Wednesday 20 June 2012

It’s strange to go to bed when it’s still light outside, at 11pm. Now that last week’s rain is finally over, I tried setting up my scanner with a laptop in the garden on Monday: it worked once and then obstinately refused to do anything despite an hour of tinkering with two different computers. I’ve got an HP scanner and printer which are both at least 10 years old now, and so they are unsupported with up-to-date drivers by HP, presumably as a ruse to make you replace perfectly good hardware.  What it does of course, is make sure that when you do replace the hardware you don’t buy anything made by HP.

After a day and more of scanning, photoshopping, and other related activities, I managed to get the Hume notation compiled, with its combination of French tablature, prick-song, modern notation in two different keys, and cryptic instructions from Captain Hume himself.  I’ll compile myself a gig folder with the bits that I need once I’ve worked out what they are.

Yesterday Alasdair and I worked our way through another three ballads with old pianos (and added guitar solos this time) which is demanding work but rather satisfying: 6 down, 2 to go. On Friday I met Amble Skuse for tea and cake to discuss how it might be possible to bring together muckle sangs, historical pianos and live electronics – once we’ve got an idea of the shape of the last 2 songs we’ll start giving it a go with the three of us in the room. Alasdair also pointed me at this rather beautiful film about Sarah Kenchington and her home-made instruments.

Breaking my normal habit, I cycled back from rehearsal by the busy traffic route, complete with its designated cycle path (with cars stopped in it, and bits of it dug up). It was a useful reminder of why not to.  My default social interactions become swearing at drivers doing dangerous things in a hurry, rather than friendly space-sharing with pedestrians and waving cheerily at the occasional 15mph motorist.  That urban warrior stuff is just too exhausting.

There’s still a few days to catch Nina Conti’s search for enlightenment on iPlayer: like Her Master’s Voice, it’s a richly-layered piece of documentary-making, worth watching more than once.

On the ‘paying for recorded music’ front, here’s a well-argued (if long) case, showing that the Free Culture folks are really just pushing money away from artists and towards the corporations that make the hardware and provide the infrastructure.