Lesley is Moore

Greetings from NYC. I'm here for the weekend. You will all be happy to know that I am wearing jeans again. I bought two pairs at UNIQLO. I also bought six pairs of colored socks, and a cardigan. So yeah, you can expect a new man when you see me next.



Also, here's a tune I did last week. It has no official title, but I'm calling it "Lesley is Moore" because there was a kid growing up whose last name was Moore, and apparently his dad was named Lesley, so his shortened name was Less Moore, get it?

Belt Brings Beautiful Bonk

Part A (The Setup)


Part B (The Payoff)

Mossy Legs

An ensemble of "gamey" instruments that were living around the house, trying to make the sounds of vegetation.



Picture found here.

Nerdgasm: Mini vMac for iPhone

Allow me to really geek out for just a minute.

Mini vMac for iPhone (jailbreak), it's a Mac Plus emulator that runs in the palm of your hand. I'm loving this. It is actually quite elegant. The icon for this application is a cute old little Mac, but get this, when you exit out while the virtual Mac is still running, the screen of the Mac in the icon shows a little miniature version of what your virtual Mac screen looks like. How cool is that? Hands down, the coolest icon trick yet. And this is a free, non-App Store program. Check it:

Extreme close-up:

My mind of course turns to this question: Anyone know where I can get a (very) primitive copy of Max that runs on something around OS 6 or 7? Did they ever even make it that far back, and at what point did the MSP (or FST, as it was originally called) come along? Since there is obviously no MIDI out, I'd have to coax a way for it to do its thing via some kind of primitive DSP. I will say though that the sound in this emulation is actually pretty impressive.






This geeks me out so deeply. I loooove emulation! I also like monochrome. And especially the early Mac, it reminds me of how special it felt when my dad took me into his work and let me mess around on MacDraw. This emulation even makes you load stuff up from "disks." Ohhh, so much fun!

P.S. There's also something very wild about the idea that the computer that I first marveled at as a child is now just another thing that I carry around on my cell phone. How weird!

PDing Again

Finally got IAC (the thing on a Mac that lets you send MIDI to and from different applications) working, so I've been doing some PD work again, this time routing the MIDI output from PD to nicer sounds from other applications. As usual, it's generative stuff, a pedal tone and two higher tones. It gets pretty boring pretty quickly, so the next step is going to be to set up some coll objects and fill them with (human-generated!) note transitions so I can do some Markov stuff off of them. Then, I'll attempt something I haven't done very much at all yet - Doing probability-based rhythms for the notes (instead of just the drum-based stuff I've done already). I have it set up for on-the-fly key changes, but it's hard for me to find key transitions that sound good consistently, so I'll have to work on that too.

Listen to it do its own thing:

A Song Dedicated to Myself

Here's a little tropical number I wrote for a guy named Mike Dixon. It's called "Note to Self." Hit it, João.



"This Week's Champion"

Beautiful Waste

I took this picture while walking home from school one day. Not only does it look good, but it like means something, maaaaan.

Do you see that Milky Way mini in there? I almost grabbed it.

Frequently Used Words for Dismissing Disagreeable Music

Another thing about Mike Adams. One thing we often agree on is bands we don't like. Not that we're total haters, but I've noticed that we generally seem to share sensibilities when it comes to music that we find particularly disagreeable. Sometimes having a common negative interest can be fun!

On that note, here's a list of words and phrases that I use to swiftly dismiss the artists I don't like:

• Sucky
• Boring
• Boring to the max
• The emperor's new panties
• Overrated
• Pointless
• Embarrassing
• Okkervillian
• Ewww!
• Stop!
• mehhhh
• a bunch of Decemberistocrats
• what's the point?
• I guess I just don't "get it"
• Now, remind me, why do people go ga-ga for this again?
• There's only one possible explanation. They must be using The Secret.
• Bringin' back the sounds of _____!
• Record collector music
• (band name) is on (formerly respected record label)?!?
• it's basically adult contemporary
• (brand of shoe worn by some of the members) rock
• literate
• too Brooklyn
• too Pitchfork
• too vanilla
• too fixed-gear
  
• trying too hard
• fashion punk
• deliberately freaky
• they're basically a dance band
  
• Mates of State-y
• Dracula Weekday
  

Mike Adams: A Man Who Deserves His Own Blog Entry

Mike Adams. What a guy! Have you ever met someone and thought "This guy is the real deal?" That's what it's like with Mike.

He's a handsome fellow (I can say that because I'm so extremely hetero that it's kind of ridiculous), but he should be glad that he wasn't born with my glasses and my hat, like I was.



Something about it just doesn't work. Be glad you are you, Mike Adams. When you got it going on, you don't have to try to be someone else. I think that's the lesson we can all learn from this experiment. Be yourself, black is beautiful.

Somehow the picture I took of him didn't upload from my phone to Flickr, and then when I went about writing the entry before this, I somehow forgot that I even took one of him. Weird, I know. Naturally, public outrage ensued, so I'm in damage control mode now.

The Foggy Mirror Trick

Here's a song about being wonderfully overwhelmed by the richness and the frailty of life.

"The Foggy Mirror Trick"

DL

Thank you all for being a part of it.

A Seeing Man Sees How It Is

picture via

As promised, two David Grubbs-meets-Dos style songs. Playing the bass is fun. Now I know why Flea wears those stuffed animal pants.

"A Seeing Man Sees How It Is"

DL

"Pack a Harp, Pack a Horn"

DL

和歌山 Wakayama Is a Nice Name for a City

I really like the name Wakayama. 和歌山　It's a city near Osaka, and the kanji for its name means something like "peaceful song mountain." I mean really, who wouldn't want to hang out on a peaceful song mountain? That sounds so cool, so magical, like there are little dudes that lay on their sides and play ocarinas all day. I met a guy from Wakayama, and he seemed really chill, as though he had been living on a peaceful song mountain.

All cities in Japan have names that mean things, and as you learn kanji you also learn that there is added meaning that comes to the names of people and places you might already know. But nothing beats Wakayama. I like the way it sounds, I like the way the kanji look. Especially at 150 pt.:

Hamada Beach is Half Redundant

My roommate told me that the first part of this song sounds "Crispin Glover"y, meaning that it sounds like a circus. I guess I can see that. It more kind of reminds me of that circus-like song on Jeremy Enigk's solo record. I forget what it's called. There were some flutes, but I accidentally erased them, and by the time I noticed, it was like 12 undos ago. Oh well. I'll pute them back eventually, I just wish I could remember what the notes were. The circusiness It changes at about 1:49. The real triumph comes at about 3:00, when the "balls just go to the wall."

It's not entirely done, but I feel like it's enough to be mostly where it's going to be. I need a hi-hat stand. I've got the hi-hats. Anyone out there want to let me borrow a hi-hat stand? I know you do.



DL

You like that pitch correction? I have a cold!