Ben McAllister

Minutes

Music EN ↓ 891 episodes

a sketch, a demo, a field recording, something I heard that day, a thought and a picture.

Author

Ben McAllister

Category

Music

Podcast website

www.listenfaster.com

Latest episode

Jun 20, 2026

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Episodes

May 1, 2026 01.05.2026

From January 1, 2024: Learning how to use my new Teenage Engineering OP-1, playing with this line: Link to the post.

April 30, 2026 30.04.2026

From October 18, 2024: Sam's birthday today - tonight we celebrate after being holed up with Covid for two weeks. This feels suitably Argento for a fall night. I'm getting the hang of exporting projects from the ep133. Link to the post.

April 29, 2026 29.04.2026

From August 27, 2024: From April 8 A complicated warmup turned into something simpler. A wise man told me recently that if I wanted to reach more people, swath my weird bits in accessible clothing. Well not those exact words but that was the sentiment. I love playing these slides and it feels good to at least have 4 more bars in the notebook. Moving these through positions and key changes is the n...

April 28, 2026 28.04.2026

From September 5, 2025: Music for the first apple picked from our 60-year-old tree. Link to the post.

April 27, 2026 27.04.2026

From August 5, 2024: A little Teenage Engineering and piano always works. This was for a movie about a massive scultpure of stuffies that never got off the ground. Here it sits - still feels good to me. Link to the post.

April 26, 2026 26.04.2026

From March 18, 2025: Link to the post.

April 25, 2026 25.04.2026

From January 4, 2024: Found an old recording of Gracie telling me a story when they were 5. I wrote a bunch of Csound and Thuja code to make some interlocking rhythms and added some textures–slices of a flute recording from Venice as well as bells ringing in St Mark's square, time signals over shortwave radio. Link to the post.

April 24, 2026 24.04.2026

From April 7, 2024: Another stream of consciousness exercise made into a piece. I wrote this out - one of three studies - in Boonville without the aid of an instrument, on November 3, 2006. These three pieces were a Satori for me, a moment of awakening, where I hadn't trusted my self to freely write. This line has 2 others, as well as drum, in this sketch for a short-lived group I was planning...

April 23, 2026 23.04.2026

From September 6, 2025: Starting to cool around here, and soon the rains are coming. The is a kid's piano piece by Bartok I played on two guitar tracks, with some computer icing laid on top. This is a death-by-cuteness picture from a winery in Boonville last week. Link to the post.

April 22, 2026 22.04.2026

From August 28, 2024: From May 29 Number 150! I got a little obsessive with this, but got lazy writing it out. 1 cycle plays the the same scalar figure up and down the scale on E, F, G, A and B, then back down - it has 4 notes in the figure. The other, with 5 notes in the figure, goes up and down E, F, G and A, and the cycles just about meet up perfectly at the end. I haven't been able to sit...

April 21, 2026 21.04.2026

From November 6, 2025: Raising the Holier Grail pedal from the dead this week. Bass lines with harmonic foreground always grounds me. Link to the post.

April 20, 2026 20.04.2026

From September 4, 2024: Playing with octave dispersions on this one, better balance and less distortion. Link to the post.

April 19, 2026 19.04.2026

From March 13, 2025: Link to the post.

April 18, 2026 18.04.2026

From March 28, 2025: Developing this idea I came up with in Croatia in September. Link to the post.

April 17, 2026 17.04.2026

From November 7, 2025: I fixed a bunch of bugs in Thuja this week, and have been messing with realtime remixing using what I've always called the loop-index method. Makes a big mess of this tapepause bit of audio from a Gregorian chant recording. Link to the post.

April 16, 2026 16.04.2026

From February 1, 2026: Olallan Candidate Collage - 30, 33, 44, 70 Link to the post.

April 15, 2026 15.04.2026

From February 4, 2024: I"ve been making music with computers since I was in junior high, but started seriously when I learned Csound in the mid 90s studying composition at the University of Washington. While I make a lot of noise with the tools I know, I haven't left my comfort zone to explore music of the live coding movement, but some sort of new year's refresh energy is having...

April 14, 2026 14.04.2026

From March 6, 2025: 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 m...

April 13, 2026 13.04.2026

From January 14, 2024: The essence of Brubeck, without directly lifting anything. Link to the post.

April 12, 2026 12.04.2026

From February 14, 2025: Getting ready for more duo rehearsals with the drummer Neil Wilson and reconvening with Guitar Cult for recording. I found a raft of great rehearsals for a Chapel show from 2023. We'll be picking this thread back up as a duo, Neil and I–here are some spots that work. Pictured: farewell OP-1 - you were a fun little synthesizer. Link to the post.

April 11, 2026 11.04.2026

From August 19, 2024: From Feb 19: This line over Jason's funk was a pain for some reason - I couldn't settle on what left hand fingering to use. You check it out. Still learning TidalCycles, and playing with how I might deploy a line from Tidal in sync with Ableton. It seems I need to anticipate either an 1/8th or a 1/4 note, but it doesn't seem consistent. Link to the post.

April 10, 2026 10.04.2026

From October 13, 2024: An embellishment on my 5.29 post. Link to the post.

April 9, 2026 09.04.2026

From April 21, 2025: This is my little field recording rig, minus the parabolic mic from Soundshark. I put this out a few times a week and see what I can hear. Here are some owls in the distance I recorded Friday night. The party always seems to happen around 4am, and always closer to our bedroom on nights I'm NOT recording. While the weather holds, I'm going to find a new spot each night...

April 8, 2026 08.04.2026

From August 30, 2024: "Arkansas Traveler" is a traditional fiddle tune that I first heard electrified on a compilation of Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant's called Stratosphere Boogie. My god did I love this record - I played it incessantly and absorbed the sounds throughout high school, but didn't think myself capable of playing any of it until later. Jimmy Bryant's tech...

April 7, 2026 07.04.2026

From October 14, 2025: Ok the notebook says Stoic is the name but that absolutely sucks. Unsatisfactory. I hear three grinding Djent / Meshuggah parts in a cycle. Note to self: another starting point for realtime that won't work unless you fix your generator-update bug. Link to the post.

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