Got my new glasses. The “medium distance” pair for computer use (and music making) is great, as long as I don’t try to walk around too much with them (and I don’t dare try driving in them).
The pair for general use… not so much. They’re rimless, and the posts holding the earpieces and central connection/nosepieces on were getting in the way of the included clip-on sunglasses at first (until I did a bit of bending). Those posts are also in my field of view and a little distracting — maybe they wouldn’t be so bad for single-vision glasses but when your focus depends on the part of the lens you’re looking through, and your eyes keep trying to focus on something a centimeter away… uh-oh. Also, the edges of the lenses catch light from above or behind and throw out distracting flares.
I gave them several days but still don’t like them. So I just ordered a replacement, in the same frame style as the computer glasses but silver instead of black frames, and purple EyeQLens (UV, infrared and blue light, with a slight tint that darkens in sunlight, reportedly even a little bit behind car windshields, yet still compatible with clip-on sunglasses if more is needed). And adding this third pair of “fancy” glasses from Zenni still doesn’t total as much as one (supposedly discounted) pair from Crown.
I recently watched a BBC documentary on minimalism (talking mostly about LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass) which was kind of interesting. The biggest surprise though was that apparently, Terry Riley doesn’t particularly enjoy listening to minimalist music. That seems a bit weird to me.
I did used to have fun making beat-oriented music with odd time signatures and complex rhythms, too twisty for a typical dance floor. But if I’d stuck with it, my music might be right on trend for summer 2024 thanks to Matmos:
(I even had the “super crunched out sounds.” Geez.)
But I found I liked making that kind of music more than listening to it, and that’s why I changed my habits and I make noisy drone/dark ambient music. Honestly I enjoy listening to my own music (*) more than most ambient artists out there. It’s custom-made for me after all.
(*) some of my older stuff does have cringe moments, places where I recognize that my production skills were a bit weak or where I would make different creative decisions today.
I do wonder what Riley listens to though. Maybe he’s a Taylor Swift fan or is really into Babymetal or Little Nas X.
I’m pretty happy with the Elmyra 2. What I especially like:
The character. It’s never clean, always interesting, and has a wide range for how lo-fi, distorted, crackly, noisy, brutal or ghostly you want to make it. The oscillators are a little dirty, the delay very much so (but unique in its sound), the filter options are all fairly clean and normal allowing you to claw back some control, and then the fuzz section is an absolute beast although a couple of the included modifier cards can take it to a less piercing place.
Comparing it to the Lyra-8, it feels a lot more intentional and controllable. The CV inputs work like you’d expect instead of basically random garbage; it can be sequenced internally or externally without any trouble, and the four oscillators have enough independence you can combine a drone, a sequence (internal or external) and a couple of manually played voices into a cohesive-sounding whole.
Plenty of filter options to choose from.
There’s a quantizer which has some microtonal modes including 7EDO and 9EDO, which I find particularly easy to work with.
What I wish was different, or don’t particularly like:
The “secret codes” button combos are definitely a compromise. While I appreciate several of the available options, I don’t like having to keep a cheat sheet. I’m planning on making a micro cheat sheet with my label printer to stick onto the front edge of the unit.
Speaking of edges, I’m not that fond of the pebbly texture of the 3D-printed panels on the front and back edges. That’s getting pretty picky though.
I wish it had dedicated drone switches or knobs, instead of holding down a multi-function button for > 1 second and not having any visual indicator that it’s enabled.
Level controls per oscillator would be nice, although one of the “MODP” modes is a lowpass filter and that works pretty well for the job.
Individual outputs per oscillator would also be nice. There is only one DAC though, and that’s right before the fuzz stage; everything else on the instrument is digital.
Likewise, the audio input only runs through the fuzz, without the benefit of the unique delay section. The most interesting use I’ve found for that is to offset the signal into the fuzz using an LFO or envelope.
But overall, aside from the cheat sheet thing I find this fits my music and preferred style of music-making to a T. I’m not sure yet where I’m physically going to fit it into my setup — I don’t feel it really needs to be patched to anything else, aside maybe from 0-Ctrl or some sequenced gates on occasion, so it could probably go anywhere. It’s definitely not going to replace my Strega or Minibrute 2S, but I might find a way to get it onto the same stand with them.
Teenage Engineering just announced a medieval version of their EP-133. It features a weirdly Gothic segmented LED display, Latin calligraphy, samples of various medieval instruments and foley, and “cocoa scented paeds.” Okay TE, you do you.
I have to admit I haven’t used my EP-133 very much. Obviously it’s more a tool for making beats than for ambient/drone, but I’ve proven that it can be employed for drones, or for resampling stuff in general. It just doesn’t fit with everything else all that well. I keep thinking I should pull it out and get cozy with using it, but there it sits, batteries removed.
I think I like Harris’ choice for VP, Tim Walz. Not a perfect choice but a good one, like Harris, and they seem like they’ve got some momentum behind them. So hopefully they’ll Walz right into the Oval Office this November.
The next album is definitely coming along, at almost 27 minutes of material already. Go, me!
I got a nice raise again, and I’m celebrating by buying myself a neat musical toy (of course). Neutral Labs Elmyra 2, standalone version. It’s inspired by the Lyra 8, but goes way beyond in terms of synthesis options; it’s a semi-modular, 4-voice wavetable synth with some limitations (no individual oscillator outputs) but still a lot of flexibility. Very raw and dirty, with a unique delay that doesn’t sound PT-based but has its own thing going on, and the distortion or Ouch stage can be “hacked” with electronic components or included mini-cards, and it does have an external audio input for its filter/delay/distortion. And a simple sequencer, elevating it further above the Lyra. (Also unlike the Lyra, it’s not made by someone who seems to be supporting Russian war crimes.) I’ve watched several YouTube videos now and I’m impressed and think it’ll fit well with the other stuff. (Where it goes in terms of stands/etc. I’m not sure yet.)
I also am getting new glasses. My distance vision prescription changed a little, but it also changed a year and a half ago and I skipped the update. I priced an option at the place but I’m going for two pairs from Zenni: one “premium progressive” rimless for general usage, and one “mid-range progressive” for computer use (it forgoes distance vision for a slightly larger field for close distances and a much larger field for middle distances); the two pairs cost less than half as much as the in-office option. I’ve been happy with the Zenni glasses I have now, except that the lenses are a little on the small side for progressives, so I got great big huge windowpanes on these.
I do have a bit of diabetic retinopathy. It’s maybe slightly worse than last time, but then, an area of more concern cleared up since last time too. I’m going back in 6 months for another check to make sure it doesn’t get worse, because apparently now there are decent meds that can halt or reverse retinopathy if caught early enough. That’s fair, since this appointment was about 6 months later than it should have been anyway.
I’ve been reading Dilla Time, the biography of hip-hop producer J Dilla. I’m not a fan of his in particular, or hip-hop in general, but I recognize his style in the modern “chill lo-fi beats to study to” sort of thing, some of which is pretty nice. I’m not sure how relevant this is to my music, since sometimes there’s not even rhythm of any kind. I’m getting some interesting bits of Detroit history, a little music tech history, lot of less interesting and slightly infuriating biographical stuff (the guy was really not great toward women generally, not always great to friends and business or creative partners, was apparently egotistical in a quiet sort of way). Still mostly an engaging book.
In my last entry I was also going to mention how I’d seen a couple of people mention recently getting the Walrus Slöer and praising it. I’ve been curious about the original Slö for quite some time, and Slöer even more so since it’s stereo and can be downsampled a bit. And having picked up Hypnosis after last Knobcon and making a spot for it (both interface routings and desk space), there’s a natural place for a stereo pedal to go.
On further review though… nah. The software reverbs that I have are doing a bang-up job at the exact role that the pedal has. I don’t feel like the clock rate control goes far enough into lo-fi territory to be really exciting.
Speaking of exciting. US political news over the past couple of weeks has been a hell of a rollercoaster. I didn’t much like the rumbling over whether Biden should drop out of the race, but now that he has, I think things are looking up.
People are actually uniting behind Kamala Harris — not just the party establishment centrists, not just the Squad, not just Black people or women, not just labor unions, but basically anyone who would ever consider voting Democratic anyway. Record-breaking funding with 60% of it coming from first-time donors.
Yes, in 2020 we were saying “Kamala is a cop and all cops are bastards.” Wouldn’t I rather have someone more progressive/leftist on the ticket? That’d be ideal, but let’s run with what we have.
Bernie is too old (82) and part of the renewed energy right now is getting someone younger on the ticket.
Elizabeth Warren is also getting up there (75)
Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia, so she doesn’t qualify.
AOC is slightly too young to qualify (34) and needs more experience.
Cori Bush (49) also needs more experience IMHO. Plus she is currently under heavy attack from her competitor Wesley Bell, for doing exactly what we elected her to do (light fires under slower Democrats to make positive change happen). This is not the right year for her to run for VP.
I also read a bit about how Harris wound up as a prosecutor. Her parents met in a study group that led to the rise of the Black Power movement; it’s not like she grew up wanting to keep other people down. Rather, she wanted to get in and effect change from the inside, to change the balance. I’m not sure what I think of that story, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
One of the criticisms a lot of people rightly have against Biden is his stance on Israel/Palestine. Harris apparently wants to pressure Israel to stop doing a genocide, supports humanitarian aid for Palestine, and is going to kick out some of Biden’s appointees who have been so pro-Israel on this.
I’d like someone more on the left but this actually looks like a step in the right direction, a possible starting point for a real shift.
So yeah. I’ve gone from “I will hold my nose and vote for Biden because the alternative is horrible” to “I’m actually pretty glad to be able to vote for Harris.”
(Right now. Something might ruin that. I was pretty excited for Obama’s first term, buying into the entire Hope thing… and that kind of shifted toward “he’s not actually that progressive” by the time the election came around. For his second term I voted Green instead. But where I stand now, Harris looks like an actual decent choice and not just a lesser evil.)
I pre-ordered a DecadeBridge Sn (aka “Tin”) — a small desktop lo-fi FM drone synth. It’s kind of redundant and kind of not; obviously I have a great deal of FM capability among my hardware and software but this is a lo-fi example, with a couple of unique tricks. There is a small chance I’ll decide with this I don’t really need the Akemie’s Castle, but I’m not particularly counting on it. So this is probably just another flavor of that thing I like a lot.
MW now has banner ads. When SynthCube took over, they said they weren’t going to. As a Patreon supporter of the “Memorial Initiative” I was offered the new Power Wiggler status, which removes the ads but otherwise seems to be about the same. On my desktop I already don’t see them (thanks Adblock) and it’s a tiny strip on my phone. I’m not sure if I want to accept the new thing, continue as I was, or drop the Patreon. The proceeds were supposed to pay for a nice memorial gift for the McGrath family and also some kind of tchotchke for the supporters, but we haven’t heard anything about either yet. Kind of leaning toward dropping it. MW has been a helpful resource, and it’s also a pain at times, especially the way it tends to be administered.
Quite some time back, a reader of my blog recommended a book by Dr. John Sarno about back pain. I never did approve that post, because I looked into it and it seemed like quackery. The medical establishment pretty much thinks it’s bunk and the supposedly amazing results he’s gotten are a placebo/coincidence.
I saw another reference to it, and since my back was actively hurting at the time, I thought… OK, I’ll give it a shot. My thinking was: Qi Gong is not based on science at all, but the exercises feel pretty pleasant to do.
So the idea is, back pain (and a lot of other pain, fibromyalgia, etc.) are psychosomatic in nature. Real pain, but not mechanical damage. The physical cause is restriction of oxygen to certain muscle groups; the psychological cause is anxiety, anger, etc.
The book says both that (A) you should always see a doctor about pain in case it indicates a physical problem and (B) doctors don’t know what they’re talking about and will diagnose injuries that aren’t real, making your anxiety and thus your pain worse, and (C) if you have this “TMS” you should discontinue any physical treatment and just fix yourself by, essentially, being told that’s what’s wrong and telling your brain to stop it. The author is not a psychologist or psychiatrist and seems to be a fan of Freud, whose ideas are not terribly well respected today. And the book also keeps citing ulcers as a well-known and accepted example of psychosomatic effects, except oops, ulcers are caused by a bacterial infection. (This was proven before the book was published, but to be fair, the stress = ulcers thing had been believed by medical science and society as a whole and it took years for the new science to be widely accepted).
I’m not at all willing to discount the idea that the mind affects the body. Maybe a lot of cases of back pain are psychosomatic, and maybe by reading the book and thinking about it, that’ll help. I am not an entirely scientific, rational person and maybe this is magic that will work. I guess I’ll see.
I’ve finally gotten all the way through The Big Book of Cyberpunk.
I’ve seen people say “this isn’t the cyberpunk dystopia I signed up for” as a response to various news` about privacy and surveillance, social media, NFTs/crypto or whatever. (The converse being “this is the cyberpunk dystopia I signed up for” about military robots, police drones etc.)
We had Black Mirror with its uncomfortably close to home, disturbingly prescient stories. William Gibson continues to write, although “The Peripheral” had some pretty outlandish tech along with the entirely too plausible omnishambles of a near future. But as a whole I was generally unaware that there was a whole set of 21st-century spawned cyberpunk which no longer takes place “15 minutes into the future” but 5 minutes or less. Tactical neural implants replaced by social media, yakuza forgotten but corporations and corrupt officials stronger than ever, street samurai replaced by influencers and trolls, and AI trying to become human (and vice versa) replaced by people trying to use AI to cope with the pain of being human.
I am more of a novel reader than a short story enjoyer, but some of these stories really hit hard.
Not long after my post about Duolingo, I did in fact switch languages. It pretty much sidelined the regular practice to get me to work on hiragana, with the threat of katakana and kanji next. Not what I wanted to do. So I picked German.
That’s mostly been going pretty well. German and English are cousins, and sometimes you can guess. The grammar seems relatively straightforward, as grammar goes. Gendered words are odd (why is pizza feminine? Why is a male cat still eine Katze?) but aside from a few mistakes it hasn’t been too tricky. Some of the pronunciation is unfamiliar, and the app’s ability to judge that pronunciation is mixed (allowing some definite mistakes and sometimes flagging things I felt I got right). There are certainly a few long words… entschuldigung!… and a few places where the gendered versions are tricky (der Arzt, die Ärztin) but I find it more distinctive and easier to memorize than Japanese.
That said… Duolingo is doing some serious dark patterns / enshittification. They really, really want you to subscribe to Super Duolingo. The difference between the free and paid versions is all friction: frequent advertising, limits on usage (though you can earn “hearts” through practicing earlier material).
They don’t want to tell you how much this will cost until you get close to agreeing to pay it; even “how much does Super Duolingo cost?” in their FAQ does not answer how much Super Duolingo costs. A third-party site said it’s something like $12 a month or $155 a year — not cheap. But it could very well be a customized price determined by your usage patterns and whatever other data they can scrape about you from your advertiser ID, email etc. Das ist cool nie.
They keep offering free trials, but considering all of the rest of this, I bet cancelling is a hassle, so I do not want to do this. But then there was a screen that said I unlocked Super for three days (“you will not be charged”) and there was no option not to accept, only a single “Continue” button. It doesn’t ask for payment info, at least. And the experience is so much smoother… finish a lesson, move on to the next without sitting through ads (and the additional delaying screens before and after the ads). No “heart” system to slow me down. Am I going to hate it when that expires?
I miss the shareware days. Get that Commander Keen floppy and you could play the entire first game (which was substantial) without restrictions. If it entertained you enough, you’d mail-order the sequels.
I’ve been getting a bit tired of playing sudoku on my phone, and thought… how about Duolingo? Spanish because I took it back in high school? German, because I started to sort of learn a little German before (and tried to struggle through an Egyptology book in German, and listen to industrial music some of which is in German)? Or Japanese, because… taiko and anime? Right, Japanese it is.
It’s been going okay so far, but it just had me start learning some hiragana and that’s a bit more of an intimidating prospect. I’ll try trusting in the process for now but I might switch to German if things get too dicey.
Finished up my study of Morpheus, except I didn’t quite… I am going to look into the idea of using the filter sequencer, a feature I’ve completely ignored, as a kind of categorization system.
The other project has been to find an approximate software substitute for Djupviks Box of Angels, or at least, something that gives me similar vibes. The requirements are three bandpass filters — fairly steep ones I think — in parallel, with a gain control for each. There seems to be surprisingly little software that can do this, either feature-wise or to the satisfaction of my ears. So that’s meant cooking up stuff in Bitwig or VCV Rack.
Most of the filters I’ve tried need to be doubled up in series to get a steep enough response. I’ve had better luck with a couple of VCV Rack modules though:
NOI Sinensis is an all-in-one parallel multi bandpass filter where the tuning spread is controlled by a ratio. It needs a quiet input to not distort, and is not quite as steep as I’d like, but the results are excellent.
Prism Droplet is not to be confused with Sinevibes Droplet which is a reverb, or Finn Mitchel-Anyon’s Droplets, a generative sequencer. This one is a steep-Q bandpass that has a switch to engage a “second pass” built in, removing the need to put another one in serial, plus an envelope follower output.
While I was slowly writing and editing this, Bunker Archaeology arrived. It is definitely “the Bruxa of reverb”… except where Tony and Alessandro put a lot of thought and refinement into design and details, this module is punk AF. The knob ranges are bizarre, the white LED for the tremolo side is a blazing strobe light, it distorts easily, the tremolo sometimes seems to let the dry signal through. I stuck a bit of colored label over the bright LED but I kind of feel like it should be a Band-Aid. It’s great though. It’s raw, but with the rest of the modular plus the DAW I can “cook” it a bit to serve whatever my needs are at the time.
With all my recent exploration of “broken” lo-fi delay techniques I started wondering: what’s the reverb equivalent of Bruxa or Tyme Sefari or a Doepfer BBD, or a cassette tape loop?
There honestly isn’t much. “lo-fi reverb” tends to be something of a different nature:
spring reverbs
the Belton/Accusonics digital “bricks” that are supposed to emulate spring reverb
terrible algorithms like Freeverb
80s budget reverbs
the Radio Shack Realistic (brand) Electronic Reverb should not count, because it’s very obviously a BBD delay and not a reverb
guitar pedals with built-in bitcrushing and/or distortion
Honestly I don’t think those 80s reverbs are that bad, just vaguely “electronic.” And Freeverb doesn’t sound bad in an interesting way.
Anyway, the hunt led me to Djupviks Bunker Archeology, which is based on the Belton brick but with some “attacking itself” feedback shenanigans. It’s paired with a frequency-driven VCA for stuttering/dropouts, which is post-reverb by default but can be patched the other way or used independently (and controlled with CV like a regular VCA). After watching demos and seeing what I could do in software — which was a lot of fun stuff but not quite there — I decided to go ahead and give it a try.
It will displace Peradam (which is kind of neat but I think I favor other forms of distortion more) and Zero-2 (which just hasn’t been getting much use).
Djupviks makes a lot of cool stuff. I’d like to try several of their modules, but especially Box of Angels and Sleeper Awakes. BOA is a triple bandpass filter with VCAs per filter and a noise source, which doesn’t seem like it’s that fancy, but it really sounds beautiful in demos and people who have it seem to love it dearly. I’m in the process of looking for that vibe without buying the actual hardware; we’ll see how that goes. Sleeper Awakes is a dual ISD-chip sampler/looper — very lo-fi, with a pronounce pop as it loops, and full of great vibes. The thing is, it might be kind of a one-trick pony, and I’ve previously replaced W/, Tyme Sefari, Phonogene and jroo Loop so I’m not convinced another sampler/looper would stay in the rack either.
I’ve started my deep dive into Rossum Morpheus. There is a LOT going on with this module — 280 filter “cubes” of wildly varying types and characters. I’m taking general notes, but the bigger project is going through all of the cubes and categorizing them in various ways, making a sort of catalog/chart. So far my schema is this:
Type: LP, BP, HP, notch, peaks, comb, vowel, resonator, complex, etc. and combinations thereof. (Sometimes these are pretty subjective choices, but it’s still a general guideline.)
Distortion? (For some background, Morpheus has true “cubes” with three dimensions of control, and “.4” filters with two dimensions, where Z controls distortion by default. The cubes can still access distortion from the menu, and the .4s can reassign it to flatten the frequency profile.) YES if distortion is rewarding, NEED if the filter is bland/bad without it, and DISABLE for .4 filters if reassigning the Z behavior is especially useful.
Envelope friendly? YES or NO or MAYBE, depending on how the filter sounds in motion. (Unless you really like cheezy laser noises, peakier filters sound best when stable, sequenced, or maybe gently wavering than a wild sweep.)
Audio rate? YES if applying some (carefully tuned) audio rate modulation to a parameter is especially cool. It depends on the nature of the filter
Resonator? YES if (pre-filtered) white noise or clicks/pings cause it to sing nicely (may require distortion); ONLY if it really only acts as a resonator (or is otherwise awful)
I’ve gone through 186 cubes but I have some categories to backfill because I kept adding new things to my list. Everything after “type” came up when I realized I was writing the same notes about several of them.
I would add a subjective rating category of some sort… but I kept finding that “bad” cubes can shine with specific usages/material. Most likely, the ones I still don’t like, I might in the right context. Likewise, some of my favorite cubes turned out to be not the right tool in other patches.
I got myself a new pair of earbuds, after going for years with the dirt-cheap QY8 from (insert about five different forgettable Chinese brand names here). I chose Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro based on price and reviews. I’ve been wearing them today at work and walking around the office complex on breaks (it’s nice to not have to pause my music when I get up to make coffee or go to the bathroom).
These are slick and modern. No cord between the two sides to make tons of noise every time you move. Little charging case that the earbuds magnetically align themselves with, and the case itself does Qi wireless charging. Sensors to tell when you’re wearing the buds, touch sensors on the back for control, sensors for the buds’ orientation and relative angle to the phone, a feature to automatically check the earbud/rubber tip fit by listening for leaking sound. And active noise cancellation, which is… an experience.
It’s made me aware of how much noise is a part of regular home and office life. Air conditioners and fans especially, but everything from refrigerators to escalators to just general ambient room tone. Zap, gone. It’s almost disorienting, like you’ve been cut off from the world. Like I’m not going to compare it deafness, but that background noise carries (mostly) subtle information about the space you’re in as you move through it, which just gets removed. (Apparently a hearing person in a seriously good anechoic chamber can experience vertigo from this lack of cue, and can also hear their own blood and eyelids.) But I don’t want to say it’s a bad experience — there’s something really calming about being able to listen to chill ambient music (or accidentally oddly chill industrial music) all day at work without interrupting it at all (except for those rare occasions when I need to talk to someone). I even made a phone call and took another one without taking the earbuds out.
There’s a feature to reverse the process and bypass the isolation from the earbuds themselves to hear your surroundings better — optionally enabled when someone is speaking to you or you’re on a phone call, and toggled on at the touch of an earbud — and some options for partially hearing-impaired people too.
As for the sound… for my preferences it’s not as good as the GMP 8.35D headphones I use for music-making, but it’s still quite good. Really comfortable, too. These weren’t particularly expensive earbuds either, it’s just that technology has come that far.
Album’s done, mastering’s done, artwork is done, notes page is done… I just need to upload it to Bandcamp and publish, when I get home from work.
Usually after an album’s done, I tally up how much I used each piece of gear and see if there are any surprises or insights. This time I made the spreadsheet and then found I didn’t much care what the results were, so I closed it without even really looking at the numbers. Opening it again… okay fine, I used Harmonia three times and not Aalto, but what’s that mean really? I still like Aalto. I used more reverb plugins than delay plugins this time (but that’s because I leaned hard on Strega). Not really much of interest to learn there.
I guess I’m actually taking the “it’s not the gear” thing to heart.
I mean, it’s also not not the gear; I made the choices I did because I like a particular sound and those modules/plugins/etc. would help me contribute to it — and part of my process is to explore sounds and then when inspiration strikes, go into “music mode” and it’s the gear making sounds. But if you put someone else’s butt in my chair and they’d make something very different with the same stuff. If I swapped setups with someone else, once I got familiar with it, I’d end up making something that sounds like what I make with my own setup.
