keeping the dead of brisbane safe for future generations
Possibly the loveliest expression of devotion I’ve ever seen. Some of these graves are over a hundred years old yet the State’s sense of responsibility does not waver. I wonder if they first thought of facing the sign inwards – towards the loved ones – a signal to sightless eyes that, come what may, they can rest safe and at peace. Perhaps later, over coffee and sweets, (some halva, a baklava, perhaps a sticky bun), they thought better of it and faced the sign outwards, as a promise. Lest we forget.
gold coast for a swim
Swim at the Gold Coast today – water a perfect temp and the waves were just right for an old bloke like me to bob about in. Elevating tacky to a new level of charm.
music by brute force
I quite like ‘brute force’ methods over computational methods sometimes – but I think I’m about due to update my coding skills and change. Anyways AllDaySleep on Disquiet Junto asked about my last piece so I though I’d show what I did (in the laziest way possible as finishing the potting shed beckons)
Two methods both of which work with the original sound Marc gave us – carving the time-frequency spectrum and narrow band construction of sounds.
Here’s pic of the time-frequency spectrum of the waves recording – the sound is the bright bits and the black holes are where I’ve carved sound away. Note that time is running left to right and frequency from low(bottom of pic) to high(top of pic)
You can see I’ve cut out quite a bit. Then I assembled very narrow slices to make ‘chords’, although more like harmonic structures than trad chords. I just use the selection tool to isolate a narrow band across the whole file and then paste that to a new file – select another frequency and merge that with the first one, etc etc. And of course you can carve into that as well
finally I mix those two techniques together – actually I mix a few examples of each of those, but the effect could be created on a single file if you wanted to work that way – which I must try sometime. I imagine it would end up a different result , I tend to think work methods are important, and ‘most efficient’ or ‘quickest’ is not necessarily better in terms of pleasure or result. This way has me listening with a fair bit of concentration to detail – but a quicker way to generate the ‘chordal’ files to listen to would be better so I am investigating that. Here’s a combination of the two techniques
another disquiet piece
A new disquiet piece this might be my last one for a while – semester getting even closer and I want to work on some other pieces – in particular the Lullaby piece for piano. Been a great inspiration for me
disquiet and soundcloud
really enjoying the disquiet group on soundcloud – Marc Weidenbaum ( = disquiet.com) sets up some compositional ‘restraints’ – I’d call them constraints which I guess reflects my science/cognition background – and the group members respond or not. Lots of great aspects to this – Disquiet ( and soundcloud generally) gives me the best outlet for my music that I’ve come across, and I get to discover an incredible amount of new music that I like.
Here’s the latest one from me
coding
Coding in Matlab today for a new piece based on Brahms Lullaby. Boy am I out of practice but managed to put something together. AND I fixed some old code so no idea how many of my previous “files and variations” pieces were not what I thought. But they were still variations based on permutations of the original material, and then edited til I liked them so not to worry. I’m very excited by this piece – the early parts are sounding good – slow and measured, nothing extraneous.
name change
when our daughter was about 12 she added a middle name. I have always wished she had kept her original middle-less name, but.. Anyways I am thinking of changing my name, although I will wait a few months yet. But Gary Glen Geoffrey strikes me as a good solid name for a man of my age and background