Trumpet

Brash brass muted Miles Dizzy Louis Cherry - got one from ebay, couldn't get a note out of it - once thought to reinforce piezo column of air or draw a bow cross the metal - suddenly a string of notes, hit record for PC solo or design one day maybe

Editing vs Not, Multitracking vs Not, Improv vs Not

From 1987 to about 2003, I was a member of a musical improv group that went under a few names as time went on. Pieces were recorded on air and eventually to videotape. Edits were cut from the improvs and released as albums - well one time anyway plus a few tapes we circulated amongst ourselves. Eventually I started to find the edits interesting because while fundamentally, one was in the situation where everyone had an equal say, only one person did the mixing (live to two tracks) and only one person did the edits. To be clear, we had an agreement that anyone could take their own parts and make something else of them. Each member also could post vids up to YouTube as part of the loosely-agreed upon project, within limits though. It was not always the same person doing the editing but it was always one person at a time.

I have no ethical issue with editing - I love to edit - actually I can't edit these improv tapes as much as I would like, because they were usually only two tracks - it would be nice to turn up the parts that I'd like to hear. In the end, my feeling towards the 15+ years of work I did would have to fall within the "almost there but not quite" about 80% of the time.

It took me years to reaize that for me it is important, as someone who clearly enjoys music-making and creativity in general as a craft, etc to have the option of a full-sounding track if the song calls for it. Most of the music I like has been recorded using multitracks and multiple takes and extensive edits and I've never seen anything wrong with it. Some newer technology actually helps me/us get closer to the spontaniety of improv by allowing a recordist to keep keep their killer guitar or vocal take from the demo - most of what I leave in a track is first take too - and edit it into a finished fleshed-out track - key and speed are no longer the barriers they once were and at the same time, all the old methods are still there for you - all of it.

Don't get me wrong - it was almost always fun - but years of doing that with really nothing resembling what I myself wanted to do took its toll. Hence the birth of my own musics...

I'm cool with improv and all it's forms and I am also cool with the edit too and all the different forms that can take - I like no limits whatsoever to get in the way with what is coming out of the head-organ, dig?

So why choose sides?

Radio Experiments

2009 Nov 07)S
unday, 08 November 2009 at 14:07

Small 9-volt powered Electrobrand AM radio recorded on Sony DSC-W50

- interference with camera itself
- interference with eee netbook
- interference with floor fan
- interference with Dell flatscreen
- interference with TV
- interference with microwave
- interference with electric toothbrush and beard trimmer
- interference with electric toothbrush and electric razor
- interference with small shop fan

Piezo Experiments

(2009 Nov 07)

piezo element wired to small Fender amp

- rolled wound guitar string + vinyl LP
- slack wound guitar string
- small AM radio
- metal table
- plucked bicycle wheel
- bowed bicycle wheel
- percussive bicycle

The Boycotter's Guide To Love And Pleasure

My point is that I have found over a dozen books on the subject at every retailer - some out of print like the one I pointed out - when when obtained by the seller can command very very high prices. To effectively boycott, you have to stop... buying and reading books. One book I saw had a direct interview with an offender who claimed to have over 1000 victims - and right there in Amazon people were arguing over whether it should be sold.

I guess what is also interesting is that the attention now over the boycott is selling the book like crazy - it will then I predict be available forever on the internet - for free. It can never ever be stopped, it will always be there, just like the sickness it describes.

You can do more than boyott - you see it isn't really about "freedom of speech" - there are acceptable limits - community standards, obscenity laws - and this kind of this can actually go to court - why stop at boycotting? Boycotting has now elevated the book to celebrity status - perhaps? Not sure.

I agree it is disgusting And I would never buy that book. But I am still shopping there...just not buying the book - that's all one really needs to do. I understand if others won't shop there - OK for them - and OK for me to continue to do so as well.

LET'S SAY someone wants to walk to the middle of Times Square with a megaphone and describe in great detail an act of violence they commited or maybe even give away for free a book on their experience with the act of violence...it's not the fact that they have rights to say or print this that is the issue...like it or not, I think you realize what that can turn into.

It's what is everyone going to do about it afterwards. They SHOULD go to his house and look for bodies.

I do believe Amazon can mark books as being "adult" if they really want more business and I do believe amazon has a responsibility to disclose who wrote it and who bought it (I am not sure if they did - did they?) and then those people should be watched arrested etc. Privacy vs free speech?

I personally do not want to see Amazon remove the "publish your own book" service, just like I can send them mp3's and they will make CD's on demand - and I certainly don't want them, a private company, judging my material. Community standard, sure.See more

Mozzarella Sticks

Monday, 03 August 2009 at 00:49

2 cups of olive oil
1/4 tsp garlic powder or chili powder
1/2 tsp seasoning salt or Adobo
1 1/4 cup bread crumbs
2 eggs/beaters
block of mozzarella
1/2 cup flour
2 tbsp water

cut sticks from block of cheese
put in bag with flour, shake to coat sticks

two eggs and water in one bowl, mix
breadcrumbs with the seasoning and powder in other bigger bowl, mix

take the floured bread sticks
and roll them into the egg bowl
then into the crumb bowl
onto a sheet

place sheet in fridge for hour

heat two cups of oil on stove top med/high

one at a time, take each stick a drop in oil - only a few seconds until brown, be careful - then onto a paper-towel covered plate to allow sticks to drain

(AnneMarie - idea to sub chili powder for garlic powder - the Adobo was my idea...the rest I stole from You Tube)

Piezo Experiments

(with AnneMarie Balogh - not recorded, Sun Nov 1)
soldered a piezo element and a 1/4 plug to a shielded cable...plugged into a small battery Fender amp

-taped the piezo element to an eee netbook and a USB DVD drive
-clamped the element to a bicycle wheel/spoke and plucked and strummed other spokes and bicycle frame and bowed spokes with violin bow
-clamped the element to a toolbox's cover and bowed the toolbox cover
-clamped the element to a terminal block and strung a wound guitar string to it - left the unwound "top" of string extended from one side and left the other side wrapped as packed out the other side - scraped against various materials

Looking for sound performances

Anyone who wants to record a solo performance of original (not cover) dicking around on any instrument or noise and send it to me, it can be considered to add to my songs. I'd never use anyone else's ideas as main hooks but have enough electronic means to get almost any sound into my arrangements as supporting sounds (and credit as such).

Music is better now than it ever has been

It's true - with computers and the internet and the world getting smaller and all this information and software freely available, we are just beginning the best music era ever, with more possibilities than ever before.

There are those of us who'd argue that the best times are behind us - but these people have always been and will always be. They'd prefer to put process (how something is made) over product (the end result), form over function, superficiality over the music, really, pretense over reality. They'd prefer to put their own limitations into definitions.

No matter how you slice it, in the end there is a listener listening to a full experience and all the emotions around that. Analog, digital, real, virtual, old, new - all different flavors of the same thing - and all meaningless without creativity.

Not Too Tight

Leather whip-babe
CEO on the splicing block
She's complaining about
She's got a block of ice up her
But I don't see nothing
I don't see nothing, nothing
Not too tight
Gonna strip the threads on the engine block