Audio Log: Straesum

Ableton session number three.

Audio Log: Morning Dreamscapes

Another Ableton Live session.

Audio Log: Funny Life

This is a fun little ditty composed on Ableton Live.

Bread and Art

I finally baked an honest loaf from the sourdough culture I started back in December. I shot it from this angle so you wouldn't see I already dug in on the other side. It's a nice dense loaf (the kind where you can eat one or two pieces and get pretty full) with a wonderful crumb, and the flavor is as rich and complex as a fine cheese. I still have to work on the crust a bit through refining oven temperature and moisture levels, but in the meantime, Ooh La La!



It seems to me that bread and art go so well together that I couldn't pass up this opportunity to marry them. The above photo is of a little beach piece put together by my sister and myself - photo by Mom. The below photo features a collaborative piece composed by my four-year-old nephew and myself on the house dry-erase board. He loves to draw superheroes, and lately I've been trying to steer his creative expression away from violence toward the virtues of respect and responsibility.



What's interesting about these two works is the striking design similarities despite the shift in context and almost a year of separation. What's more is that both mediums are incredibly transient, sort of like the loaf of bread above.

Audio Log: By Twos and Threes

This piece was born out of an attempt to create a soundtrack for a web-based promotional video I created for a client. Thankfully it didn't work out at all for the video, because it's a hot tune! In this composition I'm gradually refining my approach to MIDI-based instrumentation, and hopefully getting a bit closer to the things I'm trying to emulate. That said, I hope listeners will be able to appreciate the piece with fresh ears, or possibly imagine how it might sound with a real live band. This piece also features a couple of solos that showcase the power of the MIDI keyboard, as I wouldn't be able to do this stuff without it. BTW the video track turned out excellently, and perhaps I'll be able to share a link or embedded file in a future post.

That Sink-ing Feeling

I got hold of a new mother the other day. In this case, a mother is a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast that ferments a mixture of black tea and sugar into a refreshing and potentially health-promoting drink known as kombucha. I kept one other kombucha culture in the past (actually the new one is an offshoot of an offshoot of the original culture I kept), and never before realized the incredible toughness of these mothers. I wanted to split the new mother in two pieces so I could work up two separate jars of kombucha, and had an incredibly difficult time. I eventually came out with two mangled pieces, but hopefully I'll have a couple of intact mothers after a week or so of fermentation.

If you look at the photo, you'll see layering near the top of the jar. Each layer is a distinct mother (more or less). This whole thing has me wondering what a mother consists of exactly... Ahhh! More info here: Kombucha. Well you can check out some of the purported health effects of kombucha while you're there.

I replaced a bathroom faucet yesterday at the request of my sister. This was a first for me, and I have to say it turned out pretty well. Looks good, and no leaks! Is it strange that the liquid that gets trapped in the sink drain looks a lot like kombucha?

Bang Snow

It's a snowy day today. One of my favorite things to witness is when a pine bough gets overloaded with snow and suddenly lets loose a rush of powder - the trees must know I'm writing about them, because they just dumped a couple of the largest snow loads yet. I think what grabs me about these cascades is that there's a sort of hushed drama to the whole ordeal. The snow is moving rapidly, but seems to be suspended for a time. There's a quiet hiss as the snow lands that despite all of the movement seems to accentuate the stillness. And the trigger (one more snowflake) is exceedingly gentle.

Recently I've been working through some of the ins and outs of Pure Data (PD). PD is a graphical programming interface that can be used to make music and to orchestrate choreographed audio and visual phenomena. Personally, I've found the best approach to learning new technical applications (like PD) is to first immerse myself in tutorials and possibilities until I feel pretty overwhelmed. Then I step back and wait for these initial impressions to ferment (like sourdough, kombucha, or yogurt). When I start to think about the possibilities for X again I know it's time to pick it back up, only this time I have to find reasonable goals to maintain a consistent level of motivation. Once a goal is in place, figuring out how to achieve the goal (or at least a close approximation) becomes a memorable learning adventure.

p.s. - Re: the post title, a "Bang" is a trigger in PD

Riff

I'm looking at rainbow colors in the snow a lot these days. I try to make myself feel cold during my morning walks so that I can sit down at the computer and accomplish more than just blank staring. I've got a love-hate relationship with caffeine and technology. I'm on this Earth to make music, and to take care of a lot of monotonous business. I stopped eating breakfast because it seems like a waste of food. I forgot to water the plants again today. When I Google myself, I'm usually beat out by a bunch of ancestry sites about people who were hardly notable, never had the slightest inkling about the Internet, and haven't been alive for decades at least. I like how trees crack when the air is really cold, and the flutter of dry beech leaves always stirs the emotions. When I spill something my first thought is "ctrl-z". Knotweed stalks make great play swords.

Bird Tales

Lots of new species at the bird feeder the last few days. Mourning doves, blue jays, a diverse assortment of cryptically-patterned sparrows (including unconfirmed fox, chipping & song sparrows), a Carolina wren, Cooper's and red-tailed hawks, and downy and red-bellied (1) woodpeckers. The sparrows, titmice and juncos have become our regular regulars, so to speak. It's interesting to note how much more comfortable the birds seem as they've settled into a familiar pattern of feeding and pecking.

With all of the recent snow storms I've had to be pretty diligent about scattering a layer of seed for the ground feeders. Just today I noticed that the space underneath the picnic table has remained relatively free of powder. It also makes for a cozy little bird nook, so tomorrow I'll try throwing a bit of seed in there and see how things play out. The squirrels have really eased back on visits of late, to the point that I've actually digressed in my ability to differentiate them. Maybe they got belly-aches from gorging themselves on seed.

Digital Media

Video editing takes a serious toll. I'm currently developing a splash promo video for a client, and it's reminding me how incredibly absorbing video production can be - keeping track of so many simultaneous threads. For a while I said I could never produce video for a living because I'm not anal enough. I don't say that anymore. Aside from the gratifying feeling that comes when a video reaches completion, this particular video has resulted in an additional perk. While composing the theme music I created a song that won't work with the video, but which will make an awesome standalone piece. I hope to have it posted here within the next week or so.

While on the topic of music, lately I've been making my way over to Jamendo.com for a number of listening sessions. Jamendo hosts the works of a number of musicians and composers all under Creative Commons licensing. Plenty of albums on Jamendo are truly excellent, and all of the music can be accessed on demand or even downloaded as compressed .zip files. I've been visiting Jamendo on and off for the past year or so, and created a profile while looking into .mp3 delivery systems for this blog. Jamendo was ultimately beat out by the xspf player (now xspf jukebox) in the battle for blog audio player, but I've since discovered that maintaining a Jamendo account has benefits in it's own right. These include listener feedback, access to a community of dedicated composers and musicians, and the possibility for collaborations. I haven't yet produced a body of material that could be consolidated to fill an album, but once that happens I plan on posting to my Jamendo account. I'll also keep posting all of my audio creations here on this blog for the foreseeable future.

The below album by humeka is one of my
current favorites on Jamendo. Enjoy!

For the Birds... and Squirrels

I put up a bird feeder in the back yard last night at about 9pm. The grey squirrels have been pigging out for most of the day. I'm trying to keep mental notes of distinguishing characteristics for each of the seven plus squirrels, and so far I'm fairly confident I've got two down pat. One of the two is a larger squirrel I'm calling Red, who has a greater predominance of red-tinted fir on his head and back. The other is Britches, who has longish black patches of fir on the hind quarters. Aside from these two, I may be able to distinguish at least one other by physical characteristics, as I noticed that one squirrel may be a bit stockier/fluffier around the head and neck. As far as I can tell, the rest may need to be identified by behavior characteristics, which takes a little longer to sleuth out.

Right around 11am, I noticed a bunch of songbirds gathering in the treetops around the back yard. The crows were very vocal around the property just before and during this time period, which causes me to think they may have been advertising the location to the local inhabitants, and/or hoping for a show. The first brave soul to land on the feeder was a tufted titmouse. Thereafter I left the window for a while so as not to be a spook, but saw chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, pileated woodpecker, downy woodpeckers, juncos and a few other unidentifieds flitting all around the house. Such a treat to be in the presence of birds.

The main intention behind installing the bird feeder is to try to instill some nature awareness in my nephew and niece. At four and eight, they are ripe to receive this kind of information. My follow-up project to the feeder will be to create a "bird board" where the kids and adults can record bird observations. Once that's in place, I'll set us up with a household eBird account so we can easily keep an ongoing record of our sightings.

International Appeal

What do the following five locations have in common?

Surabaya, Indonesia

Stockholm, Sweden

Oviedo, Spain

Martellago, Italy

Lambeth, United Kingdom

People from each location have visited this blog within the last month. Thanks to everyone who's visited, and to Google Earth & Analytics for making the images available.

Audio Log: Evolution

This is my first composition using a MIDI keyboard. It's amazing the difference in terms of flow both within the composition itself as well as with the creative process. I think the main difference is that I can hear my ideas in real time, which allows my train of thought to progress without the major breaks that occurred when I was manually writing each note into a MIDI map.