One month to go - Tuesday 26th August

Thought I'd just mark the moment! ONE MONTH, thirty one-ish days, seven-hundred and forty-four hours and so on.

Makes me feel better if I think of it this way -> one twelfth of a year.

I've organised a week off starting the 8th September - so that's when everything has to be done.

I'm going to try and get some of it done in the days in between obviously.

I'm not working this weekend - so more work's going to be done then too.

Is this a window of time I see before my eyes? I hope so.

Oh and just one final thing - never guess what AMAZING thing I worked out yesterday...

For the 10 of us to get to and from America, just merely to get to the stage where we meet each other and get started on the project - we collectively travelled nearly 41 and a half THOUSAND miles - that's nearly twice around the world.

How cool is that?!! And yes, that has gone in my script!

I'm so Star Wars - Monday 25th August

Episode 1 is virtually done!

(haha - epis-obi-wan is virtually done maybe...!!)

It is amazing what you can do when you have a day off. After today's successes - I've fathomed just how I might be able to complete my MA project.

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and just get some days off work and get my head down and just concentrate on the documentary. I have tried to do both at the same time, but I'm getting stressed and irritable about the documentary and that's not helping the composition of the whole thing.

First thing tomorrow I'm going to organise that. Simple.

Anyway - enough of that - what have I done today?

Well, thankfully all the naming and sorting of my audio has just reconfirmed to me exactly which bits I want to use, where it's going to go and basically what I'm doing.

Thankfully today, episode 1 has written itself. My narration/script I've written down (again in the notebook - seriously this notebook deserves a commendation!) and recorded in my now mocked-up home studio.

There simply isn't enough time at work to use theirs, which is a little annoying, but my make-shift studio appears to work rather well, and I don't think you can tell studio from stud-ish-io.

I found all the audio I wanted and clipped it up really quickly by freakishly landing my cursor exactly where I needed it to go pretty much first time round for each clip. Nearly all of the audio I extracted edited very logically as well, and all in all it just worked today.

That little problem I mentioned earlier about losing some music from my Fostex I've solved even more today - I merely wrote some more in about half an hour - so even musically and compositionally things have gone well today.

I'll still need to write up my script properly on the computer and actually lay out the script in the proper way - but that shouldn't take too long.

I have found one part I'm going to have to sort out; copyright - which is something that I wanted to avoid - this is why I'm trying to generate all the music from what we've done and stuff I'm writing myself, but one part just needed a certain song, and now I've put it in, with a little Audition mastery, it sounds so good that I cannot take it out.

So I need to check what I need to do about copyrightable material.

Listening back to the whole thing - which is just under 6 minutes (a THIRD DONE!! YEY!!) I've managed to harness the excitement of the whole project - it sounds exciting, jubilant, enjoyable, ground-breaking, multi-cultural, young and everything you'd expect a documentary about this type of project I'm remarking upon.

Something which I mentioned in my MA proposal a few months ago before I left Falmouth to start my job is that I really wanted the documentary to be like a carnival of different voices, different accents, different music, different sounds etc. etc. And I've got it - phew!

Without wanting to give away too much - it starts with a montage of the 10 composers.

Ooh, while I'm talking about this - that was a little issue earlier today - how on earth am I going to introduce myself as one of the 10 composers involved AS WELL AS the journalist behind the documentary...hmmm I thought to myself.
I don't want to be the subject of the documentary - but I do need to make people aware that I am involved in the process - otherwise it's 9 different composers brought from across the world to work together writing a collaborative piece of music - which just isn't true...!

So what I've done is just quickly said something like "10 young composers have been brought together etc. etc. I was one of the 10 chosen to take part in this ground-breaking project, here are the other nine..." and then I cut to my delightful montage.

It's the only way I could think of doing it - just a brief mention, and then that's that.

Any suggestions on this would be useful - or comments if you can think of another way of doing it!

As I've already said - Episode 1 is virtually finished. All I need to do now is write the final bit of my script which will have the online tease to this very blog (how up-to-date I am! pity about the blog not being completely up-to-date, but it will be!) and then a coming up on the next programme...easy peasy!

Stumped for a title - Sunday 24th August

Seriously - don't try and do an MA project and hold down a permanent job at the same time.

2nd Sunday down this month at work - nightmare of a day - freaking out about the project oooooh just a little bit.

That's all for today - I've been awake since 4am...I'm trying to do MA work, I've named some of the audio and noted down notable bits, but it's just becoming all a bit much today.

Tomorrow however, is a Bank Holiday...I'm off.

Episode 1 is going to be done tomorrow. It must be done tomorrow, complete, finito, done and dusted.

Meanwhile I sleep.

MAimed - did you see what I did there!! The subtleties of languge - Saturday 23rd August

I meant to write this up yesterday - but I had to pop into work to do some stuff and I'm walking like John Wayne because of the physio treatment I had on Thursday...which is not that conducive to blogging, or even sitting down at the moment! Useful!

I can't even sleep on my back right now because it feels like I had an elephant on a pogo stick breaking the world record for how long an elephant can bounce on a pogo stick for on my back - owwww!

So I pretty much felt like death yesterday after coasting myself home from work in my beautiful car with a really light gear box and power steering.

I've then laid in bed today (on my side!) writing this blog, again on my trusty notepad!

Basically, I've remembered that I completely forgot to mention quite an intrinsic element of my project - a small, but 'dealable' issue that I had with interviewing people while over in America.

It wasn't really that much of an issue, because as you know, I got the interviews done and they're great.

I have to thank the others for how hard they worked for my interviews and for me.

But something that cropped up is the point of language differences.

Although we all had to have a 'proficiency' in English for this whole music project to work in the first place, there were still barriers caused by differences in language and consequently understanding.

I find this very interesting as the entire project is about 10 people communicating and working together and trying to prove that 10 people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds can work together and create something collaboratively.

I think we are proving this.

Musically, we all speak the same language, and we all speak it fluently. It means that we can pick up our instruments, or anything lying around as we quite often did (!) and communicate through music.

We all connected to each other's train of thought whilst playing and understood what we all were meaning, picked up on those threads and communicated/interacted with that and indeed each other.

Part of the idea behind the Counterpoint of Tolerance project is however, deciphering how we (people of the world) get ourselves into divisions and sometimes conflict because of these divisions, and how we (the Counterpoint of Tolerance team) can dissect that and find a way somehow of interaction without those divisions.

But even we have divisions, although they've never developed into conflict. Instead we've just had to find ways of agreeably working around these divisions, which sometimes are more timely to find than others, but we always found (hopefully) a solution that pleases everyone.

The main 'division' (if you want to call it that) is that of language. Myself, Alex, Michael, Martine and David are the only ones for whom English is our 'native' tongue - that's less than 50% of the team. I'm certainly not saying that this is wrong, I don't believe that everyone in the entire world should speak and understand English - that would be wrong.

Even between us 'native-English-speakers' however, there were things that we may have to explain in an additional manner because of nuances in British English and American English, and differences between those cultures (like the whole bar = measure, quaver = eighth note thing...I still have to think twice when I work that one out and try to remember that!!)

Elsewhere, Jxel, Ivan, Syrse and Claudio for example all speak Spanish fluently - and could easily communicate with each other. Then however, there are differences and specific nuances attached to Spanish spoken in Mexico, Spanish spoken in Argentina and Spanish spoken in Spain.

This ultimately meant that in conversations between Jxel, Ivan, Claudio and Syrse there were hiccups in understanding - namely something (usually very small and inconsequential..and sometimes rude (hehe!!)) had to be gone over again and approached in a different way or explained differently.

Doo Jin from South Korea could read English well, but often found it hard to express exactly what he wanted to say to everyone (and I hasten to add no-one spoke any Korean to speak of). I felt really sorry for Doo Jin, because I think he was getting rather frustrated at this limitation being put on our verbal communication - I would if I were in his position.

Noticeably though, during the two weeks we were out there, the more we all talked together (which we did ALOT!), and got used to each other's ways of saying things in whatever version of English was available, verbal communication did flow more smoothly than before.

But it was still no smooth chocolate fountain.

I have to admit that I found it difficult to communicate (which for those who know me - know that's very unusual ("the girl who'll never have dead-air on the radio" ahem!!)

Please don't get me wrong - this is no-one's fault and I'm certainly NOT complaining, but it was immensely tiring trying to think of a number of different ways of explaining one thing, and meaning the same thing, and even then, you don't know whether someone entirely understands, or indeed if something was being explained to me, if I entirely understood.

It was really frustrating! Especially as because we all get on so well, all we want to do is share each other's experiences, talk to each other (about pretty much anything!) and really enlighten ourselves by knowing everyone. In some ways, rather upsettingly actually if you really think about it, in an ultimate way - this just can't be done.

What this showed me though was that universal understanding of something being communicated did not run fluently, and, maybe in another type of situation, could have lead to real divisions and maybe conflict. It demonstrated the limitation of verbal communication to effectively mediate interaction between people, even very similar people like us.

Musically, this hurdle was jumped with Olympic ease, as, if one of us was trying to verbally explain an idea we had, and the universal comprehension was in doubt - we just leapt on an instrument and played it, and also normally reverted to some onomatopoeic, crazy aural way of mimicking what we were trying to describe (I like to call it conductor singing - you always end up using your voice to sound like some castrated mallard to sound like an oboe or something! (apologies to oboists - you do honestly have beautiful sounding instruments!))

But that's really the point isn't it? (and no not that we all have to sound like castrated mallards - although, what an insult that could be to throw at someone..! I digress sorry!)

Music can communicate universally. You don't have to play something. You don't even have to be able to read music. You don't see it anyway. Instead it's a sensual communication which taps into your psyche and tweaks some kind of interactive synapse of understanding. You hear a sad piece for example, and instantly, you may not feel sad, but you connect with the feeling of feeling sad - which is ultimately understanding. And those sitting around you listening to the same piece will also connect with that feeling of feeling sad and various conjugations around that sense, and so on and so forth.

I don't know why I picked sad then - how remarkably depressing! Sorry!

Music moves you and people collectively in a way in which verbal language cannot always achieve (in my opinion - do correct me if you think differently - I'd be really interested to hear people's thoughts on this.)

And ultimately, you must be moved to actually understand something. Understanding something is a process in which you have to connect with something to comprehend the mechanics and sense and existence of the thing.

So how does this all connect to my interviews? (haha - HOW LONG HAS IT TAKEN ME TO MAKE MY POINT?!!)

Well, if you think about communicating with someone who doesn't naturally speak your language, it's sometimes difficult as it is. Now put that in the context of trying to interview the same person. Although I succeeded and everyone was happy with what they had expressed, this type of interviewing process was one I'd never had to do before. I had to try and make my questions, with the aims of opening up areas through the questions that I wanted people to talk about, comprehensive and accommodating enough to mediate an honest and satisfying response (from both my perspective and that of the people I was interviewing.)

This was really hard and quite tiring. I found I had limitations in my way of expressing a question compared to their way of understanding. It's not that I was asking particularly hard questions, because I wasn't, and all the interviews were basically about their experiences. What happened though was that after asking the questions, if there was a struggle of putting their answers into spoken English - I couldn't advise them or suggest words or phrases. That would have been putting words into their mouths - which completely destroys the concept of objectivity in journalism. AND I had no guarantee that the words I was thinking of would have matched what they were actually trying to say.

Bothersome to say the least.

And again - I stress, it's no-one's fault and it's certainly not a limitation of intellect or anything of such sort.

It's just something that had to be tackled and somehow resolved. How I did it, was just rephrasing questions, making it much more conversational (even more than I do usually) and checking that this is really what they meant.

It just struck me as rather intriguing the way this all transpired. Before I went to America, this did crop up in my mind, and I had contingency plans in my head anyway, so it wasn't difficult to adjust ways of interviewing, but I just found that it's a whole different ball game when you're actually there doing the interview and trying to make sure that people got their fair say.

Talking of fair - it does seem a little unfair that it had to be in English. An idea that's just struck me is that perhaps if I'd asked them to interview in their native languages I may have a more personal account from each of our team. Then however, I'd have the difficulty of the fact I don't speak half these languages (just my lil' ol' French A-level, lil' bit of Italian and swearing in Cantonese...) so even if they'd responded in their native tongue, my questions would have still had to have been in a language that to the interviewee is foreign...

Also, I'm thinking that as I plan to use their voices a lot in the documentary - would it really work for an English audience to constantly have a different language going on in the background and another voice in English dubbed over to translate? Not to mention the issue of translating it in the first place - which even without my permanent job at the radio station I don't think I would have enough time for, AND think of that well known phrase "Lost in Translation"...would a translated interview really be any more accurate than one just done in English?

OK, I think I made the right decision.

ouch - Thursday 21st August

Natalie got pretty blue lights last night - and three paramedics.

No joke.

So, something I actually wasn't going to mention on here (but now am thinking hey - why not?!) is that since I got back from CA (and while I was out there) I keep on getting cramps in my legs.

And yes I did do all the walking around on the 2 lots of 11.5 hour plane trips, yes I did wear delightful flight-socks, and yes I did do everything that apparently you're meant to on long-haul flights.

But, had to go to the doctors about it VERY early on Tuesday morning. (Hence the rather miffed blog that day!)

They thought I had DVT. AS IF I NEED ANYTHING ELSE TO WORRY ABOUT!!!!

The doctor skewered my arm - 5 times in the right because he missed, then stabbed my left arm, but was really embarrassed by this point so got jittery and it felt like he shot straight through my arm, let alone my vein, and took a blood test. OUCH!

I then had to go back to work, so with a severely empty arm I drove 50 miles (plus I think!!) back from virtually the Devon/Cornwall border (literally - it's metres away!) to Exeter, and then do a full day's work. I was not in the best of moods when I eventually got home that night.

So, come Wednesday, went to work, felt a bit weird, but carried on.

Come Wednesday evening felt REALLY weird, and then got excruciating cramp in my lung...yes that's right my lung.

I don't recommend cramp in the lung.

I then lost all feeling in my left arm, and when it came back slightly - I continued to have pins and needles in my left arm for about a MILLION hours.

Don't ever try to call out 'Devon-Doc'. They're useless. And if I really had been dying of DVT (which NHS Direct thought I might be - again, horrifically, no joke) my obituary would have been loo-paper recycled from old fish and chip paper by the time the doctor may have arrived - but that would've been if he hadn't clocked off at 11pm - it was 3 minutes to 11 when we finally got through.

So yeah, the local, out-of-hours doctor was never going to come to see me anyway - and someone else involved with Devon Doc (I can't remember who it was - I was a little out of it by then) had said that I should DRIVE, yes DRIVE myself to the hospital (because everyone else around had had a drink).

I had explained that I couldn't feel my arm, couldn't see properly, was developing cramp in my leg by this point too, oh yeah and the small problem of not being able to breathe or move...but apparently in that state - it's ok to drive. IDIOT.

We only called the out-of-hours thing because I hate calling on emergency services - because you blithely think, if you're conscious at the time, you'd be wasting their time as you're conscious!!

So, we bit the bullet and called for an ambulance as it wasn't going away, and, to be honest, I was more than a little frightened.

They arrived. I confused them. It wasn't DVT because I didn't have the normal signs - phew you may think. But then the question arose - well what the hell is it? Later followed by - "Why do you have symptoms of a spinal injury when you haven't got one?"

Good question I thought.

The last thing I wanted to do was go to hospital - and without wanting to sound really martyrish, I actually don't have time to go to hospital.

The paramedics were wary about this, but they were happy that I wasn't going to die at that particular moment and that I could be left to go to bed...saying as they left "but if anything gets worse, call us right back"

I felt so cared for (sans sarcasm - they really were fantastic - big BIG thankyous to the three paramedics who came out that night).

They left me with the instructions that regardless of whatever else - I have to go to the doctors in the morning and get all this checked out.

So I did. And never guess what's wrong...

My neck and all of my back are in serious, no-messing spasm - so much so that it's cutting the blood supply off to my arm and legs (and the top of my head - hence the 'not being able to see' part and funny tingling in my head (oh yeah forgot to mention that bit - pins and needles in the skull is particularly unpleasant as well!)) and THAT'S why I'm getting cramps in my legs, lungs, arms and well, seemingly everywhere.

And never guess what's brought it all on - exhaustion and stress!! OH I WONDER WHY!!

What's so funny about this whole thing though - is that mentally - I actually feel ok about everything - I know sometimes on here it seems as if I'm ever-so-slightly unhinged - but for those who know me - you know I am anyway (but in a nice way!) and also - it's just quite fun ranting and writing!

In my heart of hearts, I know I'm going to get it done because I have to...and I'm good with situations like that.

But what always happens is something has to give, and with me, it's always something physical...although normally that's breathing - says the chronic asthmatic... hehe!

So today at the Dr's - he said very strongly, "You are taking today off." very full stop. Later, I managed to get an emergency appointment with a wonderful sports physio lady - who ended up having to do a full body physio thing on me (again OUCH!) and found that only ONE of my muscles in my ENTIRE body is behaving...isn't that such a hoot!

She did say one of my now-favourite quotes about me though..."You're definitely a challenge."

Today though - I hurt...alot. I can't move, I ache all over and I feel like I've been a very taut trampoline skin for the National Obese Trampolining Championships.

I hasten to add - sitting at a computer doing the audio is NOT something I can do today. I'm not kidding about the not being able to move part.

Up side though - I am on massive anti-inflamatories...mannnnn...!

Time is a wonderful thing - I just wish I had some - Tuesday 19th August

OH OH OH OH Ohhhhhhhhh!

Sigh

Whine

(mmmmm wine)

grrrr

shiver


scared



Running out of time and STILL have barely started actually putting it all together.

OH God.

I have that little maggotty-crawling-around-in-stomach-feeling - so much so I can't sleep. Which really doesn't help.

Last week I wasn't getting home until about half 8 at night after VERY long days at work - and I still had to eat, which made it about half nine - how on earth am I meant to do a 15-20 minute documentary, recording all my narration (writing it would be a useful thing too), cutting all my audio up and sticking it all together?

Oh and I figured out what the 25th July was - some music which I could really do with right now. As I don't think blogs have a watershed - I'll just leave it up to your imaginations as to what I thought when I realised that.

So now...ah haaaa the solution came upon me - I am a composer after all - this is what this whole stupid project is about...so....write your own music - you can tailor make it to exactly what you need. So I am.

Only problem is finding that 26th/27th/28th ad inf. working hours of the day.

And don't even mention contextual review - I may cry if you do.

Upload Overload - Saturday 16th August

Yeah yeah yeah I know - why such a big gap?...have I been slacking? NO!! I've been at work. Although I love my job and I am very grateful to have it - DON'T EVER TRY TO DO AN MA AT THE SAME TIME!

As it is I have an 80 mile round journey back and forth to work - never finish at 5 because, as I'm sure you can imagine - news doesn't just stop at five (although sometimes I reeeeeeeeeeally wish it did!) I do have to eat sometimes as well, and by the time I actually get back during the week, and feed my poor broken and beat-up tired self - I'm knackered! (pardon the phraseology!) I have tried to do MA stuff in the evening - but I'm so tired I can't concentrate on it and then I get scared I'm going to mess it up! AND usually by the time I get back from work - I've been concentrating at a computer for so long already - I can't see.

Happy stupid days!

I am a stressed wee one - a wee one that is stressed is me.

I CANNOT believe it has taken me this long to even get the blessed audio uploaded on to my computer!

And oh God - did that want to run smoothly? Did it hell.

So the equation was this earlier on today...

(F x 8gb) + (c + usb + aa)
____________________________ =ma
N

(Key: F = Fostex, gb = gigabyte, c = computer, usb = usb lead, aa = Adobe Audition, ma = the alleged MA, N = Me! Natalie!)


It just looks so simple doesn't it?!

So I plugged it all in - the Fostex spoke to my computer and my computer spoke back - they had a nice conversation and decided to strike up a relationship.

But, like all relationships struck from the workplace - it went sour.

My computer started bending my ear about how the Fostex just doesn't communicate properly and everything it's saying is just gobbledygook (and oh how I'd love to know the Collins Dictionary definitive spelling of gobbledygook!)

The Fostex, like a typical partner (non-gender-specific) was carrying on blindly thinking everything is ok - and everything it was doing was right and it's the computer's problem.

"It's not me...it's you."

Adobe Audition meanwhile, like the good marriage counsellor, is sitting there just saying, "You're not communicating together, I'm not hearing anything. Talking to each other is something you need to work on."

Basically, what was happening was that ALL 8gbs of my audio was stuck on my Fostex and wasn't loading into my computer properly - they kept on coming up in Adobe as blank - which I knew they weren't, particularly after some frantic checking.

Hours had gone by already, many of my grey cells had evacuated the quickly crumbling matter that was my brain, and one half of me was waving goodbye to my MA project - over-reacting - I thought not (at the time).

But after checking things for the umpteenth time (again - Collins spelling!) and a very good nicotine fix I realised the only way to do it was to painstakingly transfer each one in the most manual way possible - namely click and drag and check, click and drag and check, click and drag and write down which one doesn't work, click and drag and check - FIFTY EIGHT TIMES!!

And some of them took around 15 minutes or more to transfer each - I was there for hours.

And I'm running out of time on my first day off since I got back, and it's my niece's Christening tomorrow - so no worky worky gonna get done then - we're expecting about 40 people (wish I were that popular!)

I still lost some audio - apparently the 25th July was a bad day - nothing from that day works...seriously.

I've cut my losses though- to be honest I can't exactly remember what happened on that day anyway - and I've double checked that I didn't do any interviews (via my useful notepad blog!) and I've found all that audio anyway...

Oh and just as a final thing - yes I am still writing things in my notepad-long-hand-COMPLETELY-UN-TECHNOLOGICAL-RELIABLE-PEN-AND-PAPER blog - as I can write stuff down as I'm going and not have to overload my computer by running two programmes (internet and Audition) at the same time (no -because that's too hard for my pc (a.k.a. Pretty Crap) AND it means I can get away from the evil glare of technology and run to the comfort of my slightly coffee stained notebook, probably curled up in bed and have a Bic-sponsored whinge.

So, this is why all the blogs are still having to be back-dated - because it's not working trying to blog on the actual day I'm talking about. I have found it is much quicker to just type it up (and add caustic remarks here and there!!)

Anyway - most of the stuff is on my computer - and backed up on an external hard drive - and it's still on my Fostex.

I just need to name them all now.

Oh and there's the small thing of editing and putting it all together...

6(ish) weeks to go...and I'm working 2 weekends this month, already done one, one to go next week in a glorious 6 day week.

Fudge.