/195 - Sound of Stone

This morning I asked Emi if she wanted to help me with a project and of course she did. We went to a hiking trail near our house with the H4N to find some stones and record some sounds. We were there for a few hours and her energy never even flagged - climbing and jumping and exploring. She was cracking me up the whole time — every time we would stop to record (her idea or mine) I would set up and say “ok, here we go lets be quiet and listen” and she would almost immediately start singing/humming/throwing rocks/cracking sticks. Oh to be 3. It was such a great time. ♥♥♥

/174 - Diagramming

Started thinking about this week’s Junto project tonight and was sketching out graphical ideas of what could constitute “special.” We do a lot of diagrams like this at work — it helps visualize possible design motifs that become a roadmap for the actual design.

Honestly, I spent too much taking drawing them in the computer. There’s a beauty to the quickness of a hand-sketch.

/140 - Junto!

I finally completed my goal of participating in a weekly junto project. I went through the paper drums recordings I made and found quite a few cool sounds. I was very surprised at how easy it was to make kick sounds, and how hard it was to make cymbal-like sounds. I could have spent a long time tweaking them, but decided to just let them fly. Individual files can be downloaded here.

Other than that, we spent today working outside and in the garden. We built our square-garden plots last year and although we had a good harvest in general we have heard our tomatoes will be better with more soil. Today I built the 6” box toppers and we got everything mulched. The compost to fill the boxes will come next week, and if it ever stops snowing/freezing we can get things in the ground. The basement is starting to look like a jungle.

In other other news, I also started working on a project for a friend. Let’s see where it goes…

/139 - Paper Drums

Tonight I started work on this week’s disquiet junto project. A long time ago I noticed the cool sound it makes when you snap your fingers on a sheet of printer paper and thought “hey I should make a drum kit out of this.” Ok, here we go. Gathered up a bunch of different weight/textured paper to generate enough sounds to fill a “kit.” Will post the samples when I get them processed. Pretty funny project for me since I almost never use drums or percussion in my music.

Sorry for the food pic, but I don’t cook much (too many years working in kitchens and a wife who is amazing) and I thoroughly enjoyed making and eating this tonight. Korean bbq soy curls, broccoli and brown rice. Simple vegan comfort food FTW. Extra shout out to Emi for actually trying broccoli and then eating a few pieces of it. Remains to be seen if “I like it!” was a fluke.

/103 - Unfinished

I bounced around between 3 different projects tonight, and didn’t make much progress on any one of them. Here’s a clip of something I started working on for last week’s Disquiet Junto project about music for airplane noise. I had a good idea, and this was a good start, but I never went back to it to finish up a few things I wanted to try. It’s that kind of week I guess.

Being on a plane always makes me feel very strange. Something about being outside of time and place. Neither at your origin or your destination. Far away and separate from all the lives passing beneath you. It’s not necessarily a sad feeling, but definitely a very introspective one. I was supposed to go to Seattle this weekend for the first time since I moved back but I canceled it due to the coronavirus. Very sad to not go, and for all the sick people right now. Hopefully things get better soon.

/054 - Tweaks

Spent the day drawing plan diagrams for a new hospital project at work. its one of my favorite parts of the process so it was quite nice. I also didn’t get very much email and you can always be glad for days like that.

Cleaned up the acrylic mess from last night and made a few tweaks to the norns plates. Must have been tired last night because it didn’t even occur to me to drill a countersink in order to get the bottom plate screws to work. 5 seconds later and it was all together. I also did a little more work on a few other enclosure designs I might like to try.

I also re-signed up for the Disquiet Junto project newsletter. It’s a really wonderful weekly creative prompt meant to inspire musical creativity through a specific set of constraints that are then open for interpretation. I had signed up before but never completed a prompt and it was depressing to get the emails every week so I unsubscribed. Not saying I will complete it this week, or next, but I intend to do at least one this year.