Oh damn, still in this dream.

Maybe the last lockdown demo...

2021-06-20T09:09:50Z

Johnny Ninefingers · Sixty-two-point-five percent of the thing.

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More noise: Lockdown demos

2021-06-10T08:38:40Z

Johnny Ninefingers · Too many non-diatonic notes, thankfully.

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So... thinking about the Ontological Argument

2021-06-06T08:18:37Z

I was thinking, as you do, about the ontological argument. Being an Omega-point mathmo fundamentalist expressed through syncretic pantheism, it’s one of my hobbies, so to speak.

But in the multiverse, everything that can happen will happen. Ergo in the multiverse, the necessary and contingent are exactly equal. This makes the modal approach to the ontological argument rather interesting.

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Voter fraud.

2021-05-12T05:15:52Z

Good old Peter Oborne, ex Spectator writer, puts it all into perspective:

twitter.com/OborneTweets/status/1392227953837289474

'there are currently nine open investigations into Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conduct – more than double the number of voter fraud convictions in 2019.'

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Another damn Middle 8

2021-04-26T23:11:16Z

You know how it goes... nothing for ages, then a whole bunch of middle 8s all turn up at once. I need more verses. And choruses.

Anyway more Rock 'n' Roll Ravel.

Johnny Ninefingers · NewProgMid8

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johnny9fingers @ 2021-04-16T16:44:00

2021-04-16T15:46:26Z

Well, I was perusing Eliot's "Wasteland", as you do, and a couplet lodged itself into my head:

"Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames run softly for I speak not loud or too long."

So I mucked around with it, as you do, and worked out it could be a chorus.

So I used it, the chorus, as a bookend and put some filler in the middle to give it some sort of putative context.

The melody for the "Sweet Thames..." is played on slide. Given my slide technique, you can just about work out how the words might fit.

Now I'm spending the rest of the evening combing through the Wasteland looking for other bits to pinch.

Johnny Ninefingers · Sweet Thames Run Softly

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More lockdown demos.

2021-03-27T17:58:25Z

This is a rough; again with no vox. I can't wait for lockdown to be finished.

Johnny Ninefingers · And the Penny Drops

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Wot I did today.

2021-03-15T21:31:12Z

Johnny Ninefingers · Ponte di Morfeo

I was playing around with the old univibe emulator. The joke, for those old enough to know, is in the title.

Somewhat influenced by Mr Trower, I fear.

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Another lockdown thing...

2021-03-10T16:38:54Z

I had an old riff that moved between the Æolian and Dorian modes. I was playing around with it and...

With particular, different, and unusual emphasis on the notes in the riff, when harmonised, it can do outrageously different things.

This is an 80 bar iteration of a riff where nothing much happens with the notes I'm playing. The Bass opens up and has a bit of a dance, and I chuck some chords in, but it's pretty damn linear. Or not as the case may be. It is a bit of a Prog middle 8. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Johnny Ninefingers · Long Prog Mid 8

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Well...

2021-02-26T15:35:11Z

I added a fake Hammond organ sound (built with my Strat, Zoia, and Helix - what you can do with FX these days, cor!) and it sounds much more coherent.

Johnny Ninefingers · The Monday Club + Fake Hammond

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Work in progress...

2021-02-13T19:14:37Z

Not sure if I want to proceed with this set of ideas.

Johnny Ninefingers · The Monday Club

It's a bit close to "Smells Like TS" and one guitar line is the child of "Son of a Preacher Man" and "How Soon Is Now". "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" makes an appearance in the bridge (though I didn't complete the arpeggios when I heard just how they were going to sound) and the chorus is inversions of the same chords as the opening to Stairway, though you wouldn't know it necessarily. Also a walking bassline that is the bastard lovechild of "I Wish" as played by Joy Division's Pete Hook.

This is how artists steal, I guess By consuming, processing, and excreting.

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johnny9fingers @ 2021-02-05T06:45:00

2021-02-05T06:47:20Z

Johnny Ninefingers · Told You So

Guitars doing all the vocal parts alas, so it sounds a bit too orchestral. Man, I've been listening to too much George Harrison.

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Work in progress...

2021-01-29T08:49:44Z

So I've been thinking more about music as well as playing/recording ideas.

Playing with the second James Bond theme chords, transposed to A.

A, F, D, F.

Then if you overlay an Am/Am7 progression over it you do get delightful harmonic clashes:

Johnny Ninefingers · Meditation on the Second James Bond Theme - early demo working title etc.

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Anecdata: How to be a non-political musician when the personal is political.

2021-01-20T20:01:54Z

I don't have quite the same presence on the interwebs that I once had; nevertheless I'm active on one or two pages - musician's geek pages talking about kit and stuff. Most of them are strictly apolitical and enforce that apolitical stance pretty rigorously; understandably given that most musos come from all spectra of political hue.

However there are some things which overlap unavoidably and the latest of there are:

Covid (responses, gigging, poverty, death, etc)

The present UK/EU situation regarding freedom of movement for musicians; or the new rules and the lack of ability of UK musicians to play in Europe without lots of red tape and prohibitive extra costs.

Anyway, the former problem tripped me up because there are some folk who on the boards who were, let's say, skeptical about the conventional responses to Covid, and to masks, and to the curtailment of their freedoms. It's not that unusual a position among musicians; Van Morrison and Eric Clapton spring to mind.

So... it ends up that on one of these pages I've been moderated by the chaps in charge (in the nicest possible way) because I sort of... went on a rant. It was a moderate and considered rant, but rant nevertheless.

But what I'd like to know - and maybe this is relevant to the process of healing the divides that exist between factions in certain polities - is how does one go about trying to combat both overt and covert politicisation by other folk, or even oneself? I mean I find it personally objectionable if someone states up is down as a serious position; to me that is deluded. (Satire is another matter; but the sort of satire available to geeky musicians may be an acquired taste.) How do you suggest to someone that they're wrong in a way that gets them to examine exactly what it is they think anew?

Obviously, I've failed again; but next time I want to fail better. Suggestions please. (Also I don't want to burn the house down, so to speak - going all Malcolm Tucker on eleven isn't really my modus operandi here.)

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johnny9fingers @ 2021-01-18T15:18:00

2021-01-18T15:21:02Z

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One person...

2021-01-05T21:28:18Z

...Asked why I post my rough music on here from time to time when it is work-in-progress?

With lockdown I suppose we all need some sort of external validation. I'm not getting up on stage at the moment - neither is anyone else much. I don't have a proper YouTube page put together. I use SoundCloud because it's easy.

I guess the reason I put it on here is I like showing off to Patrizia; she's the only one who ever reads me and I did promise her I'd post the odd bit here and there. :)

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More Home Demos...

2021-01-04T10:44:35Z

Because I just can't help myself...

Johnny Ninefingers · Hats Off to (Terry) Reid

Some folk will get the joke in the title. I may lose the coda. The slide parts, rather than the coda, were an afterthought - but one that has put the coda in question and changed the whole feel of the track. Shame, because when I blew over the coda I had a blast. But even so; too many notes.

I may try to craft a slide part over it; but the feel has changed so much.

You add one idea and the whole structure is up for question. Such is.

For recording purists I know the acoustic rhythm guitars were recorded too hot and are compressing and it's all unbalanced and unedited. But demos are about ideas rather than perfect execution.

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Happy New Year...

2020-12-31T23:20:12Z

...to one and all.
May '21 be better than '20.

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Oh wow...

2020-12-28T07:40:45Z

I guess we are going to see more QAnon inspired acts of terrorism against the 5G network; and also maybe medical practitioners who are involved in the vaccination process.

Phone masts and doctors. And for my next mixed pair...

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May you all have a Happy Christmas

2020-12-25T14:07:06Z

Happy Christmas to one and all.

Boris has pulled a dilapidated bunny out of his top hat. He is full of surprises; but the deal ain't quite as good as Mrs May's. But once the smart money realised it couldn't pull the whole edifice of the EU apart despite having a good crowbar or two... well I suppose a deal was always on the cards. The plague has rather put things into perspective. And the problems at the ports and on the Kent motorways have really emphasised just how bad it will get. So deal we have. Thank the gods.

I have got an Empress Effects Zoia for Christmas, and since I don't have the kids with me until Boxing Day I've spent the morning playing with the presets on the beast. I've managed to integrate it into a small pedalboard:

It has very interesting possibilities. Here is my first test. I think it will appeal to those who like atonal stuff. Very Ravel influenced with bits of Bartók and touches of Stravinsky; but mainly tonal and a conventional time signature.

Johnny Ninefingers · First experiment with Zoia: Lord of the Flies

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So I’ve been doing this and that.

2020-11-28T08:11:01Z

And I’ve been demoing various musical ideas. Very rough demos it has to be admitted.

As an aside I hate engineering. I spent years in recording studios, playing, arranging, and producing; but I gave up engineering in the early ‘90’s. I still know things like mic placement etc but I’m not a drum-programmer; and when it comes to mixing I’m ok, but the specialists are better and fast. I am as slow as the growth of mountains; and can’t be bothered. Nevertheless I still try to get ideas down. Some ideas aren’t really ever going anywhere and are a throwaway one-off joke full of overplaying and fun - even if very rough.
Here’s one recent one. It’s not really going anywhere; but it’s quite fun in its childish exuberance and flashy spite.

Johnny Ninefingers · Theme for an Imaginary Political Talk Show

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Update.

2020-11-06T12:22:16Z

Some time ago my LiveJournal account was compromised and the password was taken.

johnny9fingers.dreamwidth.org/356813.html

I was then informed that the person(s) who had broken into my LJ account now had all my passwords etc. But as it happened, most of my internet accounts have a two-tier security which requires confirmation from my phone. So my accounts haven't been hacked. Now my chums appear to have received spam from a bot impersonating me with rubbish issued by close to my email address, just with an acajapan.org attached to the Johnny Ninefingers name.

You have been warned.

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Some thoughts on an alien perspective...

2020-10-13T05:53:52Z

I've been thinking about culture, as you do, from an extrinsic perspective; inasmuch as it is possible to imagine yourself into an alien viewpoint.

And I think we have been evaluating things pretty poorly.

Homer and Shakespeare and Cervantes and Goethe are very species-specific. Xeno-ethno-anthropologists will spend careers understanding the nuance of the human condition; using literary criticism, no doubt.

But Bach, Bach is not species-specific; appreciating it is sense dependent - a different order of thing; one that crosses species and culture.

So the idea is... excerpts from an alien narrative form akin to a serial; medium as yet undecided. The title being "Bad Headmaster" and set in the St Thomas School under Bach's Cantorship. The narrative explores the bad-tempered Bach and his well-tempered clavier. Then alien humour reveals itself as susceptible to absurdist juxtaposition and overnight the most important human cultural exports to the universe are Bach, Beethoven et al; and Spike Milligan and the Monty Python team.

The rest of it just writes itself. Which is why I can't be bothered.

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The Problems of the Bourgeoisie.

2020-10-01T11:30:35Z

For all of lockdown my cleaning lady has been absent, understandably. As an aside I share a cleaning lady with my mother. The last four or five have been Eritrean lasses displaced by various political upheavals and civil wars in their own country. The last lass before this one showed The Mother^TM how to strip, clean, and reassemble a Kalashnikov, much to her amusement.

The Mother^TM happens to come from an Irish Republican family. I have a suspicion that they all know how to strip, clean, and reassemble an AK47.

But yesterday, Alga, for that is my cleaning lady's forename, descended upon my kitchen, bathroom, et al like Byron's Assyrian - she came down like a wolf on the fold and left the place spotless. I wanted to send her away with a bonus bottle of champagne or something alongside her wage. Alas, she didn't accept.

When you get to almost 60, the comfort of staff is perhaps the single greatest luxury available to human beings. Me, I heap mine with whatever gold I can muster; they are more valuable to me than rubies; and I acknowledge that. I refuse to limit my cleaning lady's payments to the statutory minimum wage - to me she is worth more than double that. And it assuages my conscience for not cleaning my own mess.

I came to the conclusion that in the three or four hours she works for me she saves me six to eight hours of time; which I can then waste in leisure or be productive, as I wish.

I actually feel I should be paying her what I earn per hour, but at the moment I'm not earning, so that's a no-no.

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I've got to stop shouting...

2020-09-30T10:52:37Z

At the talking heads on the telly.

The levels of egregiousness are just too much for me to restrain myself. I know the talking heads can't hear me; but venting provides a valve on the internal pressure cooker.

I hate most politicians. But I can at least respect and support some of those opposed to the extreme right wing lurches in the Anglo-Saxon polities.

When Trump goes on about "AntiFa" he's talking about me; my father who fought in WWII; my uncle who lost an eye in that conflict; and all those who died rather than let the fascists take over. I'm a liberal capitalist with kids in private school. I'm AntiFa.

Anyone trying to trash my father's memory, or any of his generation, gets short shrift from me.

If you are anti-AntiFa it means you are pro-fascism; it is just that fucking simple. So...

Trump is a fascist, as are all of his followers who object to AntiFa.

And as for me, I hate fascism.

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