I decided that it should be available to more people so I’ve uploaded to this site.
You can read how to download, and how to build, the toy here.
]]>I’ve been looking for ways to trick myself into starting pieces.
One is to compose ringtones, notifications, and alarms for my phone.
I got tired of the selection of my phone’s built-in sounds, so I set out to make some that were more distinctive. I first came up with around 8 alarm and notification sounds and have been using them for the past year or so.
The first custom ringtone I made was done when I dated someone a few years ago. I thought it would be nice to have a ringtone specifically for her. That relationship didn’t last, but the ringtone remains. I decided recently that I should make distinct ringtones for the people in my life now.
I’ve so far made two more ringtones since then. It’s a good get-going trick because I’m mostly looking to get something that suits a (largely) utilitarian purpose. In the process I find myself playing around with melody and harmony and instrumentation. Things that give me ideas for longer pieces.
Something I noticed as I was listening to them recently was that I liked it when the ringtone didn’t sound, for lack of a better word, conclusive, or complete. What I mean is that they, in some way, feel (to my ears) as if they were extracted from something longer. This makes me want to go back and extend them, develop them, to discover just what that longer piece might be
These ringtones aren’t specifically intended to reflect or describe any person. But, of course, as I try out different things I do ask myself if the piece is somehow suitable (by whatever broad definition) for a person, possibly in a way that might only makes some sense to me. I listen to hear if it somehow “works”.
Still, it has turned out that resulting pieces really do seem to capture something about the associated person.
I have no idea if these folks would even like them. Some ringtones have some degree of angularity and chromaticism that I like but may sound odd to others.
Some of this chromaticism, etc. is a result of early versions sounding too “nice” or obvious or trite; I will write a piece, listen a bunch, use it, then later listen again to see if I still like it. That is when I start to tweak things. Or start over, maybe with some core part of the original, maybe from scratch.
In the end, since I’m the one who is going to be hearing these, I have to like it. But I’d like to think my friends might, too.
There are some practical constraints that make this an interesting exercise. The sounds can’t rely on the lower frequencies, since phone speakers aren’t well-suite for that. There isn’t necessarily a limit on length, but notifications seem to work best when no longer than a few seconds, and I prefer that the ringtones be distinct more or less right from the start. Ringtones should also kind of get to the point pretty quick (since they may not play very long before I answer).
Some alarms need to sound, you know, alarming, others can have more of a coaxing sound. I wrote some wake-up alarms with the goal of being gently eased out of slumber.
I’ve collected what I have so far into an album: RNA
It’s a name-your-price release. I still have to compose a few more ringtones and corresponding notifications, and will add those as I go along.
Last edited: Sun 23 Nov 2024
]]>So: Read(ing)
]]>Like that piece of shit Musk.
I deleted my Twitter accounts. I had a number of them for all sorts of purposes (back in the day the API was an interesting tool). Now it’s a white-nationalist cesspool of vile propaganda.
I realize this is a trivial thing in the scheme of things, but nonetheless, if you have a Twitter account, delete it. Stop propping up that fascist scumbag Musk.
You should do the same for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, for related reasons. Zuckerberg is happy to spread utter bullshit propaganda that literally gets people killed, all for pure greed.
Billionaires are not your friend.
]]>A big part of it is that so much of my sense of self was based on my relationship with her. So much of the joy of making art of any kind came from sharing it with her. She didn’t always care for what I made, often referring to my music as “scratchy guitar” (a term I came to embrace). But when she died there was, unsurprisingly, this great void.
Another part of my lack of output is the desire to not repeat (much) of what I’ve already done. The creation of Small Guitar Pieces was the result of a one-off thing I did for Disquiet Junto. I forget which one, but it got me to play around with small samples I made of, well, a small guitar. I set a rule for myself that, other than my voice, all sounds for the album had to come from my 3/4 Taylor acoustic. I allowed for manipulations, such as speed and pitch changes or filtering with comb or ring mod devices. I liked the sound, the musical space, and wrote a number of tracks. Some seemed to invite vocals, so I added that too.
Not every piece I made got on the album. There came a point where new pieces sounded too much like previous pieces. Of course, given the general approach they all sort of have a similar sound, but I was hoping each one took some distinct path.
I really liked the techniques and tools I employed to make that album, and could easily crank out more of the same, but that holds no interest for me.
Same thing for Dance Noise . I had a sort of mental framework that guided the pieces, but after a while I felt that I was making things by rote. Again, I love the sound of that album and could make more of it, but why?
OTOH, the approach to American Electronic is something I may revisit. For that album I decided that all the source sounds would come from hardware synths. (I may have fudged some kick drums, though.) Along the way I was wondering if there was any sort of organizing theme, and decided that the first letters of titles should spell the album title. That meant I needed 18 tracks, and at about 10 tracks in I was wondering how I was going to flesh this out.
I then had this idea: What if I created new pieces based on samples from existing pieces? I decided I would have 12 “original” tracks, and six more, where each of those six were made from samples taken from unique pairs of originals. If you look at the song titles, you’ll see that some titles are in parentheses. These are the tracks composed only of samples from two other songs on the album.
To do this I set up the pairings and went through the rendered .wav files of each track, looking to find interesting loopable segments to sample. Most of the samples are fairly short.
I wanted each new track to have a different BPM from the originals; doing that in Reaper while creating samples was easy, but after too much time manually pitch shifting I wrote a small Ruby script to use sox and churn out an abundance of pitch shifted sample versions.
I ended up with so many modified samples that there was no practical way I could listen to each and decide if it was quite what I wanted. Naturally, I wrote another script to randomly select some manageable number, and then I dumped them into Renoise. These then became the raw materials for the new track. I think there were a few times when I was just dissatisfied with the random sample set and I went to find replacements, but mostly I tried to work with what came out of the process.
That’s a technique I may explore again. Maybe take samples from all the existing “unpromising” Renoise stuff I have and see if they can be alchemized into something new and better.
I’ve been going through older pieces, things that never really found a home. A number of these have been added to Loosies. There may be more added in the future if I again stumble across something I think is worth a listen.
I’ve also been making ringtones and alarms for my phone. I’ve gotten tired of the stock offerings so I put together a few new ones. If I keep this up I will release those on an album as well.
A reason I should keep this up is that it gets me over my inertia. Time and again I’ve found that if I can just make myself get started on some music (or drawings, or sculptures) I have a decent chance of producing something I like. Sometimes I don’t like until it has been put aside and I revisit it later (like the tracks on Loosies). Sometimes I never like it; I have way too many Renoise projects that are just baffling, really just unlistenable. :)
But I think everyone who makes art knows this: You need to make a lot of stuff, and a lot of that stuff will be bad, but some of it will be good, and that’s just how it works. Waiting for “inspiration” is a losing game.
I’m still sort of floating around trying to find something new, an approach to songs (loosely defined) that will take me down an unfamiliar path. I’d like to devise a way to make music I could perform live, but also I think that idea is keeping me from making interesting stuff now.
In 2020 I started writing pieces that addressed grief and love and loss, but getting the words right has been challenging (though some of the music is good). Much of it felt clunky when I went back to it a few months later. I will produce something along those lines, but it’s not helping when I try to force it. I’ve been keeping notes as ideas come to me, and one day it will all come together.
]]>The same one that ran my Holger Czukay papertoy.
I figure I should just publish it here.
Holger Czukay was born March 24, 1938 in the Free City of Danzig (what is now Gdansk), as Holger Schüring.
That family name was a fabrication (along with an invented Dutch heritage), owing to persecution of Poles by the occupying Nazis.
In 1945, the family was forced to leave Danzig. They went to Berlin, a city by then largely destroyed by war, and then settled in a town near Frankfurt. Despite getting little formal education, Czukay managed to get work repairing radios.
Meanwhile, with the war over Czukay reverted to his proper surname. He was especially pleased that Czukay means “search” in Polish, something that would be a hallmark of his music.
During his teenage years Czukay played double bass in assorted groups, including, in the late ’50s, the Holger Czukay Quintet.
By 1962 his musical interests pushed him back to Berlin, where he studied at the Berlin Music Academy. Before long, though, he was expelled. Czukay then went to Cologne to study with the avant-garde electronic music composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
His studies with Stockhausen lasted from 1963 to 1966, during which Czukay met future collaborators Conny Plank and Irmin Schmidt. In 1967 he moved to Switzerland and worked as a teacher. There he met a student, Michael Karoli, who would become yet another musical collaborator.
Czukay had little interest in rock music until a student played him “I am the Walrus”, from the Beatles 1967 album Magical Mystery Tour. From there he took an interest in Captain Beefheart and The Velvet Underground.
After Irmin Schmidt finished studying with Stockhausen he went to New York City briefly, hanging with Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young. Hearing the Velvet Underground motivated him to want his own band. When he returned home to Cologne, he reconnected with Czukay, as well as an American musician, David C. Johnson.
In 1968 they formed a band. First called Inner Space, then The Can, they settled on simply Can as the group name.
The group was filled out with additional musicians: guitarist (and former student) Michael Karoli, drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Malcolm Mooney joined as a vocalist later in 1968. By the end of that year Johnson left the group.
Can released their first album, Monster Movie, in 1969. The sound they helped pioneer was to be dubbed “Krautrock.”
Czukay played bass guitar, but was also the sound engineer and tape editor. He had a keen interest in shortwave radio and sound manipulation, which he put to use creating music.
While in Can Czukay also worked on solo projects. In 1969, in collaboration with Rolf Dammers, he released the album Canaxis 5.
Can produced albums up through 1979, with assorted transient members joining the core group. But Czukay was increasingly less involved in the main production of the music. He left Can in 1977, and the group split up soon after.
In 1979 he made the album Movies which employed a technique he called “radio painting”: Recording sounds from a shortwave radio and mixing slices into his music. This idea would later be used to much acclaim by David Byrne and Brian Eno on their 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
Among his other solo albums was Radio Wave Surfer, released in 1991, which made use of short-wave radio as a sound-source.
During his career Czukay collaborated with numerous other well-known (and lesser-known) musicians, including Jah Wobble, Brian Eno, and David Sylvian.
Czukay last album was 11 Years Innerspace, released in 2015.
Czukay died 5 September, 2017, at his apartment, which was previously the Inner Space studio he created with Can.
]]>
I decided that it should be available to more people so I’ve uploaded to this site.
You can read how to download, and how to build, the toy here.
]]>It’s a collection of tracks I’ve made over the last 2 years or so, tracks that haven’t found a real home. I thought to just assemble them into an album to make them available.
It’s pay-what-you-want.