121. grilling with kindness

Lots of transforming of old sounds. I hate to admit the extent of recycling here. I like it anyway, though. Speaking of old and new things, I'm still in Boston, but back in the Burgh tonight for New Year's Eve.

120. smoker

Lots of talking at the Philosophy conference! Surprise! And this is some transformations of that talking.

119. pancetta belly

It's a gooey but tasty mass of stuff. Bad for you? Probably. Remixed tasty bits of other sounds in a little cakelet? All that and more. Cakelets, that's me. Hello from Boston, by the way. Yay more road blogging!

118. mutation of thrushes

The neatest thing here is the sort of burbly bass line part, which is all transformed snare drum. And there's other stuff too. Colorful stuff. Also, for nerdy interests, check this out.

117. heavenly host carol

Just to prove I can make a Christmas song that isn't made of cat thumps or creepy radio guys, here's a nice little chorale, written by me and sung by the Delayed Puberty Virtual Boys Choir of Pittsburgh.

116. over at Ben's

I'm cat-sitting for my friend Ben, and since I can, I employed little Callie-cat as a musical instrument; kind of a combination percussion (jumping against the wall chasing a laser pointer spot) and woodwind-ish? (making odd chirping noises when she's excited from chasing said laser pointer) instrument. Other things: radiator played with light bulb, tiny speaker hooked up to a plastic tube, ukulele.

115. christmas AM

What you find on AM radio! in this case a super-creepy old dramatization of "A Christmas Carol." And a touch of normality, embodied by guitar.

114. boggled

Made with Christmas love! and Boggle! Cuz we've been playing a lot of Boggle lately. In this version, only the letters that are notes (A B C D E F G [H]) count. As many combinations as can be made in three minutes, with some reshaking of the plastic box of letters. Through the magic of Audacity, it's jam-packed with combinations. And the cat purring, I don't know why.

113. I Do Have Some Walnuts

Sounds of John putting new strings on a guitar; me talking to my mom on the phone, asking for a pie recipe; thumping on piano and bass drum; some keyboard; a Christmas carol.

112. directionless

Laying down a beat with drum and cello-ish. Plus banjo and other things, like attitude. It's a two-minute-long Oreo with flute filling. It goes nowhere and has no purpose.

111. goomba attack

So I recently found an original Nintendo system in the basement, abandoned by a previous tenant. Disappointingly, it does not seem to work. Nonetheless, here's a piece simply rife with Super Mario samples, along with other sounds from the basement, like trash cymbal and a hexagonal barbell being rolled over the floor.

Also, I played some Super Mario online today, and it turns out I am completely terrible at it. Never had an NES as a kid.

110. backronyms

So...tired...lots of beeps. Lots and lots. Beep beep beep beep beep beep.

109. pop music

Yo yo yo, it's some fizzy pop sounds n'at. Also my radiator, some singing while blowing on bottles and flutes, and a touch of cello as garnish. Arranged artfully in Audacity for a tasty presentation. A bit thick, texture wise, flavors kind of odd, slightly overcooked.

108. stenciling

Bits of flute, sax, drums, guitar from tonight's Outer Circle show. Which was great! If you missed it, you not only missed an historic performance, but free beer.

107. a day of small things

So I relocated the glockenspiel today, as you can tell. Just in time for the Outer Circle show and party at my house tomorrow night. This is a tiny bit of glocky goodness.

106. sundog brighten

Inside the piano is a whole world of twangy, dingy, ringy sounds and delicate systems of levers and gears you shouldn't mess with. This piece doesn't use or break nearly enough of them. But it does have penny whistle. It's like ambient Irish messy breakfast music.

105. no worries

Me and Chuck, my frequent improv buddy these days, playing some sets of pitches on a vibraphone in the basement of the music building; plus a little flute. Sort of lush and vibrant, but you know. Maybe it should be "about" something? My music never is "about" anything, but I can make something up. It's about being lonely in the springtime. Or about being happy on a 18-degree winter day. Or unicorns and rainbows and buying a new car. Anything like that.

104. mincemeat

My recorder's card is full; hence this is tiny bits of everything I've recorded this week -- students playing final projects, Outer Circle rehearsal, and bits from other blogs. Very collage-y. And collages are in. At least those photomosiac jigsaw puzzles are.

103. mom, am I pretty?

You know what makes a neat fake finger-cymbal sound? Pizza cutter tapped with a spoon. There's that, and also a neat pattern of sounds that sort of build up and get all distorted and funky with themselves. Want to know which instruments? Well, you're going to have to listen to it. Bam.

102. passing heaviness

It's all about the double bass again. More altered in Audacity and Cubase this time. Yep, I'm lazy, but it's been a long day. And this is just a nice old-fashioned sentimental tune anyway, like your parents used to listen to on the radio. Yours, not mine.

101. lost focus

Sort of long waves...of drumming, a sort of electronic drone, bowed cymbal, and beautifully hideous-sounding bowed ukulele. And little melodies in piccolo and uke together, the combination of which I call "puke". And some whistling.

100. cmere you

It's got fake drum, it's got real claves, it's got the dirty-sounding flute extended technique known as "tongue rams". It's so very groovy. So. Very.

99. old hundred

This was a super ambitious project for Blog #100 that kind of collapsed like a bad souffle. It was going to be 100 different cello samples, all piled into some sort of mega-celloplex, but that turned out to be both hideous and exhausting. What there is quotes the doxology tune also known as "Old Hundred", putting bits of it in smaller piles of cello.

And if this is your first time here, welcome! go explore the blog!

NOTE FROM 2019: Somehow, the count of the blog is off; by my reckoning this is the 99th song made for this project, not the 100th. I don't know if this was a mistake in counting days I made originally, or if a piece is missing from the sequence (other than #81 "round the world" which I know is missing).

98. eggbasket

Boy oh boy, am I glad I figured out the embedding directly into posts thing. And I feel dumb for not figuring it out (that is, googling "embed mp3s in blog posts) earlier. As you might guess from the very nature of this blog, I'm kind of a DIY girl, so I was trying to make some elaborate flash movie for each recording, etc. etc. Blah. Anyway, the blog is way awesomer now.

And, this piece is banjoriffic. Banjtacular.

97. pavan

Piano and more piano. Just some improv bits from earlier today. In the background is a long ostinato with some funky pitch bending on it. Perhaps it's sad and contemplative, perhaps it's just a little depressed at the sudden drop in temperature.

but!!!omg! More significantly, finally figured out how to post mp3s directly in the blog posts themselves. I want to revamp the whole thing by Wednesday to celebrate 100 posts. Very exciting.

96. warm regards

This is so very pretty. It's all the loveliness of fake steel drum played on the old old keyboard, with some echo effects, and alto flute dropped an octave to sound like bass flute. Oh for a real bass flute. It's a bit like cheap Hovhaness. Well, kind of.

95. bell and shaker dance

As you might guess (but then, why would you?) from the title, I did a brief but energetic dance with a shaker egg in one hand and some sleighbells in the other. There's a lot of that in here consequently, along with hi-hat and snare and claves and whatever I could pull together and do quickly.

94. quorum

This has piano, piccolo, pickle loaf, banging on pipes in the basement, bits from the keyboard, and a mysterious object I found in the toolbox in the basement; it's probably some sort of prybar, but it's really the world's largest tuning fork. Whack on it with a hammer and it rings for a good thirty seconds. Awesomeness.

93. one little dance

So at school in the grad office I found a very large pair of agogo bells...apparently they live in the grad office, permanently. So much of this piece is that, plus piano just kind of doing its own thing again. It's fun and rhythm-y - (yay fun!).

92. unintelligible are toads

Procedure:
Take a poem, in this case Marianne Moore's "Poetry." Use a random number generator to select words from the poem; arrange these words in a column of lines, putting subsequent even or odd numbered words on the same line, starting a new line when the number flips from even to odd (or vice versa). Make a PDF and set it to "Read Out Loud" in Adobe Reader (a robotic woman's voice). Adjust pacing and articulation by repeating syllables and words, adding excessive punctuation, and expanding consonants. Record again. Record the text being read on a computer running Windows XP, which has a different (creepy old man-bot) voice for the Reader. Remix into a sort of canon of reading voices from high to low.  Text below: