Uncategorized – Do My Eyes Look Scary?

… and I’m not easily upset.

Oct 28, 2021Tap to summarize

The title of this post was a running joke a friend of mine had on a chat forum. You’d say something to him, and his comeback was “you’ve upset me, and I’m not easily upset.” But really I want to talk now about Lee Scratch Perry and the Upsetters. I finally ripped the 3 CD Trojan box set. And it is such an overwhelmingly rich collection of some incredibly original, arresting of music. The first thing about Lee Perry is he was writing and producing and recording because he was trying to make a living. So some of the best tracks on the compilation are ridiculously commercial. When Lee covers the Coasters hit “Yakety Yak” he makes it his own. Starting from a beat from outer space, so perfectly simple and mechanically funky. Dave Barker’s “Prisoner of Love” whose rocksteady ska beat is topped by one of the most original, soulful voices in Jamaica. Think Wilson Picket, James Brown, and Otis Redding rolled up into one. “Fever” – a cover of the song made famous by Peggy Lee – has Susan Cadogan’s channelling Lou Reed (no, not really, but kindof). Her double-track...

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VCVRackTutorial: Using modulated delay times in VCV Rack

Apr 4, 2019Tap to summarize

This is a method of patching and modulating delays I find so compelling I felt moved to write about it. This is all done in the software modular system VCVRack, and assumes you have a basic working knowledge of it. It involves the VCV Router plugin, which is non-free plugin from the makers of VCV Rack, but I consider it a mandatory purchase. As a start, consider this simple patch: VCV Rack Patch (right click or command click to save) This is a single voice sequenced by a Fundamental SEQ-3 Module. Clock triggers sequencer, clock sends pitch to oscillator and gate to envelope. Envelope modules volume of oscillator signal via a Fundamental VCA-1. The only remotely complicated part is in the middle where the pitch signal is captured in a Sample & Hold, triggered by the gate from SEQ-3. It’s then quantized by a JW Quantizer and transposed by a Fundamental Octave module. Now, add a delay. In this case an AS Delayplus: <img loading="lazy" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-2837" src="https://i0.wp.com/music.cornwarning.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sequencer2.jpg?resize=525%2C148" alt="" width="525" height="148" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/music.cornwarning.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sequencer2.jpg?resize=1024%2C289 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/music.cornwarning.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sequence...

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Favorite 10 … err… 11 albums …

May 14, 2018Tap to summarize

This is something they were doing on Facebook — the ’10 albums 10 days’ challenge, where you were supposed to just post the album cover without comment. I’m terrible at following instructions though. I actually did 11, and I took a couple of weeks to finish it. I’m collecting them here as a more coherent way to archive them. No particular order implied. Beatles “Rubber Soul” This is the first record I bought with my own money, when I was 9 years old, at the Gemco in San Jose, California. I chose it over Revolver, which was the current record at the time, for reasons I don’t remember, but I still prefer RS to Revolver. I bought the mono version because it was a buck cheaper, and hearing the stereo version still feels wrong. This was the record where they hit their stride as a recording band, when their collaboration with George Martin elevated them from their status as pop phenomenon to something more. The quality of the sound on this record always felt mysterious to me, tied in my mind to the title “Norwegian Wood” — like dark wood, with a deeply figured grain. Ironically at the time and now, that song is probably the slightest one on the album; the groove of “The Word”, the melodic and lyrical depth of “In My Life,” the propulsive anger of “I’m Looking Through You” all surpass “Norwegian Wood.” I had the American version, which followed Capitol’s practice of releasing records with fewer tracks than the original UK release. In this case only, I think the US version is superior, both for leaving off “Drive My Car” a...

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The Discrete Charm Of The VCV Rack

Dec 6, 2017Tap to summarize

Every so often I discover a piece of music software that makes me giddy with the possibilities it presents. That’s what I feel about VCV Rack. It presents the on-screen equivalent of a Eurorack modular. It has a large number of useful modules, some actually based on popular Eurorack hardware modules. It has a community of 3rd Party developers who are constantly adding new modules to the collection. And the application and most of the modules available for it are open source, supported by an enthusiastic developer community. We don’t really need VCV Rack. There’s Reaktor, Max/MSP, Pure Data, and a number of other tools. Propellerhead Reason also uses a rack & wires visual design, but most of it’s rack devices are higher-level objects than those presented in an actual modular, real or virtual. What makes VCV Rack fun to work with is that it doesn’t have (as e.g. Max & Reaktor) a distinction between programming and presentation. There’s no “under the hood.” You insert modules and wire them together. There’s nothing wrong with Reaktor and Max, they just require more actually programming and debugging to get something working. I write code for a living, so when I want to make music, I don’t want to think like a programmer any more. I’ve also found it very stable, though the documentation on using the user interface is lacking. Some tips: To wire an output that already has a wire plugged into it, hold down Ctrl (Windows/Linux) or Option(Mac) When you right click to add a mod...

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Olive Kitteridge Music & the synchronicity of chord changes

Nov 8, 2014Tap to summarize

The new HBO series “Olive Kitteredge” is great television, and the music, composed by Carter Burwell provides a lot of the moody atmosphere for the show.: [audio:http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/CarterBurwell-OliveKitteredgeTheme.mp3|titles=Olive Kitteredge Main Theme|artists=Carter Burwell] But I was sure that I’d heard the main theme music before, or something very similar to it. It nagged me all day and then I remembered: The song “Paradise Circus” by Massive Attack, used for the theme of the British crime drama “Luther.” This is also, in the form of a Gui Borrato remix, used in a 2011 car commercial in the United States. This is a really simple chord progression: F minor, A flat Major, C Major, E minor diminished. But quite evocative. You can never know for sure whether Burwell had heard the Massive Attack song, and incorporated that core chord sequence, or if he came up with it independently. I’m reminded of the Axis of Awesome’s “40 songs, same chords” performance: Trailer for “Olive Kitteridge” <iframe loading="lazy" class="youtube-player" width="360" height="203" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/joRwZpNFdi4?version=3&re...

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In which SoundCloud sends me a hilarious takedown notice

Mar 26, 2013Tap to summarize

So today I got this interesting message from Soundcloud: Hi chaircrusher, Our automatic content protection system has detected that your sound “Rubber Duckie (Wub Machine Remix)” may contain the following copyright content: “Get Some Fruit (Wubstep Dubstep Remix)” by Anand Bhatt, owned by Favorecido Productions. As a result, its publication on your profile has been blocked. You can dispute this report, if you believe the copyright content has been mistakenly identified or if you have obtained all the necessary rights, licenses and/or permissions to upload and share this material on SoundCloud. Please do so by filling out our dispute webform at the following link:https://soundcloud.com/settings/disputes/6512879 If you would like to learn more about copyright, please visit our copyright information page. Thanks, The SoundCloud Copyright Team FYI I didn’t even remember uploading it to Soundcloud — it was just a joke that took about 5 minutes to put together. I kind of love how it turned out, since Sesame Street is embedded in my DNA. If you need to hear it: [audio:http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/RubberDucky-WubMachine.mp3|titles=Rubber Ducky Wub Machine Remix|artists=chaircrusher] http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/RubberDucky-WubMachine.mp3 There are several things that are awesome about this: Soundcloud’s automated copyright infringement detector did NOT detect my actual ‘infringement,’ which was against Jeff Moss and Jim Henson, who wrote and performed the original Rubber Duckie. I claim this is fair use, but I’m not going to the wall on that; this was a JOKE track, it isn’t worth it. Soundcloud’s audio fingerprint softwa...

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Chaircrusher Live @ Gabe’s October 11th 2012

Oct 13, 2012Tap to summarize

I had a fine time, though it would have been great if more people showed up — I mean I’m used to playing to mostly empty rooms, but we had guys in from out of town who hit a deer trying to get there. But hey, Thursday night at Gabe’s — hard to draw a lot of people. Anyway Moldover sounded great. I particularly liked the a cappela song he opened with, and his guitar playing, which always drove the songs and sounded great. Exaltron has evolved a unique approach to live performance, combining voice, trumpet and guitar, live looping, expertly programmed sampled drumming and crazy electronic messing about. I was mostly happy about my set, which may have come from working myself into a tizzy for weeks getting read to play. Mostly new stuff done in the past couple months, some of it bespoke for the live set. [audio:http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/2012-10-11-Chaircrusher-Live.mp3|titles=Chaircrusher Live @ Gabe’s 2012-10-11|artist=Chaircrusher] http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/2012-10-11-Chaircrusher-Live.mp3

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Bear edge of the Iowa River.

Jun 5, 2011Tap to summarize

Bear edge of the Iowa River., a photo by chaircrusher on Flickr. There’s a frisbee golf course at the edge of the Iowa River on the Iowa City side that wanders into the woods at the water’s edge. This is a little shallow backwater. It was full of tadpoles.

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