/091 - Continua Continuing

Still really enjoying exploring the lovely continua synth. Having so many modulators and being able to map them to anything (and multiple anythings) makes a great environment for slow, evolving drones. I cheated a little on the field recording by using the mynoise app instead of something I recorded myself. Still, not sure when I will get the chance to visit/record a Finnish sauna, so maybe it’s not the end of the world. If you haven’t heard of the app I highly recommend it. Tons of interesting sound environments that lets you mix different elements with sliders. It was a real lifesaver when Emi was a sleep-hating newborn.

/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.

/089 - Three Sixty

I got to borrow this cool 360 camera from work for a project site visit tomorrow so I wanted to play around. Stuck it and a LED block (another perk of the job: cool product samples) inside Emi’s “fort” (the box our new chair came in) and snapped a pic. Found this service which lets me embed the 360s right in my blog post, too bad about the watermark. I’ll have this all weekend so hopefully I have the time and inspiration to make something interesting with it.

/088 - Flutter

It was warm (and therefore soggy) again today and the bird feeders were full of life. Put the recorder out on the porch and got about 5 minutes of very active conversation between 6-8 house sparrows that live under our eaves. I don’t think they were happy watching the squirrels eat all the seed.

Played around with the file a bit in Audacity and pretty happy with how clean the audio came out.

/087 - Dawn Chorus

The sky was much brighter on my way into work this morning. I also saw several large flocks of birds along the way. Of course, by the time I managed to get to a safe spot to pull over most of them were already gone behind the trees.

/086 - Down Down

L: I installed some heavy gauge strings on my guitar so I could try baritone (A standard currently) tuning. Feels and sounds great but I can get the intonation right so either have to do some work on the nut or take it somewhere for a setup. I’ve never had a professional setup so a little guitar spa treatment might be nice. I find the spider graphic very amusing because my music is probably about as far from spider music as it gets.

R: Taro. She is the weirdest and most lovable cat but it scared of basically everything and everyone but me. She’s also the jealous type. I was playing with our other cat and looked up to see she was staring at us intently from a safe distance. She spends most days sleeping hidden away in a closet, but she must have heard us and come to investigate.

/085 - When It Rains It Pours

New friends/projects from 2 Craiglist deals today.

I have a thing for old Yamaha amps. They sound great and can be had cheap, though prices are steadily climbing because the secret is out. Got this from a guy who was downsizing in preparation for a move to Europe. It seemed hard enough to move across the US, I can’t even imagine hopping continents. Anyway, he said it has had an issue blowing fuses in the past but right now it works great other than needing some contact cleaner on the pots. I really didn’t need another amp, but for $25 I found it hard to resist.

These ugly pedals! I had the chorus many years ago and remember it fondly after giving it away to a young guitarist. They don’t sound bad as is, but a quick internet search tells me there are a bunch of mods that can be done to these (Fab chorus, overdrive, and echo if the image isn’t clear) and I am apparently a glutton for a long project list. Why mod? Why not. haha

/084 - Settling

This crack runs right over my head when I’m working in the studio. Took these photos to document the condition (not sure if its spreading/getting worse) but once they were abstracted from being an issue of home repair I quite liked them. Still not looking forward to fixing this someday.

/083 - Couch

I saw a very dramatic light switch.

Very tired tonight, so after dinner/cleanup/bedtime I laid on the couch with the ipad and played around layering a few things in Aum. I don’t typically layer/mix things because I tend to get very picky about everything, but knowing I needed to have something to post pushed me through it. Life is very busy (no matter how how we try to slow down) and there’s not always a lot of time at the end of the day to make art. It can be hard in the moment (when you just want to go to bed) but after the fact I’m always glad that I have this daily deadline to push me to create.

I might have actually fallen asleep for a bit listening to the playback.

/082 - The Chores

Some days you have to be creative to find ways to be creative. Good thing I get to live with such wonderful, colorful people. Goodnight.

/081 - Motion

Did some more work on organizing my poor mess of a workbench. I have a hard time being productive in a messy environment. These storage bins give all the homeless bits and pieces a place to go instead of piles of bunches of random boxes. An open workspace is a happy workspace.

Why not turn them into a whacked-out De Stijl motion collage to celebrate?

/080 - Lights

Impromptu (blurry low-)light show, courtesy of meadowphysics and the grid.

/079 - Scenes From the Library

Nice (mostly) quiet Sunday, featuring a trip to the library. Colors and textures abound.

/078 - The Grid

I just realized that I got my grid one year ago today. It’s something that I dreamt about for a very long time, but I never thought I would actually ever have. When I discovered monome all those years ago, this little box of buttons was an incredible mystery and the sounds and ideas pouring from the community was absolutely bewildering. (It still is.) On top of that, since I’m not a coder I always assumed that I would never be able to contribute, or to translate all the ideas I had that could be realized by the grid — but today, as a result of the norns studies I made it do something. Definitely a baby step, but what a feeling.

Today, coincidentally, I made a little step sequencer (from the study guide, thanks to monome for bringing us all up with them) and it worked — I made the grid go. I mashed a bunch of buttons and pressed play. It reminded me of Underworld - Rez, and I laughed.

So so cool.

/077 - Catalog Catch Up

One thing about blogging every day is that I am generating a ton of data, and with life/creativity/blogging I am often very bad at keeping things organized. Spent tonight sorting hrough all the unlabelled recordings in the h4n. I have to say that it is pretty interesting to come back to these files and have only a hazy memory of where/what/when. There’s a bunch of things in there that should get cleaned up and put to use.

/076 - Communication

I’ve had an old M-Audio Uno midi interface for ages and it’s always worked great. Last week, a light bulb went on in my head that I could get another and use them together to get usb hosts (computer, ipad, norns) to talk midi to each other. It is extra wiring (there are a few specific solutions out there for this) but it works! Had a lot of fun with this tonight and am pretty excited that these things are now able to pass signals back and forth.

/075 - Little Drones

Pulled my Nanoverb down off the shelf and droned for awhile with Mangl and Digitone. There’s only 1 knob (a far cry from the control over everything inside the Wedge) but the Plate 2 setting is so wonderful that 1 knob is all it needs. The textures are better in headphones.

/074 - Shadows

Busy night. Made dinner and played with Emi. Got her in bed and read a few books. Turned off the light and made shadow puppets. Experimented with adding functions to spacetime, which worked but didn’t end up producing any musical results. I’ll keep chipping away at it — this won’t become a blog about coding, promise. ;)

/073 - Spacetime

Spacetime! And it worked! And I understood a few things about what the code meant!

but mostly not()

still == (“cool”)

end

/072 - Finally

For all the buildup… here’s a dark picture where you can’t even really see it.

I got impatient and it still had a few tacky spots when I brought it up this morning. I don’t notice any paint smell and have had no complaints from my darling bloodhound wife, so I think I’m good. Pretty happy with the layout. It gets the mixer, etc. up and angled, leaving room for cables and a few small things underneath. Now I just need to make some sounds.

Also, some tofu I made for Emi. It’s her favorite.