/270 - Things Go Snap

Emily got a Totoro nightlight a long time ago and the umbrella he was holding promptly broke off. That was fine because it was just a plain piece of gray plastic and I thought Totoro desserved better anyway. Well, that meant he moved to my projects pile and sat there for way too long. Today we were in the basement and Emi asked me if I was ever going to fix it, so tonight’s the night. Origami seemed appropriate and it’s been a long time since I have done any. This took 7 individual pieces attached together to make. I probably should have taken more pictures. Now I just need to find a way to attach it to the umbrella handle.

/269 - Things Pop And Go Quiet

It was just a fuse. When I bought this amp, the guy told me that it had a problem *one time where the internal fuse blew when someone plugged into the amp while it was on. It never gave me any problems and I made sure to plug in before turning it on just in case, but one day it stopped passing signal so I assumed that I must have triggered it. Tonight I took it apart, deoxed the pots, and put in a new fuse — plugging and unplugging in an attempt to confirm/deny the issue and I couldn’t make it happen. If it happens again I’ll dig deeper, in the meantime it’s a sweet little amp. (I’m a sucker for old Yamaha amps.)

/268 - Things Fall Apart

Or get dropped. Trying to start chipping away at the overdue projects list. I’ve had this small (and growing) pile of broken things waiting for a bit of glue to heal them. It’s a coincidence that they’re all animals, but also probably not a coincidence at all given our household interests. (The mouse is also a whistle)

/267 - Hunting For Noises

This past week my guitar chain has been really noisy and I finally dug around and found the culprit — a failed daisy-chain cable from the power supply. I’ve used OneSpot for about 10 years and it’s never given me any troubles so I can’t really complain too much. Switched things out to a backup power brick I had and all is quiet again.

Guitars and multiple long delays are fun together.

/266 - Saturdaze

TL: Emi coloring her heart out on the amazing drawing sent to us by our dear friend Kara.

TR: Installed B-B-B-B-Beat and it was full of glitchy bugs, until I found out that it was all intentional. haha

BL: We ordered lunch from our favorite The Red Fern and took it to Cobb’s Hill Park. These two set up nearby and proceeded to make some very interesting drones as a small group of people watched. We took a walk around the reservoir and they were gone by the time we got back, but it was SO COOL to randomly run into experimental music in the wild.

BR: There’s never a bad time for some Don’t Break The Ice.

/265 - Green

Emi and I took a little walkabout today to see what we could see. In the end we didn’t see very much, but the weather was great and it was still fun to walk around and talk with her. She cracks me up!

I need to start digging back into my project list. Time has been short lately, but it feels to me that I’m just posting the same old thing all the time. There’s tons I want to work on, just need to jump in and do it.

/264 - Patchwork

Not sure how many times I have mentioned the brilliance of ideas and giving that is the lines forum/norns developers. It seems like there are new scripts and ideas pouring out every week! Patchwork just had midi out added (for all us non-modular folks) and I’ve been spending my scant music time with it this week. It’s a 2 track sequencer, but each track has a note sequence and a command sequence. The commands do things like shift notes and octaves, reverse and/or skip directions, mute, and sync. The thing that really makes it is that each sequence has individual clock, division, and probability — I’ve barely scratched the surface.

(Autumn is definitely in the air…)

/263 - Visitors Come and Visitors Go

We’ve had hummingbird feeders up off and all summer, but have had no visitors that we had seen. And then this little lady showed up at the orange flowers near our main grouping of feeders out of nowhere. We have since put the hummingbird feeder back up and she’s been around multiple times every day this week. Such beautiful and fascinating little animals.

Meanwhile all the woodpeckers are mad at us because we stopped putting out suet. Total duh moment on our part not realizing that it’s made with beef fat. We’ll put up more when it gets cold enough for veggie peanut butter blocks to not melt all over the place. Hopefully they will come back.

/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.

/261 - Monarch Morning

More meandering sounds with baritone guitar and norns running barcode. Recorded very early in the morning in 4 channel mode to pick up room sounds …and all else. I didn’t know anyone else was awake until Emi came bolting into the office on an important mission and it never occurred to me that our conversation was recorded until I listened back through files tonight. I’ve got the biggest smile on my face.

(They were all there, and all ok)

/260 - Paint The Day Away

I overthink everything, and as such house projects (all projects) tend to take a lot longer in the planning stages than they need to. Ash is not like this and it’s great because THINGS GET DONE! Today we painted the double-height paneling wall we’ve talked about since we moved in. Many thanks to her for just going for it and making it happen. I would do well to follow her example when I notice my plodding tendencies weighing things down. .

/259 - Saturdaze

A very busy and tiring day. We did a lot of work around the house and in the yard. Totally wiped out, but feel very good about the state of things.

Here’s a recording of my first test using the 4 channel setup on the H4N to get environmental sounds to go with the line out from my mixer. Piano improv into norns running Barcode. I think it turned out pretty well.

/258 - Scenes From A Day

1&2: Ash discovered some Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed plants next to our house. The first thing Emily wanted to do when she got up (at 6am) this morning was go check on them. I was barely able to convince her that they probably wanted to sleep in. When we finally did go out she made sure all were accounted for and then pulled up her chair to make sure “they were staying safe.”

3: Had a lovely time with my guitar and norns on the porch after dinner. Stayed out as long as I could, but eventually the mosquitos won. Tried out 4 channel recording for the first time — using the line ins from norns and the built-in mics to capture all the environment sounds. Haven’t had a chance to listen yet, so hopefully things turned out ok.

4: Macrame! Very simple design, but decided not to go way overboard (at first) for once. Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that I can nurse this spider plant back to health.

/257 - Focal Zoom

A few shots taken during our recent trip to Mendon Park. Not a ton of birds around so I played around instead. All done in camera during capture with increasing speed.

/256 - Oxygen, Closing In

I still need to re-pot another plant and learn macrame, but it’s up!

(Wow, only 99 posts left to complete the year. I don’t think I ever believed I would make it this far.)

/255 - Arpeggiate

Was talking with a friend about synths and arps (yes, yes this is what we talk about) and I realized that there’s probably a lot that I don’t know about the arp function on the Digitone. There are no auto settings — you can program it to do whatever you want it to do, but also it won’t do anything unless you program it. Played around a bit with it and the scale function, timing, and filter section. The recording is repetitive (as opposed to all my ultra-dynamic drones…), but it was fun to make.

/254 - Freeze Drones

I have owned and loved the EHX Freeze pedal since it was released. At the time I was primarily a bass player without a synth, trying to figure out how to make the drones I wanted to make — and the Freeze was it. I experimented a few times trying to add an internal feedback loop to let me add layers of frozen notes (this was before the Superego, and I should add that I didn’t end up liking that at all) and I ended up killing the pedals both times. Luckily EHX has a great repair program! In the end I put my freezes in an effects loop and it adds the most wonderful subtle modulation to the captures. This has only the barest amount of reverb on it. Best in headphones.

/253 - A Veryful Day

We didn’t get any work done on the planters today. We did all go and take a walk in the park and visit the animals at Wild Wings Rescue. So amazing to see these (HUGE) birds up close.

Otherwise we just sort of laid low. Ash did some photo work while Emi and I played. Got to spend a bit of time with my guitar on the back porch — I should really do that more often. Between that and our morning in the woods I want to get a small travel setup together so I can go play music outside. I’ve never done anything like that, but it seems like it would be fun.

/252 - Planter Project Prep

The paint is drying on the parts and Ash brought more secondhand planters home today. I’ll hopefully get the hardware hung and plants repotted tomorrow, but then I need to learn to make a bunch of plant hangers before it all comes together. I think this will be the fun part?

/251 - A Forest

Emi and I took a trip to a nearby park/wooded area today. I was hoping to see some different birds, but apparently they’re all laying low as it’s molting season. She was just happy to run and have some new mud to play in. Since it was mid-morning on a weekday there weren’t a lot of people around and it was quite peaceful.