http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/s5m.mp3

(download here)

it has been beautiful in portland over the last week. lots of sun and lots of old friends passing through town.

here are a bunch of photos i’ve snapping while walking around and a bit of music that i recorded as part of my ongoing online collaboration with devin underwood.  i can’t wait to hear what he does with it.  i hope that he can find a way to fit something in there.  it is just one track of baritone guitar but wound up being pretty dense.

it looks like the rain is on it’s way back to us. hope everyone has a good week.

the other night i made this cassette tape loop.  i had made several of david chandler’s cassette loops in the past but i had really been wanting something longer.  after much trial and error i came up with this design in an attempt to use as much of the space inside the cassette that i comfortably could.  it took a while to get the tape tension just right but i think i have it pretty nailed down now.  in my 4-track tape deck (which at its slowest speed still plays back at a higher speed than standard tape players) i am able to get 8.5 seconds out of this loop.  with a foot pedal operating the punch-in/punch-out function of the 4-track i am able to turn it into a pretty nice lo-fi looper.

i will post sound samples soon.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/02_28_10.mp3

(download here)

for the first time in a long, long while matt and i got together with ted and brian for sunday morning music making. it was a very productive session.  i recorded a bit of it with my field recorder. here are a few little sections cross faded together (including the beginning which was a voice memo recorded on my phone as i returned to the studio from a bathroom break. i just love the sound of  music echoing down the hallway).

the players + the played…

ted – cello / laptop

brian – microphones / laptop ( processing lines sent out from everyone)

matt – electric guitar / laptop / electroncs

marc – acoustic guitar / laptop / electronics / bass guitar

here is a little composition i made with the new iphone version of nanoloop.

nanoloop was developed years ago for the original gameboy as an on-the-go music making tool that quickly grew a huge underground following.  other similar tools have popped up throughout the years but i always loved nanoloop’s ultra minimalist interface. to me, the iphone version is even more wonderful than the original.

i’ve never been a big fan of the chiptunes genre but there is something that i love about the gritty textures and lo-fi nature of the sounds involved.  the music i made with nanoloop is a kind of slow motion chiptune… clocking in at a glacial 6 bpm.  the voices you hear is a little bit of winter olympics commentary.

hope you like it.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/02_20_10m.mp3

(or listen/download here)

i recorded gemma performing this little musical improvisation the other morning.  she was laying on her back and with one foot kicking the happy apple and with the other she was kicking this jingly penguin.  i set my recorder down near these objects and captured the results.

last night i dropped them into Live and started processing them.  my part is pretty quiet throughout and gemma’s part remains unedited.

who would have thought that when my first happy apple post appeared a year ago that i would be collaborating with my baby daughter in the same room using the same tools?

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/02_18_10m.mp3

(or you can listen/download here)

yesterday there were some nice sunny breaks in the rain so gemma and i took a walk up to the food carts on mississippi and got some sushi.  it was so nice out.  on the way back home we took a detour to albina press and got some coffee and meandered down the alleys all the way home.  its really interesting to me to see a side of the neighborhood that is normally hidden from view.

i spotted this super bright moss growing from under a fence a few blocks from home.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/02_11_10un.mp3

just a brief room mic excerpt from the most recent unrecnow session.  we have a show in march and are trying to flush out ideas for a new piece.  we’ve been moving around between a few different ideas, we’ll see what happens.

we also had to take some photos of ourselves for the website of a documentary that we are scoring.  i’m really looking forward to getting more of the footage so that we can begin the scoring in ernest.

who would guess that it is february in portland right now?  sunny, warm and dry with flowers beginning to come out.  people out and about with sunglasses and smiles on their faces. the bitter sweet part of it is that we all know that it could change at any moment and by the looks of my weather widget that moment looks like it will happen tomorrow. more rain, rain, rain for days to come.  i’m glad that we enjoyed fake spring while it lasted. it just makes me even more excited for the real thing to come around.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/02_07_10m.mp3

today i was attempting to clean out my basement (no easy task) when i unearthed my old pioneer tube spring reverb unit.  i used to use it extensively in the effects loop of my old tascam 4-track but over time it grew noisier and noiser over time until the input signal was barely audible.  i was kind of hoping that in the 10 years that it has been sitting around gathering dust that it somehow self-healed.  no such luck. the springs still sound great but no signal will pass through them anymore.

i did discover that i was able to rest my acoustic guitar on top of the reverb tanks and play through it that way.  the vibrations from the body of the guitar carry straight into the springs.  noisy but kind of beautiful in a way.

i will try and see if anyone in town will service it for me. if not, it is time to say good-bye.

over the last few days i scanned  over one hundred old photos from ten to seventeen years ago. the overwhelming majority of them are music related from shows up and down the west coast.  i feel very fortunate to have been part of a such a great and supportive music community in my teens and twenties.  i saw some of the best shows of my life in the basements of houses and in tiny clubs in bad neighborhoods played by bands that played with so much energy and love.  some of these bands only played a hand full of shows but have left a lasting impression on me all these years later.  those were amazing years.

i’m sure that this thing happens all over the world all the time but to me and the friends that i made during this period, there was something very special happening.

here is a felt laptop cover that i made for matt tonight.  it is a long overdue birthday gift that jenny commissioned me to make for him.  i feel bad that it took me almost three weeks to get around to sewing.  it is a new design based off of my monome/camera covers.  i think it turned out pretty well. i hope he likes it.

today a great website called apartment therapy did a little write up on dust breeding as a source of inspiration to help kick off their february diy theme. it was very nice of them to choose to write about my project.  even gemma got a little mention.

hello again, it is good be back.

since my last post of year one i took a few weeks off and a funny thing happened…  i still kept working on creative projects everyday even without the commitment to posting them to this blog.  i still made music, made field recordings, took photos, sewed a felt monome cover… you know, business as usual.  i had some anxiety that when my year was up that i would lose the urge to keep creating.  i was quite relieved that it was not the case.

anyway, i’d like to welcome you to the start of year two of dust breeding.

above are some photos of what i have been up to while on my break.  i hope to keep things going and post something almost everyday this year. i’ve decided that if i miss a day or two here or there that i will be fine with it… i hope you will be too.

thanks again for all of the great support and kind words.

~m

for my 365th entry, here is a video montage of  still photos taken over the last year.  the overwhelming majority of them have appeared as posts on this site.  what a long and interesting year it’s been.

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one year ago today i started this blog with the goal of doing something creative everyday and documenting it here.  i wanted to use this project as a creative catalyst to keep me motivated and help me feel more productive creatively.  i thought if i were really focused i could maybe last a month… i never thought that i would make it this far into the project. i really didn’t.

it has been a really fantastic experience. through keeping this blog i have connected with so many kind and talented people who have shared their thoughts and their work with me.  it has really helped me be more confident in my artistic abilities and less fearful of rejection.  highly recommend an experiment like this to anyone who feels like they need a little push to stay creative… you can really find creativity in your everyday life sometimes you just have to slow down so you can see it.

a lot of people have asked me if i will stop posting things here after the year was up…

i thought about it and decided a few weeks ago that making things and posting them here has become too much a part of  what i do and who i am to quit now.  after taking a few days off (i think that i earned it), i will resume  posting. i don’t think that i will try and hold myself to a daily schedule but instead try and focus on a mixture of bigger long term projects and the kind of smaller one day things that i had been posting throughout the first year.

thanks again to everyone for their continued support, it’s made all the difference. a special thank you goes to my wife nicole. she has been my biggest supporter and i love her dearly.

much love,

marc

p.s. if you have a moment, take a look back through the archive. even i forgot about some of those posts.

player

(listen/download)

here is a little experiment with my lap harp +  a borrowed ebow.  i can’t believe that i never broke down and purchased one myself… they are so much fun. i’ve used them quite a bit over the years but never really liked the way that they sounded on guitar. i was very happy when i discovered how great it sounded with the little lap harp.

now i wish i had more steel stringed acoustic instruments laying around.

just one more day until i meet my goal of documenting one creative thing a day for one year.

here is a rewrite of an AU plugin that i made a few years back.  it is called buffer reverser and it pretty much just does what the name implies. it takes incoming audio and records it into a pair buffers. once one is full it plays what it recorded backwards while the next buffer begins recording in order to keep the cycle going.   there is a crossfader so that you can mix between the original and the reversed signal and a drop down menu so that you can choose between full speed and half time playback.

in order to use buffer reverser you’ll need to download + install sonicbirth (it is free but mac only, sorry windows people) and then drop the buffer reverser into the folder where you normally keep your audio units.

special thanks to brian for sending me a copy of the original one that i built years ago so that i could be reminded of how the guts worked the first time.

hope some of you find it useful.

buffer reverser AU (.zip)

sonic birth download site

(updated: i added a volume slider for the reversed signal and fixed a few things with waveform display)

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/01_13_10un.mp3

(listen/download)

some very rough loops that i recorded tonight at unrecognizable now practice.  we are brainstorming ideas for an upcoming edition of SIX (six speaker surround sound event) using six looping pedals and no laptops.  it should be a lot of fun.

this bit of music is only my half (three looping pedals) something went wrong with my room mic setup and it didn’t capture matt’s half… just this recording of me + a lot of grounding noise.

here is another raccoon related creation.  nicole and i decided to try our hands at making some felted animals tonight.  it involves wadding up bits of wool and stabbing it repeatedly with a series of needles to get the fibers to interlock. it isn’t too difficult but unfortunately in also involved stabbing our finger tips repeatedly with a series of needles.

she got a great start on a really cute elephant and i made this tiny little guy.

it was a lot of fun + i look forward to making more little friends for this one.

sometimes i wish i had the talent for sleeping that these three do.  it seems as though they can fall asleep anytime, anywhere… and they love to rub it in.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/011001m.mp3

(listen/download)

here is a bit of an improvisation i recorded tonight direct to one channel of my H4n.  it is just lap harp + eventide timefactor being fed into a KP3 that i picked up from chris randall last week.  just to warn you, it’s very slow moving and long (almost 16min).

it kind of put me in a trance when i listened back to it.

(the photo above is the view from the parking lot between the two studios buildings at work on the day a few weeks back when it first started to snow.  it seemed to fit well with the music)

it was gray and raining sideways all afternoon today.

there was one thing made today not so gray… this morning we saw one of our favorite NICU nurses.  he was by far gemma’s favorite and we could swear that she remembered him.  it made us so happy to see the two of them together again. so much has changed since they first were introduced, it is kind of unbelievable.

the three of us are looking forward to the next time we can meet up.

it was cold + windy, windy, windy today in portland.   there was also a blackout in parts of town due to a fire at a substation near the photography studio. so after waiting around a while we all went home to wait for news of the electricity restoration.

here is some wind inspired music along with one of the harp recordings from yesterday… it seemed appropriate.

the drawing above is my attempt at plotting out a system for my upcoming show.  it is still a work in progress but i am pretty sure that it what i’ll be using.  there might be a mixer in there somewhere but that’s about it.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/when-the-wind-blows).mp3

(listen/download)

tonight i recorded a few little songs from my lap harp for gemma.  i played twinkle twinkle little star to her over and over and see really seemed to like it so i figured that i should try and make some lullaby loops for her of a few of the classic songs.  i also couldn’t resist plugging in my monome and manipulating the recordings in ableton live.  i’ll post the finished recordings when the are completed.

sweet dreams.

here is a poster design for the upcoming installment of aleatoric. i was very excited to receive an invitation from the event’s curator (mike jedlick- optic echo presents/PRA) to preform a live set for the first show of the new year.

it should be a good show.  i’ve never seen helios perform, but brian (gasp) always puts on a great show.

the other night i started working on a performance set up . i think it will consist of monomes (128 + 64), eventide timefactor, contact mics and nylon string guitar.  more on that soon.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/01_04_10un.mp3

(download)

matt + i managed to make it down to the studio tonight for a bit of unrecognizable now time.  after just working on music by myself so much recently it felt great to be able to play music with another person.  here is a bit of an improvisation that we recorded… just guitar + baritone guitar with various delays + loopers.

here are some bits of thumb piano and acoustic guitar being cut up and manipulated using my monome 64 + sean pierce’s max for live version of brian crabtree’s wonderful mlr.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/01_03_10m.mp3

(download)

so 010 has been pretty great so far… if the rest of the year goes this well i will be more than pleased. here is a short video taken in industrial north portland around the corner from the photography studio. it was all shot on my new digital harinezumi 2. i love the kind of super 8 qualities of the video. also, i’m now 15 days from finishing out one year of blog entries. wow. that happened fast.

goodbye 009.

what a long and intense year.  although it was one of the hardest years that i have ever had i think it will always stand out as a landmark year for me.  i can’t even imagine what life would be like today had things happened differently for me and nicole back in august.

i am so thankful for so much and i feel like we are ending the year on an up swing.

thank you to my wonderful wife and daughter…

to my family and friends…

and to everyone that has shown their support to us this past year.

thank you, thank you.

i hope everyone has a wonderful 2010.

i’m sure it won’t last for long but i’m glad that we got some snow.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/12_28_09m.mp3

i was going to make these into a wind chime but i think that a crescent wrench gamelan is a better use for them.

today i started doing some wood block. i want to use them in our letterpress so i decided to do the carvings using the back side of old letterpress cuts.  it’s really hard to find wood blocks that are type high so these seem perfect.  years ago we wound up getting a lot of cuts that we would never really have a need for so might as well give them a new purpose, right?

it was a very cold windy boxing day here in portland. i spent it relaxing around the house with gemma napping and listening to the wind against the side of the house.  i made a little recording of the wind from inside the mail slot in our wall and used it as the basis of this piece of music.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/12_26_09m.mp3

(download here)

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/12_25_09m.mp3

gemma + i received this beautiful silver rattle as a joint christmas present  from kathan. it is both beautiful in design and in it’s bell-like tones. i love it.

here is a short rattle>contact mic>granular delay recording.  i’m sure that it will get a lot of use over the years… i might even let gemma play with it now and then.

i hope that everyone has a great holiday.

much love,

marc

here is a short e.p. that i put together of new versions of six songs that have appeared on this blog.  it’s intended as a little ambient holiday/winter gift to all the people that have supported dust breeding over the last year.

thank you so much for all the kind words and encouragement.  your support has made all the difference.

i hope everyone has a happy holiday (if you are into that stuff)

thanks again,

marc.

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download zip (24megs)

playing santa’s workshop tonight…

i’ve been getting together some things that people are buying from me to give their loved ones this christmas.  one is another felt G9 cover and the other is a print of one of my letraset animals.

i hope everyone is happy with their gifts.

i don’t know why exactly… but i really love wrapping presents.  i always have.

happy belated birthday to ericka.

here is the last half of an hour long mix that i prepared for mike at Portland Radio Authority for his weekly optic echo show.  i’m not sure when he’ll air it but to hear the whole thing you’ll have to tune in monday nights or check the podcast later.

he originally asked if i would play live on the radio but i’ve had a bit too much going on at home to get it together so i offered a mix instead.  i shamelessly dropped one of my songs at the beginning and end of the set and an unrecognizable now + oo-ray improvisation right in the middle.

hope you like it.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/PRAmix_pt2.mp3

download

_

playlist part two

(untitled improvisation) – unrecognizable now + oo-ray – dustbreeding.com

pepperdine suite – timonium – tonalism

all of us – slowdive – pygmalion

the flow, again – sawako – bitter sweet

sea grasses and blue sea – greg davis + sebastian roux – paquet surprise

zephyr – loscil – plume

air-eyes (2) – seefeel – starethrough

(untitled closing) – map~map – dustbreeding.com

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/12_18_09m.mp3

here is a little bit of new music.  it starts with a field recording i made at work of walking from the north studio building and south studio building.  you can hear the rain pooling near the gutters and the the neighbors moving 55 gallon drums in and out of trucks.  all the rest of sounds come from my suzuki tone bells.

actual & dim.  what does that mean?

i am going to work on a series of these black + white graphics based of cross cuts of wood (this one was from our christmas treee) and see if gemma reacts to them.  she loves this black + white animal book with a zebra in it.

here is another ambient collaboration with devin underwood (specta ciera) from cambridge. last week he sent me a great track of dreamy glacial guitar played through a tiny pocket sized amplifier.  i added some field recordings, resampled piano + xylophone.  here is a rough mix of the results… i think it turned out nicely.

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(you can download or listen here or used the player below)

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/spectamap_no2.mp3

the last days of my month of paternity leave are near and i am really sad about it.

another cold cold night here in portland. the widget on my laptop says it is a chilly 18?.  every morning for the last few days i’ve had to run a hair dryer in the basement to keep the water flowing to the pipes in our kitchen.  it looks like it should warm up a little  soon so my dreams of snow + another white christmas might be over for a while…

we’ll see.

it has been really really cold here in portland the last few days. if there were any moisture whatsoever in the air, i’m sure it would snow.  i really hope that we get a bit of snow again this year. maybe not as much as last year but maybe enough to build one of these guys in our yard.

(this video shows the midi velocity mapped to saturation, pixelate, zoom out, edges then a combination of all)

i posted about this a few days ago but have now wrapped it all up for public consumption.

Midi-Vidi allows you to control the playback of Quicktime videos with Midi inside of Ableton Live thanks to the magic of Max for Live.  Midi-Vidi divides your video into 12 equal parts based on the length of your video and assigns those parts to Midi notes.  There is also an effects section that allows you to map attributes such as velocity to some simple effects.

Midi-Vidi is based entirely on Cycling 74’s Jitter tutorial #26 with only minor modifications by me. I can’t take any credit for it’s construction.  I hope to use this as a jumping off point and make further modifications in the future to allow for more playability.

enjoy.

Download Midi-Vidi Max for Live plugin

]]> http://unrecnow.com/dust/2093/feed 3 http://unrecnow.com/dust/2085 http://unrecnow.com/dust/2085#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:59:34 +0000 marc http://unrecnow.com/dust/?p=2085

it was a cold windy day in portland today.  i saw it snowing quite a bit around 3am but none of it stuck.  i wonder if we will get anything like the snow we got last year.

here is a little improvisation with acoustic guitar and eventide timefactor.

(you can listen/download here or listen below)

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/12_06_09m.mp3

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here is a little video that i put together of the midi note output of stretta’s polygome monome app controlling the playback position of a time lapse video in jitter.  i’m in the process of putting this functionality into a max for live patch. could be great for live shows.

here is the most recent edit of my current video project.  i presented the first half of it back on 301 and the second on 308. i think that i’m pretty with the edit.  expect to see a few more vignettes like this in the next few weeks.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/12_03_09m.mp3

(you can also listen or download here)

just a little carpet jam with my new Bliptronic 5000 + some analog signal processing.  the sounds on it are pretty limiting so adding some effects made the whole thing a bit more interesting. i tried for a while to sync the bliptronic + the ooh-wah but eventually gave up…. anyway,  i kind of liked the way they fall in and out of sync.

bare branches + a rare mostly cloudless day in portland.

hello december.

nicole + savannah picked up this new friend for gemma today.  it’s a fishing bear with a music box inside. if you pull the fish on his fishing pole, it plays a little melody.

here it an ambient version.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/11_30_09m.mp3

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/11_29_09un.mp3

matt + i returned to our sunday morning music making routine for the first time since the end of august. it felt like like no time had passed.

my friend adam sent me a voice memo recording of some wind chimes.  this is what they sound like now.

hope everyone had a nice thanksgiving.

i have a lot to be thankful for this year.

much love.

marc

http://unrecnow.com/audio/11_26_09m.mp3

(those with out flash can listen/download here)

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here is a little time lapse loop.  give it a moment to load then it should loop back and forth for as long as you have this page open.

enjoy.

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(edit: added music now)

just finished my first real max for live project.  i created a midi effect that controls my eventide timefactor delay/looping pedal.  it works amazingly well and should be pretty useful.  next up… make a version that can be controlled via monome. (here’s just a rough version of the gui)

here is a rough version of a little piece of music + video.  the music is all just acoustic guitar processed using the eventide timefactor delay/looping pedal (with a little reverb).  the video is a shot out the window of a moving car processed using a quartz composer tool called g.p.g.

i’d like to fine tune this at some point but i was much to sleepy to continue at the moment.

enjoy.

i went out for a bike ride today just as the sun was going down.  it was my first real get out of the house activity in as long as i can remember.  i just biked around up to alberta st. and took photos in the neighborhoods.  here are a few that i liked.

i started work tonight making a max patch to use an old usb mac joystick/gamepad to send midi info to live. i am just teaching myself max/msp now and this project hasn’t been too complicated yet.  we’ll see where i get in the next few days.

here are a few stills from an upcoming video project.  it’s focus is on natural light.

more experiments in cloud folding. this time in the form of an origami crane.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/11_17_09m.mp3

(to listen w/o flash or download, go here)

-

here is just a short little bit of music from a much larger piece.   i was super sleepy and couldn’t keep my eyes open enough to finish the longer version… i think that the music was making me even sleepier.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/11_15_09m.mp3

(click here to listen or download)

here is a piece of field recording, piano + guitar music.  the field recordings are leaves, people talking in the large main room at the art school and a door handle.  the piano + guitar are pretty buried in there.  i set this song to the video i made for entry 295 and it fit perfectly.  i might re-post that one with this as a soundtrack.

i finally got around to sewing the micorkorg cover that i promised to adam for his upcoming white rainbow tour to korea + japan. i made  a double layer of  felt to try and make it a bit more padded out. i just need to do some clean up to the edges and sew a little velcro in to it and it’s all finished.

another rainy day indoors.  the three of us spent the whole day napping and eating. all good family activities.

here is a video shot from outside our living room window.  the audio is all just of bits of acoustic guitar processed with the wonderful eos reverb.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/11_13_09m.mp3

(if you don’t have flash, or would just like to download the track, you can click here)

three hundred posts.  can you believe it?

year one is almost over.

thanks to everyone who reads/looks at this blog.  you are the people that keep me going on it.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/11_11_09m.mp3

(if you don’t have flash you can listen here)

here is an update to my drone machines post.  this is made with sounds from the fm3 buddha machine and gemma’s sleep sheep.  the sounds all seem to work pretty well together.

good night, sleep well.

nicole and my mom picked up a sleep sheep for gemma this weekend.  at its core, the sleep sheep is a white noise drone machine with sounds like rain, heartbeat, ocean and whales.  it is kind of like a buddha machine for kids.  i really want to make some recordings using the two of them together.

maybe some day soon.

good night.

it finally happened.  after 11 weeks in the hospital, i’m happy to say…

“welcome home gemma corinne fischer!”

here is a little video that i made while driving to the hospital today.

our big news is that our daughter gemma, after nearly 11 weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, will finally be coming home with us.  we will be bringing her home tomorrow (sunday) afternoon.  we are unbelievably happy but understandably anxious.

it’s an odd feeling to know that our routine of twice daily hospital trips will be over and something new will be taking it’s place.

thanks to everyone that has sent their kind and supportive words to us.  it has meant a lot to us.

here’s to a new chapter in our adventure.

After a long day I had very little energy left for creative projects. Here are a few photos taken while laying in bed.

there are great things to come.  i’ll explain later.

Good night.

last week i started taking a thursday night digital video class at pnca.  i am hoping to finally get to know final cut pro better. i’ve messed around with it a bit but never fully grasped it.

tonight our class went around collecting video + audio to put together a quick project.  the teacher went through a very general timeline of events. using that as a guide it was up to us to capture then edit the material that we collected.

here are a few stills from tonight’s project.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/11_05_09m.mp3

the max for live beta was released to the public today.  since i’m not much of a max programmer myself, i’m really excited to see what other people make with it once the final version is released later this month.  it could mean cool things for the monome community.

here is a short piece of music i made using some of the max for live plugins and a sample of me playing piano.  it’s mostly buffer shuffler and some modulation + delay plugins.

kathan zerzan asked me to show some photographs for first thursday this month.  she is curating little shows monthly in a little space on the top floor of her house that used to be the office of miller safety & health consulting. i selected a few photos from different groups that have appeared on this site and had them printed at my favorite photo finisher in portland.

i spent some time tonight mapping out the order that each grouping should be displayed in.  i’m pretty happy with the results.

if you are in portland and out walking around for first thursday… come by and look at some photos.

1631 NW Johnson St
Portland, OR 97209

… but that’s because i’m a sucker for black + white animals.

nicole and i spent the better part of the weekend cleaning and reorganizing the house.  it’s funny the kinds of stuff that you uncover… like strange notes that require decoding even though they were written in your own handwriting.  some of it made us laugh a lot.  photos of one of our cats when he was a tiny kitten… but looked more like a fetal ewok.

…and these negatives.

i don’t remember where they came from but i love the interactions between the people + animals in them.

i really love the one of the girl feeding the deer.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/10_31_09m.mp3
(you can also listen/download here if you don’t have flash.)

here is a little piano melody i recorded with the wurlitzer turned off. it’s just the sound that you hear coming from the keys. i really like the percussive quality it has.

here is  a video using the same time lapse set up as last time.  i want to eventually make a longer video where i cut between multiple days shot at the same angle.

the music is some wurlitzer electric piano with granular processing.

i’ve been joking for a long time that i was going to dress gemma up as a turtle for halloween.  although it would be cute, i don’t think that i have the time to sew her a tiny turtle costume… instead, here is a little painting of one.

here is a little time lapse video i made from our kitchen window as i made dinner.  the clouds move across the sky as our rice cooker steams up the window…  eventually it gets completely fogged up.  kind of like a low tech fade out.

if you watch closely you can see the flight path of some small planes running through the film.

the music is made up of layers of  field recordings and monome (playing sine waves with a little percussion.)



here is an mp3 of the audio.


http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/091027m.mp3

fall is in full effect in portland.

just thought you should know.

here are a few short video clips strung together along with a little synthesizer melody.  the video was all taken on the buchineko toy camera while clamped to my sun visor in the car.  i love the super 8 quality it’s video has.

who needs HD?

in other news a few web sites posted little blurbs on my nanopedal this weekend. one of which was the make magazine blog. they went on to also talk about a few of my other projects that i’ve posted here.  thanks make!

a great new photo blog called (not)common people also ran a little profile on me and posted a few of my photos.

the internet was really nice to me this weekend.

thanks internet!

a few weeks ago, nicole and i picked up a mandal dresser from ikea for gemma’s room. the raw wood and black drawer faces didn’t really match what we had going on in the rest of the room.  nicole had the idea of painting the dresser white and the drawers bright colors.  a couple of cans of montana later and we had ourselves a really cute new piece of furniture.

i think it turned out really well.

i’ve been wanting a compact usb midi foot pedal for using with live for a long time. off the shelf controllers are often bulky and require an external midi interface. i built one out of a usb number pad last year but it was less than ideal.  last night while working on some music, i tried another little idea out and it worked great… so i decided to make it more permanent.

tonight i popped all of the keys but five off of my korg nanokey in order to see how it would work as a pedal. it turned out that it worked really well.  i cut some small pieces of plywood out to raise the key height and some scrap plexiglass to cover up the missing keys. a little spray paint and double stick tape and it was all finished.

i think it turned out pretty well.  not bad for a cheap keyboard and scrap materials.

what a gray day.

here’s a photo from a few days ago when we still were lucky enough to see blue skies over portland + some music from tonight.  just gray clouds of guitar.

layer upon layer.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/10_21_09m.mp3

(if you don’t have flash… you can listen here)

today was…

sun, rain, sun (repeat)

all of that mixed in with a migraine and it was quite a day.  i did manage to fire off some pretty fall photos on our morning walk to the bakery before the rain really set in.

here is some music that starts and ends with a recording of some of the heaviest of the afternoon rain breaks. the music is made up of pieces of my collaboration with specta ciera cut up using mlrv.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/10_17_09m.mp3

(if you don’t have flash, try and listen here)

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/10_16_09m.mp3

here is a bit of electric piano + granular processing.  just something slow, twinkly and ambient for your friday night/saturday morning.

all the best to you.  happy weekend.

more paint peeling from the celling.  this time it’s the new paint + old paint and it is coming off in huge sheets.

sometimes you can’t win.

…not a trip for me but for my old friend adam.  white rainbow is going on tour to asia next month and needs a cozy cover for his microkorg synth.  i am proposing a grey and mustard felt cover with a pair of webbing handles.  i should start getting sewing on it soon.

i hope it is travel worthy.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/10_13_09m.mp3

what a nasty, rainy and windy night.

here is a little piece of music that i made using my monome 128 and the application arp-shift controlling a great little soft synth called ultra analog from aas.  i downloaded it tonight from a website that for a limited time has put it on super sale ($15 down from $200!).  i usually prefer to make my own samples and don’t really use any software synthesizers but this one is pretty great.  i think it’s totally worth checking out.

i really wish that aas would put their electric piano on super sale next.

(if you don’t have flash, you can listen here)

this week i started an internet collaboration with devin underwood (aka: specta ciera). i was excited to work with him on something, i really like his music.  we both appeared on the wonderful PS010 compilation from the barcelona based public spaces label. (if you haven’t downloaded it yet, you really should. it’s free after all)

devin sent me a 3 1/2 min long track that i added two parts to. one of granulated xylophone and the other was a stretched out, scrubbed and resampled portion of the track he sent to me.

here is a rough mix of the results so far.

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/specta_ciera-mapmap_roughmix.mp3

-

(if you don’t have flash, you can listen here)

-

there was a beautiful moon out tonight.  i thought that i’d try and make some long exposure photos of it… but they didn’t really turn out so i did something else instead.

well i’ve made it into the final 100 days of my year long blog project,,, hard to believe that i’ve made it this long.  i really didn’t think that i would even make it though the first 100 days.

thanks to everyone that has been so supportive of me and this project.  all of your words of encouragement have really kept this whole thing going.

thank you, thank you.

~marc

here is a simple set of watercolor dot patterns.  it kind of reminds me of  lights moving across a monome.

(i’m obsessed)

i attempted to paint the celling in our extra bedroom only to run into an issue with the old paint being pulled off by the roller.  i spent the next few hours up on a stepladder attempting to remove the loose paint using a vacuum cleaner. it worked well but i got about 1/4 done and gave up.  i’ll next try sanding it off.

while on the ladder staring up at the celling i was reminded of this website’s namesake and the quote that described it in the october 1922 edition of littérature…

“How arid it is — how fertile — how joyful — how sad.”

~Rrose Sélavy

more pencil patterns.  nicole requested a pinecone made in this style… i’ll have to give it a shot soon.

-

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/redstart.mp3

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as promised, here is a sound sample from the audible audubon series.

tonight on our way to the hospital we saw a man standing on the edge of the fremont bridge.  nicole called 911 but they had already been alerted.

i hope he is okay.

(i’ll post audio samples of this great machine in the morning)

there were some amazing clouds out today.

we ripped a kitchen cabinet out and exposed some interesting textures behind it.  i am fairly sure that it is the original unpainted plaster.  we also discovered a torn photograph of  a chicken.  strange to think of the things that you live with everyday for years and never see until something prompts you to uncover it.

here are some pencil drawings of clouds.  it is kind of a continuation of my posts from the last two days.  it’s been so hard getting up in the morning the last few days with the darkness, clouds + rain.  i have to admit… i am enjoying dressing in layers and wearing scarves and coats again.

hello fall.

the rain is back in portland. here are some photos from around town this afternoon. there were some amazing clouds out there today.

some photos of little hospital details and 4min of slow moving guitar for you on a monday morning.

acoustic guitar, granular delay, ring modulation.

-

http://unrecnow.com/dust/09_27_09m.mp3

(you can listen here if you don’t have flash)

_

here are more toy camera photos that nicole and i took while out and about today.  i took the first four and nicole took the last three.

we got some sad news today up at the hospital.  it turns out that one of gemma’s neighbors in the NICU, a little boy named noah, died today.  he was born a little over a month before gemma at 23 weeks and had been plagued by health issues.  we were there when it happened but didn’t realize exactly what was happening.

our hearts go out to his family.

a series of photos taken around portland today with my new buchineko toy camera.

tonight i started experimenting with a new piece of software for image processing.  i started with the photo in the lower left and wound up with the graphic above in just a few steps.

tonight i am revisiting my canon g9 camera cover.  soon after nicole bought me a g9 for my birthday, several of my work buddies wound up also buying g9s.  so now i am making covers for their cameras too.  i wanted to give each of them a handmade cover in exchange for something that they create.  kind of like a gift exchange.  we’ll see how it goes.

the other thing i have for you all tonight is 1min of music.  it is another dropbox collaboration between my friend adam in LA and i.  he sent me two tracks of melodies that was about 20 seconds long.  i added some stuff, changed up the melodies and sent it back to him.  here is what i have so far.

oh, by the way… i didn’t pick the title.

_

if you don’t have flash you can listen here. otherwise…

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/modernunicorn.mp3

_

here are some mock-ups of a logo that i’m working on for the brand new field studies label from south carolina.  they wish to specialize in releasing “electronic, electroacoustic, generative, minimalist, micro-sound, field recording, and drone”.  sounds right up my alley.

look for great things coming out from them in the future.

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http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/09_19_09m.mp3

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just some acoustic guitar drones + plucking that i recorded tonight.  nothing too fancy.

the photo above is of a logging truck that i was driving along side the other day.  i find it to kind of be both pretty and sad.

(if you don’t have flash, you can listen here.)

here are some silhouettes  of some tiny tools that i got this week.  they are each just a few inches long. very cute.

sublimation in action.

another late night at the hospital.  gemma was a lot better tonight than she was when we saw her this afternoon. that made us happy.

here are some long exposure shots taken from my front yard.  extra points if you get the 90’s music reference in the title of today’s post.

good night.

_

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/090914m.mp3

today way okay… a lot of time spent at the hospital today.  we didn’t get home until after 11pm from our night visit. i did some more blanket sewing along with the finishing touches on a monome cover.  one discovery that i made this weekend was kind of a bummer… it turns out that fabric depot no longer carries the elastic that i was using for straps on my covers.  time to either redesign or source another supply.

here is a little piece i recorded tonight.  it’s just me playing acoustic guitar into a chain of granular effects.  i like the way the different layers all together start sounding a lot like an organ of some sort.

tonight nicole and i delivered a batch of homemade gemma-sized blankets to the hospital.  we picked up some blankets yesterday for gemma’s incubator but many of them were much too large… so this afternoon i cut some of them in quarters and used the handy serger to finish off the edges.  nicole had the great idea to insert a loop of bias tape in the seam to act as a tag.  we need to label all of the blankets so that they don’t wind up in the hospital laundry.  we also picked up some assorted flannel pieces from the fabric store to make more blankets. i loved the sock monkey fabric.

-

http://unrecnow.com/audio/inudge.mp3

here’s a piece of music that i made using the program above.  it’s a fun little music making toy called inudge. they give you a grid of 16×16 buttons and eight layers of instruments. there are 7 melodic ones and one set of drum sounds.  you can start making little melodies really quickly.  i reminds me a lot of  step sequencers built for the monome.

have fun, play around with it.  try playing my piece of music + inudge at the same time.

i’ve been mostly out of the music making game over the last few weeks.  in the spirit of keeping things moving with unrecognizable now, i put a little .zip together and sent it off to matt to see if he felt like messing around with it.

they are just two open drone samples that are about a minute each.  here they are stacked up and mixed together.

(if you have flash, you can use the little flash player below… otherwise you can listen here.)

~

09_11_09-samples.mp3

_

it seems like everyday in the n.i.c.u. the nurses have gemma wrapped up in a new baby blanket with cute little illustrations on them.  here is my attempt at drawing cute little animals that i would like to see on a baby blanket.  i meant to draw a panda too but i forgot.

Nicole spotted this big guy hanging out on our kitchen celling. we have no idea how he got into the house.  before releasing him outside, he was kind enough to sit in for a photo shoot.

today was a pretty good day.  i got to hold gemma for the first time  for well over an hour.  i can’t describe how great it felt.

here is a little ambient visual experiment using water and ink.  the audio is an edit from yesterday’s post. hope you like it.

today was a pretty good day. nicole got to hold gemma again.  it was the highlight of my day.

here is a little piece of music made from some clarinet samples + granular processing.

_

(if you don’t have flash you can listen here.  otherwise,  you can listen below)

090906m.mp3

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it was a gray and rainy day here in portland today. let’s hope summer isn’t quite over yet.  instead, we can try and think of those days when the sky was blue instead of gray.

three pinecones. small, medium + large.

a time lapse video of the trip from our house to the hospital and back.  we make this drive several times a day to go visit gemma in the nicu. i hope that some day the drive will feel like it goes by this quickly and that she were that much closer to us.

just a few paper constructions made from photos of empty pools + colored tape.

today was a really good day for nicole + gemma. nicole got to hold her against her chest for two whole hours.  it was so great and made me so happy.  nicole started working on a little web site to keep people updated on gemma’s progress… it looks really nice so far.

good-night. sleep well.

today we finally got home.  what an amazing feeling to take a shower in your own shower and lay down on your own bed. i’m sure more creative posts will start up again soon.  for now i am just happy that nicole and gemma are both doing well.

(the photo above is not our home… but someone else’s.  i took the photo this morning in nw portland)

we are so close to being home… right now, gemma is doing well in the n.i.c.u. and nicole was released from the hospital today and has been put on bedrest for several weeks. one roadblock in nicole’s homecoming is that we can’t even go home right now because there is a full on all day long whiteboy blues rock open jam session happening in front of our house today. I swear that i could not even make something like this up. Reports are in that it sounds like a guitar center showroom on our corner. Everyone shredding to the beat of a different drummer. Awesome
Many thanks to k + r for putting us up for the night and for their unwavering support throughout this whole ordeal.
we can’t wait to sleep in our own bed again.

today was another long hospital day. nicole is still amazing everyone with her progress. there were a few set backs with her health in the last few days but they all seem to be resolving. so far so good.

today was also the birthday of two amazing people that i know.  the first is my 92 year old grandfather back in the philippines, ernesto medrano. he is one of the warmest, kindest, most generous people that i have ever had the good fortune to know. i love him dearly and wish that we could be (geographically) closer. he has been such a wonderful father and grand father and friend to all of us in the extended medrano family.  when my mother first came to america he would write her two letters a week so that she wouldn’t feel alone and so far away.  i guess he kind of made writing letters to her his dust breeding.

the other member of the birthday club i could put into the warmest, kindest, generous category as well. she is maura… nicole closest friend since they were four years old. she has been so great to us over the last week. visiting everyday, checking on our cats back at home and just sitting quietly with nicole while she rests. she is an incredibly great calming force around these parts.  we were able to have a tiny birthday party for her today in the hospital. it was the least we could do for someone that has been such a help.

we are so lucky to have so many great friends that show their support every single day.

we love you all very much.

thanks to everyone that sent us their well-wishes, flowers and gifts over the last few days. it makes all the difference in keeping spirits up.  it started out kind of rough this morning but nicole and gemma are both doing well today.  they are two really tough ladies and i love them both dearly.

it has been a super difficult past few days. i won’t get into details but i just have to say… my wife nicole is the toughest person around.  anyone that has seen her lately would not and could not disagree. i just hope that our new little girl has the same kind of fight in her that her mother does. being born so premature, she has a long hard road ahead of her.

please welcome to the world gemma corinne fischer.

_

(the photo is of nicole + i holding hands during the operation after gemma was delivered)

saturday morning (vancouver ave, mississippi neighborhood)

sunday morning (providence hospital, ne portland)

it’s frightening where a day can take you.

i got a new microphone in the mail yesterday.  i love the design. it looks very much like a classic ribbon mic (even though this mic’s guts are not nearly that fancy) here are a few close-ups of the body of the microphone. i really like the grill pattern… it’s like the front of the apple G5/macpro.

here is a little proof of concept animation i made for a larger video project i’m working on for autistici from the u.k.

it’s a triangle themed music video for a track from his upcoming release.  i have a bunch of ideas relating to folding and unfolding triangles that i want to focus on for it.  i made this to try a technique out that i think could look nice.  more to come soon.

another heat wave for portland and another productive night of music making for matt + i.  here is a little edit of a set we recorded tonight.  it’s just a starting point but i really like it.  it sounds really drifty to me.  hope you enjoy it.

(if you don’t have flash, you can download/listen here… or take a listen below)

08_19_09un

_

p.s. the photo above is one that i took of the controlled burn of a house belonging to the sister of our friend and collaborator, rob tyler. the photo is a few years old but i just rediscovered it tonight.  i thought it went well with the music.

as promised, here is an edit of a few parts from the unrecongizable now/oo-ray session from sunday.  matt is playing guitar + xylophone, ted is playing cello + laptop and i am playing baritone guitar, monome and laptop. it was kind of nice to listen back to this after a few days and hear so much nice stuff that i don’t even remember hearing the first time.  i guess sometimes you almost get put in a trance when you are creating music like this where it all becomes a blur.   i think that i kind of enjoy that.

hope you like it.

090816_un_or

(or if you don’t have flash, you can listen here)

_

this evening i went exploring the grounds of this old hotel on the columbia river.  the hotel is split into two parts by the freeway that runs from portland to vancouver.  the part of the hotel on the west side of the freeway is totally abandoned… the part on the east side seems like it is on life support.  there is still activity, but it feels like it is trapped in another decade.

i can only imagine how fancy the hotel must have been in it’s heyday.  huge ballrooms and exhibition space. giant chandeliers. tons of rooms. i’m sure that in the years before the expo and convention centers where built this hotel was hopping with activity.

i wonder what will become of it…

for now it is definitely breeding dust.

a nice sunday.

i started the morning off by having another great drone session with ted + matt (maybe i’ll post some excerpts if people are interested) then went to a really nice bbq at the zerzan compound in Milwaukee  where i was able to scavenge a bowl of blackberries from the bushes around the property after two other groups of pickers had already swept through.  i guess being tall with long reaching arms really comes in handy sometimes.

nicole and i also went on a nice evening stroll around the neighborhood. there were a lot of cute cats hanging out on porches but none of them came down to say hi to us.

here is a new letraset animal that made tonight.  he is a chubby little quail.  it’s been a while since i last posted one. i’m hoping to get back into it again once summer is over.

anyway… back to work tomorrow.  where does the weekend go?

goodnight.

i took a little morning walk around our neighborhood this morning on my way to get coffee.  despite the terrible economy, it seems like a lot of construction projects are still moving forward.  more condos, more shops, more food carts… it won’t be long before all the little industrial spaces around us are filled up with retail spaces and condominiums. kind of crazy.  at the moment, it just doesn’t seem like it is sustainable.  who is going to buy/rent these places?…

i really hope that our local economy stabilizes soon.  it seems like every week i hear about more local businesses closing their doors.  i just found out on friday that one of my favorite shops in portland is closing at the end of the month.

so sad.

one thing that doesn’t make me sad is the smiley face at the bottom of the office sign.  i love it.

just a series of 15 second exposures of the night sky over our house.  i love the movement in the clouds.

earlier today i was talking to some coworkers about art + physics. we thought it would be cool to photograph shapes with an odd perspective… or the possibility of building whole room sets where you could play with perspective and size where none of the angles are correct .

i made these little boxes kind of as a test to play with that idea.

here are some watercolor waves.  sometimes i find it relaxing to just repeat a pattern over and over again.  it can be kind of interesting to see how your pattern evolves through repetition.

i would like to take this opportunity to welcome henry alexander birchard to this world.  my sister rita gave birth to him at 3:53pm on august 12th. we are so happy for rita + chris.

what a long day.

here is a little thing that nicole + i recorded using a monome 64 (running arpshift by edward loveall) + ableton live.

it pretty much put us both to sleep.

it could do the same for you… so i wouldn’t listen to it if you are driving or operating heavy machinery.

good night.

~

090811~m+n

(you can also download it here… 090711~m+n)

_

my one man monome cover sweatshop has slowed down a bit in recent months.  it’s kind of nice to have a little break from it now and then.  i really enjoy making them but it was pretty much consuming all of my free time for a while.

this charcoal felt monome cover is for trent in reno, nevada.  it think it turned out really well.  i hope he likes it.

here are a few bits of music assembled into a track from today’s unrecognizable now / oo-ray session.  it was great to play music with ted again.  it has been way too long.

listen here. (or if you don’t have flash…)

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090809un.mp3

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there are a few blocks along a street in my neighborhood where almost every house is a really bold color. here is a sampling of the houses between haight avenue + kerby avenue along north failing street.

the photos at the top are of the rooftop across from the studio where i work.  the guy in the disguise is our neighborhood mystery.  we see him almost every week running across rooftops and between buildings.  we first thought that he was a graffiti artist but now i am kind of thinking that he is a vigilante of some sort.  i think that he thinks of himself as superhero or something.  you would probably think of him as the same if you had seen him in a cape (like in the third photo at the top). maybe he is just really excited that the watchmen is now out on dvd…. who knows?

_

all the other photos are of the little industrial area that runs along the south side of I-84 near 22nd ave.

p.s. i love that he wears a fanny pack.

i tried again (with mixed results) to work with the trackmate software to do some motion controlled music experiments.  i think i need to come up with a better light source for my set-up. i think it is much too bright and the computer/camera is having a hard time adjusting.  has anyone reading this had any trackmate success?  please give me some tips.

on a more positive note…

one of my songs has just been released as part of an ambient compilation put out by public spaces lab from barcelona.  i have the honor of being the artist whose piece of music starts the whole thing off.  the album is called ceci n’est pas une pipe and you can download it for free here. it has some beautifully designed artwork that you can print and assemble yourself.  please check it out… there are a lot of really good pieces of music on there.

thank-you public spaces lab!

just a little painting of the sky + power lines.  the sunsets have been so pink this week… kinda like cotton candy.

i think i might be coming down with a cold.

…star wars.

i know it’s super geeky, but i heard about this project and thought it would be fun to get involved.  i had 30 days to finish a 15 second recreation of a scene from star wars.  i slacked off and now i only have 5 days left.  i think i will just animate these cardboard stills in flash and add the dialogue using the good old apple mac voice.  it’s only 15 seconds… but it sure takes a long time.

in better news… i am now on my 200th consecutive blog entry of documenting a creative thing everyday.  i am pretty proud of myself.  it’s strange to think of all that has happened in the last 200 days… and all that could happen in the next 165.

i am working on a little animation based around triangles at the moment.  when i figure out exactly what i’m doing i’ll be able to go into more detail.  it might involve a flash animated paper plane + random quicktime videos.  we shall see.

in the meantime, here is a little piece of music recorded at tonight’s unrecognizable now practice session.

it is a continuation of last week’s unrecnow post.

08_03_09un

or if you don’t have flash… listen here

~

it was a really nice night this evening. not too hot and with a pretty amazing sunset.

here are some photos from our nightly walk.   oh, and i didn’t see any free bananas… people must have been hungry.

today ericka + david got married at oxbow park.  it was such a beautiful wedding. nicole + i, along with a handful of other helpful friends + family members decorated the whole area together. it turned out great and i think everyone had a great time.

now we are so tired… but so happy.

congratulations ericka + david.

here are details of some graffiti on the drop box behind city liquidators in the east side industrial area. it might be hard to see, but most of it is done in silver ink.  it looks really great in the hot portland sun.

just a few macro photos of these little people.  nicole has been making little things using these railroad miniatures for years. now we’d like to try and make a little shadow box scene using them and one of those little peep-hole lenses (like the kind you find on someone’s front door) to give it a kind of fisheye view.   i’ve almost collected all the parts that we need to start the project. we’ll see how it turns out.

here is just a little water color painting of a geodesic igloo… nothing too fancy.

the packaging that i’ve designed would be a folding paper sleeve… maybe letterpressed with the relevant information and a photo stuck to the outside.  i made this little template out of chipboard so that i could cut and fold the paper easily.  i’m not sure how many i would actually make…. we’ll see how much work it ends up being and how many people seem interested.

i’ll keep you up to date on the progress as it goes.

another hot day. this is just a little edit of the stuff matt and i recorded before going on to win first place at the north bar trivia night.

090727un.mp3

(or if you don’t have flash…listen)

after a long hot day (and a bad dehydration headache) the night was very pleasant.  it had cooled down quite a bit and the sky was quite clear.  there was no one out on the streets and the only real sound was that of AC units from near and far.

we spent the day driving along the coast and checking out some vacant beach houses.  most of them felt like walking into a time warp. it was fun but a little depressing.  at one time people lived in them… and some may have died in them.

just a little experiment with vellum in layers based around drawings from some old photos. they don’t really translate so well in photos… it is supposed to look kind of gauzy and dreamlike.  i think i’d like to try to make some light boxes based around this idea. we’ll see how it goes.

so i’m trying to come up with a t-shirt design and need people’s help.  i want my good old penguin to  be standing on this letraset iceberg that contains a little message.  i thought that something related to the melting antarctic ice shelf could be good… but i’m open to suggestions.  here is a little mock up that i put together in illustrator. the real one will be done in letraset like the rest of the series.

let me know what you think.

thanks!

( i know this poll is kind of clunky, i looked for better ones but many of them wouldn’t work at all… i guess clunky is better than nothing)

after sitting in the hot sun eating our vegan corn dogs we were more than happy to retreat to the cool dark basement of the board of trade building for our wednesday night music session.  don’t get me wrong, i love the summers in portland.   just sometimes it’s nice to have someplace to cool down and work on creative things.

here are little random bits of stuff that we recorded tonight all stuck together…

if you don’t have flash you can listen here.

otherwise….

07_22_09un.mp3

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here is just a little water color painting i made.  i have been trying to think of triangle based ideas/designs for a video that i am going to put together for autistici (a great artist from the u.k.).  he sent me a mellotron based song from an album that comes out this fall.  i have a few ideas already that might incorporate the video+flash animation that i have been doing lately. i’m sure i will post more about it soon.

while setting out for an evening walk, nicole and i stopped by the house on the corner of failing and haight. in their yard they have ducks, geese and a pair of goats.  nicole brought along some beet greens to feed them but they really weren’t that interested in them. they really seem to prefer the food pellets that their owner put out in a small tin dispenser for people to pass to them through the cyclone fence.

i made a little audio recording of them munching away but i didn’t put the windscreen over the microphones.  their breathing makes it sound like a wind storm… too bad.

this weekend i past the half-way point of this blog project.  it’s a strange feeling.  i am super happy that i have made it so far into my goal and it has been so much fun to push myself to be more productive (creatively) but then i am kind of sad that now it’s all winding down.  i know that’s silly because there is still a long way to go before i finish this project.

i guess it’s just the question of “then what?” that’s looming out there.

thanks to everyone for being so supportive of all my little projects especially nicole, maura, brian, modi, jon, james and everyone else that leaves me their words of encouragement. you guys are great.

thanks also to jolayne for writing a little feature on her website about this blog several times (the most recent being this weekend)

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the photo above is from a trial run that i did today of one of my sound boxes.  it sounded pretty good. quiet, but good.

here is a little piece of music that i put together using a toy melodica (that looks like a little red clarinet) and a field recording of my neighborhood on my morning walk to get coffee.  hope you like it.

090719 (or if you don’t have flash… http://tr.im/dust184)

it took me a while to get back to writing an entry for these photos due to some frustrating internet troubles.  sorry about that.

here is one of the first finished drone boxes that i posted about in an earlier dust breeding entry.  it has a 20 second digital voice recorder that is set to loop infinitely  (or until the batteries run out).  these boxes will be placed in a tree in a nearby part as a kind of guerilla sound art installation.  i have about four more to build and then i’ll be ready.

let’s hope they all work out.

_

what a hot day. it’s almost 11:30pm and it is still over 90 degrees. i made this paper construction of snow drifts to try and put myself in a cooler mental state. it didn’t work so well. i’ll have to try something else soon.

a friend of mine is taking submissions for a new blog that she started about patterns and repetition.  you are supposed to send in photos of patterns that you’ve drawn inspiration from recently.  the top three (monome buttons + 2 x letraset) i actually have drawn inspiration from recently… the bottom two are just for fun.

_

listen here if you don’t have flash… or score

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after a week off, matt and i began work again on our next film score project for yesenia down in LA. this project is an animated documentary about the US/Mexican border. the central story is about a father living in the united states that ventures into the arizona desert to retrieve the body of his daughter who died while trying to make it across. this piece of music is an example of several possible themes for the segments dealing with the father’s story. we recorded a ton of other stuff so i’m sure i will post more as we mix.

while at oxbow park today we noticed a few balloons caught up in trees and laying around  the grounds in the area that ericka + david will have their wedding this august.  it seemed strange to see them there.  quite a juxtaposition of the natural / unnatural.  although they did look very festive…i collected and disposed of them.

we were also lucky enough to see a pair of deer that wandered through the area.  the baby deer even stopped long enough for me to snap a photo of it’s cute silhouette.

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here are two 30 second videos that i recorded on my way home from lunch today.  they are my contribution to deelay ceelay’s latest video project for their performance at the pdx pop festival.  they are asking for videos of people doing “anything you think is rad”.  i think bike riding is pretty rad.

you can read their request here.  if you have free time, why not make a video of your own?

i felt pretty low energy all day today… but i was nothing like this little guy.  be barely moved all day.

the lower photos are of the back of a building in northwest portland. i liked the two different windows together.

hope everyone is having a good weekend.

i know i’ve mentioned it many times throughout the life of this website….  i built this granular delay plugin a few years back and have been using it in an unfinished state ever since.  i wind up using it on nearly everything i do.  i love using it to get random and chaotic textures and for processing field recordings.  the version that i use all the time has a lot of added features that i never wind up using… so i decided to trim the fat and clean up some of the guts.  i wrapped it up all in a simple GUI and called it done.

so here it is…

the dust breeding granular stereo delay plugin.  you will first need to install the program sonicbirth before you can use it in your favorite mac osx audio unit host. then you can just drop it in your components folder like the rest of your AU’s.  if you aren’t familiar with sonicbirth, it’s a really handy open source program for building your own audio unit plugins.  there are a whole bunch of pre-built  audio building blocks (like delays, filters and buffers) along with the usual math related stuff.  it’s kind of like the my first sony version of max/msp.

give it a try and let me know if you need help figuring it out.  special thanks to bill vanloo for giving me the kick in the butt that i needed to polish it up and set it free.

~

EDIT: i’m taking this one offline for a bit while i work on a new version. let me know if you want a copy of the old one in the meantime.  07/27/09

_

okay, same space needle video as yesterday but now with sound.  the field recording buried in the background is from outside our hotel window in vancouver.  there is a ton of construction happening all over town right now.  they have a lot of work to do before the 2010 winter olympics come around.  good luck to you, neighbors to the north.

_

we had another nice day in vancouver today. lots of walking and poking around in little shops around town.  we also met up with jen and jon for a drink after dinner tonight.  they are another awesome creative couple.  it seems like vancouver is full of them!

here is a short little video that i took from the space needle elevator and added some little floating bits to in flash.  i’ll add some music later.

good night.

despite the rain, nicole and i had a great time wandering around and exploring vancouver today.  i took us the wrong direction down a street this morning that wound up taking us right to the edge of stanley park… not such a bad thing.  we spotted this little raccoon climbing down a tree and a crow couple lecturing their baby on a branch.  we will try and go back to spend more time there when the weather clears up.

tonight we met up with jolayne and xavier for drinks and a snack.  they are a sweet and inspiring couple.  i’m very happy to have met them in person.  if you have time, please bookmark their blogs and check in frequently.

just a little painting of a skunk figurine that nicole and i have in our kitchen.  we got to talking about skunks because it came out that nicole has never seen one in person.  little skunk families were frequent visitors to our back yard when i was growing up.  they loved to gather there and eat our cat’s food.

special thanks go geneva for this tiny water color set.  it comes in handy for making little paintings in hotel rooms while on vacation.  thanks g!

here is a view of downtown seattle as seen from the o deck of the space needle and another one of the space needle from below.  in person, the nearly full moon looked so huge on the horizon… not so much in the photos though.

what a nice night.

today while on the coast i picked up a little piece of driftwood on the beach. i started whittling away at it and this was the results.  it’s a little whale.  he is a bit asymmetrical, but i think he turned out pretty good for a first attempt.

when i was a little kid i used to use my swiss army knife (naturally) to whittle away at sticks while on camping trips. i don’t think that i ever attempted to make anything out of the sticks… except for sharper sticks.

this week i graduated from the swiss army knife to the bad boy you see in the bottom photo.  it’s called the remix and i really like it.  many thanks to the folks at gerber legendary blades for sending me this knife.  i hope to make more stuff with it.

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matt, brian + i have been doing a bit of improv ambient recording recently and i’m really enjoying the results.  my goal new goal is to try and come up with a relatively simple set up for quickly recording and processing my parts of the improvisations where i can access them later in order to arrange them while also still actively participating in the actual playing of music.  i think that using a set of the built in loopers in live 8 along with a track for resampling and loop storage will work out great.  i created a template today and gave it a little run through.  it seems to be pretty streamlined.

i’ll post more about it soon.

the weather has been beautiful in portland lately.  it finally feels like summer now.  the downside is that its been staying really warm at night.  poor smokey seems like he is kind of suffering under his thick grey coat.  every night he plops himself down in front of the doorway  and goes to sleep.  if he were a little more clever he would sleep in the basement… it stays pretty cool down there even when it’s hot up stairs.

who am i kidding… it’s a mess down there.  i wouldn’t want to sleep there either.

july 2nd is my 3rd wedding anniversary.  time really does fly when you are having fun. it’s hard to believe that it’s been three years already.  it’s kind of funny, when i say it…three years doesn’t sound like that much. mostly because at this point, nicole and i have been together now for ten years.  i think we need to refer to it as 3/10 year anniversery or something like that.  at least until it evens out a little more.

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note: the m+n ? is a reference to the engagement ring that i designed for nicole that was made by swiss a really nice swiss artist.  it has a two sided lens that if you hold it very close to your eye  you can read one message on one side and another from the other.  needless to say, she accepted my proposal.  yay, a win for me!

photos here

just some photos of the narrow areas between the morrison bridge and the surrounding buildings .  i really like this part of industrial southeast portland.  i wonder what will happen to this part of town as portland grows… it’s already changed quite a bit in the last few years.  i kind of hope it stays as is for as long as it can.

tonight i decided to try and make my self some business cards on my dusty old letterpress.  there was a time when i was printing on it daily  but that was a long time ago.

at the moment, i don’t really have any need for a business card but i figured that they could come in handy.

i tested out printing them using a clear varnish on a variety of different paper that i have stacked up in the basement.  most of it came form s.c.r.a.p. + the east bay depot for creative reuse

once i decide on a paper stock and work out a final design i’ll print a bunch of them.  let me know what you think.

today, after years away from the retail world, i’ve jumped back into the store window display game.

i designed this window for our friend modi’s store idom. i based it on the photo shoot that we did a few months back for her spring summer collection.  i can’t wait to see how the photos that we did on saturday turned out.

nicole made this yarn bird to match the yarn deer that she spent hours wrapping for the yarn shoot.   they are a cute pair.

today i created this recording studio inside our photography studio for a photo shoot tomorrow… floor, walls and all.  we were going for a really clean, kind of late 60’s 70’s vibe. i pulled a bunch of stuff from my basement and the unrecnow rehearsal space to use as props for the set.  i never realized until now how much old equipment i have.

i really wish my home studio looked this nice.

i’ll post more photos tomorrow after the shoot.  i hope it goes well.

here’s my first attempt at a walrus. tusks, whiskers and all.  once again it has been a while since i made one of these little letraset  animals… but i think i’ve become better at jumping back into it. getting started is always the hardest part.

a few weeks back my friend joe ryckebosch and i got to talking about a the possibility of a collaboration. joe makes really amazing art from old chartpak graphic tape (you really have to see it in person to appreciate the level detail he puts into it) and i have been making these creatures from old letraset transfers…  each one of our chosen media are obsolete graphic design tools that are now being re-used in way they were never intended.

at some point, we would really love to do a show somewhere together displaying some of our work and possibly collaborating on some pieces that would incorporate both the tape and the letters.  i would love it.

matt + i had a nice long improv session with brian (gasp) tonight at our music space.  here are a few little excerpts of some room mic recordings.  between our out of tune ukulele, piano + harp and brian’s non-western instruments (sruti box + mbira) it was a challenge to find a place where all the notes could work well together.  i think it sounded pretty good… well, it was fun.  that’s all that matters.

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listen here

or…

090624un.mp3

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after sunset nicole and i went on a little walk around the neighborhood.   i made frequent stops and took these long exposure shots.  i love the sky at this time of night.  so cool to see how the colors start changing so quickly as the sun vanishes.  i guess the days are getting shorter at this point.  too bad.

nicole requested that i make a drawing of this little plastic whale that she picked up from a party supply store. so here it is… this little guy is a paper, colored pencil + watercolor combo. it was the least i could do after she brought a glue stick home for me (as promised yesterday)

it was a pretty good weekend . i picked up a little battery powered amp that i plan on using to do some outdoor recordings with unrecognizable now soon.  we had a really productive recording session this morning. things seem to be shaping up nicely.

here are just some simple paper constructions.  what the heck did people do before glue sticks?  it can be kind of tough to make clean flat layouts using regular glue (or wood glue in my case).  i’ve got to remember to pick some glue sticks up soon.

p.s. i also just updated the audio links to yesterday’s post.

i made use of the handy new voice recorder feature on the current iPhone software to make this recording.  it’s of the displays of wind chimes in the Powell’s on hawthorne .  i just went from chimes to chimes trying out their sound and recording it.  you can hear some employees chatting in the background.

i treated the recording using my homemade granular delay and a little bit of autopan. no real editing to speak of.

it think it sounds pretty good

if you don’t have flash, you can listen here.

otherwise….

090620m.mp3

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a few years back my dad gave me this allan sherman record out of his collection saying that he remembered it being very clever and funny .  this year, for father’s day i recorded it for him and burned it to disc.  i tried my best to remove the major pops and skips in the vinyl digitally. i then photographed the cover of the lp and printed it out to adhere to a cardboard cd jacket.  i hope he doesn’t see this before it arrives in the mail. (fingers crossed)

it was a great evening tonight.  the 3rd annual rocky butte sunset bike ride + potluck/dance party went off without a hitch. special honors go out to billy for hauling a little gas bbq up to the top in his brand new bike trailer where he cooked fake chicken burgers for us.  so good.

it was a much different crowd this year…  a little less communal and a little more noisy bike punk. but it was still a ton of fun and i can’t wait for next year.

thursday night is the 3rd annual sunset rocky butte potluck ride.  a bunch of people meet on the east end of irving park and ride bikes together up to the top of rocky butte.  once we get to the top, people break out all the food and drinks they brought with them and everyone feasts.  we eat, we drink, we watch the sunset and all the while this tiny sound system will be pumping out music for all to listen and dance to.  savannah, our friend and bike ride organizer, is kind enough to provide a car battery and power inverter to run the little sound system and disco light.  this is one of those events that always makes me really love portland.  

if anyone is interested in participating, come on over to n.e. 11th + klickitat thursday evening.  we will be leaving at 6pm.  here’s a map of the route.   http://tr.im/oTCn

feel free to bring your ipod or walkman.  the DJ mixer is always open to those who’d like to take a turn.

check out other pedalpalooza events here

here’s a little lullaby i punched out and recorded tonight on the music box i finished yesterday. the recordings isn’t the greatest but you get the idea.

sleep well.

_

if you don’t have flash, you can listen here.

otherwise, see below.

lullaby

i finally got around to finishing off this new music box enclosure.  it’s the junior version of my classic music box.  i made it from a wooden container that i found at ikea a long time ago.  i first noticed it because it reminded me so much of the box i built for my old one (…even down to the card slot with the rounded edges). when nicole and i found a mini version to the same music box movement down in silverlake, i knew it would be the perfect size.  where i had installed a guitar pickup in the larger music box i opted for a simple contact mic in this version.  it sounds great.  i’ll post a recording soon.  

today marks my 150th creative-thing-a-day post.  it feels pretty good to have made it this far.  

speaking of thing-a-day projects…. jon (a fellow portlander + monome-ist) and his sister have each started their own thing-a-day blogs.  jon is not ever a week into it and has already posted some great music + his own music box related project.  please check these sites out…

toiletooth.com

hergentlemadness.com

i’m just trying to think of some fun t-shirt designs right now.

here’s a little something based on a photo of me as a kid flying a kite at a park near my parent’s house.  in the actual photo you can see that i am wearing a pair of baby blue slip-on vans with a rainbow printed across the tops.  pretty funny.

i know that i said there would be a music box on tap for today’s project… but after i started working on it i realized that i forgot my drill at the practice space.  it will have to wait until tomorrow.

just drew up some plans for my new music box that i plan on building tomorrow.  it involves a little ikea hacking.  i’ll explain more tomorrow.  enjoy your weekend.

there are a pair of finches that have been checking out a spot on our front porch for a possible place to build a nest.  some finches built a nest there last year but sadly it didn’t end well. let’s hope it won’t be a repeat of last time.  the music on this video is from the unrecognizable now ‘for sleeping it off’ ep

we made it almost a year ago for a fantastic all-night-long ambient music event that we played down in LA called tonalism. it was put on by the good people at dublab.com + s.a.s.s.a.s.

if you like the music you can find it here (iTunes link)

sometimes an amplifier makes some sounds that just don’t seem right. one of my sunn beta leads was cutting out  and crackling like crazy. not good. i have two of these amps and now both are behaving badly. it’s so sad because they have served me well for many years.  matt and i did take advantage of the sad sounds coming out of this sunn.  i recorded some of the fuzzy loops that were coming out of it and mixed them into the track below.  i’ll have to find a good solid state amp repair place here in portland. if anyone has suggestions, please let me know. (if you are going to suggest someone with the initials b.s. that has a company with the initals s.s. …no need, that guy is dead to me)

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if you don’t have flash (like if you are on an iphone)  you can listen here.

otherwise…

http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/090611.mp3

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when i was clearing out a bunch of stuff from our 2nd bedroom/office last week i happened to unearth a cd ep that i designed and made years ago.  it was for a band here in portland that i played drums in for +1 year called nordic.  the covers were silk screened, letterpressed and sewn. it was quite a production.  the white snowy area was a silk screen. the igloo and text (front and back) were letterpressed… and the edges were sewn shut with a nice zig-zag stitch.

finding this ep made me want to experiment with sewing paper again. my mom used to give me sheets of paper to mess around with and sew when i was a kid.  it was a lot of fun, plus it got me pretty comfortable  with using a sewing machine.  here are a few paper and thread tests.  nothing too fancy, just adjusting things to get the stitching to work right.  the nordic ep is the piece on the lower right.

just some paint blots.  what do you see?

what a busy weekend.  i was not at all prepared for today to be monday.  

this evening matt and i cleaned and reorganized our practice space in downtown portland.  it looks really nice so far.  we are thinking of painting and adding fresh carpet. it took a lot of work and was really dusty…but it was well worth it.

here is a new monome cover for paul in colorado. he joins an elite group of people that have purchased more than one monome cover.  luckily  he also owns a presonus firebox which fits the 64 cover amazingly well.  i hope he likes it as much (or more) than the first one.

this afternoon i built these pedal boards for imaad from some scrap wood and carpet that i had laying around the house.  it all came together really quickly and easily. it helps to have a table saw hand for quick cuts.  imaad picked up this nice green suitcase at a thrift store on hawthorne today and it was the perfect size to fit all his pedals. we used little rubber bumpers to the back edge of each board, both to elevate the back edge and to keep the boards from sliding on the stage.  little things like this that can save you time on set-up and tear-down can really make a big difference in helping things run smoothly.  

the pedal boards made their debut tonight and passed the stage test with flying colors.  the pedal boards will be appearing at the warfield later this week…. along with some other people.

my good pal adam played drums at two great shows tonight as a member of imaad wasif + the two part beast.  i love this photo of bobb at the top. it looks like a ghost bobb is coming out of his body.  the photo on the lower left is of a chandelier at the crystal ballroom the others are from mississippi studios.

it’s always nice to see old friends and even better if you can also catch a good show… or two.

the strange agency made this great little granular synthesis iphone application called curtis.  it’s named for composer, author, granular synth advocate curtis roads.  this is just a quick little thing i recorded using a captured bit of sound from a thumb piano.  pretty fun little application to play with.

weather wise it was a strange day here in portland.  this afternoon the temperature dropped from 80 to 63 in under an hour. the sky turned dark gray and  the wind kicked up like crazy… then the thunder + lightning started up  i made this time lapse of the clouds and a field recording of the thunder.  you can hear some fire engines in the background.  i heard that there was a fire somewhere in n.portland.

if you don’t have flash, listen here.
otherwise…
http://unrecnow.com/dust/audio/090604.mp3

just some water color paintings of feathers and leaves. they are a similar shape and i’ve found myself doodling them a lot lately.  there just might be a letraset feather on the way…  i’ve been thinking about it for a while, i just need to find the time.  

our old pal adam is coming to visit this weekend with the other band that he plays in. they will be staying with us and right now our house is a total disaster area. a whole bedroom worth of stuff is now in our tiny living room.  we need to finish this house rearranging project before those guys arrive on saturday.  seeing how much junk we have around the house makes me want to throw everything into a dumpster (except for my camera and some music equipment) i wish we could live in an ultra minimalist manner but it never seems very realistic.

it was a long hard battle… but i finally finished this custom cover for a 40h kit.  i’ve made a few 40h covers before so i really don’t know why this one was so tough to make…  it took me about 2 hours longer than normal.  i guess on thing is that the 40h kits are always different. it looks really huge compared to the standard 64 cover. you can see the size difference in the second photo.  this 40h cover will be sent off to vinay in killara, australia tomorrow.  i think it turned out really well. i hope he likes it. 

tonight i also finished up the audio for my lantern. it was pretty easy to load the sound files onto it because of the easy access to the usb port on top.  i think kathan is delivering it to store for a month tomorrow.  i hope people will be able to hear it inside the store.  we shall see.