Sorry - long time no post. Been busy at work and trying to stay warm and get the bathroom finished. Finally got the godforsaken floor done (well, the subfloor, anyways).  We ordered the fixtures last Friday, they should be here this weekend. Then we can decide on final placements, get the plumbing done, and proceed to the finish work part of the program.

The Faithful Reader will recall I posted a while back about my need for a mixer. Apparently my blog is wired into the global wish-fulfillment matrix, since not a week after that entry I scored a beautiful vintage Tascam 12×4x2 board off of Ebay for way, way less than a new surface-mount wonder. I ordered a few replacement knobs and a manual from Teac/Tascam, and have pretty much figured out how to integrate it into my studio. I gotta order a crapload of cables, but that’s to be expected in this business.

Been writing a bit, got three new songs in the oven - products of my recent “hey, I grew up in a creepy holler, I should be writing creepy holler music” epiphany. Demos soon - I promise.

TTFN

So, the latest here at the chateau d’saster would be me completely redoing the framing for the bathroom floor. You’ll recall I had to sister one of the joists, and install blocking between all of them to make the structure more rigid. Well… I spent most of today ripping all that work out after finally realizing the reason my subfloor wasn’t flat was because I’d only been leveling things in one direction. Normally, that approach would work, assuming your reference points are, in fact, level with respect to each other. Guess what? All the old joists are bowed (except the one especially evil bastard in the middle that’s 1/2″ thicker on one end than on the other), meaning my cribbing followed that arc precisely. Woulda been cool if I were building a boat, but I’m not, and it wasn’t. Anyways, several hours of prying, pounding, cursing, cutting, and panting later, all the cribbing was out. Y’know those flimsy-looking galvanized steel joist hangers? Them things are made to stay put once you nail ‘em in - I had to take out somewhere between 16 and 700 of them today, with 6 nails (driven into 100-year old lumber) in each. Then I got to rip the new joists to width, cut ‘em to length, and pound them into place with my new favorite tool (5lb hand sledge). I’m out of bolts, so there’s a trip to the hardware store tomorrow (everything locally closes early on Sunday), but I went ahead and laid the plywood back in place to keep the cold air in the cellar. Plus, it gave me a chance to see if this approach worked any better. It did! I now have a subfloor that’s both flat and level. w00t!

In other news, I’ve given up on trying to buy a banjo off of eBay. Everyone I like shoots out of my price range. Granted, I’m cheap, but this isn’t something I want to spend a bunch of money on just yet. Sooo, looks like I’ll be making myself a banjo. There’s lots of ways to do it on the cheap: cigar box, mountain style (flat boards rather than a bent hoop), gourd, etc. I’ll probably set up a separate section here on the site for instrument building projects, just in case anyone else is innerested in following along.

It’s oddly apropos that bits are coming together, here on the eve of the (calendar) new year. Bits of technological, musical, and epistemological* flotsam and jetsam seem to be accumulating into useful shapes in my immediate vicinity.

To wit - this person has posted a handful of schematics and sound clips regarding the construction of circuits exhibiting chaotic behaviour, and using said circuits to control synthesizers. In other words, a chaos-driven instrument is within reach of my handy laser screwdriver soldering iron.

I’m very excited.

*more on this later - I’m still working on putting it into words.

After a most excellent holiday weekend with friends and family, followed by an unbelievably boring 3-day workweek, yesterday found me back at work on the 1st floor bathroom project. Between bouts of cutting, hammering, and cursing I would pop up to the studio for coffee/cigarette/surf breaks. One of the things Dan and I discussed last weekend was DIY instruments - cigar box guitars, whamolas, mbiras, and etc. I’ve been thinking this week about various ways to build simple things that make interesting sounds - those thoughts led me to the most excellent Atlas of Plucked Instruments.

Whilst stumbling around the Atlas, I came across what can only be described as an acoustic whamola - the Dan Bau. It’s a single-stringed instrument with a buffalo-horn lever at one end (not the top - you play it horizontally on a tabletop) that’s used to vary the pitch of the string. Just to keep things interesting, the playing technique relies upon harmonics, not the actual plucked pitch. I found more info here, and sound clips there. Doesn’t look like one would be all that hard to build - the only sticky bit will be finding an appropriate material for the lever.

I wonder if the guys who built Les’ whamola knew about this instrument, or if this is an example of Jungian whatchacallit at work?

(Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.)

Just think, this time next year you’ll be listening to the OVO Christmas album…

Something I’ve been meaning to do for several years is write a Yule tune, and this year I’ve managed to whip one up. Enjoy the holiday - in whatever way it pleases you to celebrate.

the long dark has come
the long dark has come
the sun king dies, and in a star-field lies
for the long dark has come

embrace the night
embrace the night
bank the fires while the moon hangs high
and embrace the night

give thanks for the turn of the wheel of the year
share blessings and harvest with all
keep faith in rebirth and in unconquered sun
and when the dawn breaks sing your praise

the long night is done
the long night is done
the newborn light shines ancient and wise
on each of us
for each of us
every one of us a sun

Now that I’ve finally gotten my head around how to deal with Gmail’s horrifying lack of folders, and have discovered the joys of feeds via Google Reader, and have committed the majority of my writing activites to Google Docs, along comes this:

RTM + Gmail

And while I’ve tinkered with the lovely Ta-Da Lists app from the legendary 37signals skunkworks, and given one or two TiddlyWiki GTD implementations a go-round, this just nails it shut.

*sigh*

My dear friend Dan has blogged one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while.  See for yourself.

Have at it, folks…

Found a couple of interesting-looking pieces of ambient music/sound generation software:

• sounder
• ambient grains

Anyone know of anything else cool? I’m looking for ways to capture the song of the ghost in the machine…