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.
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.
My favourite audio effect is a gate and playing with the threshold brings out dynamics in parts.
Communication is imperfect. What’s being offered and what’s received don’t always match. Borrowing from my recent toe-dipping into the world of audio engineering, I’ve installed a few new signal-processing tools for navigating life: Two knobs and a fader. The first knob is labelled FEEDBACK. Feedback can be useful. It can help us understand how we’re being perceived, including the moments when that perception doesn’t align with our own sense of self. There is, of course, another kind of feedback. When a microphone passes in front of a speaker and creates a loop of increasingly ugly NOISE. When that happens, I’m learning to reach for the feedback knob and turn it down a little. Beside it is another knob labelled SENSITIVITY. Sometimes that one can come down a touch too. And while I was installing the new equipment, I added a fader labelled SELF-LOVE. Somewhat magically, as the feedback and sensitivity come down, I’ve noticed the self-love fader creeping up. Discerning what is your shit and what belongs to somebody else is a lifelong practice. I’m feeling a little more ease navigating it with these new tools
The assignment is to "Use audio of a light bulb to express the pervasiveness of energy."
Musikfestival Bern shared an audio sample by musician and media artist Michael Vorfeld, which I manipulated and then added video from a Chocolate Factory fire in Marrickville.
The assignment this week is to "Make music with nothing but rocks."
I recorded a selection of stones, mostly collected from Valla Beach, along with a couple of bricks.
These I edited in Ableton Live, repitching most, as well as adding a resonator and Sinevibes Reactor for the bass part.
The Junto assignment this week is to "Play into the distraction."
My Sunday morning routine includes watching ABC's Insiders program about Australian politics, which this week featured a distraction in the form of discussion of the Prime Minister's appearance on a podcast.
I should declare at this point that I have never subscribed to a podcast and don't understand why I would want to listen to such inanities, particularly when a transcription can be consumed much quicker.
As the venerable Fourth Estate disappears with the loss of journalism, and takes with it the important function of digesting policy and presenting a range of views rather than regurgitating press releases, we're left with mindless entertainment such as social media rushing into the vacuum.
An example of the inanity of this situation was provided in the distraction that followed Anthony Albanese's admission that he fancied Kylie Minogue, which is surprising because I think it would unAustralian to say one doesn't admire her contributions to popular culture that continue over decades.
So I found myself playing the blues as the esteemed journalists on the Insiders couch discussed the depths plumbed by the Prime Minister as a range of other significant policy discussions were disregarded without any acknowledgement of Ms Minogue's undeniable sex appeal.
I've been playing with the idea of using two Chase Bliss Habit pedals as a way of providing instrumentation.
Originally this was patched for my double-neck guitar, but I thought I'd try the Nukulele for this piece.
I think it's the most audacious instrument that I've seen in years, with the resonant strings crossing over all those extra pickups.
It gives me hope that something as much as a mainstay as the Stratocaster design can still develop, because so much of contemporary culture seems stuck looking backwards.
And it reminds me there are a pile of pickguards and guitar bodies that are waiting for me to do something different.
The assignment this week is to "Interpret [a] gauzy window treatment as an audio effect."
My first impulse was to record the guitar set-up I recently plugged together that uses a Chase Bliss Audio Lossy pedal, but my kids are home and I haven't much opportunity to jam to arrive at something worth recording.
So I wasn't sure I'd respond to the Junto, until I watched Hamnet with my daughter last night.
There's a moment after the death of the titular character where he's shown beyond veil of death and it's literally filmed through a dark piece of cloth.
(Hopefully that's not a spoiler for anyone but, frankly, if you didn't already know that the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet has been thought to have contributed to his play Hamlet then it's probably not a film you'll be watching anyway!)
This led me to ponder whether the window gauze might be something more than a filter or a gate?
Also, this morning my Facebook Memories included the Junto track Beatin' Leeton from six years ago that I thought would be good material to manipulate.
From there my idea was that going beyond the veil in this case is to use Ableton Live's convert to MIDI functions as a way to go beyond the audio tracks, with bass and drum parts generated with those transcriptions being fed into arpeggiators as well as the aforementioned effects.
The face of my delivery guy, Eric, came to mind and I really couldn't.
One wonders if it has inside it a speaker and one end and a mic at the other, or maybe a really big spring?
A wit elsewhere remarked that it is a room reverb, but I don't think I could fit my drums inside.
