Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-04-07 - 10:27 a.m.

April is the cruellest month mixing memory with desire - so starts the Wasteland. Seems pretty much that way to me.

My son James' 18th birthday - he seemed to enjoy his presents including a Creative Labs device which holds 100 hours of mp3. Lunch was in a pub near where the A3 goes of the River Wey south of the Hogs Back. He and I discussed the current standing of postmodernist theory with Chris who teaches anthropology at LSE. Chris said the French blame the Americans for distorting their insights and making them nonsensical. But quite what the postpost positions are is less clear.

I was interested too in what Robin says about writing songs these days. Loops and filters etc. My current drift is towards multiple loops - I can run Wavelab and Tracktor in parallel. Tracktor is a software mixing desk with two "decks" which will take Wavs or Cdas or mp3. At the moment I dont quite know what I am looking for - just sketching. I suppose one part of me is looking for some process algorithms.

The Wavelab plug-ins are amazingly powerful.

I have a Behringer unit with 25 basic sound processing functions including fliters phasers and the like. I have been learning this by putting old recordings - say from 5 or 6 years ago through - I suppose you would call this re-mastering. Some come up OK.

I didnt sleep well last night - I think maybe I have picked up something in the "cold" area. Time to take it easy. I have just taken the dog - Jake - a Norwich Terrier for a stroll on the hill. Sunshine too bright and wind too biting. My daughter and her friend have gone to Camden Market - still a magnet for teenagers.

I feel happiest working on Creative Labs Wave Studio on the old low power PC - cutting and pasting. Yesteday I did some of this on Andrew's piece In the Clear - just one phrase from near the beginning. Another loop I play with a lot is the opening phrase of Cathy Bell singing the Vaughan Williams song with solo violin accompaniment.

This is all a fairly featureless domain and the fear that its all too easy hovers over the top. So I feel you have to take it very slowly to see which loops really take. I didnt follow this advice in putting togeher the last track on the Plundafonix CD - I just ran a couple of copies of an organ scale against each other occaisionally reversing one or other. But I can give a reason for why I think the result works

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