deckscape 2 & dinner with Cliff

The storms passing through WI making for some interesting sky views from the deck this week.

































Hannah and her pop Cliff and I went out for a very tasty Chinese dinner last night before he flies off today for 3 weeks in Indonesia. We had a great meal and nice chat. After dropping her dad back at the family home, we took a walk around the hood admiring the gardens and unique homes and occasional sky views.






































Capped off the evening with snuggling, a dvd and more snuggling. Nice day!

view:
The Wild Blue Yonder (Herzog)

deckscape

listen:
Steve Tibbets - Natural Causes

view:
Dexter - Season 2
Shutter Island

Summer arrives!

Hereabouts it's just a flurry of activity. Changing weather (like hourly), getting out and enjoying nature's gifts a bit, and in general it's go, go, go! Taking care of a neighbor's yard. Housesitting coming up this weekend. Sprucing up the back deck.
Sunday evenings I have the privilege to explore the far reaches of the musical cosmos via playing recordings of artists on WORT, subbing Gregory's RTQE broadcast with the kind help of Alex who can jump in when I need a break. My girlfriend Hannah and I spend pretty much all our mutual free time together, what there is between our wacky schedules. It's really my wacky 'schedule' that screws up our time together. She's the apple of my eye and the beating of my heart. I'm lucky.

Drumming on a regular basis would be nice and it's up to me to make that happen it would seem. Also nice would be something to show for my hours spent at work besides sore muscles and a paycheck amount stuck in limbo. Work is steady at the bar although we're hitting that period where music lovin' folks have lotsa options and being indoors is not quite so attractive. Can't blame them and they'll be back after letting out a collective sigh that the crappy weather is finally over until the fall.

listen:
Alison Krause|Rober Plant - Raising Sand
Adrian Belew Power Trio - e

view:
Dexter (Showtime series) season 1

pics from April

the mulberry tree that used to shade (and shed on) my deck was taken down a few weeks ago :(

what's new?

The arrival of spring with all the special vivifyingness of nature and our midwestern demeanor in general.

And gigs, yes, gigs! Jon offered the news today that he is to secure a date at the coffeehouse and hopefully has also lured db back to these parts it's lookin like. Yeah! Wheels are in motion for a return to the Spark festival in Minneapolis, happening this year in September. Hoo!

The bar is doing about as much business as we can stand, which of course makes for a busy Tom. To offset this and as a way to also spend another (too rare) night with Hannah, I've stopped working the door on Wed. 2 nights of rocking will be fine. Dinners at home with good companionship are being enjoyed, yes!


And there are night's out on the town, not wearing heavy outerwear or hats and gloves.

spring approaches, in fits and starts. off to a good start!

It's been a lovely week, with temps ~20 degrees above average.
We went back to seasonality last night and the official evidence has been removed from the path out. 1st order of the day - back stoop clearing of the sticky 2 or 3 inches of white frozen stuff.
Wishing I wasn't so dragged out (from work). Don't seem to have the gumption to even set up the Powerbook. Dishes done and house tidied, as is my usual Sat routine, even when I'm this worn down. Rejuvenating delight and excellent company are soon to come - dinner date with Hannah after her planned family visit. The generosity of HN patrons will enable a fabulous dinner which we won't have to cook or clean up after.

listen:
Joni Mitchell - Hejira (today)
Gomeroke, Hip-hop (the kind that has artistry and doesn't suck) at work

view:
Cold Souls
John Adams HBO special (pts. 1-5)

c74 Max workshop

Monday through Friday at Project Lodge there was a free crash course in cycling74 software tools: Max, Jitter and Max for (Ableton) Live. I was able to attend all of Monday and the last 3 hours of Thursday's classes. Pal Gregory and co-presenter and new pal Darwin held forth on the near east side and the lovely weather allowed visits on the bicycle.

Know enough to be dangerous at this point and ahead will be digging into this deep and useful set of strategies to enhance the electro acoustic rig. That's what I have when Gregory and I do our gigs. The basic concept is to play mostly hand held stuff, some of it of my own invention and some of it high tech from, well the early 90s. So no drums, just a table with a bunch of wired up gadgets:
DrumKAT
Mini-MIDI keyboard hack







I made this from an old keyboard that was meant to plug into a PC. Jon G hot wired it to just be a plain old MIDI keyboard. I removed the frame, sawed some off and replaced all the white keys 'cept the 2 on each end.

The little blue pickup in the upper left is set up all industrial-strength and can be attached to stuff easily. It's like a little mic to amplify the little stuff. I also plug it into a trigger input of the KAT, attached to the sawed off piece of color coordinated wrist-rest pad - it's my 'kick drum' trigger. You just tap the little guy with your toe and "whooom!".

Upper right is the remaining example of my the original set of 4 electronic drum pads made from plumbing parts. It still works anyway.

At the bottom is a plastic mouthwash bottle festooned with a piezo pickup glued on to it's mouth - tap tap, whump, bink, etc.

The 'rack' will have my trusty Yamaha MU-80 tone module/effects box, Uptown Flash MIDI controllable mixer, Mackie 12o2 mixer and some yet-to-be-determined MIDI interface for the Powerbook. Losing the old 486 PC laptop (Win95!) and Bome's MIDI translator formerly used to interface Mini-MIDI kbd to the rest of the rig.

Immediate goals: System Exclusive messages translated from incoming KAT notes to change voices, pitch, duration and effects on the fly, enhancing the KAT's multi-note/multi-message generating capabilities in order to play 'rule games' for auto-accompaniment. And nifty things like setting tap tempo (adjusting delay times) on the fly. This last item on the hit list will allow matching tempos set by Gregory's looping and delays in performance, hoo!