Chasing Dreams

I just purchased a pair of bones at a music shop just outside of the public market down town Seattle. Inspiration being the following:

"The bones are a musical instrument (more specifically, a folk instrument) which, at the simplest, consists of a pair of animal bones, or pieces of wood or a similar material. Sections of large rib bones and lower leg bones are the most commonly used true bones, although wooden sticks shaped like the earlier true bones are now more often used." -from Wikipedia

The bones I got are said to be from a cow, although there was no labeling except for price, so I have actually no idea, lets just hope they aren't human. The store clerk was able to play the bones, he told me that it took about 3 weeks of messing around with them before he was able to really get the hang of it. I would post about the store but they seem to be anti-internet as I can not find them listed anywhere.

Looks like a really boring place to work

I don't know about you guys, but this place looks really lame. I'm so glad I don't live in NYC and work in a tremendous warehouse wailing on a guitar all day long. LAME.

Amoeba

Amoeba in San Francisco... Yes!

This is the best record store I have ever been to. They had everything I could have wanted (almost). I went to just check the place out and I left 70 dollars poorer; problem is I am traveling with just a backpack so I am going to have to ship the cds back home. I knew this but I just couldn't help myself.


I picked up:
Anni Rossi - Afton: She is from Minnesota or at least went to school there. I found her on myspace about 2 years ago and played some of her stuff on The Fjords of Meniscus. Turns out my friend went to highschool with her. The record is released on 4AD which is surprising, I thought it was going to be on a much smaller label.

Negativland - Escape From Noise: I had to get this because of being here in the bay area. Negativland was formed here and are responsible for one of my favorite radio shows, Over The Edge on KPFA in Berkley. So this was a no brainier, it was on sale and circa 1987.

Various - Victrola Favorites: Artifacts from Bygone Days: I think they had everything from the dust to digital record label which I really enjoy. I picked this up based on reading two reviews from the stores free review catalog (which is awesome by the way). What really excited me was the packaging, it comes in a cloth bound book, with the cds embedded in the two cover flaps front and back. Audio interview about the recordings here.

Antony and the Johnsons - This Crying Light: Sorry matt, I reached right past the Animal Collective disc to get this one, the Ep, Another World was good, and I planned on picking this up anyways. On a side note this was released on the same day that Obama was inaugurated.

KöHN - Koen: I purchased this because it was released on the k(raa k)^3 label; one of my favorite artist ES of Fonal records in Finland sometimes releases on the k(raa k)^3, so while browsing the used experimental section I decided to give KöHN a try.

Vetiver - Thing Of The Past: I had read some where that this was good, so for 4.99 it's worth trying. I really enjoy their older track Amour Fou with Devendra, but their "To Find Me Gone" album was a disappointment. They are also from the bay area.

Here is a shot to give you some idea of the magnitude of this store. I the back there is Curumin With Lateef The Truthspeaker & Gift Of Gab Of Quannum Projects (!) playing on stage while other people and myself browse about the store and the soundboard is in the folk/bluegrass section.

Listen

Animal Collective has already set the bar unreasonably high for 2009 with Merriweather Post Pavillion. Listen to it here in full (streaming), then go out and buy it.

Euclidean Rhythm

I was watching a video from 25c3, a hacker convention in Berlin, and one of the speakers was talking about custom MIDI controllers which is interesting in itself but then he mentioned "Euclidean Rhythms"

Yea, my thoughts to, so I found the paper he was talking about it's here.

Here is the abstract from the paper:
"The Euclidean algorithm (which comes down to us from Euclid’s Elements) computes the greatest common divisor of two given integers. It is shown here that the structure of the Euclidean algorithm may be used to automatically generate, very efficiently, a large family of rhythms used as timelines (rhythmic ostinatos), in traditional world music. These rhythms, here dubbed Euclidean rhythms, have the property that their onset patterns are distributed as evenly as possible in a mathematically precise sense, and optimal manner. Euclidean rhythms are closely related to the family of Aksak rhythms studied by ethnomusicologists, and occur in a wide variety of other disciplines as well. For example they characterize algorithms for drawing digital straight lines in computer graphics, as well as algorithms for calculating leap years in calendar design. Euclidean rhythms also find application in nuclear physics accelerators and in computer science, and are closely related to several families of words and sequences of interest in the study of the combinatorics of words, such as mechanical words, Sturmian words, two-distance sequences, and Euclidean strings, to which the Euclidean rhythms are compared."

Wessen who was giving the speech has a blog post about it here, listening examples included.

and the video from 25c3 is here, Wessen's talk about Euclidean Rhythm starts about half way through.

MS Paint

I often find that MS paint is the only option around when I am out on shared computers, and I have always enjoyed the simplicity of it, and learning its little tricks. Here is a list some of them I knew most of them I did not.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/tutorial/mspaint

Hirsute

Hirsute from A.J. Bond on Vimeo.