Spring seems to be here, finally. Lots of rain, but getting steadily warmer and greener. Hopefully the nicer weather makes our isolation more bearable and not the opposite.
Morning s80 sounds featuring multiple lfos and arps crossing and jumping and weaving. Sometimes you just have to hold the keys down longer than you think you should and let it play. Straight out of the s80 into the h4n.
Pics from our summer vacation last year, skewed.
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.
Quick clip of a stuttery, warbly, hazy patch I made on the S80. Recorded to h4n straight out of the synth with no external processing or effects.
We spent all day outside working on the garden and the beds around the perimeter of the house. Perfect weather and it looks great and I’m exhausted. Pics tomorrow maybe.
The Yamaha S80 has an incredibly deep synth engine, with 4 sliders and 5 knobs to access it through its little display. Still, once I figured out how it worked, the editing got much easier. It’s still not great. That said, it still sounds wonderful — don’t let the rompler snobs fool you!
I’ve had this thing for a long time (a wonderful gift from a friend’s family who weren’t using it and had no space) and have always enjoying it. It has sadly been living in the basement since we moved here because there’s just no room (really, it’s huge) in the office. Have really been wanting to use it with the rest of the studio so I crammed it in up here tonight. This likely means I’ll need to re-org everything AGAIN, but glad to have it back where I can use it anytime.
Well, my part anyway. My friend wanted the pieces cut so he could finish the case himself. Just imagine it with the center section painted black and matching black hardware. Pretty happy with how it turned out!
Almost there…
L: Tried out cutting a finger-joint box as a test for the main body of Brad’s euro case. Worked fine, but need to tweak my settings to get a tighter fit. Hopefully he won’t even need to use glue to hold it all together.
R: It’s still cold outside but the basement jungle keeps growing and growing. It would be a real disappointment to have the plants wilt/die before we can get them in the ground. C’mon spring!
My buddy John is one of the most inspirational people I’ve ever known, so I keep his picture up above my music desk. Happy birthday, man — we miss you real bad.
Got the design (not that it was complicated) settled, now I need to start testing materials. Going to try kerfing a single piece of wood to bend and create the center section. I have also been interested in trying out steam bending…
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…
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.
On and off all day long. Total craziness.
Sounds are toy piano samples triggered by Digitone.
One of the first projects I completed when I got the cnc machine was to make new handles for a large old cooking pot we had. I was so proud to get it all measured up and designed, cut them and have them fit. I was also very happy to extend its usable life instead of just throwing it away. This week the dishwasher destroyed them so today I made some replacements out of hdpe. These should last a lot longer, even if the wood ones were much nicer.
I could watch the cnc machine all day long. It’s mesmerizing.
In all the time I’ve had the Digitone, I never tried using it to sequence other instruments. Last night I tried it with the norns timber engine and got some lovely results. Took some samples of a few of the instruments we have floating around here as fodder for continued experiments…
L: Cut a test run for the dust shoe top plate to check size and alignment. It’s HUGE, but the alignment is good and that’s the most important part. Will revise to trim it down and see if I can fix the stepping on the curved edges.
R: The sprouts are huge! We need to get them repotted into larger containers soon because they’re getting crowded and it’s still several more weeks before we can get them into the garden. I also need to figure out where to get the lumber to add some depth to the raised beds. Not particularly interested in waiting in line inside and outside of Lowes right now.
I’ve been falling back in love with the Digitone. It’s not that I stopped loving it, it’s just that I stopped using it for awhile due to other projects/sounds I was chasing. That said, I’ve always had a hard time getting what I want out of its sequencer. It’s as deep as everyone says of the Elektron machines, but perhaps that depth had put me off? I’ve been reading and watching tutorials to get back into it and it’s starting to feel a bit more natural and let me get the sounds I want out of it. Progress is slow — Instead of textures, I’m still ending up with a lot of beats. Guess I might as well embrace it, haha
The days all sort of blur together lately. We’re just staying busy and all trying to stay creative.
The sun coming in through the prism onto the archway felt like it needed to be captured with the fisheye. Capa needs to be wherever I am at all times. He’s very curious. (I think he enjoys being in the way)
I took the laptop of my music desk and have been much happier being spread out. The light was nice and the sounds were …ok. It happens. Here again, Capa followed in there with me and then fell asleep in his chair while I played. (It’s nice to have him around)
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.
Didn’t feel very motivated tonight and decided to take a walk with the camera. The light was fading fast so I didn’t get many pictures, but it was still really nice to stretch my legs and breathe the cold night air.
(Hallway pic taken through the high school window)