/104 - Finds

Random heart cereal found this morning in a public sink. Lots of focus on handwashing these days.

I also received this cassette in the mail today after buying it on impulse last week. (I don’t typically do physical media anymore) I listened to this album a lot when it came out, not long after I discovered Jasper TX/Dag Rosenqvist. I don’t remember exactly how I found him, but at the time it was unlike anything I’d ever heard and threw open the door to the world of ambient and drone music. I’ve never been the same. If you don’t know his work you should definitely check it out. Other favorites: This Quiet Season and Mute Harbor.

/014 - More Tape

Morning drone tape experiments — guitar > avalanche run > MLR on norns. 6 tracks split between 2 buffers. Playing over that a bit with a Hohner Pianet soundfont running on the ipad. Recorded out to cassette and then back into norns. Getting the levels set is still challenging, but the tape quality definitely comes through. I do need to open it back up to adjust the speed because playing back with the recording was definitely out of tune.

/012 - Tape on Tape

Fixed! Once I repaired the broken switch, it just needed a new belt, slight motor adjustment, and a good cleaning. Glad I kept poking around in there. I didn’t have any blank cassettes and was very surprised to find that they had a pack at the corner Walgreens. Crazy high school flashback opening it up — I probably made a thousand mix tapes back then.

Made a quick test recording of piano > norns running compass > cassette, and then played the recording back into norns to record to tape. The ins and outs on the Realistic are all mono and I messed up my adapters somewhere because I got piano and reverb, but no compass. Oh well.

We also had a very pretty sunrise this morning, here’s some not pictures of it:

/006 - It’s Alive

Left: The insides of old electronics remind me of tiny cities
Right: I’m at hospitals pretty regularly for work. There are always lots of glass blocks used in hospitals, which is very strange to me.

Dug into the unresponsive cassette recorder a bit more and found that the motor isn’t dead. That issue came from a broken bit of old plastic that was supposed to hold a switch in place to be activated by the mechanical buttons. It’s alive! Still doesn’t sound right though. Next steps: new belt and a thorough cleaning.

/003 - Yoshiko's Shoebox

I salvaged this tape recorder from my wife’s grandma’s house when we helped move her to assisted living. Unfortunately it doesn’t work and I haven’t been able to work out what’s wrong with it. I currently suspect the motor is dead, but need to dig into it deeper. Looked around the web for info and found they sell for like $20 which is sort of defeating for spending all the effort, but I still think it would be cool to have this old thing around and know I saved it. My daughter would get a kick out of singing her songs into it I think. They don’t make them like this anymore.