A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter U

Underpainting

Art
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An initial painted layer used to establish value, composition, or color beneath later layers.

Detailed Definition
Underpainting provides a foundation for a finished painting, setting the tonal structure and often influencing colors that appear above it. Though viewers may not see it directly, it affects the work's depth and unity. In poetry, underpainting can describe the unstated emotional or historical material beneath a poem's visible language. A poem may seem calm on the surface while its images are organized by grief, anger, memory, or desire that remains largely implicit.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poet can use underpainting as a metaphor for hidden emotion beneath a speaker’s calm surface; In revision, a writer may create an underpainting by establishing the basic scene and emotional tone before adding vivid final images; A poem about a cheerful family photograph can reveal an underpainting of conflict through subtle details like clenched hands or a torn curtain; Repeated dark imagery beneath bright descriptions can function like an underpainting that gives the poem depth
Additional Notes
Underpainting is the preliminary painted layer beneath subsequent layers of a picture. Artists may use it to establish composition, tonal values, modelling, or an overall colour tendency before applying more finished passages. Monochrome underpainting can clarify light and shade, while coloured grounds can subtly influence everything painted above them. The visible surface therefore depends partly upon something the viewer may barely see. This makes underpainting a useful metaphor for hidden structures in poetry. Compare ground, imprimatura, grisaille, glazing, tonal study, layering, composition, value, oil painting, and preparatory drawing.
Also Known As
Ground Layer Preliminary Painting
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