Hey everyone, Danielle back here from TC Helicon, and now we're going to go over beaming presets into your Perform V. So your Perform V also has the ability to beam in or import an effect style preset from our library of sounds to any of the 1-3 preset buttons. The importable or beamable presets can contain up to seven different effects, harmony, hard tune or pitch correction, megaphone, modulation, reverb, doubling, and echo. So for harmony, we use a combination of the built-in room-sense microphone and the music coming into the aux input to automatically pick up the right key for the harmony voices. You'll need to have a chorded instrument near the room-sense mic or music with a chord information coming into the aux input for this to work. Anything that filters or distorts your voice falls into the megaphone category. You can sound like you're on an old radio or distort your voice for an edgy attack. Be careful with megaphone effects when you've got a loud PA that you're running through though. We need to adjust the EQ a lot to create these sounds, so they're a bit more prone to feedback than our other effects. Hard tune can be a bit misleading at times because it covers both subtle and T-pain style tunings. There are several styles to help you hit the pitch perfectly, but some sound much more natural than others. Hard tune also requires key information to work correctly, so just like the harmony, you'll need to have a chorded instrument or an aux input setup. Modulations or micromods is where you'll find effects like flanger, chorus, and other similar effects. These effects are typically used sparingly, but add a great point of interest to your performance when used properly. Now that we've covered all the presets available, let's walk through how to beam them into your PerformV. So there are two ways that you can beam or import your presets. First, use the PerformV app. Grab your smartphone and download our PerformV app from your app store. Simply press the button in the preset location of where you'd like to beam it. Then follow the instructions once you've selected your preset and simply hit the beam button at the bottom of the app. Hold your app right close to the room sense mic and hit beam. Now the preset is loaded into preset one. You can also simply connect your phone via the mini USB input on the back and beam in presets the exact same way through the app. Again, you can download the PerformV app through your app store on Android or iOS or you can find it on our TC Helicon website. Second way to import new presets is using the voice support app. All you need to do is head over to our website and install the voice support software to your computer. Connect your PerformV to your computer via the USB on the back. Now you can add your presets by simply dragging and dropping them from your available online libraries. Some of our beamable presets come with a hit option and some don't. You can see if the effect you've chosen has a hit function or not within the app right here. So all doubling reverb and echo, your on-board effects, go to their retrospective buttons and are editable under the light blue ring. All of your micromod and harmony presets are editable by holding down your preset button until the light blue ring appears. If the effect imported does have the hit function, the allocated preset number will turn blue when active. This allows you to turn on one or more effects. We like to call these additional effects hit. A common example of hit is a preset that starts out with a simple reverb and then adds on both harmony and echo. You can use the hit either for subtle variations or really dramatic changes. Hit is controlled dynamically, which means that you can make changes to each hit state by switching effects on or off whenever you choose. And as before, this is all saved automatically and in real time, so there's no need to manually save anything you create on the go. So to create a hit function, first make sure that the preset you've beamed in has the hit available. Then activate the preset that you're using and your first on-board effect. Now if you wanted to add doubling and echo, simply click them and click them back off. Now when you use the hit, you'll see the blue adds in doubling and echo. You have now created your first hit. You can also use the hit function to replace effects. So in this case, I have reverb to start with, and when I hit hit, reverb is gone and doubling and echo are activated. To do this, simply hold reverb down when it's green. Now hit the hit function, select doubling and echo, and when you hit one again, it'll go back to reverb. Remember that this is all saved in real time. So back up your unit before importing presets if you'd like to go back to your settings that you had before you started beaming things in. To reset your PerformV to factory settings at any time, simply hold down doubling and echo while rebooting. So that's it for Beamable Presets, but if you have any other questions, feel free to comment them below and we'll see you in the next video.


Ahoy Hoy! I'm Dr. Sumerian, not a real doctor, and today we are going to talk about the other half. This is part two of our series on the recent problems on the SCP wiki. Now, if you watched Tuesday's video or yesterday's video where I made a couple of corrections, you know that pixelated harmony, the user behind almost two percent of the SCP's works, has requested that any of those works be taken off of the SCP wiki, deleted. The SCP wiki has put it to a community vote, and it's almost certainly, certainly going to go in the direction of those articles remaining, which I have to assume was the purpose of the vote in the first place. With that said, how did we get to here? What situation could be so bad? What behavior could be so terrible as to cause people who strongly, and I mean strongly hold to the idea that the author's intentions or sacrosanct when it comes to their work can actually change their minds? A lot of people, after I made the video on Tuesday, I think assumed that was it, which would indicate they hadn't actually watched the video because the video says it'll be a second part, but one person was awkward. How am I supposed to know that you're going to make another video? I just have to assume you only made a little, I'm like, because in the video, anyway, not important. The important part here is that there is a lot, and I mean a lot of context behind this decision. And while I still disagree with the decision, I very much understand the attitude of the people who are making these decisions. So let's take a moment and go back to the point that this sort of started to set off. Harmony was tagging articles that Harmony had written incorrectly. Harmony was also cold posting articles of a lower quality than the SCP Wiki generally expected. I believe most of them survived anyway, which makes sense because Harmony has a huge amount of experience writing for the Wiki, meeting the minimum standard, which is not a very high bar to clear. And ultimately, this led to a little bit of a problem. Anytime pixelated Harmony received critique on posts, the reaction was not always negative, but oftentimes hostile. So the SCP Wiki's staff began to look at the problem from the perspective of, is this going to become a disciplinary issue? Harmony began to not just post lower quality articles, Harmony began to post low quality articles and mistagged them, respond hostily to criticism. And then eventually, and this is the kind of thing that took a little while for it actually occurred, posted a comment on the on mouse's guide to redactions. Now we're going to read that comment here so we can understand what's happened.  And personally, I feel like it's a pretty good guide for black boxing mainly because it does the thing that I have been suggesting to people for a long time and that is, don't black box. So we have a comment from Harmony on this post. The problem is, this person, Harmony has, what is that, 20? 20-ish, maybe 25 revisions within an hour almost. It's a 944 to 1052. The final product is not necessarily objectionable. However, the first comment, the first iteration is incredibly hostile and likely deserving of disciplinary action. So this is a terrible guide. What kind of creative writing side are we that we celebrate something that spits on our core values in favor of deifying pedantry? There's not a single word here that isn't telling people how they're allowed to think and nothing about how they can use an iconic SCP visual element in new creative or interesting ways, instead urging them to not even consider the tool and to throw it directly in the trash. A complete waste of a good author's misguided effort. This is the worst, I'm sorry, it doesn't say this is, this is the worst guide or essay on this wiki. Okay. The final iteration of this is a completely different post. And if you just looked at that, you would think, what's the problem? The issue is, of course, that people still read the first and middling iterations. It doesn't, just because you edit a comment doesn't mean, especially on wiki.dot, because it keeps the history. When you edit a comment, it does not preclude people from having first read it before you edit it or even reading it after you edit it. So this is important because this led to a revocation. A revocation is a low, probably the lowest level actual action when it comes to the disciplinary team. What can be done on the disciplinary team oftentimes is a warning. Don't do this. They send a message. They say, hey, don't do this. A revocation of somebody's membership on the SAP wiki forces them to reapply, which is, as most people who have tried to reapply know, sometimes a time consuming process, at least they don't have to register for wiki.dot, which is the usual barrier to entry for people. But it does, it gives you pause because you can't just ignore it. There's no, it requires you to do something to get back onto the wiki. So you have to acknowledge that a thing has happened. Unfortunately, this was not taken well or lightly by harmony. This led to an eventual, the deletion request that I talked about in the last video, and eventually leaving the wiki. Unfortunately, that's not the only thing that happened. You may recall in the deletion request, quote, that it talked about how if people did not respect harmony's wishes, that harmony would then individually pursue them and make and hold them accountable or something in that vein, right? Maybe a little bit less. No, it was pretty explicit, actually. And so this community vote went up. And the community vote was kind of a solution in search of a problem because the real problem was just delete the articles, right? That was just, that was, everyone was looking for a way not to have to do that. And they found it. I'm not going to re litigate that. I still very strongly believe that they should have just acceded to harmony's request and left it at that. Now we move into, though, sort of a spiraling problem. Pixelated harmony and pixelated harmony's behavior over the last, I'd say, maybe not fully six months, but close to six months at this point, have been incredibly troubling in a number of different ways. I will not speculate on someone's mental health. But just saying the phrase, don't speculate on a person's mental health or I won't speculate on a person's mental health invites speculation and acknowledges that you almost certainly have speculated you're just not going to say it out loud. I'm still not going to do that because it is I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not a psychologist. I have no degrees and anything, not a real doctor. So I can't, I can't actually evaluate this person, but I can describe this person's behaviors. So and compare them to the behaviors that you may recognize in others or that I have personally encountered in others. So when the community vote went up, a large number of people obviously voted to keep the articles on the wiki and I have spoken directly to harmony and received, oh my God, so many screenshoted images of discord conversations and discord conversations and more discord conversations. I've also received, asked for this specifically, what were some of the worst things that you sent to other people? I'd like to see those because you've been banned for harassment on the scp wiki and that's the thing that happened out of these messages.  Now, there was like 20 messages to DJ cactus in a very not maybe 20 is probably exaggerating. There were a lot. There was like a message, then six more messages and somewhat rapid succession. And then it's just a whole thing. But what we're going to do real quick is we're going to look at just the just the three messages that I have that didn't go to DJ cactus that went to essentially what looked like random other individuals. So this is a listing. This is a collection of messages. I'm going to leave names out because I don't think anyone other than the necessarily the principles or people who are already well known and can generally have to deal with this sort of problem already should be named unless it's necessary for the story that I'm trying to get across. The first message, this so called town hall betrays the principles this community claims are its core values.  This so called town hall betrays the principles its community claims are its core values. You have personally betrayed me if and the funny part is I don't have the bottom of this message. I feel though it's going in a bad direction because the next thing it says is if you play a and I'm going to guess a role in my articles staying on the site something something that the fact that it starts with if you do if you do this usually indicates that it means then this will happen. I don't know what then this will happen would have been but all of these messages in general except for maybe the boilerplate at the beginning the the so called town hall betrays the principles this community claims are its core values. That's fine. It's the little additional messages afterwards that just add a little bit of spice to to to and then the wrong kind of spice will say. Harmony sent these messages out to I believe everyone who voted to keep harmonies works on to the wiki on the wiki. So now we have this problem. Those are just the messages that harmony sent to the average user and I assume some people that harmony knew probably got more personalized messages as well specifically because we're talking about DJ cactus here and I'm going to name DJ cactus because first of all DJ cactus is a huge name second of all DJ cactus can handle it. He's a he's a he's a grown man and it sucks that he has been drawn into this in this way I think because it doesn't seem like it's deserved but he has and there's no way to explain what's happening without specifically talking about him so I just have a few messages here from from harmony I like how you're calling something I need to do to live bad faith does it feel good to be this morally bankrupt but it checks out that moral right is meaningless to you moral rights exist dipshit I'm not sure how many warnings you have left I'm leaving well enough alone because of the fallout of tearing you down would hurt people I care about and a on and on and on there's a undercurrent of do what I want and or leave me alone or I will destroy you these are the kind of messages that can get you banned from the scp wiki for harassment period and in a reasonable way if you talk to harmony you're going to find that after the revocation of harmony's account harmony believe that a ban was on the way and given that harmony thought that the best solution was to actually uh hasten it or at least not care and just do whatever and this is a direct result of that the problem is what comes after and there's a strong implication here do what I want or else right the or else came very shortly thereafter and it was and now I understand the problems you can see I don't know how to cover this section of what's happening in a serious way I'm going to or I'm going to try my best without laughing or chuckling or giving it any kind of derision but it will be incredibly difficult because it is ridiculous at this point to retaliate against dj cactus harmony launches a campaign to expose what harmony calls the scp wiki's shadow cabal also known as the yurt conspiracy the yurt is a discord server with a number of prominent maybe some non prominent scp wiki authors users and staff it is used from time to time because it is you know people on that server are part of staff and so on is oftentimes not oftentimes necessarily because I'm not in it I don't know but it has been used to discuss staff duties between staff members as though it were a private message between two people or more than two people this is pretty reasonable behavior as I think most people can see you put a bunch of staff members together in an offsite discord of course there's sometimes going to talk about staff actions and in some cases coordinate those staff actions those happen between the scenes anyway it's a political system of course organization happens there's nothing wrong with that it's a bureaucracy maybe there's something wrong with the way the bureaucracy functions but if it's going to function that way it's pretty reasonable that people are going to act this way it is not insidious it is not anything other than a group of friends hanging out on a discord server and I want you to understand something I have been sent gosh 60 or more images I have scrolled through an offsite repository of images I've looked at the timelines and there is there are two things that I know for sure one well not for sure because you can never know anything for sure but I have two things that I know with an almost absolute certainty one there is no shadow cabal there is no conspiracy to take over the scp wiki or replace it with members of some shadowy nebulous group period if you see people making that claim those people are either misguided or deliberately misleading you and two pixelated harmony believed that were participating in a conspiracy to overthrow the leadership of scp declassified discord server and the subreddit itself and the scp wiki staff now how is it possible that I could be sure of those two things or as sure as I can be of those two things and that's because I've looked through the only person who speaks in conspiratorial language or speaks of speak of things in ways that make it seem as though there is a conspiracy going on is pixelated harmony and I don't this is why it's this is why this is troubling behavior it's the kind of behavior that it absent the context of the belief that it is a conspiracy it just looks like every once in a while an odd comment there's a reuse of language the same terminologies over and over and over again and we're not talking about the basics like calling everything fascist although that exists too but a thing with conspiracy theories that I have often noticed with people who are believers in those conspiracy theories is the reuse of certain phrases or words that are abnormal they're esoteric in their use and for example here one of the words I see used very often is hierarchy or corrupt hierarchy again making no judgments on this person's mental health or any kinds of speculation but everything I see here reminds me heavily of interactions I have had regularly with people who believe in conspiracy theories that the kind of conspiracy theories that make you roll your eyes and so does this and looking through it with that context in mind I'm sure I'm not the only one that sees it now but this is a bigger problem I've also seen like I said 60 or 50 or 60 or 70 it's a lot I've read a lot of people's personal personal conversations and for nothing like at best there's people who like I said talk about how staff can sometimes be insular and needs to be more open and how they'd like to improve the wiki it's not even noble cause corruption which is a thing that can be real this isn't noble cause corruption because it's not corruption it's just people discussing things on a pretty reasonable basis now I you might be saying maybe there is more information that you don't have I have multiple times requested from harmony hard proof hard proof specifically and every time it's a document drop of completely vague nothing it's a nothing burger there's no there there but the worst part of all and I have to be clear about this is that this belief and these troubling behaviors have led to further troubling behaviors some of those pms those threats were to minors if you believe that a shadowy corrupt evil other are doing things almost any behaviors can be justified and that is a problem because pixelated harmony believes this thing exists and has cast about in anger and frustration and hurt almost everyone that harmony has ever been in contact with I want to be clear here if I haven't been already there is no shadow cabal there is no conspiracy there's just people being people some of those people are flawed too but that's mean what this person thinks it means now from this perspective comes the staff's reluctance to delete the articles or to accede to this request I understand where they're coming from in fact I strongly believe that eventually pixelated harmony will come to see this for what it was and probably strongly regret both the behaviors that came after the request for deletion and the request for deletion itself so you might think to yourself if this person is going to regret it shouldn't you protect this person from the consequences of that behavior and on the one hand yes you that is a I should say on the one hand yes that is a good argument on the other hand we consider author autonomy and control over their own works to be sacrosanct either we do or we don't that's how it is it sucks it really does but it still should happen not gonna happen but it should happen now we have to cover a couple of things a couple of tertiary side things that I have encountered in my time in researching this first of all harmony has all but admitted both openly to other people and to me in private that and I should say all but admitted because when confronted with this reality harmony denied that that was the case but the context of phrasing and the timing make it impossible to to believe anything else is happening here but all that admitted that had cactus a seeded to harmony's demands none of this shadow cabal would have come out so harmony would have gone on believing that a conspiracy existed and that harmony was a part of that conspiracy but not believed that it was serious enough to expose the corruption until harmony didn't get what harmony wanted harmony feels wronged and when you feel wrong that I and this is something I very strongly understand as someone who feels wronged by scp staff in the past one thing you want to do is win all the time you want to feel as though you've won like everything that happens to you is sort of you know your own plan and so we can look at some lines from my conversations here where this is all part of a plan to put the screws to the scp wiki staff this is all part of a plan to put pressure on them to put them in an impossible situation where they have to choose between author autonomy or losing 2% of the wiki's works these are statements that were made legitimately and statements that were made as a defense as like hey look at me look how good i'm doing in and of themselves those are troubling but we also have like even just so this shadow cabal thing um harmony has opened up uh irc logs and when i say irc logs i mean all of harmony's irc logs are open to uh people in this offsite thing they're doing work well technically these people are doing because these people uh a lot of them hold the scp wiki in a negative regard and this offsite site this offsite thing which dox's people be clear uh as a matter of uh course and uh is incredibly hostile to the scp wiki from most of what i've read are doing their best to dig through them but they're digging through them for their own reasons they're digging through them because they want to find dirt and dirt that's probably unrelated to what we're talking about here but every private conversation that harmony has had every private chat uh that harmony has ever had is now open to the public and we're talking about somebody who's a moderator a administrator and a member of staff and a user of the scp wiki for 10 years for a whole ass decade so of course there will be things in those logs that are terrible that's given i mean they should have been that does that mean they should be out there probably not because there's gonna be a lot of things that could get people in trouble in uh hot water or just make them feel bad about themselves and it's has nothing to do with any of this situation they have no involvement at all with any of it and yet they will be hurt too all because harmony wants to hurt the people that hurt harmony period god there's a particular line in here that i feel it was almost the last thing i think that was said um yes and this sort of illustrates the point i'm making and also is troubling for other reasons but we'll go from that oh and this is from harmony oh and i posted some selfies on kf as part of my successful effort to win their trust so if anyone tries to shame me for it they dumb which is true you post pictures yourself you do whatever i didn't post anything explicit which is also true unless you think toes are lewd not really sure why anyone would i can share some of those with you if you really want to see or think you would need to have it for full context i don't understand why i would need that for full context i only mention it because someone might bring it up to impute my credibility i could see that happening i guess i did it on purpose to make horny lonely internet boys pay attention to what i was saying long enough to get over their knee jerk reaction and listen to me like i said it worked and i respond no i'm good legitimately uh i actually wrote no i'm good no i'm good uh i figured benedict want to lie by a mission and so on and so forth there are two problems i have with this statement obvious well three problems if we really want to be technical first of all i'm not interested in pictures of other people second of all um that's the one extra one that i wasn't thinking about second of all um this is again the idea that i have to win right so i'm doing this to manipulate other people to my bidding which is exactly what you're trying to supposedly expose but thirdly the language is troubling to me horny lonely internet boys there are four words there i'm find one of them incredibly objectionable because of the implications want to guess which one of those it is it's not horny it's not lonely it's not internet self reflect harmony please i know and and obviously i'm maybe i'm reading too much into that obviously it's just you say the words consider it what you just said and maybe reevaluate your position also and we're going to get this more in generalities now rather than the specifics of very troubling behavior and very troubling language under no circumstances is this acceptable behavior i can only evaluate the conspiracy theories and the behavior based on what is in front of me and i know i i literally impugned somebody for saying that earlier for saying i can only judge your videos by what's in this one video even if you promise that there will be more i have to assume this is the only thing that you've created and blah blah blah i have asked three or four times and had three or four rounds of files sent my way is an answer to those requests but i have requested concrete evidence of what you are claiming happened and you have sent me vagaries and the or at best you saying stuff in comments and private conversations that seems very conspiratorial and sinister and no one else agreeing with you people continuing conversations of course but in no way saying the things that you're saying this does not exist this is not real and i'm saying this to everybody now it's not worth considering at this point are there other problems on the scp wiki are there problems with scp staff is there problems with the scp harassment teams secret organization and the way they handle problems yeah there's problems in any bureaucracy should they delete these works as this user has requested yes they're not gonna i find that a problem it's not as but none of these things justify this behavior and it needs to stop and if it can't stop if this user won't stop the rest of us and this is the this is the main reason at the end of the last video i go i hate my life because i've done a whole hour on this if this user won't stop the rest of us have got to ignore it we've moved beyond the point where we can be concerned for this user's health we've moved beyond the point where we can not necessarily they're friends of this person and those friends should continue to try and get through to them i'm not one of them you're probably not one of this is the kind of and but if you see these stories come up they're they're nothing they mean nothing it's sound and fury and that's it i think that is it actually i think we'll move on now god i hate that i have to cover this at all but it has to be clarified thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video please hit the subscribe button and then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when i upload new videos and then head on over to patreon.com forward slash d samaritan and pledge at any level like everybody here on the screen already has including dr j redacted and syngeriki who have both pledged at a hundred dollars and morgan who has pledged at forty dollars it's nice to know that i'm not alone out here and i will see you all again on tuesday where we'll finally get back to irreverent silly content like the uh like the dank memes videos


Hello, good evening. Thank you very much for coming. It's always great to see people back in the room at the JSC. Welcome also to the people who join us online and we hope some more people will join us who maybe didn't find the room in the first attempt, which is always a problem in these hyper-securitized times. So my name is Fabio Gigi, I'm the chair of the Japan Research Center here at SOS and it is a great honor for me to present our guest speaker today. One in the series that we were thinking about at the beginning of term, artists in conversation, to really look what Japan has brought to Western arts, what Western arts have brought to the practice of Japanese art and sort of to think in more detail really in concrete cases about what this intercultural communication means, what it stands for and where it can take us. So tonight's speaker is the composer, director and musician Francesca LeLohet. She joins us here. She's been, she's stayed in Japan. I just bring up, it's a very long biography and she'll be talking very impressive biography. She has worked on a number of very interesting projects. One was called How Is It For You, which takes Mori Orgaes, vita sexualis, as a springboard to explore sex education in Japan and the UK. And the second major work is Kaki, The Key, based on the novella by Tanizaki Junichiro, which is an immersive opera. So both in terms of genre and both in terms of presentation, a really very new and interesting thing. And we'll see during the talk some of the concrete ways in which this has been realized. So with more further ado, I hand over to you. Thank you very much for coming and it's a pleasure. Thanks very much for coming today in person and online. So yeah, a little bit about me, Francesca LeLohet. I studied music in the UK for my undergrad, my masters. And throughout that time, I came into contact with music written by Japanese composers in my flute lessons. And so I got really interested in the sound of the shakuhachi and then started to research a little bit more into the music of gagaku, which is a court music of Japan. And then just, you know, went down rabbit holes and was reading as much as I could. And I eventually felt that my interest in Japanese music and cultures was influencing my own compositions. So I decided to, I had to go to Japan and actually experience it first hand. So I was very fortunate to get a place on the Daewa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Scholarship Program. So I went in 2015, completed the scholarship and just stayed for quite a while and kept working with Japanese artists. And one of the main projects I wanted to create was the key, which is an opera, as Fabio has said, is inspired by the novella by Junichiro Tanizaki. And yeah, I'll be speaking about that today.  It is sung throughout, there are some spoken words as well, but it is staged. So operas seem like the best way of describing it. I'm sure most people are familiar with Tanizaki's work. I don't know, has anybody read the key or kage? Yeah. Yeah, yes. I hope Clive played in it, so I should hope that he did. Excellent research. Yeah, so it's not one of Tanizaki's most famous novels, I would say, but yeah, it's got a lot of common traits of Tanizaki in it, this exploring Western influence on Japanese society, fetishism, sort of difficulties of communication between the characters and so on. Yeah, I'll talk about why it interested me in a bit. So the opera features three singers, Dancer, and four Japanese instruments and four instruments from the Western classical tradition. And it's site specific, and by that I mean it's not performed on a stage or in a concert hall, but it is performed in a specific place, so for this it's in a house. So the drama of the story is domestic, so it makes sense for the opera to take place in a domestic setting. And there are performances happening in different rooms of the house and the audience freely move throughout as the performance is unfolding. So that's what I mean by immersive. And the libretto, which is the text that the singers sing and recite, is in both English and Japanese, it's a flips between the two throughout. So yeah, I touched on it a little bit when I was talking about the key, I should probably speak a little bit more about the novella itself. So the key is told through the diary entries of a husband and wife, and they're pretending that they're not reading each other's diaries. But they are, and they're using it as a way to tacitly communicate with each other about how they're dissatisfied with their love life. And then as the reader is you're kind of going through reading the book, reading these stories, you also get a sense of the daughter and how she's involved, and you learn a bit about the lover, a man called Kimura, that the father, well, yeah, father with the daughter, the husband starts to push the wife towards. So yeah, there's a lot about these difficulties to communicate face to face, even though they've been married for about 20 years. There's a lot of talking about engender expectations. The husband's definitely struggling with the fact that he's struggling with getting older and with impotency and being impotent and that being really difficult for him to deal with. And the wife is kind of expected to be very demure and not have any kind of sexual desires and so on. So there's quite a lot of expectations that they challenge bit by bit. And changing cultural identities because they all the characters sort of explore new ideas and culture that's been brought in from the West. Because it's set in the 50s in Japan. So yeah, so these are all kind of underlying themes in the novel. As something that really, really interested me about it was, as a reader, you're also reading these diary entries. So you also feel that you're peering in on something that you shouldn't really be reading. And you're also a bit of a detective because you're trying to work out, well, is the husband just saying that to manipulate the wife? What is the wife doing whilst you're reading the husband's diary? So there's a lot of guesswork. So I wanted to turn that reader experience into a audience experience and that informed the whole staging of the work. So yeah, so we've got four characters and I paired each character with one Japanese instrument and one Western instrument. And I was very specific with the pairings. I chose them to bring out the kind of psychological and emotional states of the characters and also their character traits. So this for me is what I thought was the best way of representing them. So that the instrumentalists really become part of the character. The character is only portrayed by a singer but actually by the whole trio. Yeah. And so we have the husband and the wife, the daughter, she does, there's nothing written from her perspective in the novel. So the whole daughter character that created in the opera is just gleaned from inferences and she's quite a new character that I created. And you'll also notice that Kimura also, again, nothing from him in the novel, is portrayed by a dancer. And I did this because I thought he needed a more abstract art form to portray him. So I didn't think he should speak. I thought there should be more space for not only the audience but also the characters to kind of imagine who is Kimura, what does Kimura mean to them? And I think Kimura means something very different to every character in it. So I chose a slightly more flexible, abstract art form to represent him. So yeah. So these are just photos from the performances in Tokyo 2019. So you can get a little sense of what they look like in each of their rooms. So we have the husband, accompanied by a double bass, and Shaka Hachi. And then we have the wife, who is accompanied by Shou and Cello. Does everybody know what the show is? No. So the show is a mouth organ. As you can see this one here. You hold it here. So it's bamboo pipes and each of them have a metal bead inside. And the sound is made by inhaling and exhaling. And you have to heat it up. So if you see in the video later, this is kind of like spinning it over a hob. That's what they're doing. Which is a bit of a problem for risk assessments in the UK. So she was playing the show with the shower. And we have the daughter trios. We have the violin and hip-hop percussion because, well, we've got the kotsutsumi, which is the handheld percussion. So she actually, Ogao-san is often playing in Kabuki and certainly Japanese orchestra ensembles as well. And then the shime daiko is the one just to left, which you would play with sticks. And then we have Kimura trio. So yes, so originally I got Kimura and paired in with two instruments, the biwa and the clarinet. Later on, so the key was performed in Tokyo 2018 and then 2019. And then we brought it to London in 2019 as well. And it was actually various budget issues that meant couldn't bring everyone. And okay, can we find a biwa player in the UK? No. Can we find a biwa player in Europe? Not really. So you're just like, well, maybe we don't have a biwa player and a clarinetist. And then Kimura doesn't have a trio and he was free to move throughout the rooms and maybe interact a little bit more with the other characters. Actually, that made a lot more sense, I felt. So it's interesting how out of a budget constraint actually sort of worked quite well. So because my idea for Kimura is that he's seen, he means something different for every character. So I felt that if he were to go into the rooms or near where the other characters are, he could change his expression. He can become the version of Kimura that they see him as, if that sort of makes sense. There'll be questions later as well. Yeah. So so many important things about the music. They all rooms perform simultaneously. So wherever you are in the house, you, the audience will be moving through, you could, you can go into one room and watch one trio, but you would probably still overhear music from the other trios or, I'm probably simultaneously. And that idea was so that as an audience member, you never get to see the full story. They intentionally want you to miss things. And that's because of the whole idea of reading these diary entries and you don't get the full story. You have to fill in the blanks yourself. And you know, as you're reading the, you're following one character, it's not like all the other characters have stopped living. So that was the idea behind that. And it really depends on the building, but sound bleed. So being able to overhear these other rooms became a really important part of the piece. And not only just overhearing it, but kind of sensing it. I remember we did an after talk on one of the performances and it was in Japanese and there was me and the choreographer and we had a critic come and interviewers and just some of the, some of the performers took part as well. And they're saying, ah, it's the K-Hi. And I was just like, I don't know what that is, but it's probably right. But I have to remember correctly, but it's this sort of sensing that presence. And I think you really do get that you sense a presence of the other performers, the other people in the room, the other audience members as well, actually. That's something else you can talk about. Yeah. So I spoke a little bit about why I chose these instruments. But because, and I say it's to really convey the emotional, the psychological states of the characters. So like the daughter can be quite reactive. So for me, it felt quite good that she had maybe some explosive percussion. And you know, the violin can, it can be a beautiful sweet voice, but can also be really grainy and then it could also be really dynamic and aggressive points. The wife is always trying to keep this sort of serene, perfectly poised, give this presentation to people. So, so having the show with these very high, just floating tones made sense. But then she's got the cello as well, which I think can show a bit more like an earthy kind of, yeah, heartfelt emotion as well. And also give you some edges because she's got edges. So yeah, so that was my idea. But then the way you hear these instruments also depends on where you are in the house and the furnishings of the house. And, you know, these instruments were created for different places to be heard. So the, you know, the string instruments like Violet and cello have come to be developed so they sound great in a concert hall. And that's definitely can't be the same for, say, Shaka Hachi and Biwa, where you want to hear them in a room that's got the tummy flooring and your audience are quite close if they're being audience because you might just be obviously playing it for yourself, meditative purposes in the case of Shaka Hachi. And you should be able to hear natural sounds of the natural world around you. So yeah, they've got different sonic capabilities and they're heard very differently in the spaces. So I thought that was quite an interesting fusion and a challenge as a composer. Yeah. And I was talking about how Tanizaki is very concerned with this Western influence in Japan and how the characters responded to that and how they maybe flirted with it. For instance, oh, too many spoilers, but the wife would put on Western dress when she was gay out to the movies with Kimura. And but then she would definitely wear Kimono when she was at home speaking with her husband. So they're sort of using what they want from both cultures for whatever situation suits them best was my reading of it. So that's why I thought it was good to have an instrument representing both cultures say to portray the characters. And I also chose those instruments, the Japanese instruments, because I felt a bit more comfortable with them. So during my time in Japan, I did study and take lessons on Shaka Hachi, Biwa, Sho, I played in a gagaku ensemble on the show. So I was sort of playing to my own strengths a bit as well. It was actually really hard writing an opera, if you can guess. And this is like writing four operas because they all happen at the same time. Yeah, we're speaking about this recently in the context of cross cultural composition. And of course, it's cross cultural because you've got Japanese instruments and Western instruments, but I think it's really also cross cultural within Japanese cultures. The instruments come from really different traditions. So and they have a whole different repertoire and way of playing. So and notations. So the Shaka Hachi and the show do not use the same kind of notation. They don't play together. You wouldn't they don't really exist in the same world. And then you've got we had different singing styles, because they weren't all opera singers. Actually, each time we've done it, one of the singers has been for more of an acting background. Usually the daughter twice has been an actor. So that gives a very different quality. And then when the Biwa was involved in Kyuura's trio, they also sung or narrated. And then that's got a very different kind of quality as well. The dancer. So the dance actually we were two dancers, but they were both physical theater actors. And they worked with a choreographer who was from a butto background. I don't know how many people know about butto in here, probably. Yeah. So it's inspired by butto. It wasn't strict following these kind of characters that are often within butto. But yeah. So that was a totally different. You wouldn't see a butto dancer with the Shaka Hachi usually as well. So a whole different mix there. And the architecture. Oh yeah. So when we did the performances in Japan, they were in traditional style houses with tatami floors, shoji, suma, that sort of thing. Not the case when we did it in the UK. But yeah, I'll talk about that a little bit later as well. Yeah. So and then the costumes again, a very different thing with the UK for the wife. She was wearing kimono in Japan, but it didn't really make sense for her to wear kimono in the UK. So yeah, we changed that to but still like something that would make sense for a sophisticated Japanese woman of around middle age to wear. Yeah. So you've got a lot of different elements coming together. I would say to represent these multifaceted characters. And yeah, I was trying to say to try and resonate well in the house. You know, sometimes we had to play with levels and you'd have to, I lost a lot of weight when doing this opera because there was like running from one room to the other quite a lot. They're like, okay, we have to, this has to be quiet an hour. You can afford to play louder. Yeah, as I was saying, the instruments are built for different things. Some unexpected results for me as a composer was sort of delving into how these Japanese instruments, their repertoire, how they play, their modes of behavior when they're performing as well. But the sort of their ideas about ornamentation and also like the oral tradition, like there's, they have sheet music, like a lot of their pieces be written down. But then it's like the very base of it. That's the basic level. And then if you want to learn how to actually perform it, you learn by listening and following your teacher. And then there's just so much more freedom and quite a lot of them like the way that freedom in tempo or freedom and taking a breath and the space is really important. And all of that actually really influenced how I wrote the music for all instruments and singers combined. Yeah, which meant that I did struggle a bit with how to write it all in Western notation. So it's in like a five line stave. I chose to do that because that was a way that that was like the common language that everyone could read. But it is a bit of a compromise. So there were definitely some points where I was just like, oh, I could just do a big scribble, a scribble like that, because that's kind of what we want. And then we could talk about it. And then that'll work, which was the best way sometimes. But yeah, there was definitely some issues there. Yeah. Well, Clive would be happy to know. I think they created a process that's shaped by the performers in that instrument. So it yeah, it became really apparent that we had so many different experiences and skills in the rooms. And that was really going to benefit the piece. And these, yeah, these different playing sensibilities, the way to say experiences, we had some people who were excellent improvisers, but we had some people who were more experts in the kind of like the contemporary music field. And then had somebody who played vaudeville kind of like comedic music. And then actors as well, and a choreographer. And, you know, it meant that this project provided something new for everyone involved in a new challenge for everyone, but also hopefully enabled them to bring what was unique about them into the project. And I think that really strengthened them. Yeah. So we did a lot of discussing and sharing of ideas throughout the whole rehearsal process. Yeah. And improvisation, this kind of guided improvisation and giving space, especially for the Japanese instrument players to improvise and add automation in a way that was idiomatic for their instrument, became really important as well. So that was a good challenge for me for some performers who hadn't experienced that so much before. So should we watch some? I think, yeah. And so I'm going to play, we have, so the opera is about an hour to an hour and a half long, so we're not going to watch it all. But I have a trailer video from the Tokyo premiere, so I thought it would be good to have a look at. Oh, where is it? Yes. Yeah. It's behind this and if you look. Oh, okay. Let's do it. Okay. So that's a bit of, there's a bit of the, we do questions at the end, but I'd love to hear it. Thank you. Anyway, yeah. Okay. So this little quite here is a question that was posed by the International Shaka Hachi Festival Prague Symposium a couple of years ago. Should these musical worlds coexist or create a whole new world altogether? So I don't think they're trying to make a rule or anything, but I was thinking about it in respect to the key. And I think that there's no way they can coexist. They have to work together to create a specific world of the key. And that's because it's all about portraying the characters and telling their story. And the instruments, they're so integral to the drama. So, yeah. And I think that together, these combinations of the instruments really working together, as long as well as all these aleatorics, so these kind of random elements. So each room is unfolding in its own time. And there are some cues about where they match up, but it is quite free. So every performance is slightly different. And of course, the audience, they are totally free. You never know what an audience is going to do. And they're all in totally different rooms. Every audience member has a different experience to another audience member. So they're all experiencing the sonic world in their own way. And the acoustics and the natural environment, the time of year when we performed it, we did a research and development performance in August in 2017. And so we had the sounds of the not yet dead cicadas. And whereas in May it was slightly different. And, yeah, sort of, I think all these factors come together to create a whole new sonic world, in my opinion. So, yeah. So in August 2019, we brought the key to London as part of Tetetet, the opera festival. And it was, I'd always kind of had the idea I'd love to do it in the UK. And I wanted to bring the Japanese instrument players from Japan's pair with UK based players, like the clarinet in the violin and the cello, and then maybe to have half of the performers of the characters, the two of the singers, or maybe a singer and a dancer from Japan and two singers from the UK. That was my idea. But we actually then ended up building it with pretty much everyone who was based in Europe. And we brought one singer and the dancer over from Japan. And we were sort of thinking for a little while, should we try and do it in a Japanese house in the UK? Or should we really embrace this new context? And we actually did it in a very kind of modern sort of 1960s originally architect's house. It was very swish, very stylish. So that really affected the staging of the performance. And we had decided to keep the story the same, but change the context. So the idea was, it was a Japanese family who had moved to the UK, started their life there, and the daughter had been born in the UK. To try and make it make sense. The whole idea is that when you walk into the house and you walk into the performance of the key is that you're immersed in it. And it would be such a shame if you walked into it and felt like you were watching a weird stage performance and you weren't really involved and that it didn't quite match. So we've actually changed the staging to suit every venue. It's got to be responsive, I think. So it's also a modern house that kind of updated the context a bit. So that was reflected in the costumes that the performers wore. But I kept the text, the libretto, largely the same. It was still Japanese English. I felt that was really important. It just kind of put a few sections. It was very long in Japanese and the start of each movement that they play, they sing the date of the diary entry. And I just changed all of that to English to try and give the audience a bit of a hook so they could get involved. But yeah, it was, the main thing was the main thing was adapting it to fit the venue and the context. So I thought we could watch a little bit of that, if you like, as well. So it's a full video. So I'll just show a section of it. Oh, that's all I have to say. Yeah, I think that would be a great time if you have any questions. Thank you so much for listening today. And I have a website that is dedicated to the keys, www.thekeyopera.com, if you want to have a little look in your own time as well. Cheers, thank you. Thank you very much. Let's quickly turn the lights on now. That's better. Thank you so much. That was really fascinating. I'm sure you have lots of questions, but I wanted to start by asking you something very concrete, because it's, I mean, it's a brilliant idea to take something that the characters think of unspeakable. They can't talk about it, but they write about it, but then you transform it into singing, and they sing about it. But of course, they don't hear each other's voices. The audience is the only, the audience are the only ones who actually hear what is being performed. And I was wondering, there was, there was a, and sort of the spatial compartmentalization is maintained to a certain degree, but there's also extra, there's one moment where Kimura hands a picture, but you could speak a little bit about the photographs and their role, because they seem to be the thing that is exchanged, that is the only thing that can actually go from one room to the other. Yeah, there were a couple of moments where we sort of broke the rules, which I felt was just really important for the drama. But yeah, like you say, most of the time the audience are let into this very intimate space, and they're the only ones who can really listen to their stories. But there were just, there were certain points that were so important in the drama that I felt had to be shown. So yeah, the passing of the photographs is one. And then actually, at the very end of the opera, they are all brought together, which again just seemed to sort of had to bring it to a close in a way, and had to, wanted to bring the whole audience together at the end as well. So that seemed an important way of doing it. But then they stand out as very important moments, because it's not happened throughout the whole thing, I think. Does that make sense? Yes, please. Questions from the floor? You will have some members of the audience that you could see. Yes, so we have one here, and then we'll come to you. Yes, please. Well, thank you very much indeed. It's a pleasure to see the performance being wherever it was. And there should be reminded of it from what was three years ago, and a couple of comments on a question. I mean, your description of the outset, I mean, was very helpful, but it's also certainly what your initial description, one could get as an audience member, what you were saying was that I didn't sense the absolute be-work, and the three clarinets, but apart from that, you could get what was supposed to happen. And if anything, I would also say that I could hear more there around the house than you could necessarily in the video. In fact, I would say your description of it reminded me more of my experience than the video itself. It's incredibly difficult to represent in film. Which kind of gets me towards my question. So I'm sure I wasn't there when the cameras were there, and obviously that involves the more choices. I can't help thinking of a comment that Pony Rain said about Tarama Suji, the theatre of film. And he did a show in Amsterdam where everybody was going to go around in their own cars and get unique experiences.  And so, you know, it wasn't entirely as rant, but obviously the same for your filming. So then you say a little bit more about the choices of your filming. Yeah. Well, with the UK film, we had two videographers who arrived about two hours before the performance and said, so what do you want us to do? And they said, well, it happens in four different rooms. And I said, yeah, over two different floors of the house. Well, then I picked up a few moments sort of like the passing of the photographs and some kind of, basically key moments that I think an audience member maybe needs to know in order to form this story so that they don't come out of it missing the opportunity to see how multifaceted the characters are.   So I picked up a couple of moments, but also some of those important moments, the music is louder in those rooms and it's quieter or not at all in one or the other rooms or the dancer is physically moving into that space. So the audience are really free, but they're given hints. And audience members are again, very welcome to just stand in a quiet space where no one is performing and or do the exact opposite of the crowd. But the way that I've kind of guided the music so you can pick up these anchor points of the story, inform the filming with the Tokyo ones, the videographers came to rehearsals and every performance. And then we pieced together a trailer at the end. And then that's a bit different for a trailer.  So that was just quite a lot back and forth between me and the video editors deciding, okay, there was a shot in the trailer where you the camera went from one room into the next room into the next room. And I thought that was really important because it shows that the spaces were open and and that the audience could actually see in that house two rooms at the same time, so I say. So yeah, there's that kind of informed how we did the filming and how we made the trailers. Because I just, in my experience of, you know, in Liverpool, yes, you must have guided me. There was obviously something that was started before I thought it was loud. And then, yes, then you were aware of something happening over there. But you're here and I'm closer to these performers than I am to you now. And it seems kind of disloyal and rude, you know, just for this walk out. And eventually I got it and realised I did have to move. I had to have an inconstant loyalty, which was, you know, part of the show. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, a lot of people said the same thing. Like, yeah, I quite like that. Thank you. Yes, there's a question about. Oh, God, no, I had a panic dream that someone couldn't turn up and I had to do it. Yeah, no, no, I wasn't tempted to do it myself. But as a composer, I can't play the trumpet, but I know how the trumpet works and I can write for trumpet. So, yeah. So in some ways, that's quite similar to just as your work as a composer. And then the other way is just sitting down with a performer and discussing, OK, if I want this kind of sound or I want to create this kind of atmosphere, I think it should be like this. What do you think?  And so that back and forth helps you to shape the music. I actually, I've brought some samples of the scores and the libretto, the text, if anybody wants to have a look. I can put them on the table if you want to have a look. I also brought some shakuhachi and show music, like written in the notation that they would use if you want to compare. Thank you. As a composer, I'm curious to hear you experience working with Japanese instrumentists, because they're very different in notations, very different in the sense of timing. Because I most of them don't have a very strict sense of counting. You neither do singers. When you are developing your score, what strategy do you use to contextualize everything? Because you have the Western instrumentation and then you have the Japanese one. How do you do synchronization and explain between the Western and the Japanese? Yeah, so the Japanese instrumentists, Japanese instrument players I was working with, they all read Western notation. So that meant, okay, we can use that as the common language and so everyone will understand what's going on. But then, yes, that you say definitely this kind of timing, I think there was points where just in the rehearsal, I'd say, I've put a pause here and you just breathe and then make it clear, okay, I want you to follow the violinist here, I want you to follow the percussionist here, because it just needs a bit more space. Or because they're very much linked with the performers, there was quite a lot of cues from them. So she needs a moment to turn the page. So when she lifts her head up or something, maybe the cue can come from the performance. There's quite a lot of physical cues. There's definitely a way of getting around that. And then, say, for the Shaka Hachi, for instance, like I might write the melody line. But then ornamentation, for some specific ornamentation that I knew I wanted, like I want Morayaki here, like the overblowing sort of sound here. But then the rest of the time, maybe I'm just, you know, I'm up for, you bring what you want to bring, let's see what that works. And because I've written the dynamics or if they know what's happening in the words, so they know the context. So there was, so we could be a bit more free about how to shape their line. Yeah, I guess it was kind of how we did it. There was full concurrence between what we're using. Yes, yeah, yeah. How much coordination do you have between them? A little bit. Sometimes it was, say, for passing the photo. So I'd say to one room, especially if they were next door, be like, wait until they've finished that movement or you hear that line, and then you can start or something. Or sometimes it was even for balance in the different buildings. Okay, it's too loud. Usually it was okay if these two rooms are going at the same time, but in this different house, they have to be a bit more spacious. So one has to wait for a bit. And so to this thing, you be reading your diary at this point, and it's just quiet. So this is the other thing. They're always acting. It's like they're constantly on stage, and the instrumentalists as well. So there was a bit of freedom there about that kind of thing. That's sort of how we did it. So there were little cues, but it wasn't strict, because number one, I think that would be impossible. And number two, that's not all I wanted, because I wanted it to feel like they were living and that you'd really walked into someone's weird house and you'd kind of, you know, there was an actual realness to it, I think. No, thank you. Yes, please. I'm trying to just say I was really inspired by, at the beginning, you were talking about your concert. And I was just like, wow, amazing concert. And then to pass forward to the end of presentation, we get to see it. I was, unfortunately, I didn't get to see it in my life. But I just, for me, that's really exciting and inspiring to see when you have this idea that unites all your patterns of interest. And then just to be able to take it right through to completion. That's quite inspiring to me, as an early on in my study of projects and stuff like that. I wanted to ask you about how this process was from the conception of the initial idea. And we just first came to this, how long, how long were you working on your idea of going forward into publishing? What's important to have? Yeah, it was really long. I actually came up with the idea when I was living in Scotland, and I came across the key in a second-hand bookshop. And I said, Tanazaki, it's like, oh, yeah, I know Tanazaki. And I pulled it out. I had a naked lady on the front. I thought, oh, that looks interesting. Obviously important. And then I was reading it and then I had the idea for the concept, like, oh, it could be very initial. It could be staged. And then developed it more as like, oh, it should be staged in a building. Oh, it should have people at different rooms. Oh, that'd be great. And then obviously the ideas got bigger and bigger and bigger. But I was just studying my masters at that time and it was living in Scotland. So I had all these ideas. That initial concept was there, but then it just sort of sat there for a while. That was maybe 2011 or 2012. And then it moved to Japan 2015 and was doing the scholarship and then was coming towards the end of the scholarship. I thought, okay, that idea I've had on the Batburner, maybe we could revisit that. Now I've actually got a bit more understanding. Maybe I can now try read the key in Japanese as well. And then I thought, oh, well, now it could also have Japanese instruments in it because that would make sense because I hadn't thought about that originally. I hadn't thought about doing the text in English and Japanese originally because I didn't know any Japanese as well. So at the time, so guess going on the scholarship kind of accelerated it and came to the end of the scholarship and thought, okay, now I'm ready to do something and then started developing it. So that was like maybe March 2017 and we did a research and development. So we tried out about 20 to 30 minutes worth of material to sort of test just my crazy idea of work and getting people interested and involved and so on. I was fortunate to meet a producer who was based at the Gai Dai, the Tokyo University of the Arts and so and then they said, oh, you should try it in this space that's been bought by an arts community organization and then you can work with them. And so there's a lot of just like meeting people and talking to the right people and getting them excited to for them to then get other people excited for it to sort of snowball a bit. And then lots of unpaid work and then applying for funding and just building the right team of people to get really invested in it. So yeah, I guess it took quite a while. Thank you. People online, please feel free to put your questions into the Q&A function. We have one more question from the floor and then we have a question from virtual space Barbara Abram, you'll be up next. So please. Yeah, I wanted to ask a bit more about the underlying structure of the music. Presumably it's driven by the structure of the story, obviously, but I'm wondering if there's some sort of, I was going to say key structure, but I mean it's atoneable, right? So it doesn't have any keys ironically. But is there some kind of underlying structure to the music through the music? Yeah, I guess there is thematic material. So there's a melody as a theme that happens first in the husband's room. And then for me, that kind of is maybe a motif in a way and that happens when the husband is doing one particular thing. So then when the wife is reflecting on it, it's sort of echoed in the cello in her room. And then when the daughter's may be talking about it, it sort of, it comes into a new variation, a new role in her room. So there is the certain material that kind of links them all together. Yeah, it's not any key. It is atoneable, but it's also got quite a lot to do with the shows, the pictures are set, and there are certain chords that resonate really beautifully on the show. So that actually has quite a lot of implication, harmonic implication in those rooms. Yeah, throughout, really. Yeah, so there's, yeah, there is definitely quite a bit of progression there, but it's not like a Western tonal harmony sort of thing. Thank you. So we have one question from Barbara Abram. Hello, Barbara, I can hear us. You may have to unmute yourself. Okay, we make up, no, no, sorry, we may come back to you. Is there any other questions? Yes, please. I was just wondering at what stage in the composition did you know who the performers were going to be? And were elements of what you composed specific to the people who were going to be the first performers? And I'm thinking with this kind of project where there's a certain amount of flexibility and interact and improvisation with say, for example, the later works of Luigi Donald, he was composing them for people he knew. So he even writes in the score the names of the performers, not soprano, cello, whatever, the names of the performers. Was there anything like that with your process? And how did it, and if there was, how did it then affect the overall effect of the work other people performed instead? Yeah, I knew quite a lot of the performers before it started. So yes, for some of them it did influence it, especially there are some semi-pro amateur performers in there. So that affected how like the complexity of the music that I wrote for them. And then also sort of knowing their strengths a bit, like I knew the double bassist was a great improviser, so that sort of thing. It did affect it. And then when I had some different performers the second time around in Tokyo and also in London, yeah, sometimes I did have to make certain adjustments. Also, like a major one, like for the singer Hiroshi who plays the husband, he's actually younger than the daughter, in London, he's got like some a hairspray, I don't know if I can make it a bit rare. But he's a tenor, not a baritone, so there were a couple of movements that I just moved up a third, I had to adapt it slightly because it would fit better in his range. The two people, the first daughter and the last daughter, because they were more actors, sometimes I'd written music it was a process of getting to know them through the rehearsals and then making some adaptations as well. So yeah, it did, it became quite personal and that's why I think creating it really was a credit to everyone involved and it was quite inspiring. Okay, let's try again. Barbara, Barbara Abraham, are you there? Incredible silence. Right, yes, I actually can write over, but if there's any more questions, yes, please, yes, Lucia. I'd like to get more about the audience, the Japanese audience, what was the reaction that, whether they moved from one thing to the other? Oh, yeah, oh yeah, a mixture. Yeah, some people were just sit and watch, but even in the UK as well, we did talk about should we have ushers for a while, like people who could just gently say, it's okay, you can move now. We didn't want to be too, we don't want to guide people too much, but so what we did do is we kind of had ushers near the start because it takes people a while to understand what's going on and to get comfortable in the space. And it starts with everyone in one room and then they overhear the other rooms and then they're free to move. So we did need people to just go, and now you can get up and move about the start, but then after that, people start to get used to it and then they don't really need any help and they did, yeah, and they did move around or take a seat and just kind of, yeah, listen to all the other rooms as well. Sometimes they stood incredibly close to the performers, sometimes, yeah, but it was, yeah. Interesting, yes. Yes, please. Thank you. Tell us a little bit more about the house in London in Goa, I mean, you said it was not a Japanese house, but in my sense, defended its belief. I thought it was a Japanese house around this garden that's sort of looking well, but very in a very formal way, and it wasn't, it was a well-lit house, but somehow I got the gloominess of the rumours and the oppression of these rumours, you know, and what does she know about what he knows about who she knows about. Anyway, what was the most choice in the house? Well, my producer here suggested it, she'd met an architect and they were willing, it was actually, people actually lived in that house, so we had to wait for the teenage son to get up in the morning to get in the room. It's eight times like the football finish. It's not a glamorous life when it goes like that, but yeah, and so, and I was in Japan, I didn't get to see the house before we did our first rehearsals, I just, luckily a couple of people in the team had been and they took a video around and sent to me. I was really nervous, really nervous before the start because I thought it's got massive windows, she's totally different, it's got hard floors, it's, yeah, is it gonna gonna work at all? It's got like colourful furnishings and so on, so I was really nervous, but then I thought more about kind of the essence of it and decided it sort of intensified this peeking in a bit because intensifies the voyeurism a bit, I think, because you've got these massive windows, but they're not actually communicating, they're just peering in on each other and they're, you know, they're performing for each other in a way and they go, oh no, I really don't care about you, oh, I'm going to flirt with this man and, you know, so intensified that and yeah, and it did have kind of like sliding spaces, the spaces could be changed quite a bit, which worked really well and also it, it felt a bit like a model home in a way, like this is where a happy family should live, so having a really dysfunctional family in that space, I thought also like heightened that, that sense of they really can't communicate with each other and they're really not happy in each other's spaces, so yeah, then then I thought, okay, it worked. It's like a lot of like observations, I've seen two in Japan and in the one in London, it's just reminding me of Dinasaki book in close-up shadow, I wonder whether you have any view on that, how the darkness in the Japanese home suddenly, it was just completely different, it's so much more impressive because it's so much, I don't know what it is, it's actually how it affects the way I listen to the piece as well, you have that opinion about that, even the lighting of the display. Yes, like when we were staging it in the Japanese houses with the tummy flaws and the shoji, it just felt like it has to be dark, it has to be, you know, it has, and also it had to be very natural, like a lamp that you would just have in the house because it felt it would be really weird if there was a spotlight, so and it would be really weird in that kind of setting if you had a very bright what bulb. Anyway, so yeah, so that that was definitely a consideration, so there was another reason why I was really nervous about bringing it to the UK, that's going to be really bright, and it was in summer, so it's going to be really light outside as well with these big windows, but I think it worked, but I think it maybe would have, yeah maybe it would have felt really strange if we'd made it really bright in a Japanese house or we tried to make it gloomy, might be, might felt really strange if we tried to put windows and like curtains and screens and things in the UK house to try and make it artificially gloomy, because it's, yeah it's not gloomy is it, it's this, it's the shadow that's, yeah, yeah and and something even the the choreographer, she was really nervous about the house in the UK because she was saying that there's no humidity and there's no damp and there's no mold. She was like, you know, it should just be a bit sticky, I guess so, and you don't get that in the UK house, but I guess also that sort of that kind of stickiness, you know, fits well in the humid houses in Japan for this fresherized, uncomfortable story, it's a bit uncomfortable to watch, it sort of should be a bit uncomfortable to watch, everyone's a bit uncomfortable talking about the issues, so I didn't want it to feel clean in the UK and all that. Sticky, yeah, a hint of mold, yeah. Thank you. Any last questions? Oh, yes, Sam. What's next? Yes, that was my last question. Yeah, so what's next? So, well, this year, hopefully, I will be doing another immersive piece or we do some research and development. I'm going to do it in my hometown, very different to Japan, we did it in Stoke-on-Tran. It's a massive piece exploring a woman who was accused of witchcraft in the 1600s and the idea is there's lots of different perspectives, you know, the priest was saying she was satanic and then you have the people in the pub sharing all their rumours and myths and stories, so I want to turn that into a kind of an immersive piece where the audience hear these different viewpoints and they could choose different ways and then in the end they're going to be surrounded by a choir of people and the choir will be made up of women and non-binary and trans people who will represent the story of the character Molly Lee, the woman who was accused of witchcraft. So that's going to be in the summer and then be developed into performances in 234, 235. And then Japan, the end of this year, I'm creating a concert and in this concert I've got a new piece for Biwa and Voice. So the Biwa's repertoire is generally about war, battles, telling the myths and I was thinking well what about women's stories and women's battles. So I'm writing a new piece for Biwa about a feminist anarchist Ito Noe who was around in the early 1900s. So it's going to be a way of kind of like exploring her life and talking about her battles and then creating a concert around it or feature music by Japanese women composers from the early 1900s as well. Thank you. And we just got in the first question online but from Dr Yonah Sidder who's asking there's an interest in Israel and Japanese culture both the key and in praise of shadows were translated into Hebrew. Would you consider bringing the opera to Israel? I'd certainly consider it. Yeah, sure. Yeah, as I was going to work with like a Israeli dramaturge I think because it's really important to craft the piece for the context that's going to be performed and experienced in. But yeah, sure. Definitely yes then. So thank you very much for coming. Thank you for such a fascinating presentation. Give a big round of applause please. And yes, we're looking forward maybe the anarchist feminist piece could be performed also in a sort of, you know, maybe in some kind of collaboration with local Japan related institutions. That'd be fantastic. Yes, I would like to bring it to the UK. Excellent, thank you. And if anybody wants to have a look. Oh yes, please have a look at the notation. And we also, I just want to remind you we have three more official events on the 16th of May. We have the last in the series of Japan and Sports Symposium organized by Helen McNaughton in the presence of the ambassador of Japan. So that's on a Tuesday, not on a Wednesday. And then we have a talk by the abbot of the Daigoji and the director of the terror space who are planning to launch a space temple in 2004. So definitely something also to look forward to that's on the 26th of sorry, 24th of May, 10 o'clock in the morning. And our final event is with our good friend, Professor Stephen Dot who will talk about the political symbolism of flying saucers in Mishima's Utsukushi Hoshi, beautiful star, a novel that was serialized, that wasn't really part of the canon of Mishima's writing, but that he has translated and that is now available in Penguin Classics. So please do put that down in your diary and do return. Thank you.


Oh Maybe he couldn't get a word in edgewise So the best way to get something done if you if you hold near and dear to you that you What's that Phil?  It's like a fairy tale Why? Because I heard they were more lucky than a rabbit's foot Oh, however, it seems most fairies don't have a tail Making it difficult to acquire one. I know just where you can get one


I feel good, especially when you win. Was there any concern on your behalf that it was going to take you some time to get back in the swing of things? OK. Concern, eh, como si de preocupación. O sea, si tuviste alguna preocupación que iba a tomar cierto tiempo para tu bola recuperarte, volvés. No. Yo lo que quería estar seguro que estoy 100% ready para no volver atrás. No, I wasn't worried about it. I just wanted to make sure that I could get, that I wanted to get to 100% healthy so that I could get back. Is it gratifying, though, to have some immediate success out there?  It's great. What was that like watching Pax pitch the way he did tonight? La salida de Pax, eh, como eso, o sea. Tremenda, tremenda salida, eh, no me sorprende, yo sé el está que él tiene y en verdad no sentimos mi contento de que él haga el trabajo que está haciendo.  Can you play first base? Yep.


This farm was started by my grandfather, John Johnson. He came from Sweden with his brothers, so this is a century farm. My father, he started farming with his dad. I started farming with my dad with no pressure. You know, you have to love it in order to do it. I did the same with Brian. I never really said anything. You know, he was part of the operation helping, and I wanted it to be his decision, you know, alone that he wanted to farm.  I started after college in 2004, and now my wife and I have four kids. Ella's 12, Lila's 10, Leo is 7, and Evelyn will be 3 here shortly. And they're all active helping various activities in the farm here, working cattle, checking cattle in the pasture, calving season, they really enjoy it. They like to ride along with me in the field, in the tractor, in the combine. It's definitely a family affair. My favorite thing in the farm is cutting corn with dad and papa. We have to feed the chickens. We have to go check the cows. We kind of have to decide who does the chicken chores because none of us really like going to pick eggs at like 5 o'clock. I grew up in northeastern Nebraska on a cattle farm, on an Angus farm. And I swore to my dad I would never ever marry a farmer because it was such hard work. And I went to college and hated living in the city and met Brian. And I was like, oh, hey, there's a farmer. So I got myself back to the farm. And it's kind of been my goal and my passion to make a complete system out of this farm. Bring those cattle back, you know, to the carrying capacity that the pastures can hold. Utilize those rotational grazing wise as what they can hold. And then in the last couple of years we've really focused on integrating those cattle back onto the crop ground, spending less time and energy, moving manure, already having it out on the fields. We saved money by putting them on cover crops and putting them on that longer until it grazes a little shorter. So it wasn't that I had to change a whole lot because the footprint had already been made. It was just tinkering with some new ideas and some new practices here and there. One other thing that we have really honed in on in the last five, six, seven years is focusing on really the acre by acre productivity of the farm and looking at even if it's a small piece of ground, what's the best use for that acre? Is it corn? Is it soybeans? Is it small grain? Is it forage? Or is it really we need to put that into grass so we're reducing our erosion and we're providing some habitat for wildlife or whatever it is on those CRP acres? It was mostly just managing the water. What can we do with our crop rotations and our management system to be able to handle the water and use it efficiently? Through the water issues that we encountered it became more of a, okay, we have to change some of our crop land away from crop production into grass and water management and that's where the CRP acres came into play. That whole systems approach of having different things growing, whether it's in your pasture, whether it's in your crop ground to keep the soil healthy, keep all those microbes happy and functioning healthy together. When you have a healthy soil, you have a healthy crop, you have a healthy livestock. It all comes back to you're producing healthy soil, you have a healthy end product. To us that's really important. They've seen an increase over the years of organic matter on their operation through the diversity of crop rotations, the addition of cover crops to their rotations and I also think, and especially with a year like we're experiencing now, they're starting to really see the benefits of improved infiltration in their soils.  As you drive down the road coming in here, you can see some of the conservation practice they put in place, the St. Lean areas, they planted back in the grass, they recovered those areas, seen grass waterways and they have been innovators in conservation in our area and soil health for a long time and I think we learned more from them and they learned from us but we really like working with them. You know on our operation we do what we do because it works for us and we think it's sustainable and it's the right thing to do. We weren't looking to receive awards for anything we do other than just because it works. We want to be able to pass it along and keep doing the right thing and learning as we go, making adjustments, improvements, more trees, more shelter belts, some cross fencing, just integrating the livestock more. It's a journey that we're on here in this operation. We've come a long way in 30-some years of no-till. There's a lot more that we know that we need to do and that we can do. We're driving through the pasture in the ranger and the granddaughter reaches out and grabs a couple stems of grass. She goes, oh, crusted wheat, grown grass, that's kind of neat. They take it to heart too, you know, and they're proud of what we're doing here. When you think of those moments where you're all together and you're working hard and at the end of it the little kid goes, wow, that went really fast and that was so much fun. Like, those moments are just like heartbeat moments of we're doing this right, we're doing the right thing, or during harvest when we're all out in the field. Alan and Mickey and Brian and I and the kids and it's, you know, someday it'll be the kids running the equipment, you know. Those are the moments where you're pulling in the corn or the wheat or the soybeans or your bale and hay and everybody's together. It's like, this is what we're doing this for, is to build a family, build these values to be passed on to the next generation.


My name is Phillip, but my friends call me Phil, or Master P as I was known back then. Yeah, I know it's the name of a famous rapper, but I had another friend who went by Mr. T. It was kind of our stick. But this story isn't about corny nicknames. It's about a strange girl that I picked up 20 years ago. And why I can't ever forget about her. I was 28 years old and had been driving taxis for 7 years. It was supposed to be a part-time gig until I graduated college. Well, graduation came and went, and I couldn't find another job, so I decided to stick with it. Over the course of those 7 years, I met my fair share of weirdos, drunks, prostitutes, fellow late-night workers, and an assortment of other creatures who call themselves human. This particular night, I'd picked up a group of 4 young adults. It was the girl in question, along with 3 guys. They looked pretty normal, not drunk or high, which was a rarity for their age group. The guys were very talkative, and I got to know a couple things about them. The ringleader was Fred, a tall Asian rocker.  Fred explained that his car had broken down earlier that day, forcing him and his companions to walk. Jim grew tired of that, and decided they should hail a cab. Carl was hesitant because he thought I or some other psychotaxi driver might try to kill them. I joked that I only killed during the daylight hours, and preferably young, hot women. Fred and Jim laughed, but Carl wasn't amused.  I noticed the girl hadn't spoke this whole time, so I tried shifting the conversation towards her.  She didn't respond, but Fred said she was shy. I inquired more about her, and he told me her name was June, and that she and Carl attended the local university. He and Jim had dropped out last year, after they realized they didn't want to be a doctor and an accountant, respectively. The talking died down until I saw June whisper to Fred through the rear view mirror. Fred nodded his head, and then told me there was a change of plans. Instead of me taking them all to his house, they wanted to be dropped off at their own places. He apologized for making me go out of the way, and said he'd pay full fare for everyone. Carl said his house was just back the other way, so I busted a small U-turn and dropped him off first.  I figured it belonged to his parents, and decided to hawk the horn to let them know their son was home. Carl shot me a dirty look, and ran into the house as soon as he saw the living room light turn on. Jim laughed, but he was next. However his neighborhood looked a bit rough, so I decided to cruise through and not draw attention. After that, it was down to June and Fred, and I thought the gentlemanly thing to do would be to drop her off first. But Fred insisted his stop was closer, and that June enjoyed long car rides. He handed me $200 as he got out. The meter read 63, but he said it was to cover June's ride as well as a tip. Seeing how he lived in a newly built high-rise, I assumed he could spare it, and I didn't argue. I asked June where she lived, and she didn't answer. Remembering that she was shy, I turned on the radio, hoping it would make her more comfortable. Some crappy, albeit popular song came on, and I asked her if she liked it. Again no answer. I gave it a few minutes, thinking maybe she'd open up on her own. Eventually she said something, but I couldn't quite make it out. I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I said. She said it again, but I still didn't catch it. I turned off the radio. Could you repeat that one more time? Do you see yourself on the TV? She asked. It was an odd question, made even stranger by her childlike voice. Assuming she meant do I imagine myself as famous, I replied that I was in a band in high school and dreamed of making it big, but I don't care about stuff like that anymore. She shook her head and said again. Do you see yourself on the TV? This time I said my best buddy had been an extra in a movie. It was the closest thing to seeing myself on it. She frowned and started looking out the window. I examined her through the mirror. She was pretty, although I couldn't tell what her ethnicity was. Being the logical man that I am, I declared her to be all three of the races the guys were. She had long black hair styled in bunches and wore an old fashioned floral dress. She caught my stare. It's getting late. She said. The clock read 11.15 and I was inclined to agree. Where's your stop? I asked. Will you turn on the TV? She said. I didn't understand her obsession with TV, but I promised her I would. Then you can stop right here. I pulled up in front of an old industrial building. I had a strong feeling she did not live there, but I was tired and it spent enough time with this girl already. I wished her good night and she gave me a wave before disappearing into the shadow of the building. When I got home, I threw myself on the couch and turned on the TV. I know it was stupid, but I just had to see what she was talking about. I must have flipped through every channel hoping to find a doppelganger to no avail. I eventually settled on a late night movie channel and half heartedly watched it until I fell asleep. As soon as I did, I heard a familiar voice say, Hello. I perked up and looked straight at the TV, staring back at me. Was June. Hello, Phillip. She said in a sweet voice, I'm glad you turned on the TV. I sat there in shock. Was I dreaming or was she really on the TV? Would you like to see yourself? She asked. I was scared. But I said yes. The next thing I know, I'm seeing myself lying in bed. My alarm rings and I knock it off my nightstand. Funny, I thought, I did the same thing that morning. I roll out of bed and head for breakfast. I get dressed and the outfit I have on is the same one I'm wearing. I eat the same breakfast, toast, eggs, and bacon. I made a phone call to my mom that morning. Then I picked up my first passenger of the day. You might have guessed it was the same guy from this morning. I watched my whole day play out all the way up until I picked up June and her friends. You can watch any episode. She said before vanishing, unable to comprehend what just happened.  The following day, everything went as usual. I didn't see June or the guys again. Part of me was relieved. While the other half was disappointed, I wanted to tell her I saw myself on TV. Her reaction would tell me if I dreamt it or if it was some kind of elaborate high tech joke. That night I laid in my bed and watched some good old cartoons. Suddenly, the broadcast was cut off and I saw June appear on screen. This time I knew I wasn't dreaming. I'd called off early and took a nap, waking up about an hour ago. Hello, Phillip. She said in the same voice. Did you enjoy last night's episode? I didn't know what to say. Knowing my life was a TV show for her unnerved me, but also made me angry. My privacy was being invaded by a girl whom I didn't know existed until yesterday and there was seemingly nothing I could do about it. I don't want to watch myself. I said, You don't have to watch today's episode. She replied, just hearing her say that made me sick. Remember, you can watch any episode. She said, Any episode? I reiterated. She nodded, Show me the day I was born. I know it was ballsy, but I still had a hard time believing it was real. Someone snuck into my house and placed a hidden camera and attached one to me somehow. If she couldn't show me my own birth, then I'd be right. If she could, I was screwed. I was major screwed. Not only did she show me my birth, but the full nine months leading up to it. I learned that I was actually my parents fourth child. The other ones were either miscarried or stillborn. But I was born from another man's sperm without my dad's consent. He begged my mom to abort, but she wouldn't. That's when his drinking problem began and what would later cause them to divorce. The episode went off and I was left feeling hollow. These were family secrets, never meant to come out. The siblings that could have been the humiliation of my father, the first sign of their marriage, breaking down. I cried for hours. My nights were spent watching episodes of my life. I saw myself take my first steps, go to my first day of school, and many other milestones. I watched all the mistakes I made and all the embarrassing moments I had. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I cried. It stopped scaring me and became comforting. One evening, I got a call to pick up a couple of people from a local pizza joint. I was surprised to see that it was June, Fred, Jim, and Carl. I'd become accustomed to seeing June on the TV to the point that it felt unreal to see her in person. I greeted them and Jim asked how I'd been. I told him I was on a self-discovery journey. I saw a quick smirk appear on June's face. I dropped Carl off at his parents' house again and Jim at work, June accompanied Fred to his apartment. He lingered behind while she got out. Something wrong? I asked. He shifted from side to side. Do you watch TV? He asked. Doesn't everybody? I said with a chuckle. Do you see yourself on the TV? I swallowed hard. I couldn't bring myself to answer the question. You can see other people, too. He said, looking me in the eye. I nodded and he got out of the car. I skipped watching TV that night, but his words stuck with me. So the next night I tried it out. I asked June if I could see the day my parents got married. She obliged. From there, I asked about other family members, friends, former flames, and even random people on the street. It was exciting, but I also felt disgusted with myself for prying into these people's lives. June assured me they would never know, but I couldn't help but feel guilty. Where do you see yourself in the future? June asked me one night. Never really thought about it. I replied. I don't want to drive taxis forever. Do you want me to show you the future? It never occurred to me until then that I could take a look at the future. She did say any episode, but I assumed it was only the episodes we have already lived. I do. I said, but can I see your future, too? My future, she said, puzzled. Yes, I want to see your future and my future. I said, perhaps we'll still know each other. Without saying anything, she showed me my future. I'll quit my taxi job and go into business with my friend. The business will bloom and I'll meet a wonderful woman named Sandra. We'll get married and have two kids and live an idyllic life in the suburbs. My father will die, but not before making amends with me and mom. Mom will get cancer, but pull through and become an excellent grandmother to my kids. It made me emotional knowing there was such an amazing life awaiting me. As for June, her future was less clear. Literally, there was nothing but static.  June stared as the mistreated middle daughter of a wealthy family who was having an affair with a doctor. Fred, her parents' personal accountant, was Jim and her dogged nice guy best friend was Carl. Some new neighbors had moved in and her mother dragged her over to meet them. Those new neighbors, my future family. It's been 20 years since then and everything she showed me has happened. My wife is cooking downstairs and my children are playing outside. As I type this up, my TV flicks off and on twice. It's one of those cheap off-brand smart TVs, so I figure it's on the fritz. But then I look out my window and see my children talking to a young woman wearing an old-fashioned floral dress.