So I asked a large-language model to consider the poem and interpret it as song lyrics.
The first response didn't really grab me, but it had the line "my ears yawn open" which I liked.
Then I pondered the idea of going out on a limb and the sense of the sky being a view of the unknown.
This morning I finished writing and recorded lyrics using a simple melody and tried a few musical ideas before settling on a dancefloor banger.
The Junto instruction this week is to "Make music with three sounds: one you love, one you dislike, and one you consider to be neutral."
I started playing with this typewriter instructional movie for a different song.
The first sound with the periscope comes from the end and is one I love, while the stopwatch is neutral and the soundtrack I dislike.
You can hear that in how much I manipulate them, as the soundtrack is divided into two to be repitched and gated while the other parts largely stay recognisable.
I have the fire burning but it's not cold enough for snow, so rain is falling.
There was a melody in my head that I quickly arranged and arrived at something that sound to me a bit like one of Aphex Twin's earlier (so-called) Ambient Works.
This led me to play around with the timing of the parts as the piece progresses.
The assignment is to "Make music intended to be listened to in the background while one is reading in the middle of the day."
I don't normally like music while reading, so I asked Google and it recommended lo-fi beats.
This prompted a little bit of pondering, since the crunchy beats seemed at odds with background listening.
Investigation of different kits in Live led me to one that was "darker" sounding but had too much reverb, which was addressed with a gate.
Then I noodled around on the computer keyboard to play a bassline and added effects to make it darker too.
It sounded good, but I knew it needed something more and time was short as my family wanted to watch another instalment of Dune -- because my son seems to insist in only sitting still long enough for half an hour at a time.
To speed things up I repurposed the bass as a keyboard part, starting it at a different point and pitching it up a few octaves.
The video was shot last weekend while visiting Dr Greg Pritchard in Natimuk, where I had the most delightful crap accompanied by the kaleidoscopes he has sitting in the bathroom.
(If you're looking for an artist residency, then I recommend his studio and the nearby Mount Arapiles is also inspiring for rock climbers.)
Interesting instrument, I think.
The way the feedback saturates with the vibrations on the tape reminds me how much I liked hearing Alan Lamb's "wires" through a polystyrene box.
And the visual sense of folding the tape for pitch makes it look like driving the reins on a runaway stagecoach.
