STARTHIEF

My spouse’s first day on her new job is today. It was quite a long search for something that met her criteria. It isn’t the most exciting career on the planet, but there is a lot to be said for a dull-ish, stable, non-irritating job with decent management and minimal exposure to the public.

I’m feeling more accepting about going back to the office myself, at the moment — I’m actually kind of looking forward to it to some extent. (Maybe part of this is because I now have a jury summons a couple of weeks later to fret about instead!) The COVID stats are trending downward. The county’s at about 50% adult vaccination. We poked around a couple of stores this weekend, including an outdoor outlet mall on a ridiculously hot and sunny day (probably the most sun I’ve gotten since 2019) and the idea of being out of the house is generally feeling less weird and scary.

Speaking of weird and scary, I noticed a few days ago that Phonogene and Portal combined are the same size as a Verbos Harmonic Oscillator. I feel like neither of these are essential modules for me — Phonogene because my Bitwig sample looping game has improved, and Portal because it’s just a weird distortion thinger and was always kind of a situational oddball.

The VHO is something I’ve been wanting since at least 2017. It featured prominently on two of my most favorite modular albums — Caterina Barbieri’s Patterns of Consciousness and Nathan Moody’s Etudes III: Red Box. It’s a clever design that I have imitated (to good effect) in the ER-301 and in Bitwig Grid, and to a lesser extent with Bitwig Organ and SonicLab Fundamental — though without really capturing the full flavor, nor all aspects of its flexibility.

I’ve held off until now because it’s big. Originally, I just didn’t have the space. Then I had “too many oscillators” and told myself to make room for VHO I’d have to drop Akemie’s Castle. Which, despite considering it many times, never happened because Castle is just too charming.

So despite adding Odessa and Manis Iteritas to my “too many oscillators” I’m getting this one too. Because I want it, and there aren’t any other needs or wants that can outweigh it.

The design is a single analog oscillator core, with the typical outputs — plus individual outputs for the first eight partials of the harmonic series, and a mix output controlled by sliders, CV inputs, and a “scan” function (like a bandpass filter) and tilt (like low/high pass). In terms of additive synthesis, eight partials is pretty primitive compared to a monster like Odessa — but having a combination of direct and macro control, individual outputs, and an analog flavor with characterful rather than pure sines and some saturation in the mixer, makes all the difference.

Even my software-based attempts at harmonic oscillators have been pretty nice in conjunction with some waveshaping and/or FM. I’m expecting this to be more than that.

I don’t normally talk about stuff this mundane, but

My old standby hiking boots were pretty worn out after however many years of service, and some lesser sneakers rotated into and back out of the, um, rotation during that time. But I decided at some point, I was going to get some really comfy work shoes and take the advice of the people who know: nurses and restaurant staff. Even though I don’t stand or walk around all day, I figure, any shoe good enough for them should work fine for me.

One of the branches that led down was Crocs or Profi Birkis (Birkenstocks made for work, non-slip tread, waterproof and super easy to clean, and supposedly really comfy). I chose the latter, and… eh. They have this really high arch support that took some getting used to. Plus I got a size too big and they liked to wobble all over or slide right off my feet. I made it work with some stick-on pad thingies, but not ideal.

I decided since I’m going back to work, I might as well try Crocs On The Clock. Same general design, but instead of big arch support they’ve got more memory foam (yay!) and are just slightly less slip-on (and slip-off). They don’t look like weird plastic clogs like many Crocs do, they cover your whole foot sort of like a… I guess a loafer? And they’re like 3x more comfortable at a cheaper price.

So there’s my recommendation. Just get the Crocs.

I am actually not looking forward to things being more open and “normal” again right now

– me, a week ago

My employer has announced that, since a majority of us are now fully vaccinated, the office will be reopening near the end of this month and we’re ending work-from-home.

Problems:

• They didn’t actually ask who was vaccinated. The local vaccination rate is still hovering around 36%.
• There were hints from managers that there would be discussion about continuing WFH indefinitely at least on a partial or voluntary basis. This discussion never happened.
• Office reopening is not even the norm yet, with only about 28% of offices in the US having opened. Many remote employees said in a poll they would consider quitting if they couldn’t keep WFM.

There are no problems with WFH, and the development team prefers it. We literally just hired a developer who lives out of state anyway. Our product manager and our head of QA live on two other continents. It works! In the past year we released our most ambitious major version and an update to it. We are well organized and communicate very effectively online.

I’m thinking the only reason we’re going back is that mechanical engineers, particularly older ones, tend to be very conservative and traditionalist (not just in a political sense but in all things) and they want a return to “normal.” And probably the boss is a much more social person than anyone on the development team and just misses being around people and assumes we feel the same way.

But, all this said:

I’m going to try to make the most of it. The feeling that it weird and dangerous to be around other people is going to eventually pass (I hope) — honestly I think it’s less about personal COVID fear now, and more a matter of convenience and comfort and efficiency, and the frustration that it’s not necessary to be in the office.

My commute is really not far at all. The money I saved with WFH was mostly in breakfast and lunch, and I can continue saving that money. And I did honestly miss the availability of a much better environment for walking during breaks (a big, mostly flat space outside in good weather, and laps around the air conditioned atrium in hot/cold/wet weather) and it’ll be good to get more exercise just from moving around a bit.

Perhaps I will be able to negotiate partial WFH after things settle down.

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One thing I need to figure out is music at work. I used to maintain a music library at work on a thumb drive and update it via cloud storage. That was kind of a hassle and things were pretty far out of sync generally. Part of the problem is, I might acquire new music either at home or at work, and I might decide to prune my collection in either place.

Shortly after WFH began — when we all assumed it was going to just be a few weeks — I set up a Plex media server, which I could theoretically use on my phone and at work to listen to my MP3 library at home. In practice, it meant occasionally losing connection even at home, a substandard phone app, and possible security issues. So I killed that, and switched to SyncTrayzor/SyncThing to automatically keep my phone synced to my media library. That’s worked beautifully.

• I could install SyncTrayzor at work too and sync it from the phone, but that makes the setup on the phone side more complex and probably violates cybersecurity policy.
• USB stick, either treating my home collection as “master” or the stick itself as master. The former requires a little discipline to keep things in sync; the latter requires not losing the stick or forgetting it, and also making sure to make backups just in case.
• I could just listen to music directly from my phone. This is good for security and doesn’t add any more library management (except, again, buying music at work is an issue). It does mean I’d need a headphone mixer to use both the phone and computer audio.
• Go back to some kind of media server, or cloud storage. My MP3 library is currently > 75GB; I’m gradually culling it but also still gradually adding to it.

[UPDATE] I bought a 128GB stick on eBay that comes with encryption software. But then I also signed up for Icedrive, which (like Dropbox/Box.net) can mount like a hard drive in Windows but supports stronger encryption, and is cheap at (much larger than) the level of storage that I need. That should do it.

Now available on Bandcamp!

Also, my set for Sonic Sound Synthesis:

Enjoy!

I’m seeing more and more signs that Americans think COVID-19 is pretty much over and things can return to normal. Which is exactly what I feared would happen when the CDC said that unvaccinated people can go without masks.

Today about 50% of adult Americans are fully vaccinated. That means there are about 145 million adults and 72 million children here that aren’t. Some of them aren’t bothering to wear masks anymore, abusing the “honor system” most places have for their mask policy now, and putting the rest of them at risk.

In St. Louis City, it’s more like 26.5% and in St. Louis County, 34%. In rural Pulaski County where we went to get our shots because of the shortage in St. Louis early on, it’s down around ten percent.

Right now in our area, new cases per day is about the same as it was this time last year. That’s a lot lower than it was in winter, but it’s not close to zero.

India is going through a huge wave of it, and there are fears of a variant that might get past current vaccinations. Of course the more prevalent the virus is in the world, the greater the chance of such a variant developing.

There’s a likelihood that vaccinated people will still need booster shots, either to cover the original strain or against additional variants, and Moderna is actually preparing for that right now.

The last I’ve heard, data on the effectiveness of the various vaccines for immunocompromised people is still lacking. The J&J vaccine is apparently somewhat less effective for diabetic people, but there haven’t been any longer term studies.

Early during the pandemic, before my office went to work-from home, and when we were getting conflicting info and then asked to wear homemade masks, and a short while after that, I felt a lot of anxiety over it — like every person I saw was a potential health hazard. And I’m starting to feel that way again, a bit, now that increasing numbers of people are going around without masks. I am actually not looking forward to things being more open and “normal” again right now — because it’s no longer normal! I can continue not eating in restaurants, and wearing masks inside stores, and mostly staying at home, and just never being in crowds ever. I would like to visit my family, and I’d like to visit some aquariums and zoos and stuff like that again sometime. But I feel like it’s a mistake to pretend everything is okay before it actually is. Didn’t that happen too much in 2020 already, making the pandemic worse as a result?

I’ve finished recording the material for the next album, which will be called Parallax — cover art done, ready to master and write up the descriptive stuff. And I’ve also got the half-hour Sonic Sound Synthesis set I’ll be releasing as Stridulation-Yukon-Relay, art and mastering done and words left to go. So that’s Starthief releases 19 and 20 about to drop.

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Recent reading has been Linda Nagata’s “The Red” trilogy.

The first book (which is really called First Light despite the cover) is a very dystopian, intriguing (and intrigue-filled) story that’s like a (long) Black Mirror episode in novel form, with strong elements of War Is A Racket. I enjoyed it very much. It’s a novel that feels like it was written in late 2020, despite its 2013 publication date — aside from explaining a couple of concepts that should be very familiar to almost every science fiction reader and person paying attention to social commentary in general.

But the second and third have the protagonist become less likeable, turning away from people he supposedly loved and trusted and his original motivations. They read more like Tom Clancy but not quite: almost patriotic/jingoistic, almost pro-military, and almost clear-cut ethics most of the time, no matter how many times the characters tell you that everything is grey and confused. There were still a few twists and betrayals but they just didn’t land well. Overall, books two and three were not bad, but still quite a disappointment after the first.

The author’s novel Vast, from 1998, has long been one of my favorite science fiction novels. It’s supposedly the third in a trilogy, except that it’s really the fourth in a six-book series. There was a “book 0” that was chronologically written first (Tech-Heaven), and then further along the fictional timeline but closely spaced in real time, books 1-3 (The Bohr Maker, Deception Well, Vast). Then 22 years later in real time, another “series” of two books (The Inverted Frontier: Edges and Silver) which follow not too far behind in the fictional timeline as I understand it. But anyway, I’ve had a hard time finding any of the original four books aside from Vast, until I thought to check Alibris.

I have to admit, I’ve confused Linda Nagata with Sarah Zettel. Zettel’s Fool’s War is another one of those favorite books, and I presume it and Vast occupied neighboring networks in my brain, though the plots and writing styles are really not that similar.

We had to say goodbye to our sweet dog Gretta on Monday. Over the course of just a few days she went from being less enthusiastic about food — not that unusual for her, a fussy eater — to refusing food and water almost entirely, getting increasingly lethargic and unable to stand on her own. The vet said she was anemic but ruled out any simple explanations or treatments. Given her age and medical history, there just wasn’t much hope that more procedures would give her more happy and healthy life.

I’m glad we got so much time with her though. She was a very good dog. ❤️

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We’re in kind of a heat wave, so of course our air conditioner failed. In fact, it double-failed — the batteries in the thermostat went out, which is certainly no big deal, but also the outside unit hums loudly without spinning up. A bit of googling and memory of when this happened before tells me it’s probably the capacitor, so not a big deal to an AC technician but not a DIY fix on my level. We have a repair visit scheduled and I’m just waiting on that now.

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After learning about what it can do, I picked up an Antimatter Brain Seed. This is a discontinued module that people have claimed is hard to come by, but I found several used ones for sale at reasonable prices. It’s a module that records incoming CV in steps and plays it back — in steps, or under CV scrub control; up to 1000 steps, and can update very rapidly, and is very easy to work with. So it can be used to capture complex motion or even low-grade audio, and act as a kind of waveshaper. Or simply grab a part of a sequence and let it play counterpoint. Or grab a short loop and then selectively overwrite it with new values.

I’ve rearranged modules and worked out my plans for the rack. I decided that since my synth has what it needs, anything else is luxury, which meant I could give myself permission to put some “extra” stuff into that space.

So I’ve got a Softwire Synthesis Press on the way — a wooden pressure sensitive controller inspired by the Ondes Martenot’s gradation key/ touche d’intensité. It’ll sit next to the joystick. Maybe in the future I’ll want to add a ribbon or ring controller for pitch, but I figure with my style of music making, this should be very handy (so to speak) with more tactile precision than the small faders on Sweet Sixteen — and the crossfade feature seems very nice as well.

I have space reserved for an Erica Pico BBD, which I’ve not actually bought yet but probably will. I do have plenty of delays available in both hardware and software, but an unfiltered BBD does bring some nice character, and I can spare 3HP to add it to my spice rack.

I also have space for a compact Serge-style resonant EQ. Someone’s hand-building a few at a time and I’ve expressed interest in claiming one of the next batch. People do a lot of lovely things with them even though the frequencies are fixed; it just has mojo.

And that would leave me with no space remaining. A couple of low-priority 2HP modules to fill odd gaps, but that’s it. I figure if a hardware beta test opportunity does come up, or there’s some must-have module announced in the future, I can juggle some of the lower priority things in my rack as needed.

On Saturday May 15 at 7PM BST (1PM CDT), Sonic Sound Synthesis @ The Neon Hospice online radio will be playing played a half-hour set from me, plus additional music from Extractor Dan and Drift of Signifieds.

The show will be archived at MixCloud afterward Here’s the MixCloud archive of the show, and I plan to upload my set to Bandcamp afterward as well.

This is the second time my music will have been played on an British radio show with “Sonic” in the name. (The first was Sonic Tapestries in 2019.) This one was recorded specifically for the show, and led to an evolution in my process which I’m still very pleased with.

I’ve recorded 33:46 so far for the next album (and bits that are going to be used in the next section), with no concept or name in mind for it. But it’s flowing along nicely.

Mylar Melodies recently did a video titled “Thoughts on Designing Live Modular Systems & How to Play a Live Improv Modular Synth Forever.” It’s a mouthful, but gets the point across, right?

I’m contemplating the gap between a set-length performance (about 30-90 minutes) and my current process (“movements” of about 6-10 minutes recorded live, but edited and stitched together outside of real time).

Mylar plays dance genre stuff. For him, it’s a matter of:

• Setting up a smallish, flexible and playable system, that allows for continuous variations but not too much complexity.
• Patching it in a “semi-permanent” way.
• Practice as if playing a live show. Get to know what the patch can do, take notes on tricks and on things to avoid, practice graceful recovery when things go awry. Get used to the way time flows and feels during a performance.
• The performance itself is a slow juggling act with two or three voices. Voices and patterns are slowly evolved, dropped out, changed silently and then brought back in as something new.
• At some point he makes changes to his live rig, or builds a different one and practices with it, etc.
• There’s not a lot of planning involved, just more of a general outline.

To adopt my own process to this, obviously patches would have to live a bit longer — right now I patch from scratch for a single recording session, then unpatch.

Things are complicated somewhat by using effects chains in the DAW. Overall it less nimble than Mylar’s simpler rig, with only a Mimeophon for FX and a significant part of his case dedicated to mixing. I would have to prepare a bit more in advance, and perhaps juggle a bit less than he does.

But I do think I could approach this incrementally. Instead of readying a 10–minute recording, I could add a bit more stuff to be layered in and get to 15 or 20 or beyond without even juggling much. In fact, having the DAW is also something of an advantage in that regard, because I can set up a number of software voices and looping samples as well. So perhaps my own approach to this shouldn’t try too hard to imitate what the modulator techno improvisers are doing.

I still do have that extra space in my rack. There are “programmer” or “preset” modules which can shift or morph several CVs together, and ways to change routings and so on via switches. I could also do some of this with Bitwig and the ES-3, and a little of it with Teletype.

Naturally, if I really wanted to play live outside my own studio, there are other concerns. My setup is not at all portable! But that’s not really my goal; it’s to see whether this different approach appeals to me and serves my music well. And since I very much enjoy my current process, I’m not really in a hurry to switch it up. I might just naturally push those session times longer with my current process, and see where things go from there.

I was surprised to find out that Victories Greater Than Death (a title which I keep mentally mangling, maybe due to Love is Colder Than Death which was a 90s darkwave band named after a 60s film)… where was I?

Right… this book is considered Charlie Jane Anders’ first YA novel. All The Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night both felt YA to me. Young protagonists, where we’re very much in their heads, and the types of romances and ideals that they have.

It’s a space opera, fish-out-of-water story. The MC is a girl who was left as an orphan by aliens, physically human but carrying within herself (A) the dormant mind of a heroic alien space captain, and (B) an interstellar rescue beacon due to go off any day now, to bring the fleet to help her fulfill her destiny… but also bringing an alien murder squad to finish what they started.

But I didn’t really want to get too much into the plot; it’s the characters and how they treat each other that was most notable. This is a very queer story, and very respectful of gender, ethnicity and other aspects of identity, as well as boundaries and emotional needs and so on.

Nearly every character aside from the Earthlings (and sometimes them too) introduces themselves with “My name is _____ and my pronoun is _______”, even if they immediately follow it up with “…and I’m going to blow your pathetic little ship into space dust” or whatever. This is probably very practical in a galaxy full of diverse intelligent species. But even among humans, you really can’t discern another person’s gender identity with your own eyes as well as you might think, and it should not be a difficult realization that getting it right is a matter of basic respect.

The Earthlings (and most of the other characters, aside from the major villain) always ask permission before touching someone (unless they’ve given prior ongoing consent). The MC and one of the others have been really close friends for years, but she will still ask first, “Can I touch you? You look like you need a hug.” This just goes generally with characters’ respect of each others’ boundaries, need for space and alone time, concern for their emotional states and so on.

I admit, as a person who believes in respecting others’ identities and emotions, it was still kind of startling at times and felt like a bit much. But not wrong, just a different culture and therefore kind of a shock. A flawed culture should, absolutely, change to make people happier and healthier. So I hope that some readers take the book to heart, and the culture does shift to be a little more like this fictional one.