(youtube link)
This was a quick thing, using REAPER and the JSFX "sequencer megababy" and "super8", recorded and edited in 18 minutes while videotaping (taping hah). I'm going to do a longer version with more explanation of the tools used, I think. Lots of fun.
Recordings:blanking on the date
2 Comments
Ah so it's been almost a week since I've posted here. Time got really really slow for a bit there but now maybe it is speeding up as life as we know it becomes more routine.
Such a bizarre predicament that nearly (?) all of humanity faces. We're all in it together, unless we're in denial. When the weather has been nice (most days since I last wrote), the parks have been crazily busy, which makes running really difficult. So instead:
(lucky me with roof deck access) An hour is an excruciatingly long time. At one point before I tried an hour I contemplated doing 24 hours. Now I think that's insane. It might happen. Yesterday was cold and rainy and amazing, I could run wherever I wanted and nobody was around! Bring back winter!
I'm now on board with everybody wearing masks (not N95 but procedure masks etc) when they are out in public. It makes a lot of sense, given the fact that people are contagious before and/or without symptoms. The advice here has always been "wear a mask only if you're sick" which is no longer applicable! Anyway I've spent a great deal of time making a mask (and now starting a second) from this site's template/instruction, which seems to work well! I don't have a sewing machine so I'm using a couple of tiny travel sewing kits that I've acquired over the years and doing all of the stitches by hand. I'm terrible at it, but getting less so as time goes on.
Musically, I've turned to NINJAM at home again, Andy and I played the other night which was nice. Hope to do more of that!
(obviously it goes without saying, all the people out there who are helping other people: doctors, nurses, delivery people, people working in grocery stores, thank you thank you thank you. I'll try to say this more in person but it's hard with all of the other pressures of life outside of home)
9 Comments
(youtube link)
Apologies for my outfit (unless you're into legs, in which case, you're welcome), I ran to the studio from home. At 11am the Brooklyn Bridge was pretty empty, thankfully, but on the return it was getting more crowded. Plenty of tourists out walking in big groups, not practicing social distancing in any form. Sigh. Can't stop what's coming.
There were also a lot of people out in Brooklyn Bridge Park. I don't think playing volleyball today is a good idea.
Maybe I'm overreacting, but it's really not looking that way. I hope I'm overreacting. A "shelter in place" order seems not-unlikely for NYC at some point in the near future. We've discussed leaving, but have nowhere we'd want to go. Being home is a pretty good place to be, even if there are too many goddamn people around. Even if we had known what was coming months ago, I'm not sure where we'd want to be. I want to be somewhere else but nowhere else. Maybe after this whole crisis is over (will it be a few months? 18 months? ugh), a move is in order.
Recordings:super8_panic_marathon - 1 -- [0:17]
super8_panic_marathon - 2 -- [50:37]
4 Comments
I bicycled from Manhattan to Brooklyn to play the piano some, and do a little Super8 session:
(youtube link)
On Wednesday, I had gone to the studio (which is right by Fairway) in the afternoon and stayed until the evening. I went into Fairway, which was pretty normal-ish. After my cancelled band practice and trip home, there had been a presidential address, which was a total failure in pretty much every way I could see, other than getting peoples attention. The next day, I went to the studio, and stopped in Fairway on my way home to get a few more things, and it was a total madhouse. Such a difference in a day.
Anyway since Wednesday we've been practicing Social Distancing, which is both easy and not easy. It's only been 5 days but it's going to be challenging.
A friend and I discussed food strategies via text. What Allison and I are doing now is basically trying to keep a stocked pantry with a list of things that we wouldn't mind having more of, and when we need something, we'll go buy that thing we need and other things from the list of things that we wouldn't mind having more of.
Last Sunday we were scheduled to fly to California, and yesterday I was scheduled to run a 50 miler in Marin County. We cancelled our trip the day before, which made me sad but after an exercise in sunk cost (figuring the difference in cost to proceed with the trip vs cancel, ignoring non-refundable stuff), it made total sense. Yesterday I found out the race was cancelled anyway.
There's my rambling. Someone on twitter said now was a good time to try journalling. My first thought is "my filesystems are all ext4, baby." I lied, I'm on a mac at this moment.
Recordings:super8_distance - 1 -- [32:10]
super8_distance - 2 -- [5:56]
super8_distance - 3 -- [0:49]
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(retroactively posted on March 15)
(youtube link)
This was last Wednesday -- I was scheduled on this day to play music with some friends, but we cancelled after one of my friends found out that an usher at a Broadway show that he had recently seen had tested positive for Coronavirus, and the reality of this whole situation became clear. So I did a quick two songs before going home. The title refers to the article
Cancel Everything in The Atlantic.
Recordings:live solo improv: super8 cancel everything
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Windows has a unique (as far as I can tell) "feature", which I have not experienced first hand but I've heard about. If your system has more than 64 cores (effectively, e.g. 40 cores each with 2 threads would count), then it divides the cores into "processor groups." By default, an application that creates threads and does no additional work has all of its threads run in the same processor group (is this always Group 0? or is it randomly assigned? I have no idea).
The significance of this is that if, for example, you have a 36 core hyperthreaded CPU (72 logical cores), then a traditionally-written multithreaded application can utilize at most 36 cores. (It's also unclear to me if the 36 cores in a processor group in this scenario are 18x2 threads each, or 36 threads on 36 unique cores).
Anyway, we're now testing a REAPER tweak to address this. If you need to implement this in your application, see SetThreadGroupAffinity(), and get ready for some fun using GetLogicalProcessorInformationEx() with RelationGroup and parsing the output to determine the group structure (the documentation for that is a bit light IMO!).
So there you go, everybody.
Recordings:super8 - 1 -- [17:37]
super8 - 2 -- [11:51]
super8 - 3 -- [2:38]
super8 - 4 -- [14:28]
2 Comments
For the first time in ages, I fired up the Super8 laptop rig, and did a bit of a session:
(youtube link)
(Note to self: a dead battery that won't take a charge in the Thinkpad X60 causes all sorts of DPC issues, hmph)
Anyway, a little rusty getting the songs started, but it's amazing how different tools can get the different creative juices (ugh that really sounds terrible) going differently. So much fun. I need to do this more.
Recordings:super8_no_focus - 1 -- [6:19]
super8_no_focus - 2 -- [11:09]
super8_no_focus - 3 -- [6:48]
super8_no_focus - 4 -- [9:27]
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