The Road Back......

Well, today has seen the beginning of my return to the world of I.T.C. research.

Courtesy of a cool Yahoo Group based website called Freecycle, I picked up an old CRT PC monitor for the grand total of nothing. Yep that's right, nothing. Zilch. Zero. Free.

I've also purchased an RCA to BNC video lead which I hope will allow me to connect my video camera direct to the monitor, rather than through a computer.

The idea behind this is to get a direct signal that involves no transmission circuitry, but still retains a unit that has a good electro-magnetic field around it - it would seem that the Spirit-side team use the EM field as a kind of energy-based interface.

There's a long way to go with this, but slowly and surely we'll get there.

A new pathway starts to open up.

It's been a while since my last blog, like nearly a year!!!

A lot has been happening in that time, not least the completion of my first album under the name of Geigertek called "The Garden", live performances and leaving regular full-time employment to become a working clairvoyant.

And it's that latter part that concerns this blog.

For my musical pathway, I'm going to continue all related blogs on the Geigertek MySpace page which can be found HERE. This blog will be used to chart the progress of my I.T.C. (Instrumental Transcommunication) research, a pathway left a few years back owing to personal and family circumstances.

The events of the last few weeks, and in particular the last few days, have brought back a pathway thought forgotten and consigned to the past. This isn't the case.

Over the coming weeks and months, possilby even years, I'll be updating this blog with details of events, situations, experiments, ideas, theories and anything else that's relevant to my research work.

In the words of Jean-Luc Picard:

"Let's see what's out there......"

Work Underway

As the title suggests, work is now underway on the next project. I've spent a few weeks playing around with different synthesizers and effects units to find something that will provide the right sort of inspiration or match the sounds that dwell within the darkest corners of my mind.

Those sounds have now been found and so it's onward with the process of getting them out of my head and into the sequencers.

The new project is away from the one I originally planned. That was to be a collection of songs and instrumental pieces collectively called "The Splendour Cascade". But listening back to them, something is amiss, not least a lack of originality. So, I have put those recordings onto a USB stick for the time being and am now following a different path to the intended one. The approach is akin to the first release "The Garden", taking the inspiration from within me and from around me and from things familiar to me. The inspiration this time is the subject of Instrumental Trans-communication. Instru-what??? I hear you yell. Cool. Let me explain.

Instrumental Trans-communication (hereinafter known as I.T.C.) is a relatively new form of paranormal research in that it is the attempting of spirit contact using mechanical or technical means. This can be anything from telephones, to television, computers, fax machines, radios, tape recorders etc etc etc - the most well known of the various subjects which falls under the umbrella of I.T.C. is Electro-Voice Phenomena (E.V.P.). The branch of I.T.C. that I became very involved with was to do with video recordings using a technique known as the Video Feedback Loop. The process is simple and if conducted in an organised and honest manner, can yield some surprising results. I have examples of my work on my website, here's a link:

http://www.neilfellowes.co.uk/galleries.html

Sadly, because of very silly T.V. programs such as Most Haunted and Dead Famous and equally very silly people and mis-informed "ghost-busting" (meant in a very derogatory way) groups, the position of paranormal research has been set back considerably and in consequence, the cause of serious I.T.C. researchers has resulted in their work, in some quarters, being dismissed. Sad but true. Now that the wave of paranormal T.V. programs is beginning to die a well deserved death, I have the hope that a new Golden Age of research will emerge and all the stupid people currently waving their printed t-shirts, embroidered baseball caps and mono-grammed underwear will get fed up with and move on to the next "in-thing".

Looking back over the last paragraph, I come across as a little bitter. And to some extent I believe that to be true. I was fortunate enough to have been a part of the incredible research/investigation community before it became the latest "in-vogue thang" for the bored 30-something housewife aching to get away from the rigours of married life, and it was a truly wonderful time with many new ideas and practices being tested and re-tested, theories thrashed and trashed and on occasion, taken on board. Alas, that was not meant to be and it was lost in a sea of cheap thermometers, ouija boards and "boil-in-the-bag" mediums. Isn't it funny how someone watches an ENTERTAINMENT prog like Most Haunted, and WOOF!!! they're suddnely a medium!!! These are what I refer to as "boil-in-the-bag" mediums - just add water. Commercialism on a new scale - forget years of training from experienced mediums, learning how to actually make true contact, learning how to cope with the demands of the sensitive mind and learning how to interperate the often meaningless images and thoughts you are given. None of that has been necessary for the "boil-in-the-bag". My piece of advice for them is go back to where they bought their instant medium kit and get a life instead. I understand Morrisons are doing a "buy one get one free" offer at the moment.

I have digressed and so it is time to remove myself from the tirade, but there are times when you need to get things off your chest. Music, yes, that's what it's all about now and that's where my energies are currently focused.

The pieces are becoming increasingly ambient in flavour, with a hint of subtle moodiness suggested in some of the pieces on "The Garden", the latest track I am working on has a strong rhythm to it, almost trance-like in places which is a very new direction. And of course, lots of reverb.

I love reverb.

Okay, time to get back to that which is necessary for me to pay bills - work :-( If anyone would be kind enough to donate sufficient amounts of money to me so that I could please stop work and focus on music as well as I.T.C., I would be most grateful.

Laterz......

Neil x

Frustration returns

Today is very much a day where the darker corners of my mind reach forward and cast shadows over an over-wise happy existance. I know the cause which counts for so much, and it's simply frustration. Oh yes, I might add not of the sexual type before I continue further :-)

My mind is constantly turning over, constantly revolving itself around a million subjects and packed to bursting point with musical ideas and thoughts. Happiness is countless hours seated at a computer-based recording facility (facility sounds much more sensible than studio) allowing the ideas and thoughts a kind of physical manifestation. Sometimes the ideas find a permanent form when they are recorded as a piece of music or a kind of musical sketchpad, sometimes they'll simply drift off into the ether and that will be that. But, the important thing throughout is they are let loose from the confines of my mind thereby giving much needed breathing space to everything else that's lurking in there.

The frustration comes when time doesn't allow me to sit at the computer, my fingers playing over the keys of my MIDI keyboard controller like some maddened soul in the Phantom of The Opera. And this is when the darkness comes forward, shutting out the light of my soul and clouding my prismic, kaleidoscopic-like thought collective that's lit by the suns of life itself. The external manifestation of this darkness is withdrawal, a certain quietness that I understand as my way of dealing with things.

I really do sound like a spoilt child ion the edge of a tantrum, but I do go deeper than that - lol. The creative mind is a place of chaos and contradictions, but one of the things that helps with this is love. I have the love of a very good woman, she is kind, gentle, understanding, tolerant and motivating. She sheds light on my life when the lights seem to go down on it, her smile is warm and bright and it's impossible to stay in a darker place when she is close by. She is inspirational, encouraging and soothing, placing an almost hallowed calm upon the confusion and disorder that is my mind.

The clocks tick, but the hours don't seem to be moving forward and so the wraith of frustration rears it's unyielding head once more.

Politicians......

are, by and large, lying arrogant tossers who are totally out of touch with the rest of the world.

They are also a bunch of thieving, fraudulant wankers who basically get away with murder (it wouldn't surprise if that was literal either!!!) when the rest of us don't and have to fund their annoyingly wasteful lives at the same time!!!

Hello Mr. Brown? Erm, whilst you are busy being "in talks" with foreigners, your citizens are falling deeper into debt and poverty. Are you actually aware of this? Are you aware that bills are rising at a far higher rate than wages and that maybe, not all of us have enough money to pay them?

What confounds me the most is that I actually bloody well voted for Labour at the last election!!! The thing is, where you go from here? I'm not sure that Mr. Cameron is what we need and as for the LibDems - hahaha!!!

Another moment of despair wondering how our disintegrating country will go.

Neil x

EARTHQUAKE!!!

Blimey, an earthquake in the U.K.???!!!

So, there we were, happily in bed watching "Shaun Of The Dead" when a loud rubbling started. As we live not far from Norwich Airport, we at first assumed that maybe it was a late night cargo flight, but when the house started to shake we thought differently!!!

Now, for those who suffer the terribly destructive earthquakes we hear of, these things are not nice at all, BUT for this oik in Norfolk, the event was both a little scary and quite exciting. I never dreamed that I would ever be able to say that I had experienced an earthquake - particularly whilst sitting in bed watching a late night movie :-)

Laterzzz......

Neil x

New Material

Well, my first album has been completed and now sits with the record company reading for re-mastering and distribution. A nice feeling I have to say.

So, I am now left with an empty canvas reading to make new music, but what a pallet of colours I have to paint new music with.

My new material is going to be very different to my first album "The Garden". I'm looking at ideas and techniques that I haven't used before and at new "working environments" within my computer. This basically means that instead of recording track by track in the traditional sense, I am going to create soundscapes, backing tracks etc using a kind "shell" set up whereupon I drop in synthesizers and effects and then connect them up differently to how I would if I was using more conventional DAW practices, a kind of modular approach. The approach isn't new by any stretch of the imagination, far from it, but for me it will be new.

I've a bit of experimenting to do first, I need to learn what will work and what won't, but the paper-borne ideas I've had seem to be holding their own in theorectical terms, but as with all things, the practicalities will be the proof of the pudding.

I've become very interested in granular synthesis and bit-crushing as well looking at ways of automating my set ups using this new "modular" method of working. I'm enjoying learning about resynthesis, the taking samples and loading them into synthesizers - for this I'm very keen on using the Protoplasm and STS-26 by the German programmer H.G. Fortune as a means to get me started. Mr. Fortune's little babies are quite awesome and when fed through simple effects such as reverb and delay, their sonic potential is, in my view, immense.

I've also been playing around with a freebie synth called Pokegy - it's a software emulation of the Moog Prodigy, a little monophonic synthesizer that was around in the late 1970's/early 1980's. Of course, being a software emulation means that it is much better than it's hardware ancestor in that it has memory (well you save your patches), it has polyphony (the original was strictly one note at a time!!!) and of course it fits into a black metal box that sits under my desk :-) Now why mention the Pokegy? Well, I think that I'll be using it a lot on the new material, I like the sound, it's easy on the CPU and like the H.G. Fortune stuff, sounds awesome when channelled through different effects.

And I'm also very keen to use speech synthesis and vocoding. These things are old hat now I know, but the draw to use them is there for me. Again, coupled with filters, delays, reverbs and the like, I'm sure that interesting things can be done.

Also coming up in the very near future is a change to the studio area. My beloved partner and soul mate, Anne, now works from home full time and needs to have a proper workspace, so we are installing a new desk for her which means that my DAW set up will become a permanent fixture, dedicated for music purposes. Aren't I a lucky man to have a lady in his life that considers this important?

These are exciting times with lots of good prospects, and I hope these prospects will be realised.

Back soon.

Neil x