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.
The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week captures something of the weather here.
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.)
The Junto assignment this week is to "Make music for (anonymously) someone who’s angered or disappointed you."
A magpie-lark (Grallina cyanoleuca) is known locally as a pee-wee and it isn't a big bird, but it will act aggressively toward larger birds and even people.
So I was watching a pee-wee swooping at a hawk on the drive home from the shops and started singing about it to my partner.
She was amused and I typed up my lyrics when I got home, then the Junto instructions arrived that night and the bird theme made me think it'd be fun to record the song.
It's directed at some people in my neighbourhood who've been cutting down trees recently.
The line "birdy peep" imitates a call I've heard from pee-wees, but also is a rallying cry for those who would like to see the bird habitat protected.
