October 2017

"Dance Pastiche"

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"Dance Pastiche" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

One four bar sequence follows rapidly on another four bar sequence...
Composed on the Elektron Octatrack with some additional mixing in Tracktion's Waveform DAW, running on Unbuntu Studio. A final gain boost was done in Ardour using the threshold control in LSP's stereo limiter plugin.
This Octatrack has a growing .wav collection of Dance Sounds From The Last 20 Years (40 if you count one much-recycled breakbeat), tossed into this track like fruit salad. However, the "hook" comes from Loopmasters, which provided a sample pack for the Octatrack, about 5 years ago. Possibly that counts as vintage now.

about that calligraphy class...

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Ken Shirriff notes a bit of corporate self-puffery by Steve Jobs, back in '05, regarding the development of the Macintosh computer.
Jobs claims the first Macs had multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts because of a calligraphy course he took after dropping out of college.
Shirriff reminds us that the Xerox Alto computer, which Jobs saw in the late '70s, had these features.

Here's a detail of Shirriff's photo of the Alto he's been restoring, with Jobs' 2005 commencement address at Stanford, where the "calligraphy" brag originated, typed in multiple, proportionally spaced fonts:

commencement-alto_crop

And Shirriff's detail from the above photo:

commencement-alto-closeup3

In fairness to Jobs, Shirriff adds that "[o]f course, Steve Jobs deserves great credit for making desktop publishing common and affordable with the Macintosh and the LaserWriter, something Xerox failed to do with the Xerox Star, an expensive ($75,000) system that commercialized the Alto's technology."

palast on dore's show

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Journalist Greg Palast has been a (largely ignored) obsessive on Republican election fraud, going back to the Bush vs Gore days and "purged felons." He's done extensive research on the Trump victory and says it follows the GOP pattern, this time with aggressive use of a dubious device known as "cross check," supposedly weeding out double voters but in fact eliminating voters with similar names. So, if the Orange One stole the election using these machinations, why don't the Democrats challenge it? asks Jimmy Dore on YouTube.

The Dore-Palast discussion is initially frustrating because it omits the DNC's dirty tricks against Sanders, concentrating solely on Republican schemes in the general election. In attempting to answer Dore's question, Palast notes that Al Gore went on to become a billionaire after his 2000 loss (let's assume that's true), and opines that if he'd challenged the system he wouldn't be invited to sit on boards -- he'd be "destroyed." Clinton isn't willing to say the Electoral College needs to be rethought, she thinks it's a great feature of our democracy, according to Palast.

Both Dore and Palast are baffled at all the energy the Washington media are putting into the Russia-stole-it narrative (which is palpable rubbish and a joke around the world) while ignoring the "Palast material" (again).

"Trailing Trojans"

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"Trailing Trojans" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

waveform_10-24-17

Composed w/ Tracktion's Waveform DAW, running on Ubuntu Studio
Sound sources:
Helm softsynth (a guitar-like e-piano setting, played in the piano roll, rendered to audio, sliced, reversed, pitch-altered)
808-style drum hits "found on the internet"
Some percussion riffs made with Elektron Octatrack
"Rock" beat loops from an ancient ROMpler called Beatburner
Calf Monosynth -- my own patches for basslines (triggered and recorded using Ardour and imported into Waveform)
a-fluidsynth playing E-Mu Orbit samples (triggered and recorded using Ardour and imported into Waveform for further alteration as audio)