My Chase Bliss MIDIBox arrived yesterday afternoon and just as expected, now that my Mood Mk2 is getting its timing from Live, it's an even more fantastic piece of kit than it was straight out of the box. I've already recorded a couple of tracks with it in its new configuration and those should be available for you to listen to on Friday, as I'm planning on releasing another album for May's Bandcamp Friday. Most of it's already done, but I need another three tracks or so to record before I think it'll be worthy of release, so I'm just about to head back upstairs to the studio and see what else I can do with it.

New pieces of gear are a reliable source of inspiration for me, but this particular item is letting me make sounds which I have never made before. I've gone from wondering whether I was ever going to feel like making new music ever again at the beginning of the month to absolutely brimming with ideas today, and that makes me feel very good.

When a blog entry begins with the words, "I should..." you've probably gathered that this usually means I've already done something to make whatever it is a reality, and last Friday's blog entry was no exception. Yes, I have a trail cam now.

I wanted one that used rechargeable batteries, and this one even has a solar panel for a roof that has topped the battery back up to 100% by lunchtime, which is pretty cool. I don't even have to traipse out to the camera to discover what it's captured, either. Instead, I send it a Bluetooth signal from an app on my phone, and that switches on the camera's own WiFi hotspot so that I can browse files on its SD card, play back videos, and download them to my phone's memory. The video quality is pretty good at night and during the day the thing can record in full colour at 4K. As you can see from the still above, it's already revealed some of the activities that take place in the back garden when I'm not watching, and that hedgehog is considerably more chunky than the ones I've seen out in the early evening. Most of the visitors that the camera has spotted so far have been neighbourhood cats, though. The garden gets a surprising amount of feline traffic.

In fact, it feels like I could run a segment of Springwatch from the back garden at the moment. I put out some suet pellets yesterday evening to see if I could tempt more hedgehog visitors, but a flock of several dozen starlings pitched up instead and set about hoovering up everything. They made a tremendous racket.

They made so much noise, in fact, that something else nearby decided to investigate. Five minutes later, there was absolute silence outside and when I looked out to see what was going on, I got quite a shock.

My neighbours tell me that this female sparrowhawk (accipiter nisus) has been working her way through the local population of collared doves over the past couple of weeks. It isn't the first time I've seen a sparrowhawk in the garden, but it's the first time I've seen one using the bird table as a vantage point. It was a rather special sight, as I'm sure you'll agree.

I've been having lots of fun with the Chase Bliss Mood Mk2, although I have realised that it's only going to properly come into its own once I've connected it to Ableton via MIDI so it can sync up with Live's clock signals. One of Chase Bliss's MIDIBox 5-pin DIN to TRS converter boxes is on its way to me as I type this, so it won't be long before I can really get the thing to sit up and beg. But even with it plugged into the desk as it is, I've been getting some very lush sounds out of it, as you can hear in the video below. It took me a couple of attempts to get the levels right with using the latest version of OBS which I use for live streaming (hence the somewhat over the top multiple-camera presentation) as the first take was much too loud, but it sounded all right in the end. And much to my surprise (because it's been a while since I uploaded anything at all to YouTube) I could still remember how to edit video and add text and graphics to things.

In the first 24 hours since I published it, the video has garnered more than sixty views, which is considerably more than I was expecting...

I'm still catching up on sleep after getting to bed at 3 am on Saturday morning. I'd been in Bristol to see the Ryoji Ikeda/Jlin show at the Bristol Beacon, but the event didn't start until 10:40 or so and ran on until well after midnight.

It was a standing gig in the Beacon's main hall, but because I'm old and decrepit, I made a beeline for the unreserved, tiered seating at the back and managed to get a seat directly behind the guy doing front of house sound—so I could watch the mix on the sound desk's display. It was insane. Most of what was going on was between 20 and 100 Hz, then there wasn't very much until it got to about 4 kHz, and at that point the craziness kicked in. And oh boy, it was loud. When Ikeda triggered the subwoofers he was using, I burst out laughing as the entire building was vibrating. The audience roared their approval, too.

I've seen Ikeda before; this time, the visual aspect of the show was limited to a single screen at the back of the stage, but the imagery (all perfectly synchronised to the sound) was still hypnotic and fascinating. It's easy to see why people write academic papers about Ikeda's work. I found myself reminded of the conclusion of Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash (and if you've seen any of Ikeda's work, and know the book, you'll know what I'm referring to here) although there were a couple of occasions when the projector feed completely crapped out and reverted to the hire company's logo instead. What made me laugh, though, was the sublime coincidence of the first time this happened being just before the computer voice in Ultratonics 04 says, "That is incorrect. Try Again."

It was a fun night, but a very late one.

I did manage to solve a mystery that's been bugging me for a month or two on the drive home on Saturday morning, though. The last few times I've used the car (it stays in the garage most of the time these days) something would make an electronic chirping noise whenever I turned on the ignition but I couldn't track down where the noise was coming from. You know how it is: these things get annoying after a while, specially when you've no idea how to get rid of them.

Yesterday I finally figured out what was making the noise. The car's cheap-as-chips dash cam was telling me its battery was dead. And because its battery was dead, it had reverted to its default setting of making a noise when it was powered up (from the adapter plugged in to the car's power socket) rather than remembering that I'd disabled it. The battery must have been dead for quite some time, as every single video file on the camera's memory card (which I've just checked) had the same creation date: the device's default power-up date.

I looked up how to replace its lithium polymer battery on the Internet, but it involved de-soldering the connection to the camera's main circuit board so I could remove the dead battery and then wiring in a new one which I'd have to order from a Chinese supplier. Given how old the thing is, I decided not to bother. It doesn't owe me anything; I've had it since late 2016 and I've easily driven more than seventy-five thousand miles with it (the equivalent of three times around the world) so instead I reckoned it was time for an upgrade, which arrived this morning. I've already installed it in the car—after downloading and installing a firmware update for it and installing the Windows camera management app for it on my office PC, which is more than I ever needed to do with the old one. I'm impressed with the feature set, but will this one last eight years? We'll have to see...

I should get a trail cam for the back garden, I really should. A lot goes on when I'm not watching and there could be all sorts of amazing creatures passing through that I'm not aware of. I know there are some hedgehogs about, because there was some fresh "evidence" of their presence on the patio this morning. There are foxes and badgers around, too—and while I don't have a problem with grey squirrels raiding the bird feeders, every now and then I see one or two by the big trees at the end of the cul-de-sac. Despite there not being any open water nearby, I've also encountered frogs and toads (I even found one in the garage once, and it gave me quite a start because it jumped right towards my face when I disturbed it). There are plenty of mice about, too; apart from wreaking havoc in the garage (which I stopped by putting an ultrasonic emitter in there) they also chewed their way through the chipboard mounting for the smart meter in my electricity junction box on the outside wall and used the mulch to make a cosy little nest inside the cabinet. I occasionally see what I think is a wood mouse snacking on seeds that have fallen off the bird table, too:

I just put a scoop of suet pellets out on the back lawn and while it might seem like I'm anthropomorphising things, when I went back inside the male blackbird that is a regular visitor to the garden made a point of flying right up to the other side of the window from where I was standing, looked at me, and then flew straight to where the suet goodies were—as if to say, "thank you."

And that's another reason why looking after the back garden is so often a great boost to one's mood...

I've been spending some of my inheritance this month. Another batch of much-needed work starts on the house next week, and the older I get, the more I realise how the state of where you live can have a profound effect on your mental health. Last week I spent a couple of hours in the garden cutting back the rampant growth which resulted from having the leylandii hedge chopped down a while back, and looking out of the dining room window still gives my mood a little lift, so I'm hoping that when I look of the window and see the new patio I'm having built, I'll feel great.

And I've also been upgrading my studio setup. I finally decided that it was time I made Ableton Live talk to the Korg Opsix and Wavestate 2 this week, and by lunchtime on Monday I'd got them doing everything I wanted them to do (and discovered there was a fresh firmware update for the Opsix in the process). I did this primarily because I wanted to get the sequencers and arpeggiators on both synths to synchronise with the Live set I was working on in Ableton without having to faff about with twiddling the tempo knobs on the hardware and hoping that they didn't drift noticeably before I'd finished a take; now, they sync flawlessly to the MIDI clock signals that Ableton broadcasts (provided that you set aside a bar or two before they come in so that they can lock in to the correct tempo, that is). Given the complexity of the sequences that the Wavestate is capable of generating, this is a very important achievement and it widens my sonic palette considerably. I was feeling very satisfied with myself when I got it to work, and I've already recorded one composition that made use of the functionality.

My sonic palette has been further expanded today, because last week I found myself asking the question, "If I don't do this now, when am I going to get around to doing it?" once again. Thanks to my continuing health issues, I find myself contemplating the prospect of not waking up tomorrow morning rather more regularly than I used to. Because let's face it, I'm not getting any younger. I'd hate to run out of time before I got round to doing the things that I know would bring me considerable quantities of joy. Asking myself that question is what pushed me into finally making the big changes I made to the studio back in 2020, after I'd spent more than a decade dreaming about making them and doing nothing about it. The results, which have wildly surpassed my expectations, convinced me that it's an important way to frame the significant plans you might have for your life. If you have the means to make something happen, make it happen. Because tomorrow might turn out to be too late.

I was asking the question last week because I'd realised that ever since I found out (in March last year) that Chase Bliss had just released the Mood Mk2 multi-effects pedal and heard what it did to sounds that were fed into it, I knew that one needed to be an essential part of my ambient music production setup. And yet I'd been telling myself I needed one ever since the first version of the pedal was announced back in June 2019 and had done nothing about getting one. And then I discovered that the company had just brought out a limited edition of the pedal which looked very spiffy indeed. Something needed to be done, so I did it. And I regret nothing.

I've been tweaking how the studio is set up and expanding my music making capabilities because I've decided that when my current run of Thursday evening live streams on Twitch gets to its 200th episode in a couple of months' time, I'm going to stop doing them. I think what I've done with the show's current format has more or less run its course, so I'm going to take a step back for a bit and think of another way of using the platform. I won't be dropping Twitch entirely, but what I do there needs to change. The current plan is fairly nebulous right now, but it will almost certainly involve me making music live on camera—hence all the tweaks and enhancements to how Live talks to my synths. You know what I'm like; if I'm going to put on a show, I'm going to put on a show.

I was out doing sound for a mate's band again last night. They were playing the local pub, and the room can be a bit twitchy for live music because it has a suspended wooden floor that acts like the head on a drum and standing waves can build up in the low frequencies. Also, there really isn't enough room to properly isolate the band from the PA, so I had to be on my toes to kill any feedback that kicked in. It was a full-on task for a couple of hours, and when I got home I realised just how tired I was. But the band have been watching video of themselves on Facebook this morning and said they sounded good, so I'm happy.

The band have lent me a dedicated control unit which I use to configure the mix remotely: a Kindle Fire tablet. I was surprised by just how much more latency it had compared with Ewan's iPad (which I'd been borrowing up until now) but it got the job done and it still had plenty of juice left in the battery when the band closed their set at just after 11 pm. Okay, it doesn't confer the same kudos on the user as a large mixing desk would do, but believe me, it's a lot quicker to put away afterwards and it's much easier to carry about...

The sky was clear when I left the pub last night and it remains so this morning; it's a beautiful sunny day outside with clear blue skies, which makes a nice change (even better, my PV system currently starts to generate power at 06:50 am and by 09:15 the battery was back up to full charge!)

But those clear skies overnight resulted in a frost first thing; the minimum temperature in the back garden dropped to -1°C (30°F) so we're not entirely rid of winter just yet...

Back on April 9th I updated my Eventide H90 to firmware version 1.8.5, which had just been released. When the pedal restarted, only the left hand output channel was working. After a lot of tinkering and swapping leads in the studio to make sure that it wasn't some other piece of my gear at fault, I realised that it was the H90 itself that was the source of the problem. So I rolled the firmware back to the previous version (which, thankfully, was very easy to do with the pedal's H90 Control software) and hey presto, I had effects processing in stereo once again.

Let's try that again, I said to myself. So I restarted everything and had another go. This time, the update went perfectly and I've been running the pedal on version 1.8.5 ever since.

However, I posted a message on Eventide's support forum asking if anyone else had experienced the same behaviour, and it turned out that quite a few people had. In fact, the thread seems to have prompted an official announcement by Eventide (who have figured out what was going on) and an updated firmware release is due out later today. I will therefore regard the new version of the firmware as being my personal firmware update, and there's nothing you can do to stop me...

I plan on having my bathroom completely remodelled later this year. One thing is for certain: I will not be engaging the services of the company who were responsible for this little home decor nightmare under any circumstances. (Found via the always entertaining Kottke.org on Mastodon).

Any day that I wake up without World War Three having broken out overnight is a good day. Let's hope that this continues.

From the looks of things, the day isn't going quite so well for the orange one though, is it?

Yes, I've had a tidy up. I've been meaning to streamline the blog's page header for a while now, and after a bit of a play this afternoon, this is what I've come up with.

In the process of doing that, however, I finally tracked down what it was that has been making my pages render strangely in Firefox since December, because when I tested the new layout of the page header from a file on a local hard drive I was rather surprised to see that both the Raleway and Noto Sans fonts that I use were back to rendering like they used to do (with a medium weight, rather than the extremely light version I've been seeing so far this year). It turns out that the way fonts are called from fonts.googleapis.com has been streamlined in order to make using them easier, but my old code, which only called specific font weights, didn't degrade quite as gracefully as one might have hoped. So now I've adopted Google's revised method for calling specific fonts, and hey presto! Now everything looks like it used to do once again.

The situation in the Middle East heated up still further overnight and to say that it's making me nervous would be an understatement. Iran may not have nuclear weapons today, but thanks to Donald Trump's ham-fisted handling of things a few years ago it appears that they would find it quite easy to change that situation.

I'm no political pundit but it has long seemed to me that the quality of people who choose politics as a career has declined rapidly over the last forty years or so. I can't think of any country these days which has someone in charge I would trust to sort out this mess adroitly and sensibly.

"Keep my head down and hope for the best" seems to be the only option available.

DPD should be delivering a custom-built flight case for my D3200 later today. That will make the process of doing live recordings out on the road significantly less risky, even if the current round of sessions in Chipping Sodbury has finished for the time being. I really like the buzz of working in a big room with a live band, and getting out there and doing stuff is a very different kettle of fish from watching "how to do it" videos on YouTube. I've learned a tremendous amount over the past month.

All the same, it's much easier when I can work with the musicians who are involved at home, and that's what I've mostly been up to this week. Last night I was tracking Michaela's vocals for a project with Function 246 and after a bit of thought we decided to go with my Shure Super 55, a.k.a. the "Elvis Mic". It turned out to be the perfect choice as the results show off her amazing voice really well. She nailed every song with the first take, too. Nice!

This afternoon I should be working on guitar tracks with Paul, which is always fun because we're both old musos, and this is what we like to do.

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were some of the windiest I've ever seen while I've lived here, and it's coming up on 29 years since I moved in. Storm Kathleen has been clobbering the country for what feels like weeks, and although there's no flooding around here, the back garden is a swamp once again and the lawn can only be negotiated with wellingtons (I just topped up the bird feeders again). I haven't been able to get the grass cut yet (not that this is particularly high on my list of things to do) but I will need to get the garden in some sort of order before the patio and drive are relaid at the end of the month. I'm looking forward to that happening, as it will make quite a difference to the house's appearance.

Last night was clear and chilly; the minimum temperature here was down to just 3°C (37°F) but it probably won't come as a surprise if I tell you that it's raining again this morning.

April showers, indeed.

Once again, Bandcamp are waiving their transaction fees today so that artists get a little more money from each sale than they would normally do, and I've already made a few purchases of my own. Should you wish to pick up anything of mine on the site, you can find it all conveniently listed on a single page here.

Last night's listening party for Something To Do While I Think Of Something To Do went way better than I expected. The number of people who RSVP'd to the invite was in double figures, and I'd told myself beforehand that if half of them actually showed up, I'd be happy. So I was surprised and delighted to discover that even more people showed up on the night, and they stayed, too!

Bandcamp's listening parties have reminded me just what a powerful and enjoyable experience it can be to sit down and listen to an artist's album in its entirety from start to finish. It was something that I'd do on a daily basis as a teenager, but as I grew older there was never as much time available for such things and I gradually fell out of the habit. The way that music is presented to us has changed, too; simply clicking on a track or letting the random play function take over the responsibility for choosing what you hear means that listening to all the tracks on a single album, in order and without interruptions, has become a rare occurrence. That really needs to change, because we're missing out on something that is positive and sustaining—and simple to do.

In a triumph for outsider artists everywhere, the late Ron Gittins's extraordinary flat in Birkenhead has been given Grade II listing, which means that the building's current state must be preserved and protected. Have a look at the Guardian's photos and then watch the slideshow tour of the property and you'll see just how extraordinary the place is.

It's Bandcamp Friday again tomorrow. For 24 hours from 8.00 am BST on Friday until 8:00 am on Saturday morning, Bandcamp will waive their fees for any purchases made on the site (PayPal, sadly, do not). And I have a new album released there, all ready and waiting.

A couple of my online musician friends have suggested that I ought to do listening parties for my music, so tonight I'm going to do just that. If you click here, you can RSVP and book yourself a space. The online chat part will start at 19:00 BST this evening, and playback of my album Something To Do While I Think Of Something To Do will start at 19:30. I have a "producer's commentary" text document prepared for each track, because that's exactly the sort of thing that I'd enjoy reading during an event like this, isn't it?

I hope you'll join me this evening. And thanks to all the people who have already RSVPd!

Remind me never to visit Tennessee. The American State has just passed legislation banning "the intentional release of chemicals into the atmosphere." The bill appears to have been the result of intense pressure from a small but very vocal group of "chemtrails" wingnuts.

Congratulations, folks. It might not have been your intent, but you just made breathing illegal.

You would have thought that Western civilization had become a little more scientifically literate since the 19th Century, when the General Assembly of the State of Indiana passed a bill declaring that maths as it was was too difficult so they were going to make pi equal to three, but apparently this is not the case.

This morning the singer Fish posted to his Facebook page that he would be adding another set of matinee gigs to his farewell tour. Some of his more entitled fans had been outraged when he added some extra dates a couple of weeks ago and I know the man's got a wicked sense of humour, but the giveaway was when he went on to announce that the tour would now be sponsored by McDonalds and punters would be entitled to a free happy meal with every ticket.

So this was a quite literal case of what the French refer to as a "poisson d'Avril"—an "April Fish" and what the English-speaking world calls an "April Fool". It made me smile, although I'm now wise enough (or at least cynical enough) not to believe anything I read on the first of April any more. Given the way that truth has more or less been abandoned as a requirement of public discourse, the idea of the April Fool joke has pretty much been made obsolete.

Having said that, Robert Fripp's announcement today that he had joined the OnlyFans website, complete with a photograph of the sort of content he would be posting there, was hilarious and frankly, rather disturbing. Some things cannot be unseen...

It's also Easter Monday today, so it's a bank holiday. I'm sitting here at my "office" desk updating the blog while listening to the Los Angeles radio station dublab streaming over the big system in the living room (because—as sometimes happens—my usual choice of station, Boston's WGBH Jazz has fallen off the Internet again).

When I've finished doing this, I'll be getting things ready for another recording session with a friend's band. The Korg D3200's flight case hasn't arrived yet, so I'm still using a canvas holdall for it. It's not optimal, but it gets the job done.

Despite it being rather dull outside, the roof is currently generating a kilowatt, and my storage battery is getting topped up nicely. I thought I was obsessed with the weather before I switched to solar energy, but getting an array of photovoltaic panels has really kicked things up a notch. I think I'm justified in this, given that my energy bill this March ended up being less than two-thirds what it was in March 2023.

I'll take that.