I’M UP early to get sourdough in the oven…and Margaret has an early start to go and meet Les in Edinburgh – hairdos and lunch.
Good to get an early start in the studio as there’s still shitloads of footge to go through for this new ‘introduction’ video.
A batch of glass bottlenecks arrives but I can’t put them on sale yet. I need to engrave them first. Long lead times and ‘availability’ issues led me to start inducing the damn things myself. Hopefully I’ll get time over the next coupla days.
A last minute idea to have pizza tonight means I have to make an emergency batch of quick pizza dough. My usual dough recipes need at least 24 hours…and 48 if I’m doing a pre-ferment like biga or poolish.
Back in the studio I finish ID-ing bits of video and first thinking about any talking head and voiceover. I’m going to keep it to an absolute minimum as my theory is that bookers, promoters and festival organisers want to see the performance and audience reaction – not hear a list of accomplishments or biog info. That all belongs on my website.
That means I only need some very short clips to camera but I want to do them by the loch and it’s wet and windy, so won;t be happening today.
Instead I try and narrow down the border clip shortlist and start pulling various bits into an edit.
Before I know it it’s 6.30pm and my evening guitar student arrives. We have a good session then I go back to the house, Margaret arrives back and I make pizza,,,,
STRAIGHT to the studio after breakfast. Today’s priority is to start work on a new ‘introduction’ video to send to venue bookers, festival organisers and promoters that don’t know what I do.
The first – and possibly biggest– challenge Is trawling through this of live video footage to identify potential clips. This is not just down to the volume of material to go through, but taking an objective view of what’s best to indlude. And sometimes the best, most dynamic video doesn’t have good quality sound…. Or vice-versa.
The solution, I ‘first, is to go with ‘best practice’ – you can get away with poor quality video guitar but if the sound is second-rate the game’s a bogey.
I start trawling and clipping potential bits of guitar.
When I go back to the house for lunch Margaret mentions the car parking in the village is a mess, Largely due to half of the main car park being closed of for TV/film production vehicles and units. I put the drone up to get some video of the car parking situation and surrounding parking issues but as soon as it reaches a height above the trees it softened veers off in the opposite direction and zooms out of sight. No response to the controller and RTH (return you home) button not working. Then connection is completely lost.
I decide to give ‘find my drone’ a shot and follow the map into a particularly inaccessible forest/woodland area. I’m already scratched and torn by thorns and stuff when I chase, somehow, to find the drone…but getting out the forest is another level of difficulty!
Eventually I emerge covered in bruises, scratches, cuts and soaked from hidden swamps!
Back home I have lunch then manage to extract all ofe flight logs to try and work out what happened. No time to investigate properly, though – I need to get through all the video footage.
By the time my late afternoon guitar student I have pulled out more than fifty video clips….after rhe leaves I do some prep for dinner then have time for a quick walk before Betty arrives….
THERE”S an early phone guitar session then we head to the village to go for a swim. The leisure suite is closed tho’ – the hotel’s boilers are down 🙁
We pick up a few things at the shop then head home.
My pal Kevin arrives – I’m helping him with a few online bits and pieces to prepare for his new album release. We spend some time in the studio then have lunch and a long blether back at the house.
Later in after noon I have a wee nap then back to the studio to work on some music stuff before a walk up the lochside.
WE’RE off into Glasgow early for an appointment…I’m driving and Margaret’s eating the toast when she ‘finds a hard bit’. Turns out to be a bit of tooth and a crown. Oooffft. A call to the dentist sorts an appointment for later this afternoon.
A planned power outage was scheduled to start at 9am until around 5pm and the electricity is indeed off when we get back home just before lunch. A solar power bank we bought for camping trips comes to the rescue and we’re able to make coffee and stuff.
I spend a few hours trips to manually transcribe the guitar part for TIme WIll Come (Brexit Blues) and I make progress. It’s frustrating and laborious tho’…and I picked that one ‘cos I thought it quills be straightforward!
Power’s still off when my guitar student and her mum arrive…power bank to the rescue for coffee again.
Margaret gets back from the dentist as the electricity comes back on and I hit the studio to prep for tonight’s Wildcats’ livestream on Facebook and go down a rabbit hole with some guitar stuff….
THERE’S some merch to get packed up ready to send then back to the house for breakfast. The tentative soft rolls I made hit the spot!
Then into the studio for some the final prep for tonight's radio show – some music has come in that I want to feature.
There’s time to mess with some guitar sounds and ideas before i go back to the diary and prepare some stuff for dinner. I’m making nem nuong – Vietnamese pork skewers – for the first time. A simple but fiddly recipe that uses a paste made from pork, garlic, fish sauce, brown sugar and pepper layered with tortilla and skewered sour the grill.
The radio show all goes to plan, dinner is cooked outside and we eat watching Bill and Dorothy‘s downstream livestream….
THE dough I made earlier in the week and froze for rolls has been thawing in the fridge overnight. I get up early-ish to get it out and let it rise a little at room temperature for an hour or so before baking.
Back to bed with coffee and we chat, check emails and stuff until I get the rolls in the oven. The end result is OK, but nowhere near as good as they are when the dough’s not been frozen. I’d hoped it could help avoid getting up at 5.30am to get the dough going.
The lamp unit in the hydroponics I’m using for tomatillos is definitely screwed. Bummer. There’s an email in form the supplier suggesting I remove the lamp in case the connector has moisture so I do as instructed…if still no joy by Monday I’ll order a new lamp unit.
By crap coincidence, the tomatillo plants that are outside have all been demolished by the wind overnight. I do my best to untangle and rescue them. We’ll see if it works. The tomatillos seem to be cursed no matter how I try and grow them!
I spend the rest of the day in the studio prepping for tomorrow’s radio show then make a new batch of dough – a different recipe as Margaret has asked for ‘softer’ rolls – before heading up the lochside for a walk.
WE head for a morning swim after breakfast then I get busy in the office when we get back.
I’ve been making a clock for the studio out of remnants of acrylic and a spare clock movement I’ve had kicking about. I get to subsided than have lunch.
The postie drops off some stuff including a couple of humane mouse traps. We’ve spotted a wee visitor scurrying around and reckon they’d be better off back outside. We set the traps with some chocolate.
In the studio I trawl through this week’s music submissions for Sunday's radio show then need with some guitar ideas until it’s time to nip out for some dinner.
We’re sitting worth a drink when we get home and I that a noise Vivian form the living room…my suspicions are confirmed – there’s a cute wee mouse unharmed in the trap. I grab a head torch and take the trap up to the woods and let the mouse free.
New in my online store – aluminium pop-up card wallets
I MANAGE to sleep through my alarm so a bit later than usual getting started.
A reminder to pay the credit card pops up. Oooffft. Hard one. A lot of venue bookings, deposits and future revel-related stuff I’ve here and no income to cover them. Yet. Problem is, if and when the money does come back, in it’ll no doubt get swallowed up by ‘necessities’,..so I need to try and figure a way to get on top of this and sort our cash flow.
Margaret goes of to get shopping and skid wants to visit the grandkids – I get busy in the office engraving some aluminium pop-up bank card holder/wallets and taking some photos of ‘em.
A local pal drops by with some stuff for the notice board which we go and sort out and have a blether then I make myself some lunch.
There’s some stuff to do for the local hydro agent then I have an online guiatyre session would s rodent in the USA. Then there’s only a few minutes before an in-person student at the house.
FInally I start getting the card holder things on sale in the online shop and Margaret arrives back with the shopping..then we dash down to Liz’s for dinner and a grand evening…
Balmaha and a cloud-shrouded Conic Hill from the loch
I’VE managed to get breakfast and some admin out the way by the time my 9.30am guitar student arrives. She’s here over an hour despite the lesson being a ½-hour slot. Happens a lot with my in-person students ‘cos I talk a lot!
The loch’s pretty calm so I take advantage and go for a paddle and , at the same time, film some video clips to use as gig updates and stuff on my socials.
After lunch a courier drops off some RFID-blocking aluminum card ‘wallets’ I ordered online – that kind that hold four or five bank cards and has a wee button on the side that ejects them and fans them out. They engrave nicely but I’m not 100% convinced of the quality/longeviity…
I have some other merch head to try out too and spend some time on that before another guitar student arrives.
Next job is to edit up the bits of video I shot ont he loch earlier and post ‘em round my socials. There’s also some press cuttings to be scanned and posted around….
JUDGING by the rain and temperature, the summer’s gone. For now, anyway.
I get soaked as I go to the studio for an 8,45am online guitar session then start experimenting with other ways I might be able to automate the writing out of guitar parts the some of my songs.
This is a rabbit hole and I try converting audio to MIDI then into guitar tablature, using a MIDI pickup into Logic Pro and Guitar Pro8 and all sorts of combinations. None of them are great, some are so full of errors and big-triggered notes tat it’d take longer to try and correct them than it would painstakingly working out parts by hand.
I’m keen to crack on and am determined to sound a way of doing it. Suddenly the rattle day is gone and I’m starting to think I’m gonna have to re-think the whole ‘songbook’ idea.
Anyway, my 6pm student arrives and we have a session before heading along to Betty’s for dinner.
