because of my setup. I may well order a longer cable.

As it happens... I've been working on a song in 68 that I started a few weeks ago. I created one version that sounded absolutely terrible when I imported into Reason, so when I started another version, almost immediately I checked that it sounded good in Reason. Of course, since then, the arrangement has gone through many changes; today I added extra bars in certain places in order to emphasize and I also added some parts.

The idea of using SG7 is that I am much more likely to come up with interesting parts if I am playing a MIDI controller in the shape of a guitar, and indeed the parts that I added today made the song more interesting. That is not to say that everything I played made its way into the arrangement as it stands at the moment; I had to clear out quite a lot that simply was not interesting. But a short chordal passage was used as was a counterpoint to the introductory solo. SG7 should also shorten the time that I spend on creating a song's skeleton as I can simply play the chords then transfer the MINI notes to different instruments; quicker than adding them manually. I wonder whether I'll ever compose a song on this instrument. 

Last Friday², when grand-daughter #1 was playing the piano, gd #2 picked up the pan pipes that I bought in Rodos many years ago. Once she understood how to get sound out of the pipes, she then walked around the apartment playing them. I am in two minds as to whether I should introduce her to SG7; at least she won't have any difficulty in getting normal sounds out if (as opposed to pan pipes or a violin), it won't hurt her fingers and I can show her simple tunes.

Internal links
[1] 1812
[2] 1893

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
544	31/01/2013	DBA exam results (not yet)	DBA
671	31/01/2014	IBR 2/3 exam results!	DBA
923	31/01/2016	A managerial reason for opposing the use of spreadsheets	DBA
1714	31/01/2024	NOT the end of an era	Motorbikes

Apricot chicken

Friday was wet and windy so I thought it a good idea to cook beef goulash in the slow cooker for dinner. The last time that I did this, I wrote¹ about the barbecue mat, musing that next time I will add some string (or similar) to the mat to facilitate pulling it out of the cooker; if I put string on opposite sides then maybe I'll be able to pull the mat out with the vegetables still on it, making it even easier to decant them into a dish. I remembered to add the strings to the mat before placing the mat in the slow cooker. The idea worked very well!

In some novel that I read a month or so ago (I don't remember which), I read about someone cooking apricot chicken. This sounded interesting so I searched for a recipe and found this one that requires 1 cup apricot preserves, 1 cup French dressing, 1 (1 ounce) package dry onion soup mix and 12 chicken thighs. This is an American recipe: I presume that 'apricot preserves' are what I call apricot jam. I don't know what 'French dressing' is so I used 1000 island sauce, and my onion soup powder comes in a big container, so I used a teaspoon full. I didn't have any chicken thighs but I did have drumsticks. The name of the game is adaptation. Skinless thighs would have been better than drumsticks with skins, as most of the apricot flavour was stuck to the skin instead of transferring to the meat. Possibly I used too much jam, as the few pieces that had flavour had too much flavour.

Somehow I doubt that I will be repeating this dish.

Internal links
[1] 1833

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
156	27/01/2009	Long time no blog	Programming, Psychology
801	27/01/2015	Shetland	Literature
1287	27/01/2020	The third way, continued	Problem solving

Visit to the Gaza border

On Wednesday, I had the honour, along with 30 fellow employees, of travelling to the area surrounding the Gaza border. I admit to having been slightly apprehensive regarding this trip as I didn't know how I would react. I feel that it is incumbent upon Jews to visit sites that are connected to our tradition and suffering; this is why I try to visit old synagogues¹ in European countries and places² connected to the Holocaust.  The last time that I visited the Holocause Museum in Jerusalem (maybe 20 years ago) was very moving and I cried a little. For some reason, this trip didn't move me as much.

The first stop on the trip was 'morning coffee' at a bar in Sderot; on the map, this town is the top-most green area. One can see how close it is to the Gaza border (the grey area enclosed in a dotted line), and in the morning of October 7³, tens of terrorists entered the town. There was a serious battle for control of the town's police station, sited only about 100 metres from the bar that we visited. Due to the damage done to the station, it has since been knocked down, and a memorial has been created in its place.

From there, we travelled along the blood soaked Road 232, which is the solid line on the map leading from Sderot down to the bottom left hand corner of the map. Our destination was Kibbutz Nir Oz (marked in yellow on the map); one quarter of the adult population of the kibbutz was killed, and many more were taken as hostages. About half of the houses on the kibbutz were burnt down, sometimes in order to 'smoke out' the residents and sometimes simply as wanton violence.

There were wave after wave of terrorists and then Gaza residents who invaded the kibbutz, so the damage differs from house to house. There was one path through a residential area where all the houses on one side had been damaged badly, whereas most of the houses on the other side seemed hardly to have been touched. That doesn't mean to say that their contents were not looted.

There were flags placed in front of most the houses, either black or yellow. The black flags represent the number of residents that were killed and the yellow flags represent the number taken hostage. Some of the yellow flags have black tags, representing hostages who were later killed in captivity. One such victim was Yoram Metzger, aged 80; our visit was led by his daughter in law, Ella. Amongst other things, she told us that the kibbutz members (almost all now living for the time being in Kiryat Gat) were set to discuss how many of the damaged buildings were to be torn down and how many to be left as reminders of the blackest day in Israel's history, but that the current prisoner exchange programme caused them to concentrate on that (receiving the returning hostages) and putting aside the subject of commemoration.

There were about another two groups being shown around the kibbutz while we were there. I had been apprehensive that the kibbutz would be filled with people examing the damaged sites but we were told that visits take place only after 'a booking' has been made. Even so, there are kibbutz members who requested that their houses not be entered.

Incidentally, the topology of Nir Oz is completely different from that of my kibbutz: they have much more room and so have single floor houses, although these seem to be relatively small. My kibbutz is built on the side of a hill and so there isn't much room to spread out; most of the houses (save the new ones being built) are two stories high and house four families. The gardening on my kibbutz is much more intensive, but as my son pointed out, no one has looked after the gardens of Nir Oz for the past fifteen months.

From Nir Oz, we travelled to the site of the Nova festival massacre, which is about halfway between Nir Oz and Sderot (i.e. we doubled back on road 232). Numerically, there were far more people killed at the Nova than there were in Nir Oz, but somehow the emotional effect was lower. There were also far more visitors at this site.

From the Nova, we continued our trip northwards to the graveyard where vehicles involved in the fighting have been stored. Supposedly this is a temporary location, but I can't see it being moved elsewhere. It's difficult to choose which picture to show: those of cars riddled with bullets, those of cars with structural damage or just a general scene. I decided to use the picture on the left that shows the car belonging to Ben Shim'oni, who despite escaping the Nova massacre, chose to return to the inferno three times to save friends and strangers, until he himself was hit by gunfire. Under heavy fire, Ben managed to save 12 more people. In the third round, he was hit and killed along with two other passengers, and the third, Romi Gonen, was kidnapped to Gaza, and released in the Hamas-Israel agreement in January 2025 (i.e. the Sunday prior to our visit, a mere three days).

If there were many people at the Nova site, then there were even more at this site, mainly groups of religious teenage girls who were being lectured about the events that the site commemorates. 

From this site we returned to Sderot for a disappoing lunch (five different types of pasta) and then the long drive home.

I've delayed writing about this visit for a few days primarily because I wanted to devote to it as much writing time as possible, unencumbered by other activities. Whilst I may have captured fairly accurately what I saw, I'm not sure that I captured what I felt. Maybe like our guide at Nir Oz, I have become somewhat acclimatised to the events and what has been left behind. I have no doubt, though, that it was very important to go on the visit.

Bleeding heart liberals in Europe and elsewhere may say that the number of Israelis killed in this war (along with the 1200+ people who were killed, another 850 soldiers have fallen) is nothing compared to the number of Gaza residents killed, and that the damage done to several kibbutzim is nothing compared to the damage done to buildings in Gaza. Whilst this is true, I would like to point out that it wasn't us who invaded another country, it wasn't us who set fire to buildings in order to force the occupants out, it wasn't us who took hostages, ranging in age from a few months old baby to 80 year old persioners, and it wasn't us who use hospitals and schools as camouflaged sites for storing weapons and supplies, using these sites as a basis for firing rockets into Israel. Hamas has shown again and again its low regard for human lives, including those of their own people, and is still playing psychological tricks on us with regard to the agreements made for the exchange of hostages and prisoners. 

I am sure that many people in Europe would act differently should Hamas be active on their borders or within their cities. The big mistake is in relating to Hamas in the same way that we relate to other people; Hamas has shown time and time again that they have different values

Internal links
[1] 1043
[2] 286
[3] 1674

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
445	26/01/2012	Displaying a database table as a tree	Programming
922	26/01/2016	Suspected poisoning	Dog
1197	26/01/2019	Thank heaven for system restore	Multi-track
1286	26/01/2020	Thinking outside of the box: the third way	Priority tips, Problem solving
1468	26/01/2022	Janis Ian is retiring from recording	Janis Ian

Friday night music

Quite possibly in response to the death of Garth Hudson¹, the radio played several songs by The Band yesterday evening. Ones that I definitely heard were 'Lonesome Suzie', 'Whispering pines' and 'The night they drove old Dixie down', but I'm sure that there were more. There was also someone else's version of 'I shall be released'. Earlier in the day we had the weekly play of Fairport's "Who knows where the time goes?" (Unhalfbricking version); don't they know that there are other lovely songs by Sandy Denny? I also heard 'Pink moon' by Nick Drake; this makes a change from 'Northern sky' and 'Riverman'.

The volume on the radio was low so that it didn't interfere with the piano playing of all my grand-daughters. The most amusing picture was that of g-d #1 showing g-d #3 how to play! I doubt that g-d #3 absorbed very much of this, but if she suddenly starts to play at the age of (say) 3, then we'll know where it all started.

We were also treated to a recital by g-d #1 - she has added 'Happy birthday' to her repertoire in honour of her mother's birthday this week. Although g-d #2 is too young for lessons (her 6^th birthday was only a month and a half ago), she is absorbing what her older sister is learning, and can rip off a mean version of 'Fur Alise' at a moment's notice.

Internal links
[1] 1892

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
23	25/01/2006	End of an era	Computer
1196	25/01/2019	Frustrating day	Song writing, Multi-track
1285	25/01/2020	Another record @ 50 - Hot Rats	1970
1467	25/01/2022	Demoing a new song	Song writing, Home recording

Garth Hudson, RIP

Garth Hudson, the last remaining member of The Band, died a few days ago, aged 87. He was the first to be born and the last to die; an obituary can be found here.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
328	23/01/2011	Sumptuous Sunday 4	Cooking
541	23/01/2013	The simplest ideas are normally the best	ERP, Problem solving
920	23/01/2016	Vinyl log 27 - 23 January	Vinyl log, 10cc
1371	23/01/2021	Porting an application to Windows 10/Delphi 10.2 (part 3)	Programming, Delphi, Unicode
1372	23/01/2021	Porting an application to Windows 10/Delphi 10.2 (part 4)	Programming, Delphi, Unicode
1576	23/01/2023	More David Crosby: Guinnevere	CSN

Q & A with harpist Alice Roberts

One might ask who Alice Roberts is; she is the harpist who plays with Jasmine Myra. I've tried to contact JM though various channels without success, and it occurred to me a few days ago that I might have more luck in contacting one of the musicians who play with her. Harpist Alice does have her own web site (she is also available to play at weddings, bar mitzvas, etc) and through this site I was able to ask a few questions. 

Q: How do you manage to concentrate and maintain your timing in the long pieces when you are playing continuous arpeggios?

A: A lot of playing the harp is just muscle memory so I’m not really thinking too hard about the repeating patterns, I’ll usually be listening out for certain other cues that trigger the next part of the song. When we play live I tend to sort of riff on the patterns a bit more and we can be a bit more reactive as a band than on the recordings.

Q: How do you manage touring with a harp? Do you take your own or do you hire at every venue? And if so, what is it like playing different harps?

A: When we tour outside of the UK we typically hire a harp [at] every venue. It can be quite interesting haha! Sometimes the harps haven’t been very well maintained so it can be a bit stressful getting them to a playable state in a few hours before the gig, but sometimes they’re amazing instruments - even better than mine. So it just depends and I always make sure I’m at soundcheck in plenty of time with a tuning key in hand.

Q: It took me quite a while to realise that 'Words left unspoken' is in 54 as I found it difficult to find the '1'. I'm also having trouble with 'Glimmers' in finding the '1'; the other day I realised that this probably is in 44, albeit with some oddly placed accents.

A: Yes, Glimmers is in 4/4 and Words Left Unspoken is in 5/4. Hope that helps!

So there you have it. At the moment I don't have any more specific questions, and my assumption that everyone in the JM Band is occupied with their own projects at the moment whilst Jasmine writes some new tunes was not adressed. On the other hand, Alice did write Jasmine’s music is so beautiful and I’m really thrilled to be a part of it.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
540	21/01/2013	Another evening (song)	MIDI, Song writing
800	21/01/2015	A pleasant surprise whilst writing 800 blogs	DBA, Meta-blogging
1003	21/01/2017	TV series in January 2017	TV series
1106	21/01/2018	Art turns into reality	TV series
1195	21/01/2019	Validity styles	Programming, Psychology, Prolog
1466	21/01/2022	The auditorium	Personal, Song writing

Chrome returns!

Ten months ago, I wrote¹ System Restore says that it has restored the system to how it was 10 days ago. After rebooting and holding my breath, the computer restarted but it's still at 100% disk usage. After about an hour and a half the computer calmed down and it became possible to do some work with it. But Anydesk and Chrome seem to be damaged, so I'm having to finish this blog on my work computer, hence no 'today in history' for the time being ... maybe I'll add it later, assuming that I can get Chrome to work.

I downloaded the Chrome setup program from the Internet and vainly tried to install the browser; each time that I tried, the program simply gave up during the initial installation phase. So after several barren attempts at installing - and also seeking advice on a professional forum where I received no help - I gave up on Chrome and went back to using the Firefox browser that used to be my default browser, several years ago.

The only action that I couldn't do in Firefox that I could in Chrome was access any Priority Web installation (PWI). This wasn't that much of a problem, and a few months ago I realised that I could use yet another browser, Edge, for accessing a PWI. 

So what's changed? My company now has its own PWI, and we even have a user that uses it exclusively. There have been a few times that I have wanted to access this PWI but have never succeeded, even though others have. As it seems that today someone from Priority technical support wants to access our Priority via the PWI, it became important that I have access to it. So I got in touch with our technical support and one of the first things that the technician did was to rename the directory c:\program files (x86)\ google to c:\program files (x86)\ google.old. He then proceeded to install Chrome!

It's a shame that I didn't know about this hack nine months ago. Installing Chrome went without problem, but it took the technician about half an hour to figure out how to access our PWI (VPN and firewall problems). Now I'm set up. There were some bookmarks to add to Chrome (I couldn't seem to export them from Firefox then import them into Chrome) and several to delete.

Internal links
[1] 1733

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
539	19/01/2013	Successfully sending an email in Hebrew with embedded picture and attachment	Programming, Delphi, Email, HTML
919	19/01/2016	Another misuse of Excel / preconceptions	Excel
1464	19/01/2022	Late afternoon walking	Computer, Weather

Fictional Italian detectives

It seems that I have a soft spot for detective stories set in Italy. Apart from the Commissario Brunetti¹ stories (written by Donna Leon) set in Venice², I have also read and enjoyed four books written by Tom Benjamin, featuring private detective Daniel Leicester and set in Bologna. Recently I've come across another series, this time featuring retired DCI Daniel Armstrong and set in various locations in northern Italy such as Tuscany, Firenze and Portofino; these are written by T. A. Williams.

I find these books charming, and possibly useful as tourist guides. I doubt very much that I will return to Venice, for otherwise I could check out some of the Brunetti locations. Similarly, I won't be returning to Firenze³, but I do have my eye on a trip to Liguria, probably staying in Santa Margherita Liguria and visiting Portofino.

Whilst I also find the Armand Gamache⁴ books interesting (though not as tourist guides), they slightly annoy me in that they are basically part of the 'closed circle of suspects' (or 'drawing room murders') genre. So are the Armstrong books. I have to admit that I don't like this genre very much; whilst it allows the author to concentrate on characterisation, it doesn't allow for open ended investigations that are the norm for real-life police murder cases.

It seems that author T. A. Williams is churning these books out, as 'In Tuscany' was published in 2022 and 'In Verona' (the ninth book; Portofino is eighth) was published at the end of 2024. That said, they make for interesting reading, and unusually for modern books there is no sex (it might be implied, but not written about) and no bad language. And they are much better than 'The spy in the shadows'⁵.

The Italian books take great pains in showing all the wonderful meals that are served, so I often wonder how a Italian Jew who keeps kosher (no meat and milk) and has hyperaldosteronism (no tomatoes, especially) would eat. I love the fresh fish but not the frutti di mare (not kosher).

One question that has always been in my mind from the Brunetti books: what does Dottore mean? The answer comes from T. A. Williams: they addressed him as ‘Dottore’, the usual appellation for an Italian with a university degree or in a position of responsibility. So I can be called Dottore when in Italy.

One peeve that I have with the Brunetti books is that time seems to stand still: the children are still the same age, or maybe are one year old in the later books than they were in the earlier books. One policeman gets promoted, the police pilot is replaced and the Senegalese waiter in the police's local bar takes over the bar, but otherwise everything else is the same. This does not happen in the other books that feature a normal continuing back story.

One final niggle before I close this blog: in 'Murder in Chianti' (the second Dan Armstrong book), his daughter says prior to visiting Firenze that "We can get a train direct from Pisa airport and be there in little more than an hour."  When we went to Firenze, we flew to Firenze airport, not to Pisa. It seems strange to me that they would fly to Pisa unless this was a direct flight from Birmingham where the daughter lives.

Internal links
[1] 1114
[2] 855
[3] 848
[4] 1868
[5] 1888

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
443	14/01/2012	More City Boy	City Boy
534	14/01/2013	Election day duty driver	Kibbutz, Probability
669	14/01/2014	Commuting	Personal
915	14/01/2016	MP3 Headphones	Richard Thompson, MP3
916	14/01/2016	Alan Rickman, RIP	Films, Obituary
1574	14/01/2023	Inside and outside the lemon tree	Personal
1708	14/01/2024	Band practice	Musical group
1709	14/01/2024	CPAP problems	CPAP

The spy in the shadows

A phone call in the middle of the night cuts through the quiet, unsuspecting European streets. At one end of the line – a veteran Mossad Agent on an undercover assignment as a diplomat in Paris. At the other end – the Mossad’s deputy director, with the only news the Agent was not prepared to receive: “The daughter of the head of the Mossad is on a class trip to Poland. Last night, she went missing.”

So reads the blurb for the "gripping espionage novel" (not my words) by Orna Sandler Klein, who worked for the Mossad. As one review puts it, This is an excellent book that describes in vivid detail the nature of complex Mossad operations in foreign countries. As opposed to most books on Mossad, it is not filled with James Bondian acts of derring-do and violence but rather reveals the complex planning of operations, the tradecraft involved, and the toll that the intelligence profession exacts on its practitioners. Its portrayal rings with the accuracy that comes from the author's years in the Mossad.

So how could I resist reading this book? Unfortunately, my experience of reading did not really match the 5 star reviews posted at Amazon. For starters, the daughter of the head of the Mossad only goes missing half way through the book; until then, we are treated to reading about the peripatetic lifestyle of the nameless narrator, a woman living in Paris with her young family. One day she travels to Brussels, another day to Amsterdam, a third day to Rome ... all the time liaising with the agents that she supports.

Apparently I have a different standard for a good spy book. I come from the 'stale beer' school of John Le Carré and know how complex planning reads; I didn't see too much evidence of that here. Apart from anything else, the writing itself was confusing: plenty of paragraphs begin with "He" or "She", but it's not clear at first who these people are. It wouldn't have hurt to use the characters' names when switching point of view.

I agree that this book describes 'the toll that the intelligence profession exacts on its practitioners', but this could have been included in a more interesting story. 

There is a hint of the pagers affair, where one character is described as a businessman hoping to sell computers to some enemy organisation; now that's planning. But the rest - including the operation to save No'a, the missing/abducted girl - just happens, one day at a time. In other words, the planning here is tactical, not strategic.

This would appear to be Sandler Klein's only available book, so I can't compare it to any of her other works. I can't recommend this book to anybody and I doubt whether I'll even bother to read it again.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
325	13/01/2011	Mirror mirror on the wall	Personal
442	13/01/2012	Caught in a musical timeweb	10cc, City Boy
533	13/01/2013	Embedding pictures in HTML emails	Programming, Delphi, Email
798	13/01/2015	Split questionnaire design	DBA
914	13/01/2016	Reviving the research	DBA
1461	13/01/2022	Desiccated apple slices	Cooking, Ninja grill
1573	13/01/2023	Israeli democracy nightmares	Israel
1707	13/01/2024	Bish-a-lu-la 2	Cooking, Kibbutz, Slow cooker

Recording "Life as a bell pepper"

Each evening during the past week, I would devote an hour or so in recording vocals for this new song¹. The results of the first two nights weren't very good, but every night my singing would improve. At first, I was using a pop filter that I had bought some months previously from Temu, but the resulting sound was terrible and I couldn't get it to sound like I wanted it to by using EQ. Also, the pop filter encouraged me to sing louder than I normally do; whenever I do this, I lose a great deal of accuracy. So the later nights had me reverting to my normal close mic technique which also records breathing and even some stomach noise.

Once I had a good vocal track, I could begin mixing. Should the vocal be in mono or stereo? Two mono tracks with panning? I spent a few hours on Friday and more than a few hours on Saturday trying to find the optimum combination. In the end (after maybe 50 different mixes!), I achieved the desired sound: this is mainly a mono vocal but with long reverberation added as an auxiliary effect: this allows the vocal to be clear but also to have a cloud of reverb somewhere behind.

Internal links
[1] 1885

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
532	12/01/2013	Play it again, Sam	Woody Allen
796	12/01/2015	Removing the blinkers (Research questionnaire 6)	DBA
797	12/01/2015	Reinventing the wheel	DBA
913	12/01/2016	Sending complex emails via Priority	Programming, Priority tips

Jolly coppers (on parade)

On 1 Nov 1977, I bought my vinyl copy of Randy Newman's (then) latest album, 'Little criminals'. My feeling at the time was that the production of his albums was constantly improving; this one married the orchestral sounds from the previous albums with a more rock based approach. I have a memory from a few months later, sitting in a chair next to the balcony in my room with the sun shining in and "Jolly coppers" on the radio - this time I noticed the synthesizer hiding behind the horns and it bought a smile to my face.

Fast forward about 30 years: I made a recording of me singing "Jolly coppers", as noted here¹. I thought that I was being smart by making a slight change in the lyrics; in the first verse, Randy sings "Why, they're as blue as the ocean". In the final verse, I changed this to "They're as cool as the ocean", which I though was very neat.

Over the past few days, I've had Randy Newman songs playing in my headphones as I walk around the kibbutz; I haven't heard these songs properly for several months so I was paying close attention... and discovered that I had misheard/misremembered that line. In the final verse, Randy is not singing "They're as blue as the ocean" (despite this being the official lyric) but rather "Coming through the heart of the city"!

I suspect that I sang the song from memory without having the lyrics in front of me. This would also explain why in two other songs I suddenly forgot a word or two and had to improvise. Incidentally, another song that I recorded whilst singing the words from memory is Richard Thompson's "Withered and died"; it turns out that I had inadvertently changed several words from the original - although in one case, I improved the grammar. The line "If I was a butterfly, live for a day" should be "If I were a butterfly" - this is the subjunctive, that is normally used to express wishes or hypothetical situations.

A few songs later in my walking playlist popped up "It's money that I love". This includes the phrase "Oh mama!" This morning I heard this and I noticed that I had unconsciously adopted this phrasing in my recording of "Jolly Coppers" for the rap-like middle section ("Oh mama, that' the life for me"). This really surprised me!

Internal links
[1] 14

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
530	07/01/2013	Recurring actors in long running TV shows	TV series
910	07/01/2016	Vinyl log 25 - 3 January	Vinyl log, Jackson Browne
1000	07/01/2017	1000 blog entries	Meta-blogging
1369	07/01/2021	I haven't disappeared	DBA, Health
1456	07/01/2022	Fourth time around	Covid-19
1572	07/01/2023	Passports	Personal
1705	07/01/2024	dbProlog resurrected	Programming, SQL, Meta-blogging, Prolog

Life as a bell pepper (song)

About a month ago, I wrote¹ about a new song that I've been working on. It seems that every weekend I devote several hours to rearranging the song, trying to find ways of maintaining interest throughout its five and a half minutes length.

Various external ideas have made contributions; I'm documenting this now so that I won't forget, but I doubt that anyone would make the connections. David Bennett has a video about songs with three bar loops that provided the basis for the bridge. The song "Captain of her heart" (1985) provided harp glissandi, and "Fade to grey" (1980) contributed a synth pattern to the bridge. If I'm assigning inspirations, then mention must be made of a song by Israeli singer Dani Litani that provided the initial impetus; unfortunately I don't know what this song is called and I couldn't find it by listening to the random selection of his songs available on YouTube.

Last weekend, after reading a few biographies of Kate Bush, I was tempted first to change various parameters of the sounds in the tune and then to create a completely new version that was very much "in one's face" (maybe I'll keep this as a bonus track). On Friday, I discarded all those changes and reverted to an earlier version that I then changed around, making it softer but also more interesting (I hope).

Being busy during the week - or at least, occupied - doesn't lend itself to writing lyrics. After several false starts, I decided to write about a scene that was in "The Lazarus project", where girlfriend/wife Sarah breaks up with George (this was probably episode 7 of the first series). In terms of the series, it's very important (George had to start a thermonuclear war in order to cause his wife - who was killed in an accident - to be resurrected). Here's a paraphrase of what Sarah says: "you've got the next five years of your life mapped out whereas I don't know what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow". 

Actually, that's a phrase that could easily have been used by my mythological ex, G, way back in 1975: I did have several years mapped out (studies, emigration, kibbutz, army service) whereas she wasn't sure of what she wanted from life. I didn't realise this at the time, but in retrospect it's fairly clear.

Anyway, on Friday afternoon I started to write and with difficulty managed to create two verses. Here's the second verse:

Your future's unformed
Whilst mine is so clearly planned
You feel quite unsure
You don't want a helping hand
Through all of life's turns
When shadows will whisper doubts
You'll forge your own path
You'll find your own way out
And now you must leave
You're saying goodbye
There are no more doubts
You'll be your own guide

But then I reconsidered: after all, it's a breakup song, and there are an untold number of such songs; I've written several myself. So I dropped that idea.

Whilst walking the dog on early Saturday morning, a new idea popped into my life: using the development of the humble bell pepper as a metaphor for life. As the pepper grows and ages, so its colour changes: the green can be seen as adolescence, the red as adulthood, and the yellow as retirement.

But even if I had such an idea, how could I turn it into words? I have to admit that over the past few weeks I've been playing around with the soi disant AI program, CoPilot. If it can write computer algorithms², then quite probably it can write lyrics, although it's debatable how good they might be (a confession: "shadows will whisper doubts" in the above lyric comes from CP, as quite possibly do other lines). So I 'told' the program about the basic metaphor of the song and its structure (how many verses, how many lines, how many syllables per line) and let it rip.

Let me say that the results are not bad at all. I've tweaked them a little in order to let the stressed syllables in the words match those in the tune more closely, and I have yet to finish this process. CP had problems with the bridge that is composed of the three bar loop: even though I told it how many lines there are and which lines should rhyme, the result was not as I specified. But I could take that raw output and shape it to my needs.

Probably during the coming week I'll start recording a demo of the lyrics in order to learn the tune better and see where there are words that need replacing/improving.

Internal links
[1] 1870
[2] 1875

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David Lodge, RIP

I was saddened, although not too surprised, to learn that one of my favourite novelists, David Lodge, had died, aged 90 (less a few days). The linked obituary provides a good background to both his life and his books, so I'll try not to repeat anything written there.

Until now, DL has been mentioned in 11 blogs, most of which mention him in passing, but they show how deep his books have entered my thoughts. In 2010, I wrote¹ "The first novel of Lodge's that I read was 'Changing places', which was recommended by some book club of which I was a member maybe twenty five years ago.... I know that CP was actually Lodge's fifth or sixth book to be published, but ... for me, it was his first book, and as far as I am concerned, there was a leap made in quality from the books which preceded it to those which came after." 

In 1998, we (my wife, children and I) went to Britain for a few weeks. The first few nights we stayed at a hotel in London (The Avalon) where I had stayed again for a few nights the previous year when I made a solo flight to Britain in order to attend Cropredy 1997 and also visit Sandy Denny's grave. That first evening, I went out for a short walk and found myself in a book store in Euston station which I where I saw Lodge's novel "Therapy". I absolutely love this book.

As far as I am concerned, his last good book was "Deaf Sentence" about which I wrote², also in 2010. I bought the paperback of "A man of parts" which is a fictionalised account of Henry James; not being a student of that period of English literature, this book doesn't have any resonance for me. This is despite the adulation accorded to Henry James in the Commissario Brunetti novels - "it occurred to him that she had left Henry James to go and check on him in the bathroom. He was immeasurably cheered by the thought". ("The waters of eternal youth", chapter 15). In David Lodge's work, Henry James is also mentioned in "Thinks...", another novel that I love.

Obviously, Lodge's writing days were over, so I don't feel the shock and disappointment that I did upon the death of Peter Robinson³, who was still an active writer at the time. The final living author in my pantheon is Robert Silverberg, who was born in 1935 (as was Lodge). He too has ceased writing.

Internal links
[1] 271
[2] 262
[3] 1537

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
155	04/01/2009	Another day, another RDBMS	Programming, Delphi
794	04/01/2015	Less pleasant memories from early 1975	Health, 1975
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1103	04/01/2018	Business rules in Priority which do not apply to specific users	Priority tips

Listening to old Richard (and Linda) Thompson records

During the past few days, songs of R+LT have been playing in my headphones as I walk around the kibbutz or travel on the train. When I transferred the songs to the memory cards in the headphones several years ago, storage space was at a premium so I transferred only what I considered to be the better songs, maybe only 40-50% of them.

These days, memory cards are far larger and so there seems to be no reason why I can't listen to all of his old songs. Thus when I came home from my late afternoon walk, I dug out the first four cds ('Henry the human fly', 'I want to see the bright lights tonight', 'Hokey Pokey' and 'Pour down like silver') and ripped them to my computer's hard disk. Presumably at some time I'll transfer them to the various memory cards.

Whilst doing this, I remembered that Island Records issued some years ago a live record of R+LT from 1975 so I looked for this then ripped it too. I don't know whether I have listened to it since buying it - my records say 2 Oct 2007, so I could have blogged about it (but didn't). The recordings come from three different concerts, but not from the show in London which I attended.

Listening to these songs brings back many memories. One memory that I have never written about was that in 1977, I recorded a cassette of other people's songs. Maybe I should dig out that cassette just to see what was on it, although I doubt that I will enjoy the performances. As far as I recall, there was 'Autopsy' (Fairport), 'Something so right' (Paul Simon), 'Vision' (Peter Hammill), 'Fountain of sorrow' (Jackson Browne) and 'I'll regret it in the morning' (RT). There must have been a few other songs but I don't remember - possibly 'I don't know where I stand' (Joni Mitchell via the early Fairport).

Recalling this, it seems bizarre that the Richard Thompson song that I chose was 'I'll regret it' - it seems that I preferred this to 'Withered and died' and 'Has (s)he got a friend for me', both from 'Bright lights'. Incomprehensible to me now.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
63	01/01/2007	January 1	ERP
154	01/01/2009	The least we can do	King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator
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