This is GREAT! And I am so loving your dad's harmonica, and that you got him included in the music process. Thank you for adding (and improving!) :)

I finally finished my horrible preschool job a few weeks ago, and jesus christ I didn't realize what a number that job had been doing on my body/psyche until I was out of it. It's nice not being on edge and full of tension all day, or collapsing into a ball and sleeping for 12 hours every night. Barring an act of god, I'm never teaching preschool again. I love teaching, and I love kids, but it just isn't worth it.

I have a job teaching music over the summer, which I'm really excited about, and I hope it'll pave the way for future jobs. And I have a month or so of downtime before then, which I am using to actually deal with a lot of the problems which have been accumulating the past year. Found a therapist, started meditating every day, and I'm making time for music again. I spend an hour a day practicing piano, and another hour practicing improvising and songwriting. I'm hoping to put together some videos on the games / techniques I use to get me out of my creative blocks, because I think they might be really useful to other people who are stuck. I also realized how much of my creative block was rooted in a more general emotional block - it's kind of incredible how much easier it is to make music you like when you are actually able to emotionally connect to it again. Music is just flowing out of me naturally again, and it feels great.

Here's a couple tracks I put together this past week to submit to a little beatmaking contest:

Especially pleased with the first one. I think I am going to try and record an EP or Album of summery, funky tunes to release by around June.

lol

I'm really hoping this will be my last year teaching preschool. I'm stretched way too goddamn thin at this center I'm at. I'm at school 8-5 every day, teaching 15 kids, 4 of whom are on the Autism spectrum and qualify for services (but aren't receiving them due to COVID). We stay in one room all day, and maybe if it's sunny and over 40° we go outside for a max of 30 minutes a day. It's fucking depressing, and I have no power to change things because almost all aspects of the day are determined by corporate. It's incredibly frustrating knowing what small changes would make a huge difference for these kids and being unable to actually implement them.

After years of having a vague notion of wanting to teach music at some point, I finally looked into what goes into getting licensed in various places, and it turns out VT has a pretty solid alternative peer review based licensing program. I'm making it my goal to put together a teaching portfolio and pass the Praxis teaching tests by the summer so I can get licensed for the upcoming school year and get the fuck out of CT, and out of the "childcare solutions" racket.

Awwwww heck! Glad I could be an inspiration :) keep it up!

I've been (non-COVID) sick for about 5 or 6 days now. I think it's just the standard flu, been incredibly tired and out of it. Possibly returning to work tomorrow.

I've been staying busy by fiddling with electronics some more. I got my 3D printer up and running again, and have been making some odd devices. Here's a prototype of an idea I've had knocking around for a few weeks - a solar powered synth, with a build-in piezo disc speaker, to use as a tool for measuring/interacting with sunlight. Right now, I'm really missing my old job teaching in the woods, and am really bummed out by my current school's very small concrete and astro-turf playground. There's no sense of change to it, it's exactly the same every time we visit. So I want to make some devices that kids can use to explore the changes in natural forces in some fun and unique ways, and this is the first idea I came up with. After I fine-tune this, I want to make some sort of wind harps. Still trying to think of a good rain-instrument (maybe a drum of some kind?).

I have a ton of these little squares of wood left over from my wedding (I made coasters as party favors), and they happen to fit the solar panels I have beautifully, so I'm using them as my basic unit of measurement in designs. I think this box's design is a bit too deep, especially for little hands. There's two oscillator voices in this device - one is wired up to the output jack on the back, and is controlled by the knob (the sound is SUPER gnarly). The other one, wired to the built-in speaker, has a fixed frequency, but is only activated if you complete the circuit by touching both copper plates. It sounds like an angry bird to me, which I like. I might have the pitch mapped to an LDR in my next iteration.

These are <$5 in materials, and take maybe 45 minutes to wire up. I'm going to send some to musical friends to play around with.

I also made an Electromagnetic Mic out of an old solenoid I had lying around - here's me playing my hair clippers like a didgeridoo:

EDIT: Just made another sunbox. 4 voices, always playing, pitch controlled by LDRs. I call it the "very angry box" for reasons which I think will be clear upon listening. Might re-make this with different capacitors, wonder if I can make it actually melodic in some way.

Guthrie and Seeger are huge heroes of mine, and absolute dyed-in-the-wool pinko commies. It's really a testament to their persistance and skill as songwriters that they became as popular as they did despite the "Red Scare" and being blacklisted. Always loved bringing in songs by them to do at my last school's "All School Sing" - went over very well at the little anarchist school in the woods.

If anyone's interested, here's a playlist of leftie jams I put together a year so ago, some good covers of Seeger/Guthrie songs throughout.

Ah, your teacher has excellent taste ;) It's an insanely open-ended synth, love love love it. I hear Syntorial is really great, hope you enjoy!

Allow me, if you will, to nerd out for a minute.

I hunkered down this long weekend with "Handmade Electronic Music by Nicolas Collins" and HOOOOOLY MOOOOOOLEY did I have fun. Can't recommend this book enough for anyone who likes tinkering. I especially loved the section on 40106 chip oscillator circuits. It's insane to me how expressive such a simple circuit can be. Just got some cheapo solar panels yesterday, planning on making some audio automatons this weekend.

Here's my attempt at making a "digital fire" by making a bunch of lfo-rate oscillators, controlled by photosensitive resistors, and playing them through Piezo pickups taped to pieces of wood:

And here's a track I made last night using the circuit pictured and a couple FX:

I am absolutely blown away by this shit. This would have made my gig scoring a horror movie a few years back infinitely easier! And all for like $2 worth of materials (ignoring the effects, all of which could pretty easily be emulated using free VST plugins or a Pi running Pure Data). No programming, no automating effects in my DAW, just putting my hand in front of a flashlight for a few minutes and seeing what happens.

If anyone's interested in the specifics of that track: Two oscillator voices, both running into separate FX units on my Koma Field Kit FX. The first one is run into a frequency shifter which changes frequency every second or so, the other run into a resonant band pass filter. Both run together into a ping pong delay and harmonizer (set to a perfect fifth) on my Raspberry Pi. The circuit is powered by a 5V solar panel, which in turn is powered by the flashlight in that picture. When it receives full power, you hear a little rhythmic "ping" sound. When I cover it partially, the circuit is "starved" and starts making the whiny rumbling sounds.

goobster I definitely recommend checking out that book if you're ever looking to play around with your own custom synthesizers! It's very clearly explained, and assumes no prior understanding of electronics. It's all geared towards tinkering and exploration rather than mastery, and I've found it incredibly fun to work through.

I've been trying to listen to a new album every day, mostly been able to stick to it. Here's the best ones I've listened to so far:

NNAMDI - BRAT - really cool fusion between math pop and indie hip-hop.

sunn - Life Metal - really sonically rich drone metal.

Holly Herndon - PROTO - avant garde electro-pop. Really cool production.

The Microphones - It Was Hot, we Stayed in the Water - Somehow I'd never given this a listen, despite loving their other albums. Great lo-fi freak folk.

Billy Woods/Kenny Segal - Hiding Places - excellent rap album. Really inventive and personal lyrics, killer production.

Also just stumbled upon this, which is awesome:

---

Anyone have suggestions for albums to add to my list? I'd love some ideas, feel like I'm getting into a rut.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oxeXmkBifXtDHsaYLkZ1krTkhJkt7YZe/view?usp=sharing

Bumped the tempo up to 100, added a couple instruments and did some light re-arranging too. Nice groove!

Lyrics:

I see the water a-rising round you

Another flood I suppose

I know I'll sink like a stone, I'm bound to

It ain't the water that drowns you,

It's the weight of your clothes

--

I feel a breeze slipping through my fingers

Fly like a murder of crows

You're long gone, but your spirits lingers

There ain't no words when I listen,

Just the wind and it blows.

That's just the way that it goes....

Let go...

-------------

I was very tempted to layer in the "It goes" from this track into the build at the end:

Well oh well oh well, conveniently I have myself a long weekend...

What's the tempo?

New phrenology just dropped

swedishbadgergirl I read "Every Heart a Doorway" not too long ago either, I thought it was a fairly interesting read. Not a tremendous fan of the dialogue, but I agree that the concept is really engaging. Ended up listening to one of the follow-ups as well, which was about the same quality.

I am in the middle of about half a dozen books, as always.

NON-FICTION:

I feel like I'm reading way too much nonfiction at the moment. I'm putting together resources for some possible future video-essays on music criticism and theory, so I'm knee-deep in academia at the moment.

Segregating Sound by Karl Hagstrom Miller - A deep dive into the formation of folk/country/"race" music in the early 20th century. Unique amongst several other academic looks at "folk" music in that it views corporate "Pop" music as equally important, and not separate, in the formation of cultural canons. Kinda dry.

Musicking by Christopher Small - I read this in college, and am revisiting it now. Very readable, it's mainly concerned with a radical broadening of how we define music as a process, rather than a text.

Hand's End by David Rothenberg - A book I desperately want to enjoy. It looks at technology as not separate from our engagement with nature, but a vital part of our process of understanding nature. Techno-ecology. Pretty dry.

Zeroes and Ones by Sadie Plant - a really enjoyable (for me at least) look at the history of women in computing. Brings in a lot of different disciplines. You can pretty easily find it for free online too...

FICTION:

Jerusalem by Alan Moore - Why do I torture myself? This book is awesome, but Christ, is it long and difficult to grok.

Been busy as all hell the past two months. We're really understaffed at my preschool, and I'm running myself pretty ragged. They just cut our hours down to 30 hours a week, which I am actually pretty grateful for at the moment. I don't have to go in until 11:30 every day now, which finally gives me some time to work on things before I am completely exhausted at the end of the day. I've made it my goal to make some new music every day, and so far I've managed to keep up with that goal for the last two weeks or so. If you want to listen, you can check it out here. Pretty much all just ambient stuff, I've been going back to recording live on tape and slowing things down. I'm considering taking about an hour's worth of the best tracks here at the end of the month and printing a limited run of like 25 tapes.

I also did some music for a friend's short movie recently, which just came out this weekend:

And last, here's something I'm really proud of that I made for the preschoolers when we were talking about robots:

It's a light/touch sensitive synthesizer thingamajig! LDRs for the eyes, and custom-made PCB touchplates on the sides. The kids had a blast exploring this.

Hope all the Hubskiers are having a good start to 2020 2.0!

I just saw this, seems really cool! Gonna check it out tonight.

Happy to help ;)

Damn, that is quite a haul! Sounds like you've got a hell of a weekend lined up.

One thing that might be of interest if you're ever looking remotely jam with people is a free Reaper plugin called "Reaninjam":

Basically, you can play in pseudo-realtime (in sync, but a few bars behind) with either friends (in a private server) or total strangers. I have a private server set up, if you're ever looking to play sometime! I've been missing collaborating with people, and while this is not quite the same, it does scratch the itch.

Edit: this plugin called Jamtaba seems to let you connect to NINJAM users in any DAW!

I think KB's probably right - the Monologue's pretty nice, and Behringer ain't too great as a company. If you're looking for a hardware synth, that's a really good place to start.

Ultimately, I think the "right" gear is whatever gets you making the most music, period. I totally get not wanting to be locked into the computer after working on it all day - that's part of what attracted me to hardware synths initially. Now I use sort of a mix of hardware and software, and I sequence it all through my Keystep Pro, which is both the most expensive and by far most useful piece of equipment I own. It's the only piece of gear I own that I couldn't part with without dramatically changing the way I make music.

Obviously, the big benefit of going digital is that there are a STAGGERING number of choices to try out. Even Modular (or, hey, even FREE MODULAR). I have yet to pay for a single digital synth, and I feel pretty happy with my options. And, importantly, I don't believe that there is any sound that you can create on any analog synthesizer that can't be recreated digitally (with a bit of knowledge and the right software). Obviously, I am a huge fan of Helm and Vital, partly because they are really intuitive, and partly because they have no right being as great as they are while still being free. I hear good things about NI, but haven't tried it myself.

The big downside to digital is that, if you only want to play one synth, then it's not quite as "giggable" as hardware. It can be great if you're going to jam with some friends to just grab a synth and a pedal and head out, but it can get a bit more involved with digital. My favorite hardware synth, the Microfreak is super light, and I can just throw it in my messenger bag with a cable and head out. That being said, the more gear you get, the more incredibly time-consuming hardware setup becomes.

On the other hand, one of my favorite bits of tech is my PiSound, a HAT for the Raspberry Pi that can turn the Pi into a pedal or any number of synths. Once you have it all set up, you can just boot up the Pi, plug in a Midi Controller, and run "headless", as it were. I mainly use ORAC, which has a bunch of great synth/effect options, and allows you to run several synths at once (I have done sets with just the Keystep running 3 synths at once on my Pi, and using a drum machine on the last track. Beautifully streamlined). There's also an app so you can use a phone or tablet to change parameters of whatever you're running. You can also run Pure Data patches on it, which gives you access to lots of community-made synth and FX modules. The PiSound is a bit of an involved project to get set up, but it sort of gives you the versatility (and cheapness) of digital, while giving you the portability of hardware. And, if you end up buying a synth, you can set up MODEP (the FX module) to run a midi-synced delay, which is pretty rad.

From a performance standpoint, I find hardware synths a lot easier to manage in a live setting. One knob does exactly one thing on each synth, and that is wonderfully intuitive and hard to fuck up live. Not quite the case when dealing with a computer, and unlabelled knobs on a midi controller (to say nothing of operating a mouse precisely in a high-stress setting). For an example, here's what my Midi mapping looks like when I run three synths at a time on the Pi, as mentioned above (I switch between Midi channels for each synth):

That becomes less of a problem if you are consistent in how you have your Midi controllers set up, and don't use a ton of different synths.

If you're on the fence, I'd recommend buying yourself a pretty nice midi keyboard with lots o' knobs, and messing around with software synths. If you get a midi keyboard, you can assign each of the knobs to control a different parameter of the synth software (ADSR, Cutoff, etc). It's really easy to set up in Helm and Vital, and I'd be more than happy to do a quick video on it. The great thing is that most software synths will remember those mappings, so you can just boot it up and get going right away. This will seeeeriously cut down on your time looking at the screen, highly recommend it.

Second-to-last bit of advice: if you are thinking of just using a synth as a solo instrument, either in a band or recorded, then analog might make just as much sense as digital. But if you think that you might end up want to make whole synth tracks, then I'd really recommend starting with digital. It becomes really unwieldy (and real fuckin' expensive) really quickly if you go the analog route there.

Actual last bit of advice: a big part of why the Keystep Pro is my favorite piece of gear is that, once I have my synths picked out, I can make a whole track without really having to look back at my computer. I can sequence things on 4 separate tracks, and send them to 4 digital (or analog) synths/drum kits. There's also this cheaper pad-style sequencer by Arturia, which has most of the same functionality. In any case, if you decide to go digital, I strongly recommend starting with a nice free synth, and spend your money on a good Midi keyboard with lots of knobs and sliders.

Edit: I swear to god I'm not being paid by Arturia, but I found this deal on their entry level keyboard, which also comes free with the lite version of: Ableton, Analog Labs (a really great sounding synth software), and a grand piano sim. For your consideration.

Thanks, Steve! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I really love this synth, and it's made by the same guy who made my previous favorite synth, so the workflow is pretty familiar to me. Excited to dive in over the upcoming long weekend...

I, for my part, am devouring all "Vital" content I can get my hands on, trying to understand this wicked new beast.

Very cool stuff, can't wait to hear once you get the Poly D!

Regretably, ANOTHER very exciting synth thing has come up: Matt Tytel, the guy who made Helm (my VST synth of choice) just announced a new free wavetable synth called Vital and the early release version I got of it has fully consumed my mind. Really cool stuff, working on putting out a playlist for it to release when the synth is released to the public on the 24th.

Also, it seems there's not an Android version of this app, which is a bummer - the ckncept seems pretty simple though, I might try and mock up my own version in Pure Data when I get a chance

New Mort Garson!

Also been loving this album by Marnie Stern

Super cool, pledged! Seems like a nice thing to work on while drinking my first coffee of the day.

Holy moley, gonna dive into this over the weekend - looks sweeeet!

Thought I recognized that lanky feller ;)

Glad you're enjoying it! I'm happy that I've been able to upload pretty consistently, so far I've done a new video every day since Sunday. Expect an in depth tour of the Modulator sections imminently...

Edit: holy shit I have some feelings about modulators, video ended up being a full hour long lol I could probably have talked for another hour as well...

I certainly wouldn't deny that there's good reason for Veteran's Day writ large, I just think it's a really strange thing to be celebrating with kids this young. It's hard to get into the concept of a just war with 3-year-olds, let alone give a decent, age-appropriate answer to 'what do soldiers do now' ("try and help people" was the best I could do).

But maybe my hackles are just raised from my last job, where I genuinely had a parent complain that "Paw Patrol" was fascist brainwashing. Also had a kid who watched footage of WWII bombings with his dad, and then unsurprisingly spent a lot of time air-raiding his classmates with pinecones. Somewhere in the middle is a reasonable stance, just not sure what it is myself.

Gotta say, it's really surreal working at a childcare center where we can't even talk directly about Halloween for fear that certain families might not celebrate it, but have no problem talking to kids (like, 3-year-old kids) about a day that celebrates "the people protecting our freedom" totally uncritically.

it begins...