There is something I like about C Santana's phrasing on Black Magic Woman - partly it s the pitching of the bends but also the way phrases end. Dr Z plans to spend a few hours today in Lille - the place our paths cross for the first time this year - he has an attractive new book to be published shortly. There is a style of downtempo trip-hop circa 2000 which is a lot to my taste - Mandalay are an example of this. There is a serious bit of work I have been putting off.

The sJp is a 19 bar sequence - with a reducing coda built round the turnaround and then the first 4 bars. These bars suggest a certain key centre - as does a 6 bar passage in the middle - but the landing in this key is never decisive enough/and-or too hysterical. It drifts out on something which is clearly a passing chord but happens to be C. I have programmed the bass to be erratic because the other two tracks are tightly rhythmic.

The famous Paul Butterfield Blues Band album - I think their first on Elektra sounds like it is a live performance but I believe it s a studio album pretending to be live. Simpletun comes from the Cowley Rd area of Oxf. You can hear how JM took the vibe and e-piano sound from P Sanders' Thembi 1971 for his great records. To my surprise the bear put on a Gentle Giant track - that's what I call progrock. With irony the bear followed up with LS3 or Day In Day Out as the unremixed version was called - I think this was originally written with the AWE32 - it was one of the first tunes where I recorded realtime MIDI lines with the Dhorn. It was meant to sound like a meeting circa 1970 between some Lower East Side minimalists and free jazzers.

Is The Priest about L Cohen? I would never guessed where PW went for the trip with his daughter if he hadn't told me. I have just linkedin with the woman who went out with IMAC in his first and only year - everyone wants me to say hello on their behalf - it made me reread the Guardian obit. The bear played the other great Luther Vandross track - Never Too Much - its the arrangements I love - I think they are a mixture of recorded and programmed - Marcus Miller learning his craft getting ready for the Miles albums.

A remix EP from TT's latest album is out today I hear but only on mp3. I am behind with this but catching up on the earlier stuff including BW's initial acoustic album.

I left at 11.45am for my lunch date - we were meeting at the small version of Big Ben outside Victoria Stn. Eventually I found James and Louise there. Louise had just that morning passed her driving test. The idea is when she is in Libya she can get a 4x4 and drive out into the desert. I said my XXpatriot friend had done this in the Gulf and liked it a lot. We went to the Turkish restaurant in Pimlico which was as good as ever - this time we drank a bottle of Turkish red - unfortunately I couldn't see the Cotes de Ventoux on the list. James is going to the USA on Thursday and will be taking some classes there as well as doing his research. We talked a lot about politics and policy - we had all for different reasons voted Lib Dem. We talked about the Audit Commission and it turned out that when James was at Demos he had looked into that organisation - and drawn negative conclusions.

We also talked about Turkey as a growing power in the world and PM Cameron's trip to India - plus the state of Pakistan. Louise has to do 8 months more learning Arabic in Cairo starting in a few weeks - I mentioned various points about Cairo life DrZ has made - she was esp interested in the negative attitudes of Dr Z's students to learning high Arabic.

James asked what I was reading - answer Penrose - which led to a discussion about things we used to know and had forgotten. Everyone seemed to be worried about the amount forgotten already. I am not surprised that Louise having mastered German and Russian finds that learning Arabic knocks out some existing stuff. James said he would be taking more Russian classes. This makes sense considering how much effort he put into learning the language for his MPhil - several trips to the Ukraine. He needs a new Ipod and there was a debate about whether to buy one tax free at the airport or get one in the US. I explained the joys of LastFM.

On the train back I pushed on with Penrose. The bit on Hamiltonians is in a chapter which considers the breakdown of classical physical theory - apparently existing electrodynamics had serious inconsistencies at the small scale before the advent of quantum theory - if you think of the way gravity distorts the shape of the earth by pulling water around to create the phenomenon we call tides, the electrical forces would do a similar thing to distort the shape of an electron in classical theory making the calculation of its electrodynamics uncertain. This was avoided in 20C by making small scale electrodynamics obey totally different rules from other levels.

Someone has made a start on the important piece of work and that will help get me going. The bear played SS5 which is one of the more outside pieces. Someone sent a class foto of us all in the 3rd year. I could hardly recognise myself. The bear played the Time of the Barracuda again which suits me. He followed up with Chick Corea and Gary Burton.