/360 - Ticking On Down

Like last night, but different. Playing a few field recordings on the bitbox into clouds, while also looping and chopping in MLR. I had a really fun jam on this same patch this morning, but of course I didn’t hit record and by the time I realized how much I liked it it was too late. So it goes, tonight was fun too.

Getting pretty close to the end of the my 366 (leap year) days and not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, doing this has sometimes felt like a mad dash — that every day I had to slam to get whatever together to have something to post. On the other, I’m not sure I’m ready for it to end and will miss it a great deal. It’s not like by not doing daily posts I will stop working on my ideas, making music, etc but the extra push to make it a focus has been incredible. I want to keep things up but not sure what my plan is right now. I started last year on December 1st. Maybe I should just continue until January?

/237 - Not So Much

Decided to try this idea out in an old enclosure before I spent the time to design and etch an enclosure for it. Good thing because it didn’t really work. It’s a simple piezo box — the idea was that it would clearly pick up the ringing/vibration of the bells, but it didn’t. It was there faintly but turning up enough to really hear it meant a huge THUMP every time a bell was struck. Oh well.

/236 - Old Beginnings

Re-found these old bells (salvaged from the wall-mounted rotary phone in the hallway of the last house we rented) and remembered something I have wanted to do with them. So I started doing it…

/025 - Gratitude

Time and time again my family shows me that they understand me, and that they listen. Their gifts are wonderful, almost as wonderful as they are. Feeling so very thankful. Really looking forward to getting outside with the h4n.

Top left: The note reads “I asked Emily what she wanted to get you for Christmas. She said “a bell with a rainbow string.”” She is really the sweetest. :)

Bottom right: Ash and I made sure Emi got some new sound toys too. She was absolutely jamming on the harmonica all day!

/019 - Night Bells

Another long day at work. 2 deadlines complete! (That’s what they always say) Typically I would have just gone straight to bed, but I didn’t have a chance to do anything creative all day so I pushed myself to play around for a bit. Knowing I have to make a post is weird sometimes — like I’m just making it up. Well, I suppose that’s what creativity is, no? Anyway -- I played some of my bell samples with Timber/Norns > Avalanche Run > Shoebox. For a minute there, I lost myself. Goodnight.

/001 - Bells

I have a few small bells around that I would like to work into my music, so I thought it would be a good idea to try to find out what notes they ring. I started by trying a few tuner apps on my phone, but quickly found (surprise surprise) that there are so many overtones created that they couldn’t get a solid read. A quick google search led me to the amazing work of Bill Hibbert, specifically his program Wavanal, which let me record the bells and run frequency analysis to show the fundamentals and overtones. Turns out there are no sharps or flats in any of the the fundamentals, with each ringing in varying amounts of cents +/., There are a few picked up in the overtones, but not sure how present they will be to the ear. Will be interesting to hear how they sound against solid synth notes, or each other.