Recorded a bit of guitar noodling from early this morning. Haven’t been feeling very inspired at the desk recently, but still taking the time to try and see what comes out. Busy day. Worked, hung out with Emily, took a walk, played in the yard, dinner, bedtime…
It’s been great getting all of these projects off my list, but I haven’t sat down at the desk in what feels like forever. I’ve been playing LOTS of guitar — I am pretty obsessed with the jazzmaster — but that’s just been guitar > amp. Tonight I set up compass as a longform delay by reducing the loop lengths and setting a low overdub amount. That way everything kept looping and slowing fading as new layers were built on top. All running into the Wedge, of course. (maybe a little too much) It was fun and I will definitely be exploring this further.
As much as I like loop-based music and drones, I don’t tend to enjoy (with some notable exceptions) repetitions of short loops for extended periods of time. This morning I ended up with a loop out of Compass that I meditated on for a very long time. Tonight I ran it through the reel to reel for some saturation and wow/flutter, but it wasn’t too long before the tape snapped. Very old tape plus wheels that need grease, go figure.
Back to my usual speed tonight. Feels nice.
It was a beautiful day outside my window. Snow squalls all day long, the sky rapidly switching between intense sun and blasts of snow. Hard to focus on work, but it was the best kind of distraction. Sat down to play music this evening and nothing was working, literally. Bad cables? Reset the machines? Try try again. Finally things started behaving and almost immediately there was soft, snowy music coming out of the monitors. It was just that kind of day.
The holidays are “over” but it’s still busy. Recorded a couple quick things to test features and get used to the h4n. Pretty intuitive so far. A little hiss in the preamps, but seems like it won’t be too hard to eq out. I didn’t play around with that tonight. Ordered a windscreen and shock mount to be here this weekend so I’m going to try to find some time to take it out for a go.
Here’s some sounds: guitar > mini > compass > wedge > h4n