This what I do at night and the evenings (and on the weekends etc.).
I have a small record label that’s a growing collection of my more organized music projects; a release platform for my music, cues and songs for professional commercial use, and–as of this year, a growing filed recording library.
Does anyone out there have any music needs?
Rather than a generalist, I do a few things very well (synth textures mixed with folk instruments to name one).
Below is from early this week. Cuckoo is from Norway and a bit of a modern titan in today’s YouTube-based synth world. This is a pice I did that will go into a pack I am building called Today’s Future [but]_non-dystopian_. (starts at 10:52!)
Today’s patch was originally intended to be a spatial, washy sound-bed for a forthcoming track “Ghidd Whaah.” Mixing the original wrapped this week, and yesterday a rearranged the track for a micro live set. The plan was to enter it in a new #jamuary2022 contest.
(Jamuary is a sharing event at the start of each year meant to get folks writing. In maybe it’s 4th or 5th interaction, it really seems to be growing.)
Coincidentally, the theme this week was “uplifting,” and “Gheed Whaah” is just that, composed of gibberish robot lyrics set to nice chords.
[This how-i-did it is a much as a kind-of diary as a look into the ‘how’ on this particular patch.]
the Morphagene
I started in B @ 85bpm with a randomized Xynthesizr patch. Xynthesizr is a iPhone app that allows for all sorts of tinkly synth sequences. It is a good starting point for just about anything—ex.: think drone to write acoustic chords over.
From there it’s fed into the Morphagene, which mangles audio in all sorts of horrible ways. In between this carnage, there are some beautiful bits. I’ve really been trying to get to this beauty a lot faster, so I’ve been burning up the manual as well as racking up the reps/ hours.
Basically this module allows you to tape, chop, shrink/ expand bits of audio in some sort of way so that totally new sounds unheard by man coming out the other side.
I am generally still flying blind, but the tiniest rays of light are starting to poke thru.
And to complicate life even further, this is all being fed into the Mimeophon, which is a delay/ echo/ reverb unit. I know it does a lot more, but this is what I have it doing now. Again, I can only scratch the surface presently, but I have real faith greatness here too is just around the bend.
These were made to work together.
Lastly, I duplicated the output and fed it thru a Doepfer SEM filter. Really I wanted to see what would happen, but I made it self oscillate into a kind of bass drone. I am pretty sure I know what’s going on, but I need more time, man!
The whole of all of this is firmly in happy accident territory. And in my personal continuing quest for non-dystopian-future-sounding future sounds,* I’m not sure there is a better customizable instrument.
I get asked all the time if I would get back into the restaurant business.
The follow up question is typically along the lines of ‘what would you do different,’ or something like that.
Hard “NO” on #1, but I think a lot about #2.
Nobody doesn’t know it’s awful out there right now. So much pivoting …
These people may not be coming back. Barring an economic shift (which will come at some point). A topic for another post.
What would I do if was to open another pizza shop? Start with the pizza itself. There is nothing new under the sun, but you can innovate with existing products and procedures. (And tech. Could this be a business blog entry/ linkedin-thing if I didn’t mention tech?)
** Remember, we are simplifying and automating crap procedures. Nobody wants these jobs right now.
Use a raw frozen dough skin. You cannot know how many unwanted employee hours are deleted here—and potential order problems solved. Austin’s Pizza of the past did this: we used them at ACL. Guess what? Pizza was sometimes better there than at the stores.
Get a dairy to develop a pizza-sized cheese sheet. Trust me on this. I have been to cheese plants (oh the smells). They can make a 14” log and slice it with deli paper in the middle.
We have cut out a huge amount of non-staff-able, poop-y labor, we have avoided most problems that can occur before the restaurant opens, and we have reduced costs with perfect measurements. If all of this can be done from frozen even better.
All the (only one) person has to do is set this pizza in the oven. That’s it. A HUGE amount of pizzas are just cheese.
There is a lot of blind, exuberant love for Elon and Tesla in this town right now. A lot of smart people are starting to feel more than a little unsettled about it.
Ask yourself: Why is your Uber driver dishing out investment advice right now? I remember this kind of things happening twice before (2000 + 2008).
Don’t be afraid, but be skeptical. The best kind of optimists are a bit grumpy because they are born skeptics.
Article High Points:
It sums up why we, as Austinites, should be really weary of Elon Musk. “Elon has parlayed an almost religious movement of true believers to fund losses. This is a business that’s never really made accounting profits, let alone actual cash flow. Amazon did all of that, generating internal positive cash flow. Tesla has just burned cash. “
More on the dangers of religion and $$ is always good. “…you have entire asset classes and investment theses and ETFs and portfolios that are built on nothing more than narratives about disruption and innovation and belief. It is, by definition, faith and religion, and I find that to be extremely effective and extremely dangerous.”
It identifies why there is no one to make your hamburger. “I’m more concerned about the people who have dependents or mortgages, and everything has been working. In some cases, they might have had a job that maybe wasn’t so great. And they decided to quit it because they’re making more money speculating in crypto or speculating in the stock market and maybe even levering or buying on margin to do that.”
And it talks about why last mile/ home delivery companies are absolute s*#t. “It’s amazing today watching and benefiting as a consumer, from Jokr and Gorillas and these under 15-minute delivery services, because I lived during the Kozmo.com and UrbanFetch moments, when you would order something and a dude would bring you your one-dollar drink with a hot chocolate chip cookie and a T shirt and a CD with a wrap on it, and you could order something again seven minutes later, they would do the same thing. Those companies went bust. That idea is back, and it’s being funded again. As a consumer, I think it’s brilliant. As an investor, I think these things are going to crash and burn again.”
Also, and this is not put out there lightly, his version of “How Soon is Now” is shockingly great. Not that it shouldn’t be. Rather, it’s an example of his continuing artistic strength.
Johnny *&^ing Marr! This is an official nickname by the way.
Austin TX 