Lots of New Musical Content

One more day until I can get back to the studio, as its just me and one other person and we work in different rooms its not going to be an issue.

During this time of Lockdown I have made a handful of songs and not really done any typing in the regard of WordPress, apart from scoring lyrics and the occasional note.

This time of lockdown has also had a positive effect on me and changed my perception of freedom and what it means to me. I drink much less than I used to and am cutting down smoking to a point that I have half a rollie every two to three hours. In the morning I notice that the cigarette tastes like c**p but it makes me think, “have I been smoking something which tastes this bad for a long duration of time”…Hell knows what it smells like as second hand smoke….

The first piece I wrote was called “Optimism” which was based on the unfolding of the situation we face and how to deal with the new measures. I talk about the empty streets, buses and stations, there is a nod to the MD’s, GP’s and nurses in there as well. I do talk lightly on my mental health as well, which started degrading. Optimism

I wrote a few tracks called Ray of light, Tunnel of love, Electronic love, but I always found myself talking or singing about SARSCoV2 (Covid-19), and felt I was beating a very dead horse, actually into a complete pulp. So I looked at myself to figure out why my musical output was so depressing and melancholy, in some respects some of my output sounded more depressing than listening to “Lazarus by David Bowie” or “Perfect day by Lou Reed”. I was sad, so sad that I was missing my partner of nearly 12 years, 11 years since I moved in with him. He had to Canada to sort out funeral arrangements for his mother, as she was admitted to hospital twice since November 2019 and ultimately died from malpractice! She was given Aspirin, when she had a severe blood condition, and died of internal bleeding. So he got stuck in Canada for six weeks as they cancelled all the flights, and the UK was only letting limited flights into Heathrow. He got back safely a month ago and did his 14 isolation and after a month he’s fine.

So I rewrote a few tracks, which included “Give up the Fight Acoustic“, which is about giving up feelings of negativity and external stimulus,  “When It Just Doesn’t Work Any More” which is about me giving up drinking and smoking tobacco. “Running Scared” which is going to be have added lyrics and added to the “Dystopian Series” I.E: “Dystopian peace” and “Optic State”. I remade the “The Game of Life” which was a song I made back in 2007 and recorded in 2009 (when there were six billion people in the world, so I had to update the lyrics).

I also released a few songs using live vocals to backing tracks on YouTube so here is “Freedom” which is a song about getting away from substance abuse. I did a version of my girl MX7 and Optimism but its really hard to sing in front of a camera while being on the dosage of Diazepam I am on.

Here is the Logic recorded version of “My Girl MX7” this will be my final version of this song as I have done about ten versions of this song and it’s getting a bit boring. So I am learning new chord structures and will hopefully be able to do somethings in 7ths and 9ths, I want to look into 13th’s but Im not sure they sound good.

But on NewGround’s with my partners mother in hospital with liver disease and been given three to six month to live we were both feeling very depressed, so I released this turd “My Ultimate Sadness“, this is not usually what I feel like but the situation was dire.

So I also have a load of other material I have been working on and will release more happier and positive works in the near future. I am Working on a track called “The Reality” which is about moving forward and a vision of the future. “Carry on with the Groove” will be released in the next few days when It gets a decent mix down, as the vocals are all over the place at the moment.

Thats all I have to report at the moment and will be comparing the best DAW for myself as I have both Cubase 8 and Logic Pro X 19 to choose from. Logic seems cleaner but I know Cubase like the back of my hand and seems to be easier for me to sequence in.

Anyway my six year old i5 pc is still going strong and am looking to upgrade but it will take four to five months to save up that kind of money. Plus we need other stuff at the moment like a new kitchen appliances, washing machine and cooker. I also want to get a dedicated studio desk, which costs £370 which I could do if I saved my money for two to three months. But it comes from Thomann.de so it would take months to get to me in the current climate. But it comes with two 19″ racks so I can rack my PC and Digidesign 002 Sound card (I know its prehistoric but it works fine). I just need to order two 3U draws and a power conditioner, so it will eliminate some of the hiss I get through my monitor system.

I also want to get a patch bay, with both XLR and 1/4″ Jack sockets which I will label so I don’t have to consistently go around the back of my sound card. I will probably will get TRS connectors, but not sure if they completely work as my sound card only has XLR and separate 1/4″ jack connectors. I also want to get a small sized valve mixer but only have seen a ART one which is £200, but ART are okayish, but if I got the money together Id rather get a small SSL desk and get its own table just for the mixer as I think the smallest SSL desk is 16 channel.

 

 

My Spiral into Psychosis

So it started in about 2011 when we were moving out of a shared house in Worthing. I was due to move with my partner James and we were looking to move to Cambridge and around about ten miles around it. We had a guarantor lined up and some money in the bank to cover the first two months rent. We had a look at some properties in Ely and nearby villages. We saw three houses and wanted this small bungalow with a garden surrounding it. The other choices had the Landlord living right next door…

Well the person who was going to do the guarantor (who had a history of mental illness), bailed out for no real reason. So we had nowhere to go and as we were moving out of the shared house as the landlord wanted to renovate the property and jacked up the rent by £400, James handed in notice to leave. I started getting very stressed as I knew if we were made homeless, we wouldn’t be able to get into the emergency housing system and would have to pay for a shelter each night or live on the streets.

I started getting very poor sleep and had this feeling of static shocks when I lay down (I imagine this was my brain overloading). I started feeling very scared and isolated myself from everyone else in the house. It was an Anxiety overload, but it was for a reason. I then started having severe insomnia and stayed up for nearly three days once, but went to sleep when I started seeing spiders coming out the walls. Then I started seeing everyone as demons and couldn’t see the colour in peoples eyes just mega dilated pupils.

This was everyone who I looked at excluding James which had glowing red eyes, I didn’t realise there was something extremely wrong until it was too late. About a month before we moved out I started feeling physically unwell. So I saw the GP and they said the fact I was looking very worried, depressed, shaking and paranoid, she sent me to see the Mental health triage team which when they saw me, they transfered me to the EIIP (Early Intervention In Psychosis Team). They saw the state I was in and said I had a choice to come with them and they could make me better or I could walk out the door.

As I had to help James move out as he has severe Fibromyalgia I said no to being sectioned. But this is the point, they shouldn’t have given me the choice, if they were genuinely that concerned about the situation.

We moved out and transfered our stuff to storage near Cranleigh, I spent about three months with James dad, which we were not allowed to do as it was in violation of his tenancy agreement. I ended up a blubbering mess, mishearing nearly every other words and hearing lots of noises and voices.

So James obviously now clocking onto the fact that some something was really wrong, took me around my parents house, were I was taken to the emergency doctors everyday for about three weeks. I couldn’t say anything to the doctor as I was petrified. They transfered me to the EIIP again and they gave me a relatively high dosage of Respiridone, Citalopram and Pregabalin. The effects went away literally over night. I was diagnosed with PTSD induced Psychosis, even though my parents kept on telling the Psychologist he smoked cannabis as a teenager, but hadn’t touched a spliff for two years up to that point.

My parents think my condition is a drug induced mental health issue and reckon I am a Deranged, Aggressive and Violent, if this was the case they would have to told the doctor and I would have been arrested under section 21 of the mental health act and given a section 25 to section me….which never happened. I was kicked out my parents house after I had a relapse episode and caused severe criminal damage.

So now on my medical record it states that I suffer from Aspergers Syndrome, PTSD Induced Psychosis, Behavioural difficulties, with a high risk of damage to property.

This is nearly a decade later and Im still on anti psychotic medication which I probably will be on for the rest of my life.

I had a relapse a few weeks ago caused by anxiety and stress causing poor sleep for over a two week period, I’m okay now after getting my medication sorted out and being put on Diazepam twice a day for sleep and anxiety. This was brought on by the anxiety and stress of hearing constant news reports about the spread of coronavirus/SARS-Cov2.

I look at the news once a day now and listen or produce music as a way to escape the situation. Stay home, Stay safe, thats all you can do in this period.

 

Maybe a touch of cabin fever

So we are half way through the third week and COBRA’s going to convene tonight to discuss adding another three weeks to this sentence. I know we can go down the shop once or twice a week (I have no car so can’t carry much back). Have up to half an hour exercise per day, get medicines from the pharmacy and help vulnerable people. The government are working flat out to figure out this situation we are currently in.

As I have Asbergers I am usually introverted and slightly isolated, but with the social distancing, paranoia and anxiety in the civilian population. I feel more isolated than ever. I am round my parents staying until my partner gets back from Canada, but I’m getting on my mums nerves due to my negative outlook. The rest of the family feels the vibe and won’t even confirm my existence.

Obviously this isn’t the first time I’ve got under her skin and the damage takes a couple of months to repair, well away from them. I’m stuck in a position where I am forced to stay as I’m not being arrested for making a un-nessary journey or exposing myself to this virus using public transport.

I leave it there for now….

To Hell then to Sanctions not quite back.

So this year has kicked off quite badly for me, my partners parents were fighting different disorders and I was been told one thing by one person, but the element of truth wasn’t believed. My partners father has advanced skin cancer of the face, as well as other cancers in his body. He is nearly 87 and according to my partner has been granted treatment at £8000 per injection. I’ve never heard of the NHS granting such a treatment of a male at such an advanced age. He told my mother that the drug was an infusion which meant it was a drip to be received over several hours. His mother on the other hand was doing badly, suffering from non alcoholic sorosis of the liver, high ammonia levels in the blood which caused her to get very confused and unable to resume normal commands. She has take Tylenol (paracetamol) for several decades, but it doesn’t mean that she hadn’t taken other drugs to ease her pain in her life, which caused her liver to fail. She had a fall in the bathroom by herself of her apartment on a Saturday during January, she wasn’t found till Monday. She was transfered to the Cardiac ward at Jubilee Hospital in Victoria, BC. They found nothing wrong but detected too high ammonia in her blood which was causing a type of dementia. She got out of hospital about three weeks later, but even though she had he flat adapted, she fell damaging her knee. She was due out in a month from Victoria General Hospital. The night before release she attempted to get out of bed unaided. She broke her hip.

She had a blood clotting condition as well as a condition which would make her bleed longer than normal due to lack of platelets. She was given under 20% chance of survival as she had stage three liver disease and the recovery would be difficult as she suffered from Fibromyalgia most of her life.

She sadly died of complications due to a bleed in her mouth after they switched her medication from Diamorphine to Aspirin and laxatives. Aspirin thins the blood (I know as I’m a first aid trained EMT, and am told to give it if there is a suspected heart attack), she died because A.) she had a junior doctor and b.) due to negligence for the doctors not keeping correct info on her condition and charts. They reckon she went very quickly.

I’ve dealt with months of a very tearful partner and still get tearful when I think of it. She was 70, she was given two to three years to live, she died within two weeks.

My partner quickly and made hasty plans to go from the UK to Canada, just as Covid-19 was entering the UK. I can’t get into Canada because of criminal record (it lasts for ten years), due to psychotic episode, criminal damage, but it stops me from getting past the ESA which you have to fill in before ordering tickets.

If I did go with him the UK gov would have had me forcibly leave in a week. I am now in social isolation, the type of isolation I felt as a pre-teen. I’m sticking to the UK guidelines and am being cared for by my family and operating as a family unit. But with all the stress of the last few months, plus this I’m resisting isolating further. As several readers know that I have Asbergers Syndrome, a learning and communication disorder.

This time has made me sad as my partner is stuck overseas and can’t get back into this country for ten more days, the he has too self isolate for fourteen days. I’m staying an extra two weeks in line with current gov policy.

Thats all I’ll say for now. Very stressed and anxious…

 

“Optimism” Lyrics/Poem about the current situation.

Optimism by Stuart Wright

 

Verse 1:

With all the problems in the world today,

I smile at you and they all go away,

I want to go outside and play in the sun,

The news just came in and sucked out my fun,

We feel the days are phasing into one,

It’s not our fault it is nothing we’ve done,

Looking to the Future when we are free,

So much fun for you and hugs for me.

 

Chorus:

In the end we’ll all survive,

Going forward away from the light,

Lets join together in unity,

Online on Facebook and Skype for free.

 

Verse 2:

Now we are living in a paranoid nation,

Nobody on the buses and no one at the station,

Employment has hit a record low,

Recovery is important but is going to be slow,

But the end of the tunnel is coming near,

I can get back home and talk to my peers,

But unfortunately my love is miles away,

I just want him home so we can stay.

 

 

 

Mid eight or verse 3:

Stress and anxiety is catching up with me,

Just doesn’t help there’s all this negativity,

I wish the doctors and nurses well,

Their lives are on the line till the finishing bell,

Six weeks may go by or even a year,

For this virus to go away and not to be near,

Optimism is the only way to go,

Otherwise you’d be feeling lonely and low.

New equipment and things I want to try.

Hello everyone, its nearly time for two things…1.) It’s my birthday and my parents are giving me a bit of money which is being put towards new studio equipment; I will say what in a minute. 2.) I am going on a alcohol detox, as I drink way to much and seem to spend to much money on it.

So Next month hopefully I am going to buy a Behringer Pro-1, which is a Sequential Circuits Prophet 1 clone. It is a two oscillator synth with Ramp, sawtooth and Square tones. It also has two filters, ADSR on both filter and amplifier, a sequencer and arpeggiator. It has patch points to attach to other Behringer synths and modular synths. As well as being completely analogue. I only have one synth in my collection (apart from a old Yamaha FM synth which doesn’t work 100%) which is a Roland Juno-D which is sample based with some modifiers for shaping sound. With the Pro-1 I can make nearly all the basic sounds I want and have a warm tone.

I have two major projects in the pipeline, one being “Insania” which is a mammoth Electro-Orchestral project and a song called “The Vortex” which is a remake of a old song from 2007 and the stems/samples are slightly corrupt and need rescuing. I got the basis and chord structures for both projects as well as sheet music. I just need to find time to do it, as we are currently having issues with the council and its taking up a lot of time.

New titles

So it’s now after Newyear and I have a few songs in the pipeline. The are at the moment just chord sequences with one having a melody. So as you see, there is still work which needs doing. I would like one of songs to have a vocal. The song I made called “Rebirth” around three years ago, has lots of sound effects which I got from making sounds on the Jupiter 8 VSY, pro-53 and Vanguard. I love vanguard as the synth is easy to use and it can make a range of sounds. I’m finding that everyone I edit sounds with the Roland Juno-D, it is more and more limited. Earlier I wanted to make a phased sound using detune for select sampled oscillator. But the software doesn’t have option for detune, which really sucks. Also if you run a single sound you can apply DSP Effects, but if you want to layer two sounds you can’t use the Effect DSP. You can only split the Keynes into two sounds. As a £350 brand-new synth it’s a bit of a rip off. I purchased mine for £180 2nd hand.

Has any body seen the new synths Korg is making including the ATP 2600 rev4, the new Wave station and a new MS-20FS for £800.  I want to save up for a Korg Oasys but they were £5000 brand new, so I would have to spend between £1800-£3000 on a unit. The Oasys is a Intel based system with virtual ossilators, you can have 256 running at the same time, with four blocks of DSP effect. I has a seven inch touch screen and a well setup sampler. Rodger Hodgison of Supertramp uses a Korg Oasys instead of and piano as it has such a nice sound. Also dream theatres synth player Jordan Rudess has two in his studio.

I have had a rev 2 Sequential Circuits Pro One, Wasp deluxe, Yamaha PSR 175, K1 and a Tyros 1. I own accordions and love my outboard gear. I used to have the Yamaha A3000 which was great fun to use and I also had both the Also S5k and S6k which in my personal belief, the A3000 was better.

I also used to have a dual monoblock amplifier, reference speakers and subwoofer. I traded the lot in for 2x KRK G3 RP8’s and a KRK I” subwoofer.

 

 

A old drama production which I made the music for called “Insania”.

The year was 2006 and I was headhunted to produce the musical score to a drama/broadway production. First I will give you a little background and history of how I got into this.

In 2004 I finished high school, applied for a private residential college in Gloucestershire, called Ruskin Mill. Ruskin Mill was a college which caters for students with learning disabilities in a small village called Nailsworth. I arrived in september ’04 and moved into a supported house in Minchinhampton. At nights I got bored with what to do as there was no TV and I didn’t own one. I lived with Samir which had Asbergers, Tom which had autism (and was very hard to deal with), Gahura (which was the female house parent) and Tinguro (which was Gahura’s husband). My parents were musicians, my mother played Piano, Trumpet and Tuba. My father played Trombone, was trained as a conductor and arranged music. When I was seven I started learning Trombone, as I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps. I played in my tutors brass band and the 1st worthing scout band for many years, playing many venues including the Royal Albert Hall, in London. Wanting to relieve my boredom at college I purchased a keyboard and started learning a few classical pieces. I learned chords and notes mainly by ear and learned quite a few songs this way. Towards the summer of 2005 I started writing my own songs and learned a few chords for guitar. When I came back from summer break and entered my 2nd year at Ruskin Mill, I was picked to learn under a studio owner called Rob Evans, which owned a fairly large studio in Stroud. Me and several other students started a small band and we recorded a fair bit of my earlier compositions.

As I was working a Painswick Studio Stroud, I was employed to help the drama students with their lighting and sound design. I did a few shows doing lighting and helping control the main mixing desk for the music and sound effects. One day I was sitting in the Space, in Stroud (which was the small drama venue) and I was playing around on the piano and was approached by the main director Jonathan Code. He seemed to like the chords I was playing and said that he was developing a drama production for in three months time and needed a musical score to go with it. He said the drama production was about a kid growing up and been sent to a mental institution and after he left several years later, about his problems re-integrating into society. I accepted Johns offer and said I would work with a few other students and come up with a score. This is when “Insania” was born. I spent about a month writing a 90 minute score, which I then showed to a few other musicians at the mill. I worked with a guy called Michael Narres who played piano and accordion, Richard Moss and Steve Sherry who played the drums and percussion. I also did occasional work with Painswick Studio’s main apprentice Adam Butcher, who played advanced synthesis. We got a session guitarist and bassist in to lay out a basic demo. After two weeks I approached John with the demo tape, he suggested a few basic changes, but was overall, he pleased with the work. Later that week we started rehearsing with the drama students.

So it came to opening night and we had stage design and props, live music and well thought out lighting. We played five nights and we always got a amazing reaction from the audience. I had many people come up to me and congratulate me on the music composition. By the third night I noticed that there was many people coming back to watch the show again and I was very pleased.

After the last night we went to the pub for drinks and John Code came up to me and said there was a agent in the audience which saw the performance on the fourth and fifth night and was very interested in offering us another venue for a one night performance, but he didn’t say when. About a week later I got a letter through from this agency saying that they wanted us to play in Bristol, at Carling Academy. A month before I had seen Gary Numan play at Carling Academy and I knew this was a big deal.

Two weeks later we got transported to Bristol and entered the academy for basic rehearsal, we were told the event was sold out (this was at £25 a ticket, which was cool as the five nights at the Space in Stroud were free). I played with my team of musicians and after the production I was asked up onto stage to take a bow, I was in absolute tears as I have stage fright as it was and never in my wildest dreams ever thought I would be playing such a venue.

There are a few recordings of “Insania” out there, and I am in the process of compiling them into a album for people to listen to. 13 years later I can still play the score on the piano, so I many remake it, but as its such a mammoth project, I will take me awhile to do. Anyway watch this space as there will be at least a small release in the near future.

When I helped a new friend

Jamie was a kid which was out of a home on the brink of constant starvation and not a good future. He came to our school needing massive amounts of support from staff which would have usually helped me. I was in the LNC at the time which was the Lavinia Norfolk Centre, they provided support for kids which needed help day to day, and kids which needed support because they had cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy (which I had many friends at high school which died of this, sadly). My Long time girl friend which had Spina Bifida, who died a year after leaving school (which left me in the worst state of depression for around four years).

There were quite a few bad people in my school, bullies which beat and took the piss out of the LNC students and staff. I had seven bullies, which bullied me for four years after a teacher did a acceptance of Asbergers Syndrome course, and used me as a example.

When Jamie started he got in a fight with a kid named Gary, I’m not sure what over but he for countless days wanted to punch his lights out. He got to him one lunch time when he was coming back from the canteen. He came up to me and asked for help. I placed myself between Gary and Jamie and asked Gary to back off. I asked Gary this twice were he grabbed hold of my neck and forced the back of my head into the corner of a brick wall. Gary was a weightlifter and avid sports person, which probably attributed to my injury. I remember him running as my vision became blurred, I then remember hobbling towards the medical room and a student asking if I had a red polo on because I was year ten (which I was year nine and my polo was white). I remember bits from the medical room, the ambulance and A&E. I needed six staples and sixteen stitches. My hair was shaved off. After I complained of severe headaches for three days I saw a neurosurgeon, which arranged extensive MRI scans to see what was wrong. It seemed that gary had pushed a bit of skull in and it was pressing on my brain. I had the bit removed and was back to school three weeks later.

I still get flash backs and pain now…

My Downfall and a potential remake, where to start…

I made a song called “My Downfall” which is a song about potentially the end of my life as I know it. This can be found here: My Downfall.

This song I wrote in a very bad time in my late 20’s and I wanted to reflect this in music. I am up with a basic piano riff and adapted it with orchestral and choir sounds. I then made my own synth sounds and a pulsed trance styled gated sound which phases in and out of the song.

I have has a view to remake the song for a number of years as I think I could have extended the song, maybe make it more complex and made it so it sounded like a more mainstream song, one of which I could have released as a flagship song on a break through album. I have at this point made fourteen albums, mainly instrumental works and I have started getting into making songs with vocals on them, even though I am not the best vocalist and hate my own voice. “My Downfall” has a very overly processed vocal on it which nearly sounds female, and this really complimented the overall piece.

I have a certain list of songs which I have favourited, and I have a line of songs which if I ever was allowed to get up on stage and perform, I would play. The starting song would potentially be this song. This song is very emotionally charged for me, as well as a good chunk of songs which I have composed over the years. The other song which springs to mind is a song called “Do You Love Me (Take Me Back)” which was a over complicated piano song with piano playing which was like Tom Waits a fairly well known experimental Jazz and Experimental musician.

Again this is another song which I would like to remake, but because the original was so good I just don’t know where to start.

I have another project which I have been working on for a number of years called the “Dystopian Series” which was started by a piece called “Dystopian Peace”, which turned out to be one of the most popular pieces I produced for youtube. This song got over a thousand views, and had a nearly galloping beat to compliment it. The song I am listening to now is one of these songs called “Optic State” .

This song was one of the only vocal songs of the Dystopian series, which took a lot of inspiration from Gary Numan and has a very monotonous vocal which, nearly sounded like some of Numans earlier work like “Down in the Park” and such.

What songs do people generally want me to reproduce? I don’t know as the majority of my so called fans which follow me never give me feedback and its getting increasingly harder to find a new route for my music. Even though I have thought I had found an avenue for the general direction for my musical talent, even after asking people on NewGrounds, SoundCloud, YouTube and Bandcamp, no one ever gets back to me. If I did focus on recreating something like “My Downfall” and say I spent two maybe even three weeks on it, I don’t know if that would show on how many people viewed the song. I made a song called “Like a Dream” I spent two days making it and four days mixing it, and I ended up with a hundred and fifty views and about two hundred views on NewGrounds! But I spent about an hour making “Dystopian Peace”

“Dystopian Peace” got over a thousand views and I spent twenty minutes mixing it! Why should I put X amount of work into making a complex project which takes me weeks to make, mix and master, when I may get a very low play count? I don’t know and its very hard to justify, when even though these songs in question could be chart topping, I am unlikely to get any gratification or any further development out of said tracks…

What do you guys think? I am just wondering.