It’s all been fair and venue applications and maintenance and junk this latter half of the week, I don’t have much to say. So if you’re in Seattle, go to Leannan Sidhe’s show on Sunday, it’s her last Seattle show for a while. If you’re in Boston, Heather Dale has a show TONIGHT, at Boskone, so you’re in luck!

If you know any good venues for, oh, me, drop me a note! As always I’m looking for house concert hosts, I swear it’s easy, talk to me, but not just those. (All these applications are for events and fairs and such.) Plus don’t forget my show in Portland on the 26th!

And if you want to plug somebody else’s show to my audience this weekend? Do it here, in comments!

From said comments:
Vixy & Tony, Saturday night, 8pm, Wayward Coffeehouse, Seattle
The Doubleclicks/Adam Warrock/Kirby Krackle, Friday night, 6:30pm, Mt. Tabor, Portland

I have a couple of things in progress but I’ll talk about those more when I have enough to make a post about. Have a good weekend!

This sounds like a joke, but it’s not. A while ago, when the Web was young, this guy built a hamster-controlled MIDI cage. Notes would be set off by the hamster movements, where they went, and what they did. He released a couple of particularly good sample results online; I still have one. It’s called HAMSTERS! and it’s by HAMSTERS!

This is kind of the same thing, only with tree rings and an optical scanning turntable, controlling a MIDI piano. And it’s kind of awesome:

Turning Tree Rings Into Music

Of course, the human is making lots of artistic judgements about what kinds of things can happen, when building the device. That was true for the hamster music as well. But even with those caveats, I still think of the result as Entmusic.

I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t agree

Still looking for house concert venues! Know any?

Once upon a time, not that long ago, there was a performer named Meg Davis. She was a folk musician, starting to break out in the late 70s, with songs such as “Captain Jack and the Mermaid,” “The Elf Glade,” and others.

I didn’t hear any of it until later. “The Elf Glade” was the first song I learned to play on flute, back when I finally did. I still play it. It’s notated as to be played “with nasty intent;” I like that.

I never got to see her live; a triple-whammy of multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and arthritis ended her ability to play out by 1992.

But she still wants to be able to return to her music, it seems. With recent technological developments, she thinks this is possible, and she’s trying to put together a set of equipment she can use around her disabilities. She has some of it. She needs help buying an iPad2.

I was asked to spread the word. Below, please find a message I received, forwarded from Meg. I’ve edited it for length. I know it’s January, and you’re all spent out. But if this can happen – it’d be worthy.

My Dear Peeps,

I have a plan for all who wish to help me create using new technology. Although the main idea behind this fundraiser is for me to get a recording set-up to do new music, it may be that I end up creating art, poetry or fantastic stories. I could record some of my storytelling or video my animations… all kinds of neat things could happen. […] And, of course, when I have something ready to publish to the world you will get it free first.

[…] I have a friend from the Blind Association who provides guidance now when my vision goes wonky and has guided me to the computer stuff created for folks with ‘low vision.’ Consequently, I have lost my fear that I would not be able to use the iPad. Now that I know its capabilities I see nothing but promise.

My Paypal account will only be used for the iPad2 purchase and I’ve already had a contribution. I’ve been told to get the 64Gig iPad2 for maximum recording space. I can get a 5% discount through my Discover card so the cost from Apple will be around $665.

The other things I need, mic, speakers plus software will be managed with funds from Santa and my Birthday fairy (on Jan. 28).

Well, that’s plenty for now. Let me know how you feel about this. Now that I have figured out a way to ‘repay’ anyone who helps me I feel a lot better. How I will repay YOU will take a wee bit more effort 😉

My best to you this Hogmannay (New Year’s Eve),

🙂 Meg

If you want to help, here’s your contact link.
 

Separately, we have posters for our show with Kräken-Röhl and Leannan Sidhe in Seattle on the 27th! Please download and post: print resolution JPEG, 500 pixel JPEG, massive PDF. Thanks!

First, some eye candy: check out these Russian rocket factory photos by Lana Sator, before they make her take them down. She’s gone vadding into a test facility outside Moscow, and it’s cool.

December poll! While the voting was spread across many candidates, you guys clearly hate fax machines with a particular purity. The fax didn’t gain the majority outright – it tied for largest plurality – but unlike CRTs, no one spoke in its defence. Similarly 8-track cassettes, but those received fewer votes; even pagers had people supportive, hither and yon.

Mostly, I’m bored. I made yet another special cable today, sorted stuff, and engaged in Boring Business Crapimportant meetings with people about business matters. I’ve been backed off of rehearsal on doctor’s orders, after I Did Something to my shoulder a couple of weeks ago. I don’t even know how. I have been practicing some, using a weird strap arrangement, but it’s weird and I don’t like it.

That didn’t stop me from rocking the Tony Bennett Wednesday night after Session, but it has kept a crimp in things. I get to test NORMALITY tomorrow, as I ramp back up for the first show of the year, on the 27th, with Leannan Sidhe and Kräken-Röhl:

…and there was something else I wanted to talk about today instead of all this, but can’t yet. It’s not actually my thing; it’s entirely about somebody else, another musician some of you know. Hopefully, I can talk about it soon.

I’m going to see Tin-Tin tonight. I’ve heard good things. Have a good weekend!

Hey, guys, I posted earlier this week about hosting Annie Henry for a house concert – well, she’s come down with the flu! So we’re having to CANCEL THE SHOW. You don’t want flu germs anyway.

We’ll try to reschedule the show for January. Keep an eye out for that!

I’m going to round up the indie maker recommendations from the Recommendations Post, in a minute. But before that…

…I have another question! It doesn’t work as a poll, so let’s just go for answers-in-comments again. Specifically:

Who inspires you?

Artistically, musically, engineeringly, whatever. Shit is all fucked up and bullshit, as the sign said, but people keep going anyway. Some of that’s determined ignorance, but not all of it. So: who inspires you? Not what: who.

Leave comments. Others might take notes.

And as promised, indie recommendations-from-fans time! These are all from comments:

• From Christi, we have Qrafted by Queannah (http://www.etsy.com/people/QraftedByQueannah) – fun, whimsical stuff with Legos. She also has textile crafts and beadwork.
• From GlennS, we have two recommendations: Talis Kimberley (http://www.talis.net), green filky folk with a British accent and Morse code, and Jen VanBlargan’s Love Medusa Crafts (http://www.etsy.com/shop/lovemedusa?ref=si_shop), necklaces and bracelets with no clasp.
• From Shasta Willson, we have Jack Lewis’s small-press book, Nothing in Reserve (http://www.jaxworx.com/nothing-in-reserve/)
• From Angela Korra’ti, we have Repeating History, a mashup of time travel romance and Western! (http://mmjustus.com/fictionRepeatingHistory.html)
• From Dmitri, we have Tormented Artifacts (http://www.tormentedartifacts.com) – a wide mix of stuff from handmade leather pieces to props to found-art pieces, prints, digital artwork, and other items.
• From Eirewolf, we have their original leather masks and fantasy sculptures at http://eirewolf.artfire.com
• From Annie Henry, we have her Indiegogo project to fund her first album! It’s like Kickstarter, but a different website: http://www.indiegogo.com/traditions
• From Roger, we have handmade steampunk leather and accessories (http://www.steampunkedout.com)
• And finally, from Gear, who I’m pretty sure is Gifted, we have Beth Kinderman’s “pretty awesome prog-rock folk music” – http://bethkinderman.bandcamp.com/ and http://www.bethkinderman.com/buy.htm

And, of course, I recommend my own studio album, Dick Tracy Must Die, which is about as handmade as CDs and digital recordings can be. Buy the studio album for someone, or just for yourself! Short on cash, as so many people are right now? Download Cracksman Betty and/or Espionage: Live from Mars for anything you can afford, including free, and give as stocking stuffers.

G’wan, take a look. ^_^

Finally, I have SOLVED THE LINUX PROBLEM! o/ For details, see comments in the original post. Thanks go out to several people, but particularly to criacow on Twitter who pointed me at a sane explanation for how to swap out kernel images cleanly. I’m now running Linux kernel 3.1.5 underneath Ubuntu 10.4, which is vaguely hilarious, but which fixes the crash bug and gave me room enough to get the hardware running. Yay! My tiny studio is now somewhat less tiny! SIX CHANNEL RECORDING WOOOOOOOOOOOO! 😀

So, if you’re like me, you still have gifts to buy. And while I hope some of you will buy something from me as gifts, I could use some suggestions. And I imagine some of you could, too!

A lot of you are indie artists or crafters or musicians, or have independent artists, crafters, or musicians you like. RECOMMEND THEM HERE! Or, if you’re the maker, link to your own stuff!

Click through and leave recommendations and suggestions in comments on the main band blog, please, so they’re all in the same place and easier to find. ^_^ Recommend away!

I had a hose clamp left over from another project, so came up with a new DIY pop filter design, and now I’ve made a howto video for it:

For those who don’t know, sounds like P and B and D are called “plosives,” and include a rush forward of air that shows up in recordings as kind of a low-frequency thunk. You can go buy a nice pop filter – which is basically just nylon stocking on a hoop – or you can make one yourself.

The difficult part tends to be attaching them to things so they stay in place. This one fits into a standard mic clip, which means no secondary noise transmission, and no futzing around with velco or whatever. Pop it into the clip, position it, and you’re done.

I’ve done some studio experiments with this new design, and it is dramatically better than my old version. I threw some intentionally super-severe popping of plosive sounds at it today (P-P-P-POW, P-P-P-POW, really punching those Ps as hard as I could), and where the old filter could only reduce them, this new design stopped three out of four outright. Under realistic conditions, it stopped everything. AND: it’s otherwise sonically transparent, so far.

So if you know anybody building their own equipment, well, here y’go, have a design. ^_^

This post is part of The DIY Studio Buildout Series, on building out a home recording studio.

Leannan Sidhe came by today by surprise and we recorded something! It’s pure trad, which is kind of unusual for me, but not at all for her; I’ll be playing backing zouk for her at first house concert on Friday. Then on Saturday I’m playing down north of Olympia at Spooky Action, ripping it up elfmetal style.

But on Friday, it’ll be more like this. Enjoy:

Separately, I’m kind of amazed that Quatermass and the Pit (a.k.a. Five Million Years to Earth) (1967) is you guys’s favourite horror flick, but it is! And I can’t fault you for that. It’s not mine, but I respect it.

All for now, busy rehearsing. No poll this week, but MUSIC IS BETTER THAN POLLS! Go clickie!

(There’s also a radio edit without the live bits, if you prefer that.)

G’morning! There are a bunch of things I can’t talk about yet that I really want to. But I can’t. Some of them are pretty undefined and really not even definitely happening yet, some are definitely happening but there’s one more thing to sort out.

Not that you heard it from me, but relevant dates are probably in the vicinity of 29 October, 11 November, and 18 November. Probably.

But there are things I can talk about!

First, Steamcon says hi!

Not Hardly Everybody

I’ve never been before, so one-dayed it on Saturday. I… mostly don’t have the rhythm of this convention. I enjoyed the sensory immersion in retro cosplay, I even bought a few things in the dealer’s room – tho’ most of that was tea. And any fandom which supports a loose-leaf tea vendor has my approval.

But not being so heavily into steampunk cosplay – which seemed to be cosplay based on fashions anywhere between 1720s and the early 1930s, as far as I could tell, tho’ most of it was Victoriana – I felt rather at loose ends. Also, with a couple of exceptions, it seemed way more “steam” than “punk;” as Torrey mentioned, almost all of the costuming is ruling or merchant class, and there’s not much punk in that.

Which isn’t to say the standards weren’t very high – I have too many photos to post here, and didn’t take a fraction of the number I could’ve! But enjoy a few random photos:

A Sharky Constitutional

Putting the Punk Back in Steampunk

Sin By Me

Supervillainy!
Also, I do not know what era this was, but I would like to visit it

Attoparsec was there, showing off their new their latest invention, the hydrocrystalophone:

A New Musical Instrument

I also spotted a lovely hat which contained a gazing sphere showing an animation of a galloping horse, but sadly did not get a photo! I was hoping for more such gadgetry – that, I really enjoy – but if there, I largely missed it. That said, I do believe I spotted a spy:

Not Stealthy

I spent most of the evening at Second Stage, getting to enjoy shows by Toy-Box Trio, Fein and Dandee, Aeon Now!, and Curtis Eller. All put on good shows, but I was really impressed in particular by Aeon Now!, and if you get a chance to see them, you’d be insane not to take it. Complex lyrics, strong vocals, good arrangements, and the craziest drummer I’ve ever seen perform live means they blew the roof off of that place.

Shooting in the dark is difficult when you have dynamic performers, but I got a couple of decent shots:

Toy-Box Trio

Fein and Dandee, neo-Vaudvillian musicians

Aeon Now

I’ll post more photos to Flickr, later, after I have time to sort them properly.

In other news, Moog has released an iPad polysynth, and for the first month, they’re basically giving it away at 99¢. Demonstration video here; it goes up to $30 in a month. Grab it now if you’re interested!

That’s all I have for the moment. I’m really excited about things I can’t talk about. Frustrating! But in a good way. Keep watching for updates!