Minutes

Racoons chatting it up in Matt and Jean's backyard last night. We had a racoon family move in to our eave space last year - I tagged their cute speech on at the end. Another Ballard memory. It was a weird thing: where our default is to set traps to kill rats, there was no way to really rid our space of the racoon family without separating mom and babies, and wait for the babies to die. They wi...

Mike used to work for Klingendaggers. Link to the post.

We woke up to what may have been Ukranian folk tunes set to dance floor beats at 645 this morning, and we're ready to move. Link to the post.

Last night in Ballard. Minutes are on hold as we move to Olalla. Pictured as some ideas for notating fader / mixing moves from Midjourney. Link to the post.

Here I am without the guitar, without the connection my hands make to my strings vibrating into air absorbed by the earth, connected to my vibrato, making a single point sustain and sing, connected to my patterns jumping from string to string, connecting my lines to make shapes that make my sounds, connecting my bleached and muddy harmonies, my icy and gummy and firey blobs, pulling two notes toge...

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Minutes are on pause, while we move to Olalla. Link to the post.

Xenakis had this piece called Concret PH, it was a piece realized on 1/4" tape, and the only sounds–the only source material for the sounds–was burning charcoal. The clicks and pops you hear when something's burning. I think about this all the time, as an austerity measure when I'm composing. "Imagine I only have this one sound as the source." It's a good cha...

Psyched to get into shortwave recording this weekend over at the Olalla place, now that chores are lightening up. This was recorded September 20, 2023, when I first got this new rtl-sdr setup and ran the shortwave through my laptop with gqrx. Nerds! Nerds! Nerds! Nerds! This pic is from 10 years ago to the day, with my fair bride at the Getty Institute, lookin real cool. What should the band be ca...

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 and practice my guitar for what fe...

Looks like I haven't written anything about the patterns I was using for rhythmic improv with the Cult - this leans on some of those rhythms a bit. Link to the post.

Another run with the birds, this time through csound + thuja. Link to the post.

Last Friday night the woods in Olalla sounded like Pasadena, where there are constant mockingbirds (and many others) going intermittently all night. Maybe because it was suddenly so warm? Lots of birdies. It reminded me of the opening to skylarking. I opened up TidalCycles for the first time in months and played with some samples from the audio I took. Link to the post.

Messing around with fragments from a song about summertime that's always felt like a pile of fragments. Some good fragments, but fragments nonetheless. Summer is soon to come! Pictured: Kamala's beutiful jellyfish. Link to the post.

This is another Chiiwas candidate. I'm not sure about the words anymore, and this is the third demo incarnation, but it's closer to a keeper. I'll listen back to this and rewrite some lyrics I think. Link to the post.

An earworm from the past, to be rethought for Chiwas. Link to the post.

We finally sold our Ballard spots and wow is it a relief. This is my morning doodle on the ep-133. This is funny, blindingly obvious advice I saw posted at a gas station recently. Link to the post.

I've been away from the Circular 4Track and thinking about what I want to change about it. The challenge I laid for myself was to reach some sort of "critical mass" in the loops I created with it, which a lot of times took.. time. In that time I lull the listener into mellow territory. I haven't been able to jump right into the critical mass, and I want to play with that....