Minutes

I met a new musician buddy, and they asked what I play. We are both synth people, and while I primarily play guitar, I had to give them a bit of my background, so that they'd understand when I said "I play computer". What I do is different than synths and different than using a DAW. Though I use both of those daily as tools, I'm also building tools with code to process si...

Spent the afternoon building the calendar for this site, then found an voice note I took right after I work up a few weeks ago, this little drum dun-nuh dun-nuh groove in my head. Friday at last. Link to the post.

This is the first notation I made of a recording done with my 4 track looper, the Circular 4 Track. This system mostly exists in notebooks and one blog entry so far, but there is much more to unpack. I'll post some sounds and the accopanying notation as consider them as a group this winter, in anticipation of a solo show or two March / April. Plus I love making these diagrams. I've been ai...

So many times I come home from a long day of being 'on', and zone around my piano. I've got a lot of recordings in with this little junky beauty, which came from Joshua Kohl if I remember right. Like last night's Balinese-influenced Moog, a soundworld to steep in. Link to the post.

One strategy I use to get unstuck is to bust out Slonimsky's Thesaurus Of Scales And Melodic Patterns, pick a random scale/pattern, and do something with it. Here I grabbed a few of the scales used in Gamelan music and played with sequencing and harmonizing them. The sound-world, the vibe that comes with just sitting and soaking in this tonality is really special to my ears. I think this one i...

This thing has been called Slider Rays or Lines Above in my notebook for a little over five years. I like the angles, I like the slides, but it's static right now and it won't feel 'done' until I can take the idea and move it through some changing harmonies and vibes. Link to the post.

The essence of Brubeck, without directly lifting anything. Link to the post.

I remember hearing the Art of Noise for the first time and thinking I'd go nuts making drum kits with power tool samples as soon as I had the means. I've had the means for decades now, and this is actually my first attempt. Jason Thomson on the nailgun and drill. This is a photo of water freezing - stalagmites? - as it is pushed out of the hillside through the 15-degree night. Link to the...

Something went wrong with my equipment and I only caught 7-11pm last night, which is not where the magic typically is happening. This is especially the case on a semi-blustery night - I'd hoped for sound-absorbing snowfall to hit, and for me to catch a very clean dawn chorus in Olalla, but alas this is it. It's minimal, but with a spectral diagram of the sound you can still visually pick o...

Heading over to Olalla tonight and thinking about my Chapel show back in July. I took a bunch of slivers of birdsong, made some loops with my Circular 4 Track software, and slowly brought it up through the PA. The audience could hear lots of ambience coming in through the windows–kids playing outside, dogs barking, lots of birds–and it got confusing: are we hearing something outside or inside thro...

A tiny duet for Csound and the Wond. I abandoned the guitar part of the score but the computer is following it's part. Link to the post.

On the way home from practice, thinking about the last two posts. Will these tape pause pieces always sound frenetic? Can I make something soothing for bedtime? My first thought was to find some solo music–music for one instrument–on the radio; it turns out that KING-FM (the classical station) was the only option. This also features the first thunderstorm I recorded (in 1996!), as I try to capture...

Out on a long run earlier today, I was meditating on how I might notate some instructions for one of these tape pause things like yesterday's minute. Heady day at work, so between zooms I noodled around what symbols I could use, then made a little recording. You'll see some new glyphs: the "Tape Pause Clef" (that's supposed to be the sign for record and pause together...

I bought for of these boomboxes about 20 years ago to do a piece at the Moore called From Mixdown, where I played four different cds I assembled, manually synced. I dusted off the one I still possess, and brought it home to do some tape pause stuff - always a thing that breaks writers block for me. Here's what I put together from the FM dial this afternoon at 430. Link to the post.

Bobby and Ryan came over tonight and we did a variation on a piece I did at the Chapel a while ago, where I recorded the audience singing some notes - humming, singing 'eeeeee' and 'oooooo'. I took these and worked some computer magic on them to evoke a choir. I'm super zoned out from coding this thing up all day today - made big improvements to my Thuja workflow along the way....

I was on a flight and had this melody stuck in my head, so like I often do I record it on the phone and transcribe it later. This one sounds so simple in my head, but is weird when I play it. In my head, the arrangement sounds something like this. Very rough stiched-together transcription from my notebook - might have to recopy that. Link to the post.

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.

Hangs with Jason tonight, jamming on our HX Effects and hearing all the lovely noises. Link to the post.

4 days on the couch sick after 10 days without guitar practice. Link to the post.

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