Iain Cameron's Diary
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2004-05-16 - 7:57 a.m.

I�m getting more interested in setting some poetry. I made an experiment in Wavelab � I decided that the editing facilities could accurately pitch and make harmonies from a line recorded as a monotone � I can also vary the timbre using EQ and other effects. I used to set poems by writing the line and then looking around � with pretty limited success � for someone to sing it. This new route might be more constructive. I thought it was a bit of a coincidence that Ricardo had set down some lines in his diary.

I am working my way through the Su Lyn CD � its more abstract than the cassette � uses virtually created accompaniments in places which are not always closely inflected to the lyric. Generally more like the stuff you hear on Mixing It except that it was recorded about twelve years ago. I read a piece by Mark Russell of Mixing It where he talked about the phenomenon of self produced recordings � they get an increasing number on the programme. He reviewed the ones that happened to have come in that week and said that you could hardly tell them apart from the other sort � just occasionally you could tell that a fully professional mike hadn�t been used. And they had artistic integrity.

Poetry was the first art form to get to this point. In the last fifty years or so, in addition to the mainstream published work there has been an outside stream of micropublished stuff and some commentators think that it is within that outside stream that all the interesting important work has gone on. Not that everything in that stream falls into that category. And it took about 40 years for someone to realise that that was the condition that the artform had got into �and to write accordingly. It is quite possible to concentrate on the bit of the iceberg that clearly breaks the surface.

I am not sure I do gatherings � may be five or six is the upper limit that I can comfortably tolerate � especially in this weather. Larger numbers engender a dull weight that both fills the atmosphere and roots me to the spot which may not be a spot I would have chosen in the first place.

We are doing a re-timing on the Lullabies programme � maybe two halves rather than three � a larger proportion of the time filled by music. Its still a matter of leaning out the waste time � the shuffling about. Besides getting some coherence into the flow.

I read today that Anatole K and Tony Parsons have changed their minds about Iraq.

I have posted a new editorial (not mine) on the KK site under the title � if this is not a story worth telling what is? It was written by Alistair Leithead.

Certain episodes are very invasive � unwanted incursions.

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