Another short piece with three tracks of PureSalem Mendiola. I wasn't sure where this was going to go, but it ended up using chords compatible with last week's piece. Once I'd reached the theme that emerges around 0:40, I knew this one was going to work; it was just a matter of balancing the other parts. Clean guitar, no effects, but some convolution reverb send.

The title comes from the river Nura in Kazakhstan, which is 608 miles long.

Out of an even-busier-than-usual weekend (attending two plays and two family reunion events), I shook loose a little time to get a composition together. Given the compressed time frame, the fingerpicking three-track/no-effects approach seemed to be the most manageable. This one's PureSalem Mendiola in standard tuning, with the usual convolution reverb send, and compression/eq on the mix.

The title comes from a mountain near PA-607.

An even busier weekend this time, though I did commit to doing an hour-long performance Saturday morning as part of the GSG's Sturgeon Moon (raid) Train on Twitch. For events like this, performers sign up and claim one or more slots for a cascade of performances that lasts 24 hours or more. A few days after the announcement, I saw there were only a few available times left, including the last one on Saturday morning. So Saturday morning it would be!

The signal chain here is pedal steel guitar in E9 tuning, played with eBow and ebony slide, into a Reuss Effects RF-01 Repeater Fuzz, Vox Wah, Hungry Robot Wardenclyffe Deluxe, and Moyo volume pedal, into an eight-delay Max/MSP patch I've been playing with the last several years. The patch is mainly eight delay lines, though also features a VST for tone-shaping (here AudioThing Reels), FFT pitch shift, a tremolo on the input, and a convolution reverb.

The title this week is chosen for a river in Ontario, crossed by Highway 606, and not far from some rivers and streams known for sturgeon.

A departure from the just-a-bit-of-reverb approach. Having avoided obvious effects for a while, why not some echo? And instead of just three tracks, why not four? Of the four tracks, two of them have some sends to Ableton's Echo plugin, while the other half...don't. This one came together over three sessions: late Friday, late Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. Back on PureSalem Mendiola, one track for bridge pickup (with echo), one for neck (no echo), and two for both pickups (one of each).

The result...seems surprisingly hopeful, despite how the world is going. There's my usual practice of leaving some breathing space at the end of phrases, and a few phrases seem a touch familiar--maybe I'm ripping myself off a bit. Notably, some solo sections stretch out and go for the emotional expression, which feels less like an indulgence than it used to. (Some harmonies...seem a bit dissonant in places due to two scales in play, but...you know what, it seems right.)

The title comes from a little hamlet at the end of England's A605, though this does feel like the beginning of an outward expansion.

In keeping the weekly composition commitment, sometimes the composition and recording have to bend to fit the rest of life. This one started with a quick session late Friday, another late Saturday, and a few snippets recorded Sunday afternoon.

The composition process is essentially similar to what I'd been doing: record something, respond to it in two other channels, mute two, record two others, mute the first, record a third, etc. This tends to maintain an identity of an idea, and a piece can kind of flow from it. For this one, I let myself stretch out in a couple sections, and let a melodic thought continue for a while.

Lately I've been getting the sense that the Res-O-Glas guitar I'd built ten years ago wanted to speak more. Its neck is very comfortable, and (since I wired in a Varitone for the tone capacitor), there's a wide range of bassy tonal options. Sometimes, though, these can appear muffled, and a few parts could have used less rolloff.

No inline effects, but there are sends to a convolution reverb. (I'm getting the feeling to play with delays again, so next week might be a little more shoegazy.) And the multiband compression/eq on the stereo.

The title comes from British Columbia's Sea-to-Sky Corridor, in area code 604.

After a week concentrating on Max (studies for a performance), it's back to the guitar--in this case, one I'd built ten years ago, a Res-O-Glas Belmont body with an Eastwood neck and Lace Alumitone pickups. Slow fingerpicking, and a lazy bittersweet summer vibe.

There's nothing particularly special about the production--the usual convolution reverb sends, no inline boxes, concentrating on the fingers-on-guitar...but I can see that I need to get more practice in with this neck. (The width is great for fingerpicking.)

The title comes from the highest peak of the Huron mountains, which has a height of 603m.

This is a study for a performance I'll be doing in a few hours, at the 2025 PRFBBQ. This is all Max/MSP, using the Jaap-Vink-inspired feedback patch I've been working on for a while. To the Jaap Vink topology, I've added another ring modulator (on the output), another delay, high- and low-pass filters, two pitch shifters (one inline, one on output), convolution reverb, and yet another delay on the output. I've also made this into four channels, so it can be an arrangement of feedback. That's a lot of controls. Let's see how it goes.

This one doesn't use all of those filtering options, but it's both one of the shorter and more engaging of the studies.

The title comes from the IBM 602 Calculating Punch.

This one came together quickly, which tends to happen when the initial idea(s) are strong, they pull the different sections together easily. Without a strong initial idea, the music is more nebulous; it could be shaped in a number of ways, and finding the best alternative requires a lot of fiddling. This one, happily, fell into place, beginning with the first motif.

Three tracks of Univox hollowbody in Bf F C tuning, straight into the UA Volt. The usual convolution reverb send appears, as well as multiband compression/eq.

The title comes from a road that intersects PA-601.

This is the 600th weekly piece since I started keeping the commitment of creating a new piece of music each week. Since then (in the last five years), I mostly started adding a live performance and an album-length release each week as well.

Is there a point to all this activity? There are several: if I call myself a musician, am I making music? Well, yes. Before starting this process, sometimes there wasn't. I waited for inspiration to move me, which...more often than not, did not happen. Instead, doing [i]something[/i] every week keeps that part of my mind at least a little active, and keeps my connection to music open.

Over time, I've changed the active genres, not so much out of "growth" as out of following where the music leads. There've been a lot of three-guitar pieces in the last few years, and this seam may need to go dormant for a bit. But...this way of working does fit very well into a busy life, so this milestone follows that approach, rather than getting something completely new. (Last week was a departure, though.)

This one started with the second motif you hear, which comes from an experiment with a Freddie Green shell chord (here in arpeggio form), which led to some other partial or open chords. I do love sliding barre chords around, though, so those show up here, too. And in a nod to my weekly ambient practice, the eBow makes an appearance toward the end. Otherwise...there's a bit more freedom than some of the recent three guitar pieces, a willingness to let space exist, and some emotional expression as well. And inevitably a couple inaccurate fingerings...but that's part of being human.

Guitar: PureSalem Mendiola, straight into the UA Volt, into Ableton. There's a bit of convolution reverb send from each channel, and multiband compression/eq.

The title comes from minor planet 600 Musa. Thank you for listening!

Not technically a late submission for this year--I'm in before the deadline of midnight Eastern. Why so late? I was out of town to play a show for the solstice, and a tight travel schedule meant I couldn't finalize the recording until late Sunday night.

The sound source here is a Max/MSP patch I've been developing based on the feedback patch Jaap Vink developed at the Institute of Sonology in the 1970s. This Max patch is four channels of ring modulator > delay > ring mod > delay > level setter > low-pass filter > high-pass filter > reverb algorithm > graphic EQ (global) > back to the input ring modulator. In this case, there's no explicit input to the feedback loop, apart from clicks when values are set.

The sound and structure are a performance simply from changing the values of all these settings once the patch starts feeding back. It's a work in progress, but it's promising.

The title comes from the fact that 599 (the number of this weekly piece) is a twin prime with 601.

While the weekend was busy, I managed to make time to put together this intuitively structured piece. Initially I recorded a fingerpicked pattern that doesn't appear in the final piece, but which gave shape to it, as it was in 3/4. I'd recorded several other parts in response to it, some of which worked better than others. Some of the mid-stream rejects worked well together, and got pulled back into the final piece. And some parts ended up in 4/4, some of them together, and some against 3/4. Some transitions made more sense if they were a beat or a fraction of a beat shorter, or longer...so we have sections that start a little before or after I ordinarily would have had them.

Three tracks of no-effect PureSalem Mendiola, plus the convolution reverb send and stereo-mix compression/eq.

The title comes from Long Strand, off of Ireland's regional route 598.

This one's back in the three-track-of-guitar territory, though my tracking/composition process was a little different. For most of these, I'll record a motif, respond to it with two other motives. I'll mute two of them and then record two more in response to one of them, then mute that previous one and respond to the just-recorded others, repeating the process until I have as much material as I want, or want to create something different as a contrasting section.

For this one, I recorded a motif, responded to it in two other tracks, and then moved on to a new motif, without playing against the previous motives. The result...maybe had a little more variation and required a little more care in editing sections together. One interesting side effect was a key change between two motives and the other four.

This one's three tracks of PureSalem Mendiola, recorded straight to the UA Volt-1. There's a bit of convolution reverb send from each track, and compression/eq on the stereo mix.

The title comes from minor planet 597 Bandusia.

I'd started this week's piece late--Saturday night, recording some microtonal just intonation guitar figures...that weren't quite suggesting other sections, and which didn't fit together well.

Simultaneously, I'd been working on redeveloping a Max/MSP patch based on Jaap Vink's feedback patch at the Institute of Sonology. I'd been working on adding blend controls for modulation, some additional filtering, and a separate tremolo, remaking the UI, and...adding live audio input as a way of getting the feedback started. So obviously I should try the guitar as a feedback trigger.

So this is really a study toward some future work. Out of eight channels, I'd hooked up four, though only two work. We hear some guitar (microtonal just intonation Tele Deluxe) playing a few notes into one channel, and then into another. Everything else in this piece is the sound of those original few notes going through the patch, over and over, getting gradually degraded by inline reverb, some ring modulation, some auto-limiting, and a bit of eq.

The result...is interesting. I'll have some additional work to do to make this really playable, but it's a promising direction.

The title comes from Gurranes Stone Row, which is just off the Irish regional road R596.

Shaking off some of the restrictions I've had on myself, this one's more spacious, and makes use of long-reverb sustains into the quiet sections. I'd structured this one much more intuitively than other recent tracks, recording parts with long rests, not always syncing up the same way when they came around again. There's a kind of dream-logic to this, or maybe the feeling of allowing a warm summer day to pass by slowly, without obligations.

This is mostly three (and in a couple places four) parts for $60 Univox Coily hollowbody in Bb F C tuning. No inline effects, but two reverb sends on each channel: one theater-sized, and one with the Dan Harpole cistern.

The title comes from the Dún na Séad Castle at the western end the R595 road.

I've been getting the sense of changing things up a bit, and this piece is both a different guitar ($35 baglama-tuned Heit Deluxe) and the re-emergence of electric bass guitar. The guitar is tuned GgDDAa, so the outer courses are a fundamental + octave string, with the inner course at unison.

As often happens when I have an abbreviated time for tracking (short sessions Friday and Saturday nights), I end up with a lengthier editing session on Sunday. Still, it kind of hangs together. The notion of adding bass came to me Saturday after the first tracking of just guitar. With the octave courses and unison course, this guitar sounds fairly thick, and takes up a lot of the sonic spectrum in its range...but that leaves available frequencies in the bass range.

No inline effects, but there's a convolution reverb send from each track, and compression/eq on the stereo mix.

The title comes from minor planet 594 Mireille.

My working methods on this track have been consistent with the last few years--I like the immediacy of plugging in, the tonal variety of fingers on strings, and the ability to concentrate on melody, harmony, and rhythm. That said, I'm looking for opportunities to vary my playing here.

Given my limited time this week, there's not too much of a change...but there's more elasticity in a few sections, as I went with more intuitive timing, rather than click-driven timing. There are a few of these intuitively timed sections, and the piece is a full beat shorter than it would have been if I'd followed the click. This week's track required three short sessions: late Friday night, and two Saturday. Editing this one Sunday turned out to require more effort to make these intuitive pauses work.

This one's a bit late for the Weekly Beats UTC 0:00 cutoff, but at Streak Club, I'm treating 0:00 Eastern as the cutoff.

While I tracked a few bits with the Wardenclyffe, going for the effect of switching it in and out for emphasis...those sections became more of a distraction from the flow, so I took them out. As a result, there are no inline effects here, and only a bit of convolution reverb and multiband compression/eq.

The title comes from a little village in the Lake District, which is reached by the A593 road.

This piece started from exploring the Hungry Robot Wardenclyffe Deluxe pedal--a lofi dirty-up-your-sound pedal, which gets easily into noisy realms. It's a bit harder to make it sound pretty, but not impossible. This one stays more to the subtle end of the spectrum. Guitar: PureSalem Mendiola, three tracks. Recording was fairly efficient, but whittling it down into a structure took rather longer.

The Wardenclyffe is the only inline effect, and is just on one track (panned center). Mostly manifesting as a shimmery chorus or light vibrato. There's some convolution reverb send on each of the three tracks, and light multiband compression/eq.

The title comes from Altar near Schull, Ireland, which is on the scenic road 592.

This one goes back to the Univox hollowbody in modified Fahey tuning (Bb F Bb F Bb C). In a busy weekend, I recorded the first theme late Friday night, interrupted by a power outage. Saturday was a show, so I didn't write the rest until this morning. It's kind of a hypnotic wistful state--with everything going on, I've just needed some drifting.

The title comes from the Mizen peninsula, which is traversed in part by the R591.

This one came together in a couple quick tracking sessions with the PureSalem Mendiola. Notably some parts in tracking just seemed to stretch on for a while, as ideas kept appearing. There's a middle section that is a bit more in the direction of the spacious thing I'd been thinking of.

No inline effects, but some convolution reverb send and the usual compression/eq on the stereo out.

The title comes from Newtown, near the A590.

This one was tracked in a few short sessions in and among life responsibilities, back on the just intonation Tele Deluxe. Once again, I went in thinking I'd do something more sparse, but ended up filling in the spaces. As it came out, there are waves of more-busy and less-busy, moving between assured and wistful. Some of the measures flowed more naturally when truncated by a beat, or allowing the next measure to start earlier.

There's the usual signal chain: no hardware effects, just guitar into UA Volt with the convolution reverb send on each of three channels. There's also the usual stereo compression/eq.

The title comes from the town of Morecambe, where the A589 road leads to the shore.