My productivity went UP yesterday. I actually spent “quality” time practising guitar, plus I added a section to Gibbet. Gibbet is the working title. The piece doesn’t actually sound like a gibbet, as there are too many major 7 chords one after another, cascading. There is one Jazz Standard that also does that for a time. It may be Alice in Wonderland. That being claimed, the whole is not focused around major 7 chords. The main sequence seems to ever return to a harmonic major tonality. One day, some one will lock me up in a non-ergonomic pit because of my obsession with minor 6ths. A lesser spirit would make a terrible pun related to that last sentence. I am not that lesser spirit.

Yesterday was also my first day to stroll around Pagan Park. I was alone except for a shambling mute hispanic man. Perhaps he sensed my love for minor 6ths and, offended, did not return my multiple greetings as we moved along the curving pavements, shambling opposite directions. Or perhaps he was mute for some altogether different reason, though I cannot think of any reason other than being offended by someone’s obsession for minor 6ths to be mute. In fact, it may be the most widespread cause of muteness in any sort of human, not just hispanic humans.

The aeolean mode must have left crushing silences behind in many a past culture. So be it and fuck um.

That brings me to the topic of modes. Christian, when not acting as errand boy for his family, has lately been working on his understanding of modes. Or, rather, as he already has an understanding of modes, has lately been preparing chord sequences to practise modes. Of course, he is following some asshole on youtube’s advice on how to actually proceed instead of simply asking his friend who is currently living next to Pagan Park and who is a certified EXPERT on modes. Doesn’t matter. Christian only trusts youtube and conspiracy theorist forums, so I shouldn’t be surprised. He’ll soon be consigned to the pit in any case.

To create a chord sequence over which one can practise aeolean mode is an elementary thing. First, one identifies the specific notes that give the mode its sound. These notes are, if we think about F# aeolean, F# itself (1), D (b6) and A (b3). Of course, combined, that’s nothing but a D major chord. To promote the aeolean essence, even whilst simply arpeggiating this LYDIAN (in the context of F# aeolean) triad in the backdrop, careful attention should be paid to noodling using DESCENDING returnns to F# using the major 2nd (G#) and DESCENDING returns to C# (the 5th) using the minor 6th, and in the process, develop an obsession with the minor 6th and with minor 6ths in general and be LOCKED UP by our intolerant musical culture. The Aeolean Sound, played on the piano, say, is simply a D major first inversion chord in the BASS with a tinkling C# and G# on top.

I’ve been awake for less than ten minutes and I can already feel the fatigue pulling my eyes inwards. Normally Herr Jet Lag doesn’t last this long. Or does he? It’s nearly five in the morning in Seminole. My time here so far has been wholly unproductive creativity-wise. Within me is a piercing guilt.

Perhaps it is a gradually newfound perception of mortality that creates this guilt. It’s not a guilt associated with any harm I’ve done or could do to others. It’s as if I am cutting myself down with the blade of wasted time. True - I am out of sorts at the moment. Usually after the nastiness that accompanies travel, I am useless for days. I must conquer the uselessness - fight the lethargy. It’s certainly not an easy task.

My writing is fragmented. My music making is non-existent. Bleh. Perhaps I’ll continue this later.

In fact, I’m continuing the next day. Or, rather, the next morning. The fatigue is already pulling my eyes inwards once again. Today I shall fight it. Though my sleep is still of the so-called fever dream variety, lazing about as if I were actually ill simply perpetuates the lethargy.

Let’s talk about something else.

Something that always HITS me when I’ve been away from the states for a while is the insanity that is nestled in this little berg. Humans’ ability for adaption is amazing. Especially for psychological adaption. Their ability to ignore facets of life that in other contexts would be repellent is also amazing.

So, this little berg contains insanity. What sort of insanity, you ask? Well, for me, familiar insanity. In specific, my mother seethes paranoia and obsessive compulsive preoccupation with matters that do not exist. Or, rather, with matters that have a certain potential to exist but do not yet exist. In other terms, she cannot pass her time without worries. Much like I cannot go an hour without munching down a raw clove of garlic and a loose bunch of fresh cilantro, her sustenance is worry itself. And much like the garlic stench that envelops me at all times, she exists in a bubble of delusional paranoia. Delusional paranoia is probably a redundant pairing of words. It has a nice rhythm, though. It wouldn’t exactly work as the second line of a haiku. One would have to sever a syllable. This is a pursuit I’d like to spend more time with. The severing of syllables in poetry. It’s much too avoided by the proper poetry community. Fuck um.

Mother's delusion
Alive in paranoia
Scarfs another day

The point, however, is that humans are possibly too adaptable or too forgiving of seething masses of delusional paranoia. She’s my mother, of course, and according to the seething sage properly known as a Newman, family should be excused anything, even seething paranoia. Our species is too adaptable to events that occur within our bubble until we come to think of them as the normal way of life. As if there aren’t innumerable other bubbles out there with variations and even vastly different normal ways of life, all filled with inhabitants that believe they are the status quo.

Of course, the other option is to delete said people from one’s life - excise them from the bubble, as was done with good cousin Emily. This is a slightly different topic.

After being away for a good while, or even being away during the short span of a few months, I forget about this shrieking disharmony at “home”. Well, forget is a hyperbole. Better said is that my mind suavifies the shrieking disharmony. It becomes simply a yammering disharmony at “home”. Thus, it slaps me across my garlic laden jowls every time I do return, and I must bear it unless I do want to delete my mother from my life, which isn’t going to happen at this point. The balance has not tipped to the negative and won’t as it did with good cousin Emily. It’s just shrieking paranoia and alas I shall not be able to change it or even contain it, but it is bearable.

I’m aware of the psychological origins of the quirks that the inhabitants of my bubbles (I inhabit various during differing occasions, as do most humans) exhibit. I also am aware that I’m not going to change these quirks. All humans are armchair psychoanalysts. Most of us don’t go around spouting about it, though, which is a relief.

My dreams during the night, and especially dawntime, were as clear as the air between my smudged window and El Parque de los Enamorados. The last one featured Loyal as not a drum instructor but a meta-drum instructor. What is a meta-drum instructor, you ask? Well! A meta-drum instructor collects information about potential students and, according to that information, assigns a non-meta-drum instructor to said student.

In the dream, I was the potential student.

A group of us were sitting around the bed of a pickup truck. This pickup truck bed served as a conference table and the expansive out-of-doors was the conference room. The would-be non-meta-drum instructor sat to my right, partially occluded from my murderous grasp by another individual - one with no defined face. Loyal was opposite me.

The topic of conversation was drum fills. I was to be assigned (possibly) to the non-meta-drum instructor after Loyal was content that he could teach me the sort of drum fills that I fancied. So Loyal began to ask me which drummers performed fills that I fancied. I pondered and then came up with Christian Vander and Dave Kerman. About the former, Loyal commented that he was a complicated choice, or something along those lines. His thoughts on Kerman are lost to the morning as the dream slowly drifts into oblivion.

Lastly, I named Bill Bruford, that Loyal misunderstood as Tupford or something similar. Of course, such an error makes no sense since Loyal and the poundings of Herr Bruford are, or were during our years together in the so-called sacred 90s, intimately intertwined.

Information was transformed and then transmitted to the non-meta-drum instructor through a type of light pipe. We all know why light pipe came up in the dream, so I don’t have to elaborate. The non-meta-drum instructor nodded.

Thinking about it now, I should have named Daniel Denis. Were I to take lessons on drum fills, he would be the prototype of my lessons. No other plays the way he does.

@rusty@sonomu.club tooted the album that I’m listening to as I begin to scribe today’s entry. It may be this week’s entry, actually, as I’ve been slacking on my blog writing duties. I laughingly call them “duties”. As if I owe words anything. What have words ever done for me? Absolutely nothing! They only suck up time and energy as they bombard me from every angle - acute, obtuse and metaphorical. Unfortuntely, to fit into any clan at all and be somewhat comfortable in said clan’s bubble, one must aguantar the barrage. I’d say I’ve got exponentially better at withstanding the hail of palabras, sometimes jailed in phrases, sometimes not, over the epochs, and especially since living in Spain. However, I still attest to the fact that they are mostly flying debris. One must fling oneself widely and wildly to catch relevant ones (almost always jailed in phrases).

In any case, @rusty@sonomu.club tooted the album that I’m listening to as I begin to scribe today’s entry. He labels it death metal with a burping frontman. By frontman I mean vocalist. Realistically, anyone in the band can be the “frontman”. Even the louse living in the dense jungle of dead protein atop the skull of the drummer can be the “frontman”. Personally, I prefer bands that have no “frontman”, per se, but that’s a different discussion altogether. The vocalist does appear to be using eruction as a form of musical expression. I am filled with joy.

Back to @rusty@sonomu.club, though. As everyone in this infinity of quantum universes knows, sonomu.club is a node of Mastodon. I’m the only one that calls it a node, as far as I know. The majority of humans’d call it an instance. I’ve enjoyed my sonomu.club time immensely over the years that I’ve been a member, and I enjoyed its predecessor, as well. That node was my first Mastodon experience, begun in 2017. I forget its moniker. One of the principal reasons I’ve enjoyed sonomu.club through the epochs is because it’s been small. It’s a community! A tribe, even! A tribe without tribalism, in fact. It’s been a space with which I can share my musical endeavours and partake of others’ musical endeavours. Of course, we gab about said endeavours from time to time, as well. Not everyone I’ve met and communicate with “live” within sonomu. Some claim their tribes on other nodes. Following these “others” is not a problem, or specifically wasn’t an problem before, but, as Shambal Brambel forced Bob Dylan to say: the times, they are a-changin. Recently, several orders of infinities of new (are they new? As far as I know they were recently birthed or crawled from test tubes. I cannot say for certain) humans are part of Mastodon. It’s becoming, if you will, inundated. Some of these humanoids (or are they homunculi?) have settled into sonomu. If I pay attention to only the local timeline of our (meaning sononmu’s) node, I don’t find it an issue. The time it takes to sort through the toots emitted by the humanoids or homunculi is minimal and I always encounter words and ideas of interest. @rusty@sonomu.club’s mention of the metal band with its burping vocalist whose eructions still meander amongst the molecules of my bedroom is just one example.

Managing a method to go through the toots of multitudinous other humanoids or homunculi that have claimed their tribes on other nodes could become an issue. I simply don’t want to spend so much time reading through the ideas, quips, musings and eureka moments of so many humanoids and / or homunculi - not because those ideas, quips, musings and eureka moments wouldn’t have any value to me, because many would, but because my time in this infinity of quantum universes is necessarily limited and I’ve got music to make.

One solution is to slowly create lists (possibly the best feature that Mastodon has, after the local timeline constrained to an individual node) of humanoids or homunculi that present ideas, quips, musings and eureka moments that enlighten me. I’ve already made one, including Jayrope, Tim and a few others who have chosen other nodes but almost always emit something of interest to me. The main point is to not be overwhelmed by the influx of humanoids and / or homunculi, and as I am easily overwhelmed by crowds, it’s not going to be a simple task for me. In similar situations in the past, I’ve simply eked away, little by little, as multitudes repel me. In this case, I do not want to be repelled, as I’ve met many fantastic and creative humanoids and homunculi in these parts.

I think his is my first blog entry concerning social media in the history of the Martenblog (excepting possibly ancient Livejournal entries). I am amused.

My parents informed me a few days ago that their friend Noka is now a corpse. Those are my words, of course, since, according to those who don’t get my so-called dark humour, I am an insensitive galoot. Be that as it may, Noka is now a corpse. Though it is a common thing, it still astounds me the ease at which a human can transition from a dynamic state into corpse-state. Noka experienced this transition after living for more than eighty-two years. According to my parents, she simply gave up. She had stopped eating regularly and possibly at all at the end. Depression wrapped her in its shroud. But why? It seems that only the dynamic Noka knew. Corpse-Noka probably doesn’t know.

Unfortunately, it is very easy for me to see someone reaching the state that Noka did living in West Texas. Living in a pueblo can be a extreme state of being. It is isolated from stimuli. The only things that my parents do to keep their minds “active” (I use this word very loosely) is watch television and go to the casino in Hobbs. It still astounds me that they have no hobbies. Did they ever? My father used to do handiwork and did a few additions to the house when I was a child. Since it wasn’t a frequently recurring event, however, I wouldn’t call it a hobby. They used to play cards, dominoes and other similar games. I used to play with them, in fact, but those pursuits are far in the past. Was Noka similar? Did she leave her “hobbies” behind? Of course, playing cards, dominoes and other similar games requires other people. Noka’s son and daughter fled Seminole long ago. I don’t particularly blame them. That begs the question - why didn’t Noka follow one or the other to a place that didn’t isolate her from all stimuli and humanity at large? Was Noka like my father? My father insisted on moving back to Seminole because he grew up there. Nostalgia trumped (pun intended) all other concerns. At this point, anyone he knew from childhood and adolescence either no longer lives in Seminole or converted from a dynamic state into corpse-state long ago. Though I feel he has enough presence of mind to not go the route Noka did, I foresee a future of suffering - suffering from the simple lack of things to do.

It baffles me how people cannot have hobbies. And by hobby I mean something that is actively creative. I don’t mean mindlessly watching television endlessly to massage the frontal lobes into eloquent smoothness. Sure - watching a film or a series can be somewhat creative if said film or series is intellectually stimulating and one discusses its ideas afterwards. I’m all for it, but naturally, the pursuit requires other people unless one is writing evaluative essays on said films and series. I’m also all for that. The point is to keep the mind alive and not to go the Noka route. I realise there are many causes for depression, but I’m positing that one of the most frequent in pueblo culture once one runs out of people with whom to gossip is sheer lack of stimuli. One has to create their own stimuli. Paint, play music, do math, program in Lua, cook, cultivate a garden, genetically alter goats, or build an interdimensional portal. Elevate the present. It keeps that transition from a dynamic state into corpse-state at bay.

Since November is, as they say in the old lands, just around the leering hulk of the mutant termite mound, I’ve begin to prepare initial ideas of tracks for the so-called Noisevember. Noise! Everyone likes noise. Noise is the ever present fluid that allows us to swim through life. Those who take time to sculpt it to be their own are exquisite or damned. One of the two or something lurking within the infinite in-between. Actually, one idea, currently titled Mollusk Pantheon is mostly done. It blossomed on its own from a noisy beat into a jazz infused masterpiece or dull, plodding funérarium anthem. One of the two or something lurking within the infinite in-between.

My initial idea was to simply create beats using Plugh (which the newest iteration of my modular synth was named), and numerous ones, at that, and once reaching some arbitrary threshold, begin filling in whatever came to mind within each beat with sculpted noise. As is usual, plans evolve. Alas, the universe and the mind are not static, but instead seething pits of chaos. One of the two or something lurking within the infinite in-between. How I detest those who have a fixed notion from the outset of how a musical composition, an abstract or impressionist painting or a piece of software should be in its final form. These are the conservatives of the day who will be hung by their own entrails from the sky-groping branches of Pagan Park’s skeletal trees! These are the conservatives of the day who will be hung by their own entrails from every branch that poises itself to caress the heavens on every skeletal tree in every park in this infinity of quantum universes and many others to come! When evolution of an art work (or a piece of software - don’t for get the software! And one could even call software art in some sense) is denied during the process of its making, the forces of inertia are truly winning and the rest of us tossed onto the vertedero to rot eternally. One of the two or something lurking within the infinite in-between.

In any case, once reaching some arbitrary threshold of beats chiselled out upon stone tablets or digitally captured by Tahr, but not something lurking within the infinite in-between, my plan (now evolved) was to begin filling in each with sculpted noise. It is Noisevember, after all. Then I thought of Christian, that poor schlep that has no initiative of his own. He simply drives a tractor in circles for five hours every day and then drinks himself into a stupor, falls down any one of a number of cracked stone steps in his vicinity, and dies a pauper’s death in a muddied ditch. I thought giving him a task might shake up his monotonous daily routine. As he is also a beat maker in the dark recesses of his lacerated soul, and as he has often expressed to me a desire he’s had since early childhood in the late fourteenth century to become a rapper, I tasked him to do beat boxing along the course of the noisy emanations from Plugh. He already has a couple to contemplate. Good for him! He’s evolving!

Now it’s time for me to create another, as it is banging itself upon the inner wall of my cranium aching to be released.

So here I sit once again atop the bed, propped up like a mannequin and typing into myx-nulu, the trusty tablet with a cheap, bluetooth keyboard. Hey - it’s part of the morning routine, so I am certainly not complaining. I swigged the remains of yesterday’s Earl Grey with a dash of leche semi-desnatada. In a previous life, I always had a problem with the word desnatada. I saw it as something altogether different, such as desinatana or something even stranger. I believe this springs from an acute dyslexia that I have. I’ve rarely addressed this dyslexia though it’s plagued me throughout my life. Firstly, it interfered with English spelling as I was growing from a bud on the side of a spine of a desert shrub. That feature has carried over slightly into Spanish, as one can see, though the flaw is easier to catch since Spanish, like Czech (another of my linguistic adventures, as anyone who has lived my previous lives with me’d know), is a (mostly) phonetically spelled language. From time to time I still have to look up certain words in English just to be sure, even though I am mostly correct in my first “guess” at spelling.

From where does this dyslexia come? What is its source? I assume I have a very slight brain damage from being budding on the side of a spine of a desert shrub that could have been otherwise known as an eighteen year old party girl. So when I eventually became a conventional “human” infant, some water remained on the brain. I’ve noticed a possibly connected problem having to do with memorization of vocabulary in foreign languages. This may just be a normal facet of language learning, but if I don’t utilize a certain word multiple times daily in different contexts upon discovery, it is quickly forgotten and the process must be begun anew. However, if I am in constant language learning mode (which is a requirement for me for any language that is not my native tongue), the fault softens and I am allowed more and more of a delay between each contextual usage of new vocabulary without the forgetting.

Mathematical and programmatic concepts are also affected by the overly wet portion of my cerebral processing unit. The temporal distance between contextual usage of each concept can be much larger than in the case of natural language, but the decay will inevitably come with disuse. Therefore, I have to keep my programming chops fresh, honeybuničko. I advise you to do the same, honeybuničko. You will need them on your journey from this grey earth to the netherworld, honeybuničko. In said netherworld, you’ll be given a tablet much like the one on which I type now, honeybuničko. At its base will be an unattached, cheap, bluetooth keyboard, honeybuničko. You will type as you are engulfed in the pale yellow goop that swells endlessly from the netherworld seas, both polluting and cleansing each of the netherworld inhabitants, honeybuničko. You are now one of these inhabitants, honeybuničko.

The pale yellow goop that makes up what you see in your mind as the sea, undulates to the horizon in all directions. Your islet is small, but you feel it is comfortable enough for the time that has been allotted to you in the netherworld. You have no shelter, per se, but there is really nothing you need shelter from. In fact, the only real irritation is the pale yellow goop that makes up what you see in your mind as the sea. It mostly undulates calmly (and to the horizon in every direction), but from time to time, and at intervals that seem to have no predictable frequency, it swells to cover your islet. You are drenched. Well, drenched is probably not the correct word, since the pale yellow goop that makes up what you see in your mind as the sea is more paste than true liquid. It has the consistency of mercury yet not the heaviness. Were you standing on your bowed legs, you’d be covered to your filthy thorax. The feeling is one of suffocation, and of a mildly pleasant suffocation, at that. Thus, the rise and fall of the pale yellow goop that makes up what you see in your mind as the sea is a phenomenon that leaves you with mixed feelings.

You sit at your escritorio. You type these last few words, which appear on the screen of your tablet with its detached, cheap, bluetooth keyboard. You think about a cup of tea, and it appears. You sip it. The netherworld isn’t so bad after all, eh? Fuck um.

Living by one’s principles is similar going through life interacting with a universe of human life forms that are figments of one’s own mind. It is a form of solipsism. Instead of seeing one’s brother or step-mother or next-door neighbour as an incrementally changing, dynamic human life form, in place of that realism, one interacts with what I call an eidolon. An eidolon is a construct formed by these aforementioned principles. Thus, one’s principles, or I could say traditional family values or traditional neighbourly values, state that a brother has this particular template. A step-mother has this sort of template. A next-door neighbour has this one. The templates are the scaffolding of the eidolons. They are filled in by various cues from one’s upbringing, one’s peers and one’s experience with media, be it social media, television or even … literature.

No-one is completely immune to creating eidolons. I’ve read many a philosopher, storyteller or goat-flock-keeper (all the same, all the same) scribe similar musings using other words for eidolon. All dynamic human life forms have a foundation of principles. And they should have. It’s not a black and white affair, catholic-boy. But like everything so-called fixed in the universe, principles arising from anything given a label beginning with traditional … set off a worrisome alarm in my mind. I question them. Importantly, when does interacting with said eilodons instead of interacting with the monsters one’s brother, step-mother or next-door neighbour have become cross the border into psychological self-harm?

I posit something obvious to me after living among myriad toxic people (and from time to time, I, myself, have been included in that set, catholic-boy): Not only update one’s perception of the humans in one’s alrededores, and in an incremental and perpetual manner, but also not just be an observer of the familial, friendly and neighborly beings in one’s midst. A common fallback is to see the hideous monstrosities the “loved-ones” are growing into, but still interact with eidolons constructed in the distant past. Interact with the eidolons and complain to other eidolons about the abhorrent denizens of one’s alrededores! That’s the catholic-boy way! Yes!

I’d rather smash the simple, Platonic lines of templates and principles and eidolons and consider where the border of psychological self-harm is. Monstrosities will be found, and as much as it contradicts traditional blah blah values, eschew interaction with them. I have and I shall continue to do so. I advise all catholic-boys to do the same.

The current Project Euler is going to force me to create a program that does manual division and that is quite ok, but it’s getting late and yes that’s an excuse, but fuck um. I shall write some hovno and then get on with my day, saving the manual division for tomorrow morning. Hopefully, my sodden brain will muse over it throughout the current day and my sprightly morning mood will conquer it’s flimsy heights with ease. But yes - tomorrow.

I’ve begun the second revision of Pony Ride. It gurgles and eructs as if it were galloping through the scented air of my studio. An issue I’m encountering, which is an issue entirely in my mind, is that of timbre variation. Rock bands have it easy. The basic timbres are established and beyond a bit of distortion or flange on the guitars and bass, they can concentrate on harmonic and melodic ideas.

Big bands are slightly more complex. Sure, the timbres are fixed, to a great extent, but their use and placement are more involved.

Orchestras are another step up. This much talked about concept of orchestration is in full play. All it means is having certain parts expressed in certain timbres and controlling the dynamics as those timbres express the parts. The woodwind timbre (or cluster of timbres) does this at this time whilst the strings timbre (or cluster of timbres) does something else on a potentially different volume curve.

Now synthesizers enter the arena. Instead of having a small, fixed array of timbres, suddenly the palette is overflowing with colours. Instead of just arranging (or, ahem, orchestrating) a jumble of known timbres into a musical mosaic, one can spend several epochs just coming up with the timbres one wants to use in the first place.

Usually, sound designers simplify this task by simulating (to an extent) instruments that exist. Narrowing the range of possibilities to something akin to a trumpet cuts the work of multitudinous epochs down to perhaps a few days. I’m not complaining. Distilling an infinite spectrum into a few familiar bands of light is sensible. It rescues several multitudes of epochs from potential fiddling. And especially, it creates an anchor, a sense of familiarity, when the remainder of timbres floating round it may not be easily aligned with traditional orchestral instruments.

I do something similar, though my anchors are not traditional orchestral instruments. I play off of sounds I discover by wild noodlings with oscillators, filters and wave folders. I catalogue timbres that flash out of these experiments in my mind and take them as starting points to create timbres for melodic, textural and harmonic structures. In this way, I hope my music has little footing in traditional instrumentation when it comes to synth tones. The truth is, though, that of course it does because 1. I am highly influenced, implicitly or explicitly, by a good deal of synth oriented music, and 2. The nature of the equipment I use forces (to an extent) semi-familiar timbres. In any block of unchiseled granite, the attempt to create an atmosphere that has little footing in traditional instrumentation is there, and in force.

So, when it comes to Pony Ride, which easily could be the most straightforward piece on the new album because of its form, I must choose timbres (not to mention accompaniments) that take it out of any grounded context. The pony, as it were, has to lurch at an angle into the void instead of galloping mundanely along its sendero.

It’s Kindle’s birthday! Hooray! Why do I remember this? Well, my carefully worn metal file of a human, I remember this because it’s the day before I pulled my foetal self out from the tipped-over test tube. What is Kindle doing during these tilted days? I’d imagine that Kindle is busy being happy ensconced within a family. Oouh, baby! Congratulations, Kindle! You are part of the mainstream. You made it. Yes! We all want to be like you. As that old song goes:

We wanna be just like you

We wanna be just like you

We wanna be just like you

We wanna be

JUST LIKE YOU

And it’s true. That is - it is true in my case, anyhow. I want to be a happy, middle aged woman living in Louisiana surrounded by an infinite bustle of in-laws. That, my carefully worn metal file of a friend, is the good life. Don’t you ever forget it or I’ll toss you directly into yonder landfill where the rest of the erstwhile useful tools lie eternally in repose. Damn peasant.

I gulp down tepid coffee. Yum.

I’ve been considering the contrast between a perception I’ve seen myself stumbling into time and again regarding the so-called popularity of music. In specific, I’m referring to my own music and to the music of those whom I’ve met via Mastodon (sonomu.club and its extended bustle of in-laws). When I consider music that I listen to - take the new Bob Drake album, for example - I don’t consider its public appeal at all. The milling masses and their dubious “taste” have nothing to do with where I’m at listening-wise. For decades, I’ve followed a few forums and advices of people with vaguely similar taste to find musicks that appeal to me - that toot my muffin, as they say in the old countries - and in this manner, for the most part, chosen my own sendero. It’s pleasant when I do find someone else who appreciates said musicks. We can compare notes. We can even listen together. And though this phenomenon did happen more often in the past and gladdened me, imbibing music has always been a deeply personal experience. I mostly take it for granted that what I listen to will not appeal to the people who normally cluster around me. I laughingly imagine actual humans clustering around me. Ha!

Now - making music for me comes down to this simple axiom: I want to compose something that I would like to listen to. Given the information in the previous paragraph, the immediate conclusion is that the music that I compose is not going to be compatible with the “tastes” of the masses of humans and homunculi seething through the alleyways. And why should I think otherwise? I shouldn’t. But I’ve seen my perception change regarding what I create. Some mental module that normally lounges behind time mottled tapestries emerges and seeks a raw validation for the hovno that streamed from my hara. This module emerges and attempts to take control. And rationally, again given what I typed in the previous paragraph, it makes no sense.

I’ll continue to share my music, por supuesto, but Herr Module of “Validation” can remain behind its time mottled tapestry. Expectations are mostly evil. I’ve found the best perception is to regard the appeal my music has to others as a gentle bonus. Oh - I’m appreciative, for sure, but falling into the trap of it being an objective is something I can never do. As I wrote - I’ve never listened to music because it pandered to a greater swath of humanity. Music consumption is deeply personal. Any twisted and differing feelings I might have about my own output are simply incorrect.

In my “relearning python” sendero, I just performed a Project Euler calculation involving the Fibonacci Sequence. No big deal, vole! Everyone knows how to create a Fibonacci sequence, but the whole episode, as easy as it turned out to be, brought me back to sitting on that futon-type couch in Tuzla toying with the music-making live-coding apparatus that used to (and may still) exist in Clojure. Does it? Ah, yes. It is called overtone, which is a suitable name, and upon a quick search I found it is closely related to Emacs. During the epoch of my life when I sat in on that futon-type couch in Tuzla, I was still an Emacs user. A few years later, however, I migrated to Vim and more recently to Neovim. I don’t know if overtone is also suitable for use in Vim / Neovim, but after my nightmarish experiences with Supercollider and Neovim, I have no patience to try it.

No big deal, vole! I was writing about the Fibonacci Sequence, which I may add (pun intended) is a very pleasant sequence. And if my recollection is precise (and it rarely is), I was attempting to create music using overtone and the Fibonacci Sequence. I was highly unsuccessful, though I believe some ragged result ended up on something Tony and improvised for one of those early ’10s Sir Alfred IV albums that I should revisit at some point. They occupied a particular sound world that I’d dub unique. Funny thing is that I had an acoustic / electric guitar with me during my months in Tuzla that I never once picked up to play. It stayed in Tuzla. The woman (whose name I forget) who owned the flat in which I stayed is possibly still in possession of it if Miki didn’t get it from her, which he may have, though nothing is really certain when it comes to Miki, so I cannot know for sure. I could ask him, I suppose, but what would be the point, really? It’s best to imagine the acoustic / electric guitar (to which I never gave a name that I recall) exists in a type of limbo where other partially-remembered instruments live. The acute fluctuations in this specific limbo subtly vibrate their strings, pass gentle breath through their conduits and bush lightly on their stretched skins. A perpetual ambience sounds eternally in this specific limbo. It’d possibly be a fine place to retire after my immortality expires.

My conversation with Jayrope yesterday piqued my interest once more in envelope followers and since I just received one less than a week ago, the fair Sewastopol II by Xaoc, I toyed for a little while with it, running my guitar through it and my pedalboard simultaneously, to create triggers or gates depending on what fingered and / or picked. It worked to an extent. I need to sit with the module and figure out exactly how to set the envelope follower section correctly and at what point in my pedal chain to feed my signal into it. The module also has a comparator section that was also triggered as I played. I should take my own advice and read the manual! Yes! No big deal, vole! Just read the manual. My initial ideas are to trigger percussions along with melodies on Uruqi and also to harmonize with Scales. That’d be random harmonization because the module of course cannot discern any particular pitch I play, but I can contort Scales to restrict itself to certain notes in certain octaves. Or so I think I can at the time of this writing.

Herr Sewastopol II could also easily create envelopes from environmental recordings. Jayrope did something of the sort with a recent thurk he posted on Mastodon. I imagine the “generated” compositions Scales and Noise Plethora can come up with. Since I have until my immortality expires and I pass into the aforementioned limbo in which sounds a perpetual and possibly lovely ambience, all of these experiments will be soon accomplished and with vigor and vehemence, or something along those threads.

And on that same thread of thought, I come to sound worlds and how they differ from the actual music within them. Especially after listening to Bob Drake’s new album a few times through, I see how the album as a whole was probably initially conceived to exist in a particular sound world. The sonic characteristic of each piece is uniform in this manner. It is as if they all live in their own limbo where the acoustic quality of the space is unique. Each of Herr Drake’s albums occupy a certain sound world, I have noticed over the epochs of his output. It’d be interesting to know whether he conceives of the sonic space before or during the composition of the pieces that eventually exist within it. I guess I could ask him.

The music of Flavigula could be said to exist in an evolving sound world. I am not yet the master of the craft of mixing / mastering / sonic spaces, but am slowly getting there. Since I have until the expiration of my immortality, the specific ideas of sound worlds for Flavigula will change as epochs pass along with my experience. I’ve, to this point in the present epoch, been more concerned with harmonic space than the textural or sonic space, but I will take it into more consideration whist working on the electronic album, which may have the defining sound of a certain two reverbs, subtly but continuously applied. The balance between thwiddling with the timbre of “instruments” and attention to composition is essential.