Day: March 31, 2016

"Blooming Union (Wavetable Variations)"

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"Blooming Union (Wavetable Variations)" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

Speaking of the A-112, it was used throughout this tune; specifically, the sound source is the "Wiard waves," which I was finally able to transfer to the module.
The beginning section is in a non-4/4 time signature; I used an Ableton "groove map" to keep the beats in some semblance of sync with the A-112.
Some bass and synth lines were recycled from "Blooming Union" because I wasn't tired of them yet and that piece is only two minutes long.

Update, June 7, 2016: Revised and reposted. Sped up the tempo (after the intro), added bass lines, and made the beats more 4/4-ish.

new life for an A-112

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a-112

This Eurorack module (shown in a bed of eBay carpet), dates back to the late '90s and is still in production. It has two, count'em, two, sample slots. Each slot holds either (i) a 2 second-long 8-bit wav file (that plays as audio), or (ii) a 65536-bytes-long wavetable, holding 256 "single cycle" waveforms of 256 samples each (that act as a synth oscillator when the device is in "wavetable mode"). You can get a sound into a slot by recording it as audio, where it can be played back at different speeds, reversed, used as delay, etc. It can also be played (grungily) in wavetable mode. Theoretically you can also "dump" samples as sys-ex (MIDI) data to and from the device. The original Doepfer MIDI dump software no longer works on most present day computers. Fortunately, talented volunteers have emerged who have written programs that not only dump but allow you to generate or assemble waveforms for transmission to the module. Posts such as this one led me to an obsessive collection of hundreds of single cycle waveforms by Adventure Kid, which can now be used in the A-112 (there is also an Octatrack-friendly collection of the waveforms.)

more trump on foreign policy

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Posts keep appearing from the left side of the spectrum noting refreshing Trump heresies. John Feffer at Lobelog quotes the exchange below, on the subject of military bases, which took place when the Orange One sat down with Washington Post staffers. "Trump point[ed] out that South Korea is a rich country and wonder[ed] why the United States is paying for military bases there," Feffer writes. "Charles Lane, the columnist, point[ed] out that South Korea covers 50 percent of the costs." Then this was said:

TRUMP: 50 percent?

LANE: Yeah.

TRUMP: Why isn’t it 100 percent?

HIATT: Well I guess the question is, does the United States gain anything by having bases?

TRUMP: Personally I don’t think so. I personally don’t think so. Look. I have great relationships with South Korea. I have buildings in South Korea. But that’s a wealthy country. They make the ships, they make the televisions, they make the air conditioning. They make tremendous amounts of products. It’s a huge, it’s a massive industrial complex country. And —

HIATT: So you don’t think the U.S. gains from being the force that sort of helps keep the peace in the Pacific?

TRUMP: I think that we are not in the position that we used to be. I think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country. And we’re a poor country now. We’re a debtor nation.

You aren't supposed to say this in official Washington. The "US as world cop" is the accepted position, whether or not it's a dated paradigm.