More delays have cropped up in my musical endeavors. I keep a notebook of my progress and the thing has gone missing, along with my recorder, the Zoom H8. So until I figure out where I left them, and yes they’re almost inseparable, I’m up shit’s creek without a paddle. My memory doesn’t work as well as it used to and I have a habit lately of burying things under piles of junk mail.
More Statistics
More (boring) stats from me in this post. For some reason, about a week and a half ago my readership has blossomed. Here’s a snapshot of the views over the past year:
And the month of March:
I wonder if it’ll last.
Weather and Painting
Now that the weather’s getting better I have been spending more time outside painting. I’ve mostly been working on painting backgrounds and such on a number of paintings, I have 4 paintings in various stages of completion. They’re all pretty much in a new style I’ve been trying out, so I’ll have to see if anything I’ve started will be saleable.
Here’s a picture of the canvases laid out:
Most canvases are approximately 12 by 16 inches, with the black one being approximately 16 by 20 inches. Yeah, they are metric.
(As an aside, WordPress encourages users to use Jetpack to construct post, and overall interact with the platform. And Jetpack has many “features” that are quite obnoxious. Word completion and spell checking are two that I find to be especially obnoxious. And obvious features that would enhance the user experience are dribbled out rarely. They just got around to enhancing the statistics so that creators can more easily judge what posts are hitting and which are not. The improved stats also go into more detail, showing monthly and daily hits on the site, though what’s still lacking is post level stats.)
More Sampling
Lately I’ve been on a kick to fill out the sample libraries I have for my Elektron Octatrack and Roland SP-404. Well, that’s been continuing now for 3-4 months now, I guess. I change between recording synths and recording drum machines. The drum machines include the Behringer RD-8 and RD9 and the Erica Synths LR-02 (think I got the model numbers right). Yeah, I know the detractors say “Ewwwwww, Behringer”, but they are close enough for my uses. And as far as I can tell, purists don’t appreciate my music anyways.
I haven’t tried putting out music made from the samples, as I usually don’t have a recorder hooked up to the sampler, usually my trusty Zoom H8. I need to finish my recording setup in my bedroom, where I plan to make a permanent home for my Tascam Model 16 mixer, so that I can make more complex music.
Progress
Well, this post is about stats of your engagement. This is one of the panels in Jetpack’s stats page. I know that the readership is kinda lame, but it is what it is.
As you can see, I get readers from all over the globe, and not shown here is a data point that says I have gotten a 13 percent rise in readership over the past year.
So, thank you for checking me out.
Music Again
Well, I’ve taken a break from doing art work and started to review the past few months of music making to see if I can scrounge up an album or EP out of the stuff I’ve done. It turns out that a lot of my output lately has been samples destined for my Elektron Octatrack or my Roland SP-404 Mk II. And the rest of my output has been in the area of noise or ‘musique concrete’. So I guess the next thing I release will be like the “Noise Revisted” album that’s on Mirlo. The link there is https://mirlo.space/jaypeach53/releases. So keep an eye out for new music. I still have to finalize the content, mix it down, and do the art work, so it may take a while.
Visual Arts and Temu
Well, I know not to buy canvas from Temu, at least the good stuff. This is what you get when they use the cheapest delivery service imaginable.
The shipping services didn’t just break the canvases, they destroyed them. Yes, there’s two canvases there. There was no protection except some half-assed wrapping with bubble wrap. This is supposed to be protection on a package shipped from China?
Color me pissed. And Temu probably won’t even refund my money. Back to getting my art supplies from Dick Blick.
Need to order some larger canvases for some ideas I’ve got, but I have to wait until next month’s Social Security check or until I sell some work.
Edit: I may use these canvases for some bizarre work that’s multimedia in nature. Who knows.
Sound Fetishists
Read a post on the fediverse complaining about sound recordings recorded at 44.1kHz. It seems the poster wanted to sample recordings to be used at 48kHz, and they weren’t sure that the recordings would be true. Well, if you weren’t illegally sampling other people’s music you wouldn’t have the problem, eh?
I record frequently to be output at 44.1kHz since sometimes I want to convert the music to samples to be placed on my Octatrack, which AFAIK, only accepts 44.1 samples. I don’t care if it inconviences illegal scraping of my music, which is all copyrighted. So there, turkey.
Working
Well, over the holidays I found time to get my Moog Sub 37 cranked up to do some sample recording. I just started playing with presets, modifying them sometimes, and recording to my Zoom H8 recorder. The samples are destined to be transferred to my Octatrack and/or mr SP-404.
I’d had this as a to-do for months and I finally started to work on this. I’m planning to do this with more of my synths.
Not really “Personal” Part 2
As a follow-up to a previous post about expensive purchases, I offer my second largest purchase, a Joe Bonamassa product which is a reproduction of a 1959 Fender Twin-Amp from his collection. It cost me north of $3,000 and is one of a series of Fender amps I’ve got.
I also have a George Benson model Fender Twin Reverb Amp that set me back a decent piece of change.
