Category: Audio

Today Jenny and I helped our friends Jeff and Wendy with a large cactus and succulent sale that they have been organizing for the past four months called “Operation Art Gardens” They’re both teachers and they put this sale together as a fundraiser for new equipment for Jeff’s video production class, which he teaches at a local middle school, but to them it means a lot more than that.  They’re garden has become a reflection of their blossoming love (ahhhhhh, but true).
 
Seriously, I have known Jeff for almost 15 years and I can safely say that he’s the kind of guy that when he finds something that he wants to get into, he really gets into it.  And ever since Wendy and Jeff became an item, as it were, Jeff turned all his energy towards making his home a more inviting place for her.  His backyard underwent the largest transformation.  In less then a year and a half, It went from being a rocky, lifeless, dirt square into an amazing flourish of all types of plant life, especially of the cactus and succulent variety.  His favorites are the Euphorbias.  He has become what I like to call, a total nerd.
 
Watching how his backyard has changed has been truly amazing but nothing as amazing as the past four months as he’s prepared for “Operation Art Gardens”.  From dirt clods to flower beds and grassy areas to shelves and shelves of succulents and cactus all collected by Jeff and Wendy from local donors.  They both nutured a ton of donated clippings into over 500 healthy potted plants and sold over 70% of them today! 

It’s something that I’m sure will grow larger as they continue to do it every six months. 

Good job guys,

All the best!

What a night!  I told my wife that I was going to close myself off for the evening and finish my song for the latest MCRP, Version 4.   A brief description:  MCRP stands for Monome Community Remix Project and it works like this.  A group of monome users each uploads a sample into a pot, then the pot is sent out to all of those that uploaded.  Finally, each participant has three weeks to create a song from the pot of samples, no synths, extra instruments, only the samples provided.
 
You should already be hearing the song that I submitted on this one.  It was made completely from a single sample, the sound of a washing machine actually.  You can have a listen to the sample in it’s original form on one of my previous posts.   This version of the song you’re listening to isn’t going to be the final.   I plan on adding quite a bit of effects modulation and mix sweetening. But truthfully, once 2am rolls around you kind of have to wrap up for the night.
 
The song was created with both monome apps Polygome 64 and Press Cafe, liberally.   It was completely arranged solely this evening and I think that it came out pretty good when you consider how little time I was able to devote to it.  You can listen to all the songs from this version of MCRP as well as download the album from the MCRP bandcamp site.  Everyone who is involved always ends up creating such a wide array of great music.
 
Please download and enjoy!

Today I flew back from England and happily got to see Jenny and June.  It was nice to see the two ladies in my life again.  Today’s creative thing is about sample manipulation.   This evening I worked on my song for the MCRP.  I’ve been involved in something called MCRP (Monome Community Remix Project) for about four or five months now.  The idea is everyone who wants to participate adds an audio sample into the pot.  Once the deadline passes, everyone who uploaded receives a sample pack containing all of the samples.   Then, we all separately attempt to make songs out of the samples provided over a period of three weeks.  You can listen to a version of MCRP right here on this site by clicking here.

 
My idea this time around was to only use one sample to create my song.   Click play on the music player at the bottom of this page to here the sample that I chose.  It’s the sound of a washing machine and it was uploaded by a talented monome user called visnin.  Once the sample is over you will begin to hear the next track, a short track I threw together tonight of some bits I’ve created using visinin’s sample.   This is just a simple and quick improvisation of my clips (it is most likely not what my final song will ultimately sound like).
 
My process so far was, first, I started by finding just some loop-able sections of the sample and figured out the best tempo for those loops.   Then I took a couple of short chunks of the sample and created multiple drum sounds out of it.   Finally, I took a tiny chunk of the sample and looped it quickly that I was able to create what sounded like a synth saw wave and sent it through a multi-pass filter.  To create the rhythms you hear I used monome apps polygome for the drums and press cafe for the melody/bass line.

 
On a side note just for you sample heads out there.  While I was in London I visited a pretty cool exhibit at the barbican that one of the monome users, dovemouse recommended to me.   Unfortunately they had a sign that said no photography which was a bummer.  What they forgot to post was no audio recording so if you’re interested feel free to download my field recording of this exhibit.   It’s definitely worth it.

[xspf]_start(‘day20’)[/xspf]

Farewell England. It was great!

Today I went to work on the set and left around 7pm.  Unfortunately, I’m unable to show you anything from what I’m working on out here because it’s sensitive and I’d get in trouble if I posted anything from it.   Nevertheless, sometimes what I’m doing on the set is half as interesting as what’s really out there.
 
So, after dinner I decided I’d head down into the london underground for some photography and field recordings.  I have always loved the sound of subways.  When I finally boarded the train I came across Zoom-Lee, a true rastafari from Bermuda.   He hails from a particular area of Bermuda called the Warwick parish and calls himself a Sitaheelian, which means he was born in that area and raised to remain the same for life.  In other words, never to change and become a person that you are not but to remain true to who you are and always have been and to always improve.   He travels a lot and as he goes from place to place he makes money by both drumming on the street and finding local jobs as an auto mechanic.   He says that his whole thing in life is to feel fine and be happy and speak to people through his music.
 
All the best Zoom-Lee.  Thanks!

So today was a beautiful day.   The first day of spring, ironically.  I took June for a walk and decided to hit my neighbor up for an interview.  He’s known as “The Tulip Man”.  I’d noticed the crowds that gathered in front of his house last year and it was all very intriguing at the time.  His name is actually Wayne but the reason people call him “The Tulip Man” is because every year around the end of winter he plants thousands of tulips in his front yard.  This year the count reached 3200.   Also this year has been different for him because he has blown up in popularity.   The L.A. Times did a story on him and not long after that he was experiencing days with up to 100 to 150 visitors!   Seriously.  Today was not as busy as I have seen.  During our interview only two cars stopped by to check out the tulips.  Suffice to say, it is definitely a sight to be seen.
 
Today, I had brought June along in the hopes that after the interview I could take some nice baby pictures amongst the tulips.   Don’t let the happy baby pictures above fool you, that girl was miserable with a cold, runny nose and sore throat.  I tried to do the interview with Wayne but she screamed throughout it.  So, I made a plan to come back and took June back to the house.   Once I had the chance, I headed back up to redo the interview.  Luckily, after it was over Jenny showed up with June and we ended up getting some nice photo’s anyway. Please enjoy the 13 minute audio interview I did with him.
 
Thanks, Wayne!

Volta is a pretty great invention in the world of modular synths.  While it turns the visceral experience of patching something from raw analog voltages into a slower more logistical experience, it makes the composing of music with the modular a much easier task.   Plus there’s nothing better than being able to bring that modular perfectly in sync with Ableton Live and testing out different drum loops over the sound.
 
This patch at it’s core is rather simple.   Two oscillators, one going through the Frequensteiner filter and the other going to the A-137 wave multiplier.  Both then are patched through the Planb M13 for volume modulation and on to the mixer for output.
 
The rest of it is Volta driven.  I’ll start with Volta outputs 4 and 5, they’re sending out gate signals from two Volta trigger sequencers to two different ADSR’s which are modulating the volume level of each oscillator in time.   Volta outputs 3 & 4 are sending out sample and hold signals synced to Live at different divisions and they are traveling through the A-129-3 Attenuator/Offset onto the Dual Quantizer and each separately into the pitch modulation of each oscillator, creating the random musical scale.   Finally, Volta output 1 is outputting a square LFO clock synced to Live and sending that to the A-161 clock divider. “/2” output of the clock divider is being sent to the CV in of the Frequensteiner and “/8” is being sent to the sustain CV in of the ADSR 1 to add a little rhythmic variety.
 
While recording, I added a small amount of delay from the Kaoss pad and tweaked the A-129-3 knobs to play with the pitches as well as the Frequensteiner.  I also switched wave types of the oscillators throughout, messed a bit with End of Decay re-triggering on the ADSR2 and I played around with the time periods of the Sample and Holds within Volta.  Finally, I added a random drum loop over it in Ableton. I hope you enjoy!
 

So this should be interesting.  Right now you should be hearing three stereo contact mic recordings playing back simultaneously.  Hmm, how’s it sound?  I bought a couple contact mics over the internet recently and tonight was the first time I was able to test them out.  I used two contact mics for each recording.  One as the left speaker and one as the right.
 
The first thing I thought of to record was of course my refrigerator. Sometimes it makes the strangest sounds- (I was actually a little disappointed with it’s performance tonight, usually its much more strange sounding).  The second thing I recorded was my creaky wood flooring.  I taped each of them down and creeped around them in my socks.   That sounded pretty good but I kept getting some kind of electrical interference.   Lastly, I recorded these wonderful 1950’s metal outdoor chairs which I think have to be the most resonant thing my wife and I own.  I tried all sorts of things but mostly I brushed my finger across the surface.  That was my favorite recording of the three.
 
Feel free to turn off a couple of the sounds to hear them separately.  Try out some headphones, they might sound better.

What a busy Saturday!   I had to work this morning until about 1pm then this evening my wife and I celebrated my old high school drama teachers retirement.   It was very much a reunion for me.    I got to see a lot of friends that I haven’t seen since my high school days.   Afterwards, we all went out for drinks.   Anyways, because of all of the excitement of the day I wasn’t able to begin this creative project until about 1am.
 
So, I decided to document the drunks heading home. In the background you can hear the sounds of people stumbling their way through the parking lots to their vehicles.   Also, every photo you see here was taken with a 30 second exposure time.
 

Today I flew up to San Francisco for work.   I spent the whole day shooting at the Walt Disney Family Museum.  It was an epic day and my body is destroyed from it.  Anyways, I used to go to school out here and I decided to meet up with some old college friends.  Enter Justin. I decided to interview and profile Justin because he is one of the most amazing people that I know.
 
The first thing I should mention about Justin is that he suffers from a very rare nerve disease called CRPS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome also known as RSD, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy.  It’s a very under-researched disease.
 
Doctors still don’t know what causes it and there is no cure. It can be caused by something as small as a sprained ankle but could easily lead to amputation.  It’s very scary and basically, it’s slowly spreading throughout his body.  It’s a terrible condition that I hope we can find a cure for soon.
 
Justin doesn’t succumb to the disease at all though.  He uses it to push himself further into new ideas and experiences.  He’s an artist through and through and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Polaroids or painting or embroidery he goes into everything full on and head first (check out those tats!!). For example, he has an unhealthy obsession for any and all things Polaroid and a few months ago decided to start his own 365 day project in that every day he takes a polaroid of himself.
 
Justin is truly one of the most amazing and inspirational people that I know.  If your interested you can press play on the player below to hear a short 20 minute interview I did with Justin today.  Also check out his progress with the 365 days of polaroid pictures here.  Please donate to the research being done to discover a cure.  This is a great article that describes RSD or CRPS in great detail.  Please read it and learn more.