Author: Starthief

released: Kintsugi

As usual, it’s free/pay-what-you-want. The notes are here. Enjoy!

That lo-fi ISD sampler arrived and I played with it a little bit. It is indeed satisfyingly crunchy and gross as a sample recorder, with loop points that have a gap and a pop. There’s also a “feedback” mode which acts as a lowpass filter (and downsampler, but that filter is dark enough to hide most of the artifacts) with feedback.

The internal mic doesn’t disengage when you plug in to the input, which at first annoyed me but I think I’m just going to take that as it is; if I want to process Eurorack stuff with it I’m going to accept the extra noise. I can always wrap it in a towel to muffle things a bit, or intentionally stick it next to the desk fan or run a finger over the case.

I’ve been doing my best to cope with the anxiety and physical symptoms. Right now the worst thing is getting caught up thinking about it, rehearsing what I’m going to say to the doctor, etc. I’ve been telling myself, there’s no reason to dwell on it now, the proper time is when I’m at the appointment and that’s only a week away now. I’ve been distracting myself, further reducing the intake of bad/political news, and getting a bit of walking in.

This morning I actually felt pretty good to start, but then had a blood sugar crash after a breakfast of oatmeal with (no-sugar-added applesauce). Things certainly do vary.

Just for the fun of it, I memorized the rune chant in Heilung’s In Maidjan, the part that begins at about 3:54 in this live performance:

I can’t read or name most of the runes by sight, but it’s very satisfying to be able to chant this along while listening. Their music goes right to my heart, lifting my mood and giving me comfort. Having looked up translations I know a lot of it is about protection, healing, courage, and the types of love that the Greeks would call agape and philia (and perhaps storge). (You know, all the stuff that MAGA is opposed to…) It’s not all just about a badass image.

A couple of books arrived. The Composer’s Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America is about some key electronic music creative pioneers of the 60s and early 70s: Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Don Buchla, Alvin Lucier, and Sun Ra. I saw the announcement over at ModWiggler and it sounded pretty fascinating. At the same time I ordered Your Anxiety Beast And You.

First I have some library ebooks to finish. I’m currently reading The Jasmine Throne, a very India-inspired fantasy where several cultures have been jammed together uncomfortably into an empire and one, which used to rule through magic and terror but was socially liberal, is now heavily oppressed by a misogynistic socially conservative tyrant. There are rebels who want a return to form and bloody revenge, and fewer who want a better and more equal world. Interpersonal, cultural, class and political relationships are a tangled mess. It is fascinating, but unfortunately I don’t entirely like anybody. I do kind of want a couple of the main characters to just kiss already though. 😛

After that, I have A Sorceress Comes to Call, about a girl whose mother is an evil sorceress. Seems like it’ll be fun.

Starless held my attention throughout, unlike what some reviewers had said. The relationship of the two main characters was weird; it was obvious that they deeply loved each other immediately due to the whole fate thing, but they didn’t allow it to become romantic love until late in the book for reasons that mostly felt like story convention. I liked some of the characters and enjoyed the weird magic, but overall I think maybe 7/10?

Zukunfthall

After eight years (!), Valhalla DSP released a new plugin. FutureVerb combines a “too clean” high-end reverb with a characterful “echo” section which itself can spread delay taps and diffusion into reverb. Just the Echo portion alone would make for a fantastic plugin as far as I’m concerned, with features that don’t overlap that much with the also-incredible Valhalla Delay — some granular/reverse pitch shifting, a Spread control that does all kinds of interesting things, etc. Like many Valhalla plugins, controls have macro effects depending on models/modes selected, and it’s all really well thought out.

The routing is simultaneously serial and parallel — you choose whether the echo or reverb goes first, and its 100% wet output is the input to the other side, while a Level knob affects how much of the output is audible. This makes it super versatile, and useful even for effects that aren’t echoes and reverbs. (Of course, I could route this in Bitwig with separate plugins easily enough. But when you come down to it, this thing sounds great.)

So it’s definitely a winner. KvR being what it is, it has its detractors: someone who thinks you can’t use the word “realistic” to describe a reverb if you don’t specify the room size/shape and materials in a physical manner and place sound sources and microphones inside it; people who failed all reading comprehension and didn’t try the demo who think it’s just a “dumbed down” version of their delay and room reverb combined in one plugin; people who refuse to use any reverb that doesn’t have built-in ducking; people who simple say “I have enough reverbs.” Okay, whatever. For me it’s a very strong candidate for new effect plugin of the year.

Make Noise has formally announced Multiwave, shown its release video and is taking preorders. I think it’s pretty neat and I could use it to make the kind of music I want to make, but I’m unwilling to sacrifice anything else for it.

I still think they’ve made a tactical mistake in how they introduced Polimaths, QXG and Multiwave as a group, even before they were ready to share the details about Multiwave. It gives the impression you need 4 modules (two QXGs) to make the most of any of them, while also making Multimod and Jumbler feel like they don’t quite fit in. I think there’s actually a little truth in that, but also either Polimaths or Multiwave would be a fairly powerful part of any modular system without the whole set.

There’s new firmware for the Elmyra 2, with cleaner oscillators, improved delay and reverb and filters, a comb filter and some other stuff. At first I was like “why would I want it to sound clean, when dirt is part of the charm?” But with the analog distortion on board, and general stacking of potentially complex voices, and comb filtering etc. I think it’ll be more than fine. But I want to go ahead and get Kintsugi finished and released before I mess with that.

I got my first quote on chimney stuff — or rather, I didn’t. The company that seemed most promising wants to charge me $230 just to look at it (visually and with camera scopes) to determine what needs to be fixed, despite my saying we don’t use the fireplace and just want exterior leaks fixed. That should be a free estimate. My preference would be honestly to not have a fireplace at all and reclaim that entire wall.

So I used another company’s web form, while not holding my breath for an answer given how most contractors are about those things. It’s looking increasingly like I will just slap a panel on the bottom myself, which will be extremely simple but won’t fix the leak that caused the rot in the first place. Maybe a siding company is more appropriate for that?

Urr the Bearsmasher

It just so happened that Neatorama posted this video yesterday. It’s very relevant and describes what’s going on with me. (And yeah, there’s a just slightly subtle dig at Trump.)

Anyway, I went ahead and made an appointment with my #1 choice from among the PHMNPs. That’ll be mid-December, while the primary care doc is in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile I still need to deal with things myself; I do think things are getting a little bit better than they were but I need to keep taking it easy. Here’s what I’m doing:

  • no caffeine
  • less soda. Carbonated beverages can contribute to bloating, which is one of the symptoms I’m having. Also there’s the “gut-brain connection”; beyond just the discomfort or worrying about symptoms, what goes on in the gut biome influences mood. (There is a lot of feedback between mental and physical health.)
  • trying to eat healthy and gently in general, to make it easier on my digestive system and reduce blood sugar extremes.
  • drink herbal tea. Lemon+ginger is good for digestion. “Tension Tamer” has some things which may be beneficial for both the gut and nervous system and is pretty tasty too. Chamomile isn’t my favorite, but it’s also calming.
  • I’m considering some supplements. Fish oil, ashwaganda, probiotics with inulin.
  • Stay hydrated. We do have a whole-home humidifier that stops our skin from drying out too terribly, reduces static electricity and is better for our musical instruments, but it’s still definitely drier this time of year, as my cracked lips will attest.
  • I’m going to try to get at least a little exercise. On days when I’m at the office taking a couple of walking breaks is easy; at home we’re not in the best neighborhood for walking but there’s a park nearby I can drive to. Sunlight also is beneficial for mental health, both the vitamin D and the effects on circadian rhythms, and my religious side reminds me it’s Ra-Horakhty’s year.
  • Distracting myself. Hobbies and creative pursuits are supposed to be really helpful against anxiety and I find that’s true.

I had a dentist appointment Monday, and honestly it was relaxing for the most part. Is that weird? I mean, getting stabbed in the gums and having my gag reflex triggered a couple of times wasn’t great. But just lying back in the comfy chair and closing my eyes and letting someone else take care of me for a bit? Yes. Plus, I had already had a fairly pleasant drive, sunlight and music on the way there.

Did I mention, my album Suspension was accepted by the St. Louis County library for their “Listen Up STL” program? They’re making a bunch of local music available for free listening. Not that it wasn’t already free on Bandcamp, but still.

I’ve decided to hold off on further modular changes for a bit. I did some fun things with Wave Packet’s F-Sync input which none of my other modules can do. Plus there are a couple of potentially interesting things I have my eye on: Tom Erbe is working on something new for Make Noise, and Fancyyyyy Synthesis teased a new “21st century complex oscillator” which is super intriguing. I mean, this description is catnip for nerds:

Harmonic wavefolding, blended harmonic frequency shifting, damped feedback and asymmetric phase modulation, harmonic stretching, damped sync, and a universal function generator with multiple trigger responses that can drive pulsar synthesis — all combined in a CV-controllable matrix that can smoothly morph between states. K-ACCUMULATOR also features variably spaced harmonic, just-intone or equal temperament quantization, a unique root frequency architecture, and a new type of delta-sigma pattern generator.

That said, the first demo, which has blown a lot of minds, actually didn’t grab me that much sonically. I hear some potential in between the lines, but it also sounds broadly like software synths I already have, and there were no particular moments where I absolutely loved the sound. A lot will depend on the next few demos, and the size and price.

queen of pu….trescense! Boo!

I am deeply disappointed in the cowardice, tactical stupidity, and utter uselessness of the eight Democratic seven Democratic and one Dem-leaning independent senators who caved in and gave the Republicans everything they wanted after a 40-day standoff. They got no concessions at all, not even a promise of a future vote on funding health care again (for whatever that’s worth).

Angus King, Tim Kaine, John Fetterman, Dick Durbin, Maggie Hasan, Jeanne Shaheen, Catherine Matso, and Jacky Rosen, and also Chuck Schumer who coordinated this: fuck you very much, you spineless worms.

Every single one of them was already not going to seek re-election so they personally had nothing to lose — but it undermines confidence in the party for future elections, and it undermines the recently demonstrated knowledge that we all knew the shutdown was Republicans’ fault all along. Editorials are popping up from furloughed forest rangers who’ve been living in their cars, people who were losing their SNAP benefits, etc. that they wanted Democrats to keep fighting, not render this entire thing moot. Shaheen’s daughter, herself a politician, was calling for standing firm a couple of days ago and now has publicly disagreed with her mom’s decision. I will note that the big victories last Tuesday were not brought about by the centrists and fossils of the party, but by progressives and by outraged, engaged voters who properly appreciate what’s at stake.

Yet another example of how we live in the stupidest timeline.

Now, there’s still some debate and amendments and more voting in the Senate… and then it goes to the House. Which means Johnson has to finally reopen the House. Which means Adelita Grijalva finally gets sworn in, and adds the 218th signature to the discharge petition which triggers a vote to release the Epstein files. Which is all well and good… but this would have happened inevitably anyway.

Meanwhile, people will lose their healthcare coverage, and will suffer and die needlessly. Remember the “death panels” scare when public healthcare was being debated? …yeah.

I’ve decided to quite caffeine cold turkey, at least for a bit, to see if that helps. No coffee, no soda with caffeine, no tea except herbal. The anxiety stuff and what I believe are physical side effects of it are really kicking my ass, and caffeine definitely does play with anxiety. Except during my worst previous round of anxiety in 2020, I had a habit of maybe a couple of cups of coffee and a couple of Coke Zeros per day with seemingly no ill effects, although maybe they were just not bad enough to notice. Sometimes caffeine will fix a headache or give me an energy boost, but mostly it’s just a habit. So far today’s been a bad one for anxiety anyway, but let’s just not compound the problem.

On a more positive note, I’ve finished recording Kintsugi, which will be my sixth release for the year. The entire theme is about piecing together broken shards. Of course there’s the philosophical side of kintsugi, which I find particularly appropriate both personally and nationally right now, and “broken but beautiful” describes a lot of the timbres and textures that I enjoy. But there were many separate recording sessions where I’d just create a single drone, or a simple sequence or something to loop. These were put together with a little extra material, to make 14 individual named parts. After mastering I’m going to merge those to three final tracks, totaling a bit under an hour.

getting help

What I wrote yesterday about feeling better? The feeling didn’t last throughout the day; I had a bit of a rougher time in the evening. Sometimes it’s hard to disentangle physical discomforts of various kinds. Was it something I ate? Did I worsen my back with poor posture? Am I just tired or actually feeling depressed? Too much caffeine or too low blood sugar or neither?

I didn’t make it an official resolution for 2025, but I did make a promise to myself if I felt like I couldn’t handle my anxiety I would get help. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had multiple symptoms showing up, and I just feel like I don’t want to and shouldn’t have to handle it without proper help.

I took an anxiety “risk assessment” questionnaire through my health provider and it says, no surprise here, that I’m high risk. It also offered a little bit of advice on things I can do to help myself but also said, make an appointment immediately.

I contacted my primary care doctor’s office to ask whether it made more sense to make an appointment with her, or to just get a referral to a specialist. The LPN said the former, because I haven’t seen her since 2016 and need to re-establish care. (I have an appointment now during Thanksgiving week, when I already took some time off.) But she also sent along a long list of providers, including a Behavioral Urgent Care that I could go to if I felt I needed it.

On the list I found a practice that has three PMHNPs (*) who seem ideal: they get excellent reviews from their patients, and they specialize in both anxiety and gender identity. While I’m not going for gender-affirming care per se, it reassures me that they’re sympathetic and understand gender issues, and it may be relevant to helping me. (I also searched for someone who’s nonbinary, but all I can find are therapists who can’t prescribe meds, don’t take my insurance and/or aren’t currently accepting new patients.)

I’m trying to decide whether to wait to see how the primary care appointment goes, or to go ahead and make an appointment with one of them now too. And if so, whether to schedule that for after that doctor, or before.

Just deciding to do this at all has been something of a step. Just making medical appointments, figuring out what to say even in a short message, triggers anxiety. But having gone this far I already feel a little bit better about things, at the moment.

(*) Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. Like a psychiatrist, but rather than “doctors” they are at the top level of nursing, with either master’s or doctorates and a ton of practical work experience and certifications. In 27 states including Missouri, they can practice autonomously, prescribe meds, etc.

Work has been crazy-making this week, and I’m sure that doesn’t help the anxiety situation. I’ve been trying to test some update libraries & legacy Fortran compiler and it’s been throwing the weirdest errors. There’s been entirely too much uninstalling, reinstalling, updating, being unable to download the specific versions of things that we want, reconfiguring, testing, tracking down DLL dependencies, trying stupid things just in case, thinking I finally found it, discovering that the same errors persist on a different machine, etc. And almost none of it is coding. Blech. But hey, the weekend is imminent now.

I’ve got about 40 minutes of music recorded for the next album now, and ideas for at least two more tracks I want to do. So that’s good!

breathing room

There weren’t very many elections yesterday in the US, it being an off year for any sort of federal elections. We had none where I live, for instance. But some of those elections will have a big impact. Redistricting in California that balances against Texas’ gerrymandering. Pennsylvania keeping its Democratic state Supreme Court, which may play a role in the midterm and next Presidential elections if there are legal challenges. Maine voters rejected a proposal meant to disenfranchise voters. JD Vance’s half-brother was absolutely humiliated in a race for Cincinatti mayor, against the child of an Indian immigrant and a Tibetan refugee. And the next mayor of New York City is a Democratic Socialist, a Muslim, and a strong supporter of trans rights — and he won by a huge margin.

That last bit is huge. 38 out of 50 states (and something like 90 nations) have a smaller population than NYC. That is a lot of voters, and a real chance to change the course of American politics.

All Republicans offered was anti-trans attack ads (in Virginia the candidate spent 57% of their campaign budget on that alone) and other culture war stuff. Democratic messaging focused on peoples’ actual needs and rights. The winners seemed to know what people actually want… unlike the so-called strategists who were, up until yesterday at least, still on the “everyone needs to move to the right” train.

Trump, of course, had a hissy fit on social media. But, damaged as his brain is, he seems to be fully aware that people are not buying the shutdown strategy of “punish the people and blame Democrats for it.” He’s distancing himself from “Republicans” in general, because in his mind he’s not a loser and nothing is ever his fault. But my prediction is, he’ll tell his pet senators to put health care back on the table and get things moving again, and then attempt to claim credit for ending the shutdown because “art of the deal.”

…

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I feel physically better today. For a couple of weeks now I’ve had a combination of back pain, a tendency toward anxiety, and let’s call it an uncertain digestive system. Perhaps a lot of that really is driven by anxiety, so a little emotional relief brings some physical relief as well.

My current read is Starless by Jacqueline Carey. I haven’t read any of her other stuff, so I have no idea how it compares. It’s certainly very tropey, in a quite stereotypicasl desert setting that has a couple of clever worldbuilding twists to it. I’m a little bothered by the idea that one of the tribes/cultures is very much associated with thievery, and everyone (including those people) just goes with it — this isn’t too much different from real-world racist tropes about the Romani for instance.

Despite that I’m enjoying it so far, but I see a lot of reviews saying it will start to drag and feel slow later on. We’ll see.

This book no doubt wound up on my list due to the trans angle — the main character is bhazim, an “honorary boy” because boys bring families more status than girls — and for some reason he was raised in ignorance of that fact at first. At ten years old he’s been living his whole life since infancy in a monastery training in martial arts, never even seeing a woman. He’s destined to be a bodyguard for a princess, which would have required castration if he’d been born with those parts. So, individuals vs. sexism is definitely a theme here, as well as class struggle.

triple word score

The album seems to be coming together piece by piece. That is, I’ll do a short session, record a drone or a looped sequence on its own, and move on… then find parts which match up, and introduce the glue that binds them together. This has inspired the name I want to use for this release, and it begins with one of those unused letters.

CVz is good. It does The Thing that I wanted it for, and more. Rotating the inputs/outputs of the matrix mixer with CV enables all kinds of additional scanning possibilities.

I’m thinking of this patching technique as “split-and-merge.” Philosophically it’s a little different from the Make Noise NUSS concept I think, but it’s a close cousin.

Multimod makes a great splitter, creating variations in phase (timing) and rate (pitch). Small pitch variations serve as unison detuning, like a fancy chorus effect, and sound really lush. Larger ones can create chords, clusters, and harmonics.

But Multimod is not the only option. Filters are good for this — multiple different strategies, whether it’s complementary filters that mix back together to fill the original spectrum, or groups of bandpass or vocal filters, or fancy spectral filtering. Delays… well, actually a straightforward delay being panned around just sounds like plain old ping-pong which isn’t that much fun. Slightly weird delays can make things interesting.

I should keep in mind that software does this technique quite well, and it’s not always necessary to do it all in Eurorack. But if I were going to dig this particular hole just a little deeper, I would primarily be looking at Three Sisters — a lovely filter I had before, with three bands which can be low/mid/high or triple bandpass, and with the option to use separate inputs for each band. Root Locus would be another strong contender. I think the smart play right now is to wait though; I have heard that Tom Erbe is working on another non-NUSS module for Make Noise which might be exciting, and if not there are always new and interesting things to try out. I don’t really need to specialize in split-and-merge — and there’s a lot of room for experimentation that these modules have opened up.

I didn’t mention this before, but I’ve also ordered a lo-fi sampler from a maker on Tindie. It uses a really cheap, bad chip originally meant for digital voice memos or greeting card messages. But as cyberpunk tells us, “the street finds its own use for things” and people have made little musical devices from it, with a pleasant lo-fi crunch. Usually overpriced, and often with waiting lists because they’re only built a few at a time, but I got lucky with this one and the price was right. I’m a little surprised that nobody has taken it a little further and made it into a really dirty delay, but perhaps the chip’s functions are too fixed for that.

A couple of nice bits of software I’ve picked up this week:

Aberrant DSP Cataclysm is a multi-effect plugin with several sections and an experimental bias. There’s a “hum” generator which can sound like 50 or 60HZ interference… or it can use a pitch detector on the input and attempt to follow along. The amplitude modulation section and resonator can do that as well, but can also drop down into echo territory. There’s a drive section with gated/octave fuzz, which you can also modulate from an envelope follower. It’s capable of quite a lot of fun strangeness, and has a vaguely 80s spy equipment/paranormal research vibe.

Lese Smear is a spectral multi-effect, a little bit like UA SpecOps in a very loose sense. My short general review is, it’s a bit less universally useful and versatile than SpecOps, with a bias for detailed frequency resolution at the expense of poor time resolution, giving it that blurry/smeary sound. But between this, the choice of effects, and the very nice system for specifying how the effects apply to different frequency ranges, it’s well suited to slower ambient and drone applications and its sweet spots are very sweet.

back to CVilization…

Happy Halloween!

(Unsurprisingly, it’s an apocryphal quote, but I still like it.)

That’s not a typo in the post title. I bought a used u-he CVilization module, the one that looks like a Lite Brite. Yes, I had it before, then decided about a year later that I didn’t need it because dead-simple mixing was enough for my purposes.

But this year in particular, I’ve been wanting more ways to mix multiple related sources, placing them in different spots in the stereo field and moving them (typically circling around each other). Silhouette is almost made for this, but its movement has a lopsided lurch which I think suits feedback patching nicely, but not smooth, slow swirling. I’ve tried a number of other things, finally breaking it down to the simplest thing a couple of nights ago:

  • To make something circle in the stereo field requires a sine LFO over its panning. Panning requires left and right VCAs, with one opening as the other closes. (In other words, a 180 degree offset.)
  • To make two or more point sources circle each other in stereo, offset the phase of that LFO an appropriate amount. A quadrature LFO conveniently provides 4 outputs with 90 degree relative offsets from each other. Again, two VCAs per voice, then mix the L and R channels together.
  • My Doepfer A-150-1 provides the 8 VCAs with mix outputs for groups of 4, which is perfect. And Multimod, or Bitwig Grid and 4 outputs of OptX, can provide the quadrature LFO. (It may not be exactly 90 degree offsets, but close enough.)

But patching both sides of 8 Stackables in the front of that 6HP Doepfer module is pretty messy. I started checking ModularGrid both for quadrature LFOs, and a better mixing solution… and found CVilization.

CVz’s mode 4 is a quad panner — specifically designed to rotate 1-4 inputs to 1-4 outputs quadraphonically. You can rotate each one with an encoder, orbit automatically, rotate with CV, or have it “hop” to a random position when a transient is detected. And they can all rotate at their own rates and directions if you don’t want to keep them all synchronized.

I’m not doing quadraphonic, I’m doing stereo. But if you take the two rear outputs, filter them a little and mix them with the front outputs, you get a simple “fake quad” effect. I could also use it with Nearness… or run the “back” outputs through other effects for additional fun. Options are good. And when I had CVz the first time, I also found several other alternative uses for mode 4.

CVz’s mode 1 is a matrix mixer, which is really intuitive to use if you stay away from its options pages for quantization. (Quantizing in a matrix mixer is a pretty niche thing anyway.) And there’s an option to be able to rotate the inputs and/or outputs relative to the matrix settings using CV, which would also create the opportunity for more movement and morphing. Good stuff.

Mode 2 and 3 are very cheat-sheet dependent, and they don’t do anything I particularly need that MD2 or other things can’t do better. But some work is happening on new firmware for CVz, including a quad oscillator, which might be fun when I’m not using the other modes.

The other module I found in my search is Root Locus from Nekyia Circuits. It’s a similar design to the Serge VCFQ filter, but people seem to find it more characterful, and the extra features handy — dual inputs with a crossfader, and an alternate output with CVable mode. It turned up in my search because when self-oscillating it becomes a quadrature VCO/LFO. I could make space for it, and use it both for modulation purposes as well as using the bandpass and notch outputs to treat with different effects (as recently suggested in a MW thread). But I’ll hold off a while and see how things fare; it’s more of a fun alternate way of doing some stuff I can already do than a new function.

To help myself calm down and get to sleep, there’s this routine I have started going through. It merges a meditation technique, a breathing exercise, and a “body scan” technique that I read about at random in Prevention magazine probably in the 80s or 90s.

Lie on your back if possible, or on your side if necessary. Make sure it’s a relaxed and sustainable position. (I had to go through physical therapy once after a long habit of tucking one arm under my pillow and tilting my head down to rest on it. Not recommended.)

Cycle through parts of your body, starting at the toes. Inhale slowly and deeply (through your nose if at all possible), thinking to yourself “My toes are relaxed and comfortable.” Make sure they really are and wiggle around, shift positions, tense and release if necessary. Even more slowly, exhale deeply (also through your nose), while thinking/subvocalizing “haa.” Imagine that your exhalations carry away your worries with them, and empty those lungs. (I don’t personally like to hold in between inhale/exhale or exhale/inhale, but do what is comfortable and relaxing for you.)

The specific parts you name don’t matter — the point is to (A) check on and relax your whole body, and (B) make it specific enough that you’re getting plenty of these deep, slow breaths. At the end I usually go with “I am relaxed and comfortable” to bring it all together.

I like to cycle through different vowel sounds on the exhale — again, the specific sounds don’t matter, but I find this keeps things a little more engaging so my mind is less likely to wander.

I’ve found that by the time I go through the whole body, I’m pretty close to sleep. Or at least, my mind is calmer and my body is more relaxed.

a rough week

I’m kind of wondering whether the cat and I had the same illness — some gut infection that just didn’t show up in the cat’s veterinary tests. (Almost certainly not norovirus, because the one that affects cats is very different than the human one.)

Rico, thankfully, has not done his painful-sounding yowl for a couple of weeks now. I’m not sure he’s eating his normal amount of regular food yet, but he is super enthusiastic about the new probiotic bites I’ve been giving him.

I was sick the previous Saturday morning but recovered pretty well by lunchtime, fine Sunday through Tuesday night. I spiraled into a panic attack Tuesday night noticing my heart rate was high, and Wednesday was miserable. Thursday and Friday were not good but I managed to work. Saturday I was fine… and I probably overate when we visited my parents. Yesterday was bad again. Today I’m not at 100%, but I’m enduring work OK and ate a normal breakfast.

The biggest symptoms for me have been lower back pain (which I thought was from the deck work, but I’m not so sure anymore), lack of appetite and super low energy (physical and emotional), chills, and what seems to me like an elevated heart rate. Thankfully no actual throwing up, nor really bad diarrhea, nor fever. I think I’m just going to take it easy the next few days in terms of diet and activity, and see if it’ll work out. If it’s something viral that’s all that can really be done anyway. But once I am feeling better, I do want to go ahead and look into an official diagnosis and some help for the anxiety. There certainly are a lot of anxiety triggers in today’s world, and they don’t all rhyme with Chump.

During this same week, my spouse has been having a bad RA flareup. Hands, arm and then shoulder. She doesn’t think it was the change in the weather (because that came first) nor the deck teardown (because she doesn’t think she did that much, compared to some other gardening work she’s done) but more of a coincidence.

So, it’s been a rough one for us; hopefully this week will be much better. I didn’t really do much musically, aside from trying out a new early access synth plugin, Sine Machine. It’s an additive synth, with some clever ways of manipulating envelopes, tremolo and pitch variation across the partials, and a clear glassy sound like late 80s FM synths without the FM, which especially shines with unison detuning. It’s definitely got some bugs and an unfinished interface at the moment, but the sound is gorgeous and the potential to be even better once MPE support and some other issues are fixed is pretty wonderful.

Thankfully, both the dogs have finally gotten used to the new back stairs and don’t have to be cajoled or carried. That took some of the load off.