3000 visits…

Well, like the United States, we hit our milestone of a number beginning with three followed by lots of zeroes…

After 3000 visitors, though, you think a few of them might go and buy the CD or download tracks from iTunes or eMusc. But it seems very few visitors even bother to listen to the free samples.

I take pride in keeping this site and my personal/professional site free of ads save for clean and tasteful promotion of my own work. I would like to keep it that way…

…so, time for a Guilt Trip?. If you enjoy this site, would it really hurt to check out the music, maybe buy a 99-cent track or two? If you're an emusic subscriber, add us to your download queue. And if you like anything you hear (heck, even if you don't), please consider writing a short review at one of these sites. Consider this review from Gloria in Toronto at CD Baby:

Amar has done an amazing job in putting together a very creative ensemble of various electronic instruments. Each song in the CD tells a story. Just close your eyes and you can visualize and hear the stories of love, passion, suspense, and anger. It's almost as if I'm watching a movie. The songs made me feel, and every time I listen to the CD, I get more out of it than before. Amar brings forth what I consider to be an exciting new genre of music.

OK, I better wrap this up before it turns into an NPR pledge drive…





Weekend Cat Blogging #72: The furry encounter

Jelly and Kamikazee over at I got Two Shoes host this weekend's roundup. Uncle Kamikazee is up to his old antics again.

We had our own little drama here earlier. Luna was looking out one of her favorite windows here in the studio when one of our neighbors showed up:

This tuxedo kitty has been in the neighborhood a lot longer than I have, and, well, he thinks he owns the place. That being said, Luna has her own claims to the view out the window, and attempts to let him know who's the queen of this domain. She has a unique sound she uses for encounters with other felines, as can be heard in this Catster video:



This is as good a time as any to let folks know that Luna has her own profile and blog at Catster, where you can read about this episode from her perspective and watch Furry Encounter Part 2.








Catsynth pics: Silicon Breakdown

Silicon Breakdown features the cat April programming a micromoog:

Small world; Silicon Breakdown performed at Woodstockhausen 2002, same year as my first appearance at the “tiny festival of esoteric music.” Check out the track Mutate from WSH 2002, which is part of their 2003 CD Green, available as freely downloadable mp3s.








Beckett enters California politics

Few political articles reference Samuel Beckett's masterpiece Waiting for Godot, but that's exactly what we find at SayNoToPombo as they cover the recent wave of newspaper endorsements against Richard Pombo.

We at CatSynth dubbed Mr. Pombo California's Worst Representative in an earlier post.

It is nice to see literary references that add a bit of sophistication to what is otherwise an ugly campaign season.






Worthless Kitty Redux: Pyramid

Pyramid
September 19, 2004

Red
It was a red triangle
That formed on the side of the black pyramid
It was the red light curving from the source
Bent around the invisible smoke

It is hard enough to keep things straight
Without adding an extra dimension
But I string them all together
In hopes of something beautiful, something fantastic
For which I will find myself forever grateful
I thank my geometric farm
And turn all of my eyes elsewhere

It is maybe five in the morning,
I look over towards the window of our New York apartment
The dawn of early summer meeting the waning glow of city lights
And see her rising from the bed
In her T-shirt and boxers
Her indefinite-length brown hair irrelevant against her own shadow
This is a safe place
It is us against them
And I think we might still stand a chance

© 2004 Amar Chaudhary

Weekend Cat Blogging #67

Luna blends in perfectly with her dad's decor while getting warm on a table above our main heater. The temperature this morning was 49F (10C)! That is a travesty in September, usually the hottest month of the year along the California coast. It's not helping my recovery from whatever ailment has befallen me this week, either.

Anyhow, being stuck home gives me plenty of time to host Weekend Cat Blogging #67, taking over from last week's host, chefsarahjane. Assuming I'm feeling better over the weekend and things warm up a bit, I'll be spending as much time as I can outside – but that shouldn't stop me from posting updates.

So send us your feline articles and photos; either leave a comment on this post, or send me a message. Bonus points if you can fit into the cats-with-music-and-art theme of this forum.







Weekend Kitty Blogging #71: Silliness and The Mighty Hunter

This weekend's round-up is being hosted at Rosa's Yummy Yums, featuring Fridolin and Maruschka taking turns with a knit bonnet and looking quite embarrassed. Check out this week's round-up of silly and crazy, but nonetheless extremely cute felines.

Luna is quite the sophisticated cat, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have her silly moments, such as her fun with boxes last week. She also loves to play with her toy mousies, and goes at them with reckless abandon:

One of her favorite games is to push them under the couch farther than she can reach, which often leads to amusing scenes like this:

Indeed, Luna can be quite silly and obsessive when she plays the mighty hunter. I snapped this pic while she was engrossed for 15 to 20 minutes with a bug that fell behind the dresser after she succeeding in swatting it:

Sweetie, just let it go…








New Podcast Entry: Oct 14 evolver improv

I have uploaded a new podcast entry: a guided improvisation I did last night using my DSI Evolver synth. The idea was to focus on soft, high-pitched timbres but with unstable states that can easily produce more chaotic signals. This of course lots of fun, and I was quite pleased with the results except for a couple of loud “thumpy” sounds around two minutes into the piece. I am considering this an actual piece, even a composition of sorts, but I am still looking for a good title. Feel free to suggest you own in the “Comments” section.

As always, click here to subscribe to the podcast, or contact me if you have trouble with it. Enjoy!








The races

Here is the round-up of the various races I'm watching this month:

Click for electoral-vote dot com

Click for electoral-vote dot com

Series: Mets 1, St. Louis 1

Thu, 12 Oct: Mets 2, STL 0
Fri, 13-Oct: STL 9, Mets 6

I was hoping for another Subway series, but a Democratic majority in Congress is a nice consolation prize…

UPDATE: The Mets have pulled even at 2-2 with a rout on Sunday. Nothing so dramatic on the political scorecard over the weekend.





Recent synthesizer acquisitions: E-MU Orbit V2 and "hacked" Morpheus

This town is full of old E-MU gear (as well as old E-MU employees). In recent weeks I was able to pick up two old modules for my substantial E-MU synth collection. The first is a fully functional Orbit V2:

This module was quite popular in its day, it features techno sounds that I don't believe E-MU has re-released for Emulator X or Proteus X. It is also as far as I know the only one of the modules with the special “scratcher” function that models turntable scratching of samples.

I also aquired another pre-run Morpheus. I'm not sure it has quite the extensive collection of non-production filters as my main Morpheus, but it does have a rather interesting demo track,a small clip of which I provide here for your listening pleasure.

The full demo is a little over two minutes long, and practically begs to be imported into Emulator X2 and used as the source for a new composition. Stay tuned…