Everyone seems to be so busy!

I even managed to do some work yesterday aftenoon on an Invitation To Tender for some change management workshops.

This week I have to write a speech to deliver in Brno in June - one can hardly complain.

I tried to update this last night but the site failed halfway through - probably a lucky escape for any readers. Lots about the geomantic probings Jake and I have been doing in the last couple of days. Also about forthcoming engagements especially involving Worshipspace and the Merton Abbey venture.

I have just mailed Astrid Jahn a copy of Plundafonix. She has just arrived on Iona for an eighteenmonth stay. Pete Crowther, Keith Ellis and I jammed Barndance music for her birthday party a couple of months back. Maybe we will record some of this in response to popular demand (very strange).

Anyone near a Sainsbury's should fork out �2.99 on 17 Temptations tracks - not the originals but high quality broadcast recordings - in some ways even more interesting. Reminded me of the link between One of These Things First and The Way You Do The Things You Do.

Whats the link between Robin Fredeick and I A Richards? They both did creative work for Disney. A discovery in this week's London Review of Books - a review by Terry Eagleton of a collection of IAR's early papers. Shall I start into the many extraordinary points Eagleton makes? There's a lot about what it might mean for poetry to be just a matter of sorting out our emotions and impulses. IAR emerges as a fascinating revolutionary thinker. Also Eagleton confirms his place as one of the top rank critics working today. Maybe I will buy a book of his essays.

Ended up doing a piece yesterday. I decided that maybe the thing I had done the day before with Well To the Woods No More had some merits - I liked the way the guitar chords swelled out across the mix. I thought it might go back to back with the flute and guitar version unprocessed.

The piece started when I was using my old PC - where I have a problem with Cubasis - I have lost the Transport Bar. This sounds daft but it has happened before and I know it can be a devil to recover. So I opened up Cubase Lite and pulled a file virtually at randomn to drop onto a floppy disc so I could transfer it to the more uptodate version of Cubase which I have upstairs on the newer PC. It happened that the file was a derivation of one of Webern's 6 Bagatelle's for String Quartet in MIDI.

I loaded it into the new Cubase and started fiddling with the soft synth thats most closely linked to it. I havent really cracked how to get to access anything other than the Steinberg and Microsoft softsynths. I know how awkward Cubase can be and its easier to go with the flow. The novel step was to export the MIDI as a WAV - something I have never done before. This meant I could process it in my Wavelab demo which has a good selection of plug-in effects and I quickly found a very lively soundscape.

The inspiration was to put some freeform guitar lines on. I used a very rounded tone - fretboard pick-up and top rolled down lots of reverb and sustain. Not my usual preferences at all. Again it was throw the paint at the wall time. I think you just have to be in the right mood to try that - sometimes it seems like the silliest possible way to make music - other times the only way forward. But I felt good about the outcome. Partly because the source music had travelled so far from the intention which informed its creation - from alpine flowers to Twin Peaks degradation. There is a bit of hiss on the guitar track I want to see if I can process out.

I have a lot of archive sitting there on tape, MIDI and Minidisc - which is something I can always fall back on.