Was feeling kind of blue, then a bird pooped on me

david tolley and ren walters - remix 1

I've damaged my laptop speakers somewhat, I think. They sound really nice with simple tones when pushed to the limit.

Well, dang. I saw there was a new stable version of cython and decided to upgrade this morning on a lark. I went through some of the usual dependency hell, but giving pip the --no-build-isolation flag, which reuses the current virtualenv instead of creating a throwaway one ...

sleep

the place nobody goes was the right amount of crowded tonight, I hadn't been there in a year

Jandek - Worthless Recluse

Very discouraging middle-of-the-night trial run of the feedback resonator, which barely feeds back, and rattles thinly and badly when it should resonate... it may help to shorten up the connections to the amp and maybe just remove the attenuators... they could be patched in...

dog bark car honk

Still so much wiring to do, but the sideplate for the electronics sidecar is nearly done. The big red switches connect to the stereo jacks next to them, and the attenuation knobs on the sidecar for toggle muting the pickups. The glowing green LED is connected to the power supply, this breakout on the side has a USB connector for 5v power -- which will power the microcontroller awkwardly by snaking a cable through the little hole in the bottom of the plate -- and a barrel connector for charging. The LED is always on, I'm not sure why? There's another set of status LEDs on the supply itself, and the power gets cut on and off through the key switch on the top.

mauricio kagel's hallelujah (much screaming and wailing and moaning) and dieter schnebel's für stimmen (...missa est) (hissing and yelping and murmering) ... sorry neighbors

The cycfi pickups I'm using have nice headers on them, but the power hookups are weirdly at a 2mm spacing. I'm trying to avoid soldering directly to them (though I've already done so with one of them) so it'll be easier to reuse them in different projects, but I don't have ...

Pickup wiring...

Some rain families:

• Bowed strings
• Chromatic free reeds
• Feedback resonators
• Tubular blown resonators

(Figuring through forces...)

Maybe a project for this summer should be to organize my record collection again, the shelves and the files. I can never seem to find anything. (Serendipity is nice, but I also often reach for something just because I know where to find it!)

MIMEO & john tilbury - the hands of caravaggio

So much wiring to do! This is a sidecar for the feedback resonator guitar thing which holds the battery and power supply, the amplifier, and an esp32 to send the buttons and switches and etc over wifi. One of the knobs (in blue) is the amplifier gain, and the four grey ones...

jandek - ready for the house

aerosol - all that is solid melts into air

just there, thanks

trash instruments are personal

Oh, nice! Modern versions of tar can just take `xf` arguments and figure out the compression format for you. I don't have to remember if it's z or j or some other incantation anymore. :-)

jim o'rourke - so you want to write a fugue

It's bandcamp Friday, and we've put a single on the new Cedar AV bandcamp page:

<a href="https://cedarav.bandcamp.com/track/houseboat-piano-version" target="_blank" rel="external noopener">Houseboat Piano Version by Cedar AV</a>

We actually finished an album this year, somehow! Recorded on a houseboat on the mississippi river last year, we finished mixing and doing overdubs at Nick's wonderful new studio over the winter.

The creatively titled Houseboat Piano Version is Nate doing a solo piano version of one of the songs from the album. LuvSound is doing a small edition of the album later this year after we re-launch sometime this summer.

Keeping the wood glue next to the coffee mug maybe isn't the best way to organize a desk? Thank you glue bottle safety cap.

Blu and co-host otherseas have started a midwest themed radio program called loisirs distribués on Chicago-based internet station Redux. They are exploring a certain midwest sound and I'm listening with interest. It's also not your typical internet radio playlist mix-dump -- it's real radio with mic breaks and stuff! :-) The second episode features an old He Can Jog track.

Tune in here.

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Log April 2025

Log March 2025

Log February 2025

Log January 2025

2024 and earlier

david first - droneworks 1996-2009

I'm becoming very inspired by Uli Wahl's wonderful site on kite and aeolian harp-building this morning. Amazingly, it also includes pages on instruments which can be worn by pigeons, as pictured above.

His tin can kite design seems like a perfect starting point for this year's LOSST event. The site looks like a labyrinth of cool and weird ways to activate sound with the wind and I want to hear it all.

The glue is drying on a reinforcement board for the feedback resonator thing. When the strings can be properly tensioned and the pickups are in place the feedback can begin!

Update: the glue is dry, and I wired up one of the pickups after work. They'll need a house that puts them pretty close to the strings, but I think that's doable. Sounds pretty clean with just a 9v battery and going direct to the amp!

It really does like to be close to the string...

Now coming to you served from a raspberry pi in my apartment

The tuners are in the right position now, and I think I'm ready to wire up the electronics next. The end board where the strings terminate is already buckling a little and I haven't used a lot of tension yet, will need to add another board there at the end! It sounds pretty goofy unamplified with random banjo and acoustic strings I had laying around. It'll be fun to find out how the four pickups and exciter/string feedback will sound when the electronics are all wired up.