Ambient Matyk was an album that Jon Harnish and I released in 2009.  It was recorded outdoors in two sessions behind the Matyk Building and next door to CSPS Legion Arts in the “New Bohemia” section of Cedar Rapids, IA.  The area suffered devastating flooding in 2008.

We had a bunch of outtakes from these sessions, including a 31 minute piece called Return To Bohemia, but this piece seemed to escape my memory until I found it on a flash drive recently.  It was a “Late Edit” – a piece edited after the album was done and released.  I don’t know why this wasn’t included on the album or why I edited it “late”.  Normally I am fairly well-organized, but sometimes things slip through the cracks.

I gave it a simple title:  Ambient Matyk Late Edit One.  It’s 5 minutes and 14 seconds long.  One take.  Jon Harnish is layering loops with his bass guitar using the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man looper.  I’m on Xiosynth and laptop with live loop manipulation.  Since we recorded outdoors in late July and early August (I’m not sure which session this was from), we had crickets throughout and a couple waves of cicada that hit at the right times.  Towards the end there’s some dragging sounds and bottle clinking.

It’s a really good piece, I think, at least as far as live ambient improvising outdoors goes.  It’s symbolic of the recordings on the Ambient Matyk album.

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If you like it and want to send a note, send me an email at mark@markrushton.com or send something via Twitter – if it’s not your thing then delete.

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What do you know?  It’s not been a week yet and I’m already posting my third freebee!

This one is quite a bit shorter, just under three and a half minutes.  It’s not too glorious, but it’s still quite pretty.  Hope you don’t mind the “old school demo” sound in the background.  That’s where I am right now.

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If you like it and want to send a note, send me an email at mark@markrushton.com or send something via Twitter – if it’s not your thing then delete.

If you use iTunes, here’s a link to subscribe to the Free MP3 feed.  RSS readers can use this link.  There’s also an email notification service, too.

It’s called The Seefeel Oompah.

It’s just over 14 minutes.  192kb MP3.  20MB or thereabouts.

I was listening to this piece and the background has a bit that reminds me of 1993-era Seefeel.  I bought Quique when it was released and wore out the CD, although coming to this sound was purely by accident.  The piece also has a bit of oompah band feel to it, although in a chugging “on/off” sort-of way.

It goes through several phases.  The whole thing was one long take.  Chopped on the ends with no fades (you don’t want to hear the bits I cut out…).  The only post-production to the track was a slight adjustment of the volume.

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If you like it and want to send a note, send me an email mark@markrushton.com or send something via Twitter – if it’s not your thing then delete.

If you use iTunes, here’s a link to subscribe to the Free MP3 feed.  RSS readers can use this link.  There’s also an email notification service, too.

I used Soundcloud for a while, even paid for a Pro account, but I will probably just go back to the freebee account and only post Soundcloud-specific pieces there in the future.

Today’s upload is a sketch from, ta da, today!  February 15, 2012.  It’s titled 120215-croable12, although the file name is markrushton-120215-croable12.mp3 and it’s a 192kb MP3.

It’s a 6 minute and 30 second piece.   A kind of glorious-sounding improvisation.  Except for adjusting volume up a bit and a couple of fades on the ends, nothing else has been processed following the creation of the sound.

For those who want to know the technical:  the source is from Garageband on the iPad, specifically the Classic Rock Organ (the “cro” in the title) with some adjustments, fed into Ableton Live (the “able” in the title) with chained effects, and fed out to my recorder.  It’s kind of a “dirty sound” I’ve been evolving as of late.

This is the 12th sketch I worked on tonight (the “12″), and of course the 120215 for the date.

Generally, it’s me finding my way – coming up with something – a way of playing, a pattern, discovering sounds and attempting to create a composition out of thin air.

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If you like it and want to send a note, send me an email mark@markrushton.com – if it’s not your thing then delete.

If you use iTunes, here’s a link to subscribe to the Free MP3 feed.  RSS readers can use this link.  There’s also an email notification service, too.

Podcast #51 is now available to download.

Get it directly at:  http://www.markrushton.com/music/podcast/markrushtonpodcast51.mp3

It’s a touch under 41 minutes.  11 different pieces of music.  I ramble a bit in 5 different sections so you know what’s going on.

I start off with the track “Long Voice” from the EP of the same name.  Then I feature a couple of tracks done for Disquiet.com projects – “Float” for Instagr/am/bient, and “Refactoring Dreams” which was for the third Disquiet Junto at Soundcloud.

Then I play 8 pieces (about 25 minutes) of recorded improvisations I’ve been working on lately, at least the ones that I liked to a certain degree.  Some of them are from a process I call “Hypermiking“, which is recording music and sounds from the open air and live-processing them in Ableton Live and recording them off.  Further into the tracks I turn off the hypermiking and go directly into Ableton with processed electric piano and guitar from the Garageband app on my iPad.

It’s a 192kb MP3.  File size is around 56MB.

I always say “I make way too much electronic music” and sometimes I forget that the podcast is a great way to make available these sounds.  I’ve gotten many emails over the years from people who say they enjoy the works in progress, the improvs, the rough edges, and so forth, and even my rambling explanations about what’s going on.

It’s not just a “podcast”.  I guess it’s also kind of a mix-tape.  An ambient mix-tape.  Except I’m not using tape, I’m using bits.  Isn’t it funny how these terms stick around?

Last year I released 7 podcasts.  Over the course of 2011 they had a combined 45,000 downloads or thereabouts, at least according to the stats I have.  They are all free.

To get the Mark Rushton Music Podcast feed, which syndicates my programming to your favorite RSS reader or music program, click on the feed icon here: or go directly to iTunes:   – if you want an email everytime I make a new podcast then click here to subscribe.  You’ll only get an email when a new podcast is added.

You can also sign up to my new-ish email list in case you don’t want the RSS or iTunes thing to slip through the cracks.  If you have a smartphone with a QR scanner here’s all that jazz: