Patti Smith in the Observer today and on BBC2 on Friday. I just saw "Because the Night" - better than the version I saw her do on TV at some big US Awards ceremony. Friday she made it seem very fresh and the guitarist played it like he'd learned it last week and had fallen in love with it. She looked more serene than when I saw her at St James. The Observer interviewer was right when she referred to the inner strength of her self-belief - obviously not an unqualified good.

Last night there was a late night autobiographical film by a woman who had been on the great Manchester scene of the 1980s who had been notoriously reckless and Bohemian. Maybe in the interests of maturation she had got some funding to a film composed of comments on her by people who had known her on the Manchester scene. One of these was Alan Wise who had "managed" Nico (there is quite a "serious" account of this by an Oxford postgrad). Wise had an odd relationship with the film-maker too - although I think the film rather belittled him. One of the interviewees spoke of how boring he found the film-maker's self-obsession. I suppose the implication from this and the PS example is about the conceit of artists in offering themselves to the world.

I found the Teo Macero interviews disturbing in that they seemed to be so close to home. He refers to an example of a Varese graphic score, for example, from the 60s - much later than when Cage& Co were experimenting with the form. Who knows which direction the influnece ran in. The article also has a lot about mixing techniques which is close to a method I find I am using. And it looks like the tape experimentation which I had seen as rooted in Oakland where Steve Reich and Phil Lesh come together goes back ten years or more to New York. This was certainly where Les Paul was working but I had seen him as a lone inventor.Potentially all a big reassessment

I tried recording the flute using both the condenser and a Shure dynamic mike - then adding gated reverb. My attitude has not been to go for "accuracy" in recording - much more to capture sound that coheres. These two mikes might be more accurate (or maybe they simulate an image of accuracy and sonic richness.) I had a go at the piece which is currently called Fifths - because it uses whole number ration fifths to create a chain of major sventh chords. There are two takes. I thought about adding guitar but didnt.

I am also struck by the way the image of a piece goes into a mental fog after the period of focused concentration. I can easily even forget that I have done it.

I have a concern about "just" doing post-minimalist flute pieces. The one on Serious Music is called Baroksambience and on Plundafonix there is HORN Under Water. There are two more in the bank so to speak - one of which s a kind of hommage to So What and another based on Pythagorean thirds, Fifths could become "just another" of these - there is no absolute vision that it shouldn't be - just a nagging concern about being type-cast.

Also I am fretting about my cavalier attitude to the flute technique. Most of the time I take it for granted and there seems mostly to be enough for the ideas that I have. Other times, usually a fortnight run up to a performance which I am concerned about, I will practice regularly. I worry that in some sense this takes too much for granted. But the other horn of the dilemma is that there is a genuine fear about what it might mean to invest at a higher level in the instrument. Either the return won't be there - obviously bad - or it will be - but where would that extra technique take me? This doesn't mean I don't still want to develop how I play. Fifths is certainly quite new in terms of how I think about what I play - but there is an area of creative uncertainty. Creation is something new and the way I work I don't know where things are going to lead - to rush into the unknown seems reckless. *later* Listened to Macero/Davis Get Up Get With It. The reissue has notes written recently by Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea refelcting on how the music came into being. Intuition was very much to the fore and Miles didnt bother with themes although he liked to push the harmony from a keyboard. Oddly this makes this weekend' stuff feel more rooted especially as to some extent I have come into it some listening to this period. I think "Scalar cross" on Plundafonix bounces off this stuff. I also noticed on relistening how important the variable patch triggering is in the Place To Be stab this weekend.