A special treat for listeners of my podcast this Sunday! I am releasing a full-length (but lower fidelity) track from my RPM Challenge album, 2 1/2.
“Four Days” is a piece in the style of musique concrete, and fits into the overal narrative theme of the album 2 1/2. It has a really captivating and eerie quality, perhaps even a little spooky.
Enjoy!
(and please check out the current recordings available if you like it)
Just a nice quiet day for us here at CatSynth to relax and do, well, not much of anything, except of course taking photos and videos and posting them on Weekend Cat Blogging.
Here, Luna gets comfy near the glass doors downstairs:
This week, we also have some Catster videos to share. Hear Luna's cute “hunting noises” and watch her tail go and she enjoys her favorite view out the bedroom window:
Another video from today over at Catster has Luna responding loudly to getting pet while surveying her domain…
Hehehe…let's crack open a window!
Click on the image above to enlarge, you can see another kitty outside (you can be sure that Luna sees him, too).
The big WCB roundup is being hosted over at champaign taste, where Louis' enjoyment of the outdoors turned into a scary “Lost Cat” story for a day. Thankfully, he returned in the evening and everything is fine. We're glad the Louis made it home safely. Go read his story and check out the other kitties this weekend.
Well, it's been a pretty intense few days finishing up the RPM challenge, but we made it! Finished recording on Feburary 27, did some very cursory mastering and CD artwork on Feburary 28, and today, March 1, assembled the finished goods:
The final title was indeed “2 1/2”, and the final track list was as follows:
01 Prologue – Jerry Gray (1951)
02 Fragments in Gray
03 Twista Dilemma
04 Trieste 116
05 Four Days
06 ghanaplasticity
07 microkitty
08 RPM Filler Track
09 pique
10 Happy Machine
11 Epilogue – Count Basie (1953)
Musically, it's a fairly mixed result, some tracks were exceptional, others need a fair amount of work, which I can do at my leisure outside of the RPM challenge. But it is still a fairly good result for what was really just 2 1/2 weeks of solid work amidst the various other dramas of this past February…
At 11:30 this morning, I mailed it out from the post office in Scotts Valley, California. And with this simple act, it is done.
You can read some more detail of the last week on my rpm blog. As for me, it is time to rest.
Submitted by polynominal from Italy:
Mimì is a 8 years old female cat, born in the island
of Sardenia in Italy.
Her name is from a character of the opera “la Bohème”
composed by Puccini, although I could never bring her to the lyrical
theatre “La Scala” of Milan,
the city where I live and have my recording studio.
Mimì likes to stay in the studio for the warmy
heat produced by analog machines, perfect for little
cozy naps!
In the snapshot she's thinking of a way to sync a tb303
to an Elka Synthex's sequencer!
I hope she'll find out soon! 🙂
Besides being a classic analog instrument for techno and dance music, the TB-303 is quite a comfy location for a nap. Who knew?
From our friend kitikata-san Weekend Cat Blogging 90 comes the story of LBK (Little Black Kitty) in Nashville. According to kitikata-san's human companion:
This little black kitty (LBK) was found in the middle of a very busy intersection of Wedgewood and 12 Ave. South in Nashville during rush hour. He had been hit by a car, or tossed out of a car. I stopped and a woman stopped to help LBK, and we took LBK to the vet. LBK is in a fantastic foster care situation now, so LBK can heal up, and get the remaining course of antibiotics. Amazingly, the vet said that LBK has no broken bones, only some trauma to his face.
Doesn't he look a bit like Luna in that photo?
LBK turns out to be a really sweet cat (seems like many little black shorthair cats have an exceptionally sweet disposition), enjoying lots of cuddling and pets, and purring. He also is quite healthy (outside of the whole getting hit by a car thing), neutered and apparently well cared for. All this adds up to the conclusion that he was someone's beloved companion. So what happened? Perhaps he simply got out and got lost, as seems to happen all too often. I also can't shake the idea from kitikata's human that he may have been “tossed out of car.” How could someone do that to such a sweet, loving, creature?
In any case, we hope LBK finds a good home, or is reunited with his original family. If anyone reading is in the Nashville area and interested in LBK, follow the “related link” below.
While the RPM challenge continues to dominate life here at CatSynth, there's always time for Weekend Cat Blogging. Indeed, Luna has been helping out quite a bit in the studio the past few days:
Take a break with us from the struggles of art to visit Kate, Bustopher and Harmon who are hosting Weekend Cat Blogging 90.
weekend cat blogging
wcb
wcb90
cat
luna
rpm challenge
recording
album
experimental
A beaver was recently discovered the Bronx River in New York City:
Beavers have returned to New York City for the first time since colonial days when the animals were hunted to extinction for their pelts.
Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) discovered a beaver in the Bronx River. The animal was photographed and filmed.
WCS says the appearance of the animal, which have swam downstream from Westchester County, is a symbol of New York city's improving urban environment.
The beaver has been named José in honor of Bronx Congressman José E. Serrano, who has championed the restoration efforts for the Bronx River.
Clearly, the beaver is taking advantage of the opporunities in the revitalized sections of the south and east Bronx. His habitat is only a little bit upstream from the Bruckner Interchange (just east of the Bronx River parkway).
No, it's not Luna, but another cute black cat posing with musical gear:
From cydonia at flickr:
no, not the cat nor the synth…follow the blue light to my new thin amp.
Fox News convinced the Democratic Party to let Fox host a nationally-televised Democratic presidential primary debate this summer in Nevada! Letting Fox host a Democratic debate is a bit like letting us here at CatSynth host an American Kennel Club Dog Show.
But Fox isn't even a legitimate news channel! It's a right-wing mouthpiece like Rush Limbaugh?dedicated to smearing Democrats. (Recently, Fox falsely claimed Sen. Barack Obama attended a terrorist school!)
There's a growing backlash of people demanding that Democrats drop Fox. Can you help out by signing this petition to the Democratic Party of Nevada? It's really easy?just click this link:
http://civic.moveon.org/foxdebate/?refe … &taf=1
Thanks!
Yes, this is the second RPM post in a row, but the project has been dominating my outside-of-work life the last few days, at least the parts not taken up with eating, drinking, sleeping and playing with Luna.
Even though I didn't spend a huge amount of time this evening, I think I produced my best track to date, as I described earlier on my RPM blog:
Well, this is the first recording I have made for this project that felt truly inspired – even as I was working on it, I had the feeling “this is going to be really good.” So even if I never release the RPM album to the public as a whole, this piece will be released in some form no matter what.
It is called Trieste 116, and splices together an improvisation done with my favorite custom patch “116” on the DSI Evolver, with excerpts from a live recording of a jazz combo with pennywhistle at Cafe Trieste in San Francisco (yes, that's the famous Beatnik hangout). The Evolver patch features non-linear feedback and filtering only (i.e., no traditional oscillators), and has an unstable flute-like quality that I attempt to blend with the pennywhistle in the Cafe Trieste clips. It all works together, at least for me. Additionally, the track opens with a quiet recording of a Dixieland band, an element I wanted to use somewhere in the album as a New Orleans tribute.
The Cafe Trieste recording as well as the Dixieland band were obtained from the freesound project and released on the Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.
Once again, a demo track is available to RPM participants (do any RPM participants read this forum?) via the Sample Engine, just look for “Amar” in the Author column. One can also get a pretty good idea by listening to the October 14, 2006 podcast, which also featured an improvisation using my Evolver patch “116.”
UPDATE: Trieste 116 is up on the front page of RPM today!
I also recommend checking out “Angie Fights Crime”, I had coincidentally looked at them yesterday, too.
rpm challenge
recording
album
experimental
evolver
jazz
freesound