/361 - Not The Sound of Fields

I had to go to the hospital for work the last two days so I took the recorder with me. I use the H4N all the time to record jams, but haven’t taken it out very much lately. (I mean — it’s a pandemic, I haven’t been going out either.) Job sites can be full of interesting sounds, even if a lot of them are too loud to record and/or dangerous to be around. These are mostly my record of walking back and forth from meetings. Birds, cars, concrete reverb, people talking, HVAC, doors opening…

I really appreciate the renewed focus on field recording stemming from wanting interesting source material for the bitbox. Working with the files is still not intuitive, but I think they are turning out cleaner than they used to. I’m most interested in the total environment of a recording, so as long as things can be heard and distinguished I’m really not too bothered by a bit of noise.

/333 - Outside the House

Spent half of the day in the field for a project. After lots of delays due to the pandemic, things are happening and it’s actually going to get built. (Only 3 years until it’s done…) Nice to get out and stretch my legs, plus I love being around places where interesting shapes and textures are being accidentally/haphazardly combined into interesting configurations.

/262 - Double Duty

Our team is prepping for a big meeting tomorrow so I worked all day, took a dinner/bedtime break, and am back at it. Very glad to have the work to do, but also glad these types of deadlines don’t come too too often.

/159 - The Hours Pass

Stuck inside, looking out the window.

/148 - Sundaze

Tried to make a quick mounting piece to attach the cool old Webcor mic to a mic stand. The piece of hdpe I was using had a lot of cuts in it from past projects which somehow started vibrating enough to break it free from the table and ruin the piece. Then I couldn’t even clean up the mess because the vacuum stopped working from a dirty filter. Can’t win em all.

On the (sort of) plus side — I start back at work tomorrow. Our company got approved for one of the federal loans created under the covid relief bill. Not sure what I’ll be working on yet as all my projects are still on hold. I am incredibly lucky to have only been off work for 2 weeks, but wow it went by fast.

/132 - Ping Pong

It snowed hard all morning and the ground was completely covered. 45 minutes later spring returned and all was blues skies and sunshine. It was still very windy but Emi and I still took a nice walk. We were also delighted to find that the wind had freed her kite from the tree we crashed it into a week-ish ago.

In other events, I am officially out of work. Most of our clients (very understandably) put all projects on hold and after wrapping things up there’s nothing left to do for a lot of us. I know that the work will come back, but like everything else these days there’s no sure idea of when. We have our health and some savings so I can’t and won’t complain. My thoughts go out to those who are experiencing otherwise.

/093 - Studios

Didn’t come up with any earth-shattering ideas for the 360 camera, but figured since I did a bunch of cleaning and organizing today it would be acceptable to share my studios. I am very very very lucky to have these spaces to work. Many thanks to my family for enduring the noise. These work best in full screen view.

This morning I also finally finished the norns studies. It was not surprising to find that after only a week I had lost a lot of the momentum in comprehension that I had built. Streams is essentially an audio to pitch converter, used as something like a 16-channel freeze pedal. I tried to patch something like this on Axoloti a few months ago and although it worked, I couldn’t get the pitch detection stable enough. I have lots of ideas of things I would like to add to this if my coding skills ever let me make them happen.

/090 - In the Field

Unfortunately not a grassy one. Spent the entire day at the hospital verifying measurements for a project. Above the ceiling, into service rooms, electrical closets, storerooms…. So much clutter and weird stuff to see. Was really tempted to bring the field recorder, but my hands were already very full. Oh well.