Modular

This was Albert Bentley place at twenty past eight, looking wonderful in the morning sun, as the Minx and I set out for a pre-work walk.

I had a lovely afternoon, too, as the tutor, Yoss, announced that in today's class we'd be looking at modular synthesis, which had me rubbing my thighs (figuratively speaking).

So, by way of explanation, instead of the kind of synthesiser you might be used to seeing - the one that is a keyboard with a load of knobs and faders - these set-ups consist of lots of different units - oscillators, mixers, filters, gates - all patched together with cables. Often a sequencer is used instead of a keyboard, so the whole set up looks quite daunting and not at all like a music instrument.

We weren't using physical units but ones in the computer but that didn't diminish the fun. Or the frustrations! A missed patch cable, a misconfigured filter... for all sorts of reasons you can suddenly find yourself with no sound at all. Conversely, there's such a deep joy to be found in tweaking a knob and discovering a whole new sound.

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I finished reading 'Touching The Void' by Joe Simpson. Ironically, having taken weeks and weeks to read this relatively short book, I would recommend reading it in a single day. The story of how Simpson, badly wounded after his climbing companion had no choice but to cut the rope that was holding him, is a gruelling account of how he dragged himself back to base camp, surviving against extraordinary odds. Dipping in and out was not the way to read it!