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.

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.

This is a bit of a departure from my usual no-effects approach. This one uses the microtonal just-intonation-fretted Tele Deluxe through the Reuss Effects Understate and Moyo passive volume pedal to take off the string attack. From there, the signal goes into a patch I've been working with in Max/MSP. The patch uses some tone-shaping (AudioThing Reels) and eight delays set to different long values, usually over 20 seconds and less than a minute. I'll assign each progressive note to a different delay, so the next repetition will have them appearing in a different order. Each delay has a send to a convolution reverb, here using an impulse from the Dan Harpole cistern.

The title comes from minor planet 582 Olympia

I'd done some rhythmic composition with guitar and bass, and...it didn't seem that interesting. So Sunday evening I did a few improvisations with home-built Res-O-Glas guitar, Moyo passive volume, and my eight-delay Max/MSP patch with Hainbach's Wires (for grit and warble) and convolution reverb. I recorded that to the drive, and brought it into Ableton for fixing levels a bit.

Title this week refers to NGC 90, a spiral galaxy interacting with NGC 93 to form the galaxy pair Arp 65.

A long track. This past week included a show on guitar, through a new Max/MSP patch. The signal chain is a Waves Factory Cassette VST, four parallel tapin/tapout pairs with variable lengths and regeneration, and convolution reverb. Delays and reverb also had variable bleed back to the input, and I set up message objects with fixed delay amounts so that I could snap the delay suddenly to new values. It's a work in progress, but I'm into the direction in which this is going. (UI work is important here; I'm using the Mira app to give more immediate access to the controls.)

Still, kind of a cool wintery vibe here.

Guitar (the Res-O-Glas) is going through a MOYO passive volume pedal and into the Focusrite. I pseudo-mastered this in Live with the Full-Chain Master effects rack.

Title from the unexpected volatility of this week's element, Lawrencium.

Very busy week including travel to the spatial audio workshop at RPI, so this is a quick little improv with Max/MSP. [cycle~] into the pitch/delay/pan/degrade network, a bit of convolution reverb, and Full-Chain Master in Live.

Title from the use of this week's element thallium in photoresistors.

Very busy week, including prep for a Max/MSP show with mic feedback, so this week's submission is one of the test runs through the Max/MSP patch, with guitar. Kinda ambling and chaotic.

.aiff file captured to the drive, then brought into Ableton for level correcting, a touch of convolution reverb, and Full-Chain Master. And there we have it.

Title from the discovery of liquid mercury under this temple in Teotihuacan

I spent the weekend at Cycling74's Expo, which is devoted to things we can do with Max/MSP, so this week's track is in Max. I used the input shifter patch I've been using for a while, with a filtered square wave as source material, and then dropped the recorded result by an octave. There's a convolution reverb send, and Full-Chain Master on the output.

Title from the use of Thulium in lasers. (A lot of these elements are getting tricky to differentiate.)

Busy week, so here's some Ableton Electric into two convolution reverbs plus chained delay, and several tracks of Moog guitar through the Reuss RF-01 Repeater Fuzz and Vox Wah.

Title from the lustrous quality of niobium, element 41.

Some percussion and electric piano around a sine-wave-modulator-generated sample.