200 jacks

Today at work a package arrived for me with 200 1/8" jacks in it!



Our new modules are that much closer to being built!

B.P. Soundtrack

¡¡¡Eso Si Que Es!!!

So my dad used to tell me this joke that I really liked when I was a kid. It's a language joke, and you have to know a little bit of Spanish, but I'll help you out.

This guy goes into a department store, but he's from Mexico, and he doesn't know any English. He goes to the salesman to get some help, but the salesman doesn't know any Spanish. Being a good salesman, he tries his best to make it work.

"¿Donde están los calcetines?" the guy asks, and the salesman says, "Um...are you looking for a shirt?" and he indicates his shirt, and the man shakes his head, so the salesman says, "Do you mean pants?" The man shakes his head again, no.

The salesman lifts the leg of his pants and points to his sock. "Socks?" he asks.

"¡Ah! ¡Sí! ¡Sí! ¡Eso si que es!{That is what it is!}" the man says.

"S-O-C-K-S?" The salesman says. "Well why didn't you say so!"

It's a total Dad Joke, but I bring it up because I finally finished knitting my first pair of socks, which are for Pete. It only took me three years!

You can kind of tell from the photo--the sock on Pete's left foot (the sock on the right in this photo) has a super point to it, kind of like an elf sock. I don't know why that happened, and I offered to fix it for Pete, but maybe he's half elf, because he said it was just fine the way it is. I like for my homemade things to look super homemade, so that's fine by me.

Special thanks to Courtney for teaching me how to turn a heel, twice, and to Kellie, for teaching me how to do the magic loop. And Pete for waiting so patiently all these years for his socks. Yeah, okay, I'll make you a dang sweater. It should be ready in about 5 years.

Speaker as fixed EQ

I was making digital copies of dictaphone tapes this afternoon, and while doing so came to the conclusion that I prefer the sound of the tapes through the recorder's internal speaker over the sound of the tapes directly.

So, to get more of the sound I wanted into the computer, I set a 57 an inch or so off the speaker's center and pressed record-- it's a much closer copy of what I want than simply running the headphone output into a mixer.


Have any of you tried this? Do you have a favorite mic for the job? I haven't done much experimenting (and don't have the biggest mic closet in the world), but if this is something you've done or do often and can recommend a set-up, let me know-- I'd love to hear about/try it!

New Colonial CDs!

There are 5 new CDs coming out on Colonial this Tuesday:






Check the Colonial site next week for more info, MP3s, etc.

Touch Clock

New utility box on the way

Our (mostly finished) new utility box:


Two A/B selectors, one mute switch, two momentary 9v gates (w/ snazzy green LEDs) and two passive OR circuits. Might try to squeeze a multiple in there as well...

Next on the list are the synth PCBs we've been "collecting." I've finally started sourcing parts for them, and we should have at least one of them coming together in the next month or so. Details/photos SOON!

"Fireball" by The Dustys

Audio: "Fireball" by The Dustys

Video: 9/18/09

The Dustys are a group from D.C. that feature famed Iran-Contra member Peter H. on keyboards. They're going on a national tour this fall-- if they're playing in your town (or playing in a place that is accessible from your town): GO!

"Trouble Deep" by New Mexicoe

Audio: 9/15/09

Video: 9/2/09

From the upcoming "Fifth Rehearsal" disc by New Mexicoe on Colonial Recordings USA.

Previous long-form NM video here.

September synth meetup

A couple of quick photos from this month's Muffwiggler forum meetup, which happened a few hours ago in sunny Bensonhurst. As always, thanks to Scooter for hosting!

If you squint, you can see Bubblesound's long-awaited uLFO in there, being FM'd by an AFG. Word on the street is that it'll be out in 4 weeks or so. His SEM/MS20 filter sounds amazing, by the way. Note to self: buy both of them.


...and here's Anthony's dual Little Boy Blue-- essentially two LBBs, with two additional noise sources (white and brown) all in the same housing. There were only 5 of these made:


Oh, and Nick brought a Synthi (w/ the keyboard)! Lots more!! Video soon!!!

"Oh Darlin'" by The Shamblers

Audio: Bay Ridge, 4/28/07

Video: Manhattan, 9/11/09

From The Shamblers' 98-track MP3 CD, "First Year Music."

Vacation!

I was lucky enough to have the day off today and spent most of it riding my bike around the suburban time capsule known as Dyker Heights.

Here are some of clips from the day, set to the (almost 10 year old!) Cosine song "Ballad of the Pit Boss":

What did you do on your Labor Day? Finally sleep in? Go to the beach one last time? Forget that you had the day off and drive to work by accident?

Knitting the News

I'm studying for my Programming for Interactivity class, which mostly means collecting examples of projects using the programming environment(?)language(?) Processing, a longtime crush of mine. In the midst of this, I happened upon a knitting project called News Knitter that uses Processing, somehow, to create visual representations of the news, translate these to a knitting machine and then make sweaters, comme ca:

 

 This reminds me, of course, of the less high-tech (though still knitting-machine based) work of Lisa Anne Auerbach's sweater/skirts, which are often news-related:

 There are a few great things about machine-knitted sweaters, and the most obvious being that they don't take as long to make, and you can pretty easily (if you're computer-savvy) create complex patterns that would be difficult to hand-knit, if not impossible. In both of these projects, that ease and speed are used to create complex and context-based sweaters that will be not only out of fashion but literally out of date in a relatively short period of time, memorializing and creating a lasting physical record of contemporary events.

The News Knitters also make more abstract representations of news visualization, which may withstand the test of time slightly better, and are taking names in the hopes that they might offer the sweaters for sale someday.

 All of this ties in very nicely with my interest in the idea of our everyday life objects forming our own personal living archives, and my very real desire to never ever ever get rid of the awesomely comfortable and nearly worn out t-shirt I was wearing when Pete & I first met.

Do your hand-made projects end up representing specific times and places for you? Do you think of your drawer of hand-knit socks as an archive of your progress as a knitter or as a person? Is it totally unreasonable to save clothing when it's no longer wearable for sentimental/archival reasons?

Ludwig Phase II-- how much is too much?

I apologize for the recent spat of "this costs too much!" posts, but there's a Ludwig Phase II on eBay right now with a STARTING BID of $1,8000 (w/ $100 shipping). That's more than double of what it should sell for.


As everyone knows, the Phase II is pretty cool-- it's a phaser, fuzz box and VCF all rolled up in one, with an expression pedal and street cred built right in. It's the famous "Diamond Sea" sound.

Here's Thurston using his on Letterman in 1995:



Question: if you had something either financially or practically irreplaceable that was an important part of your sound, would you take it out of the studio in order to use it live (as Thee Oh Sees do with their Space Echo), or is using something inferior but close-sounding good enough?

"Country Music" by Pet Cemetery