Minutes

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Rabbit holed on fixing a little bug in Thuja. Now it works a little better with chords, which means I can make big abstract chordal phrases on Lopez this weekend. Link to the post.

Oh the joy of security training. Link to the post.

Medicine Hat good times tonight, our first new tune shaping up. This is the middle section, which we are still shaping, but I got a gold star attaboy from Legat so I have to post. Thomson and I went to Bar House after and heard lots of metal. The ceiling of the place is a scupltured seascape. Link to the post.

Working with John and Neil on Guitar Cult today. I have a study or two to do to really nail this idea down from the middle of Square. It's a weird thing when you pull the drums out, and those hocketing exchanges between the guitars are still a little sloppy–they only work when the players are metronomic, otherwise there's a little bit of swing. Do I like that? Is that a cool quirk? Link to...

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I stayed up and had a long clear-eyed talk about family history with my dad tonight. He was the youngest of six - four brothers and a sister to show him the way. I was born long after they all became parents, and after my grandfather had passed, so I never got to know him. He'd had a terrible set of experiences and financial missteps that left him damaged in some way, and my oldest uncle had b...

Something about catching the negative space in these smooth R&B tunes that satisfies. That squished guitar sound makes me happy here. Link to the post.

Tape pause machine is back in Olalla. Link to the post.

All this week, the focus is on Guitar Cult and updating the Circular 4 track for more Neil duo time. This is a little tape-pause inspired loop. Link to the post.

All this week, the focus is on Guitar Cult and updating the Circular 4 track now that I've bought this new Keith McMillen footswitch. More on this later as I explore what it does, but already I'm loving the action on the buttons. Link to the post.

All this week, the focus is on Guitar Cult and updating the Circular 4 track now that I've bought this new Keith McMillen footswitch. More on this later as I explore what it does, but already I'm loving the action on the buttons. Link to the post.

This morning we go in to begin laying drum basics down for a Guitar Cult record, finally. John and I playing scratch while we support Neil's live takes. First up is Square this morning, which you'll hear more of soon, but this morning it's the last of the surverying of Guitar Cult demos for a little while. This is "2022.06.20.Skips 2 with Slides" - another expansion o...

Pulsinators is the working title for this seed. Link to the post.

Skips is a real special piece for me. Stravinsky said, about writing the Rite of Spring, "I was the vessel the Rite passed through", or something close. He opened up and it channelled through. I had a similar experience one time at my space. Very warmed up, I sat and started playing a stream of low G sixteenth notes. My hands started wandering around like I was using a Ouija boar...

Another GC sketch. It derives from the middle section of Skips (here's a solo version) and is intended to be a second or third movement to the piece. Link to the post.

Medicine Hat is reconvening for practices and an EP, and we're in songwriting mode for the first time in 30 years. I put this together yesterday. A random guy burst into our practice space one night in 1991, like a seal through the surface of the water, and shouted "Bates I knew I'd find you!" at our singer Sean (Bates). These things stick in your head and you refer to th...

2021.03.26.Slidey Idea mix. This study focuses on a thing we spent a lot of time on in rehearsal, the problem of finding the pocket in these tight interlocking things. If you listen to each part, you'll hear rhythmically precise slides and mutes. 2 notes, but 5 actions: mute string, pick, slide, mute string, change position. Getting these parts right in isolation is one problem, the next is to...

"2022.03.21.Metric Mods" A raft of ideas from the notebooks, strung together for a sextet of guitars. Maybe the GC? Or maybe just added successively as layers in a looper. Here's the notation of the section that starts around the :50 mark. Link to the post.

The first little Low Clouds Blooming idea, all via loop pedal. Link to the post.