getting over a bad cold, but went to a new coffee shop with Patrick and wrote and talked and it was everything. This is a WIP for hopefully album

122818

ok so not good ambient (gets ok in the middle and weird that I have opinions about this sort of thing at this point) but the first tests with a new setup on the old drawing table in the corner—synth texture recorded to a tape loop, played through guitar amp, snowball mic'd and sent through clouds, pitched up and down with midi keyboard, frozen sample shifted around with keyboard sliders. Ordered midi pads and knobs from that guy that's been at guitar center forever. Ate Wolfgang'sw/Patrick leftovers for lunch—told him everything. It's snowy and bright.

011919

trapped a string transition and cycled through on the new lpd8. Talked on the phone for an hour and a half and all the snow melted to slush and told stories with parents and Ben, work's been lame—I recognize this isn't good ambient/drone but it felt good to take 20 minutes or so to learn the sample and its interaction with the controls and get conditioned to hearing a melody before recording an arc, and maybe it's a usable scrap of fabric

012319

spent a long good time at Lisa and Rusty's coffee shop reading Uproot before heading to a Calvin practice room to play with piano through granulators—got bored and caught this whistle, will later repurpose for the ambient album

020919

underwater addendum to something similar with kicks and claps, decided to loop it back through another resonator, I like how it all swells when it overloads, from the ambient joint that serious is seriously coming—what a successful night working at home can look like, beard still untrimmed for weeks, indian leftovers for work lunch

030719

I thought about making an obnoxiously long ambient modular scape today at work and whaddaya know it came together (though this isn't it) this is all feedback—two resonators respectively (respectfully?) plugged into each other's inputs, looping through clouds all fed back through that bass note—marching through a sequence set up with tuners and switches:  B+G, D > E > F. LFOs dial through the resonators' parameters, tripping them and seeding the feedback. Amazing when they fade completely out and then restart. I just let these run while scrolling twitter, finished the Last of Us tonight, and bought allergy meds cuz it rained and smelled like spring again. Might do a collection of these feedbacks and call it an album ha, might

031319

a plucky echo vcv rack drone I made a while ago, lfo cycling between clean mix with hats and one going through a cycling formant filter, some days at work are good

041219

a really good, productive day, though probably too much coffee and screens—even snowed while j+k and I watched hunger games and pet Craig. a bunch of bathwater stuff finally got on spotify and I posted a bunch about it, and fixed some dataviz stuff, the people at rising grinds know my name, also got a gallon of milkis at Lee's, started to languish around 3 as always but I can power through with something to do, life is pretty great and I take good care of myself

042719

another circle of resonators triggered by each other's feedback, plus some echos and reverb to keep things excited, ate popeyes and watched jeopardy, work was really frustrating when the boss gives unspecific feedback when you've found a constructive way to move towards something workable, feel like being alone tonight, reading Rachel Held Evans, not writing

050619

this sounds sad but today was so much better, even handed some things off and the day went well, wore the olive jacket for the first time which kendra said twice she liked, I'm late to get tacos with paola. made this at lunch and at this point I'm almost certainly gonna make a collection of feedback triggering other feedback, this one has two layers of clouds, with a stepping melody that happens to be eerie

050719

occasional lo-fi instrumental sketches, household instruments, loop pedal, found sound, voice memos, maybe modular, notes to self, trying to form a habit, trying to remember and preserve

named after my old corgi, who hates baths even when she needs them

"When I'm thinking of maybe writing a song, 99% of the time I get bored and sick of myself a fourth of the way in. This makes it really easy to slip into never actually generating anything, because I can't get over not creating something Complete or Thought Through or Well-Packaged...These aren't songs by a long shot—they're just a way of keeping myself accountable to consistently be Doing Music. These often come out sounding really saccharine."

https://open.spotify.com/user/125354007/playlist/1ERBCY2U3CEpJ5UB3nzRbt

Bathwater For Jessie [archive]