Saturday...

Had a nice mellow morning.  Woke up a little bummed out I missed out on a night at Innerspace Studios but happy I felt so rested.  The week had taken its toll and I was out at 10:30. 

Rode the bike with the family to the communal Easter Egg hunt at Caper Acres after whole wheat blueberry pancakes baby. 

It's a great day today, beautiful.  I spent some time preparing the ground in the backyard for a nice little garden.

I just found out that one of my favorite freeware apps released an updated version.  This version costs money now but the 2.0 is still super cool.  It's really useful for Ambient or IDM.  Check it out on this nice Saturday afternoon.  This guy's site is really cool anyway.

GLEETCH LAB



 
 

So I'm getting way into sound design lately and learning as much as I can about digital sound. 

The following files are made from a file I recorded of Larry the poet at the poetry slam. 

The first one is me toying with loop point values, the second haunting ambient pad sound is from a granulated reverb with 30 voices or something like that.  The sound grains are programmed to go backwards and I think they're between 100ms - 300ms.  The grains going backwards gives it a soft ambience.

The third sample is generated by radomized loop values being patched through the granulated reverb. 

The last one is more randomization of the poet going backwards and in different speeds and stuff.   

I was manipulating the parameters as I went with a lot of variables so I don't totally remember what I did.  These samples come from a recording of real time manipulations. 

 
 

I'm not a big fan of cats for the most part.  They make my face get all snotty and my eyes water.  They poop in the house and they don't really care about people.  If you were to drop dead, and the cat were hungry, it would eat you with out remembering all the nice things you did for it. 

That being said, when I met my wife Anna, she came with some cat baggage.  "Beastly" and "Lucy".  Beastly was a big black tom cat.  His head was like a bowling ball and his eyes were tough, tender and full of personality.  He was a special cat and we ended up getting really tight. 

About two years ago Beastly was freed from this mortal coil by a pack of coyotes up by Bidwell Park.  He even managed to gouge one of their eyes out before he went down.  Knowing Beastly like I did, this was the most appropriate and noble way for him to die.  Yes, I cried. 

Last night I listened to a sample I recorded of his purr about 3 years ago.  I had been working on my 3rd ambient piece for a few hours and was over it.  It was really late at night and I thought maybe if I listened closely enough, and dissected the audio enough, I could hear messages from Beastly on "the other side".  Well I didn't, but I did end up with a cool little sound design piece.