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Thursday 27 February 2003

Today (techinically yesterday) - I'm recording sounds of household appliances that use water. This for a call for acousmatic music. So far I have the clothes washing machine and dryer (those were part of an old project that i'm recycling, so the dryer counts), the tea kettle and the dishwasher. Coming up on the list is the garbage disposal, the tiolet, the sink and a shower, especially the wine at the end. It's sure a good thing I went to music school... I feel so pretentious working on this piece, which is I guess appropriate since I think my list of favorite composers has gotten me a reputation for pretentiousness online, which shouldn't annoy me but does anyhow. Anyway, all my middle-class water-wasting, electricity-eating gadjets will soon be musical, and I won't even need to go to the laundrymat, which is too bad, since the washing machines there are extra cool sounding, especially with contact mics on them. Makes me wish I had a fixed filter bank to process all of this. I could write one in MAX. I could write a whole application for generating laptop music and call it the acous-a-matic and check my email while generating sounds for audiences pretentious enough to like it.

Matthew, Jenny and Owen came over. Matt had his first interview with East Bay MUD today. He expects a second interview. Then we all went over to Jenya's house to talk about our proposal for the Singapore installation. It has a postmark deadline by Saturday, which means it has to be done friday. I have zero recordings for it. None. I was too busy recording my dishwasher because I completely forgot about the due date. I suck. So tomorrow, instead of going to the Other Minds office to file things, I'll be riding BART around. Jenya has a PC with USB, so I can do a DAT and minidisc recording at the same time and be able to dump the minidisc data to her computer. Then, I need to interview people about their thoughts during commute rides. Will I walk up to folks on bart? Interview my neighbors? I'm screwed! And I have a wineglass rehersal tomorrow night, I think. I emailed two people to ask them for the rehersal schedule, one of them was the composer, and neither emailed me back yet.

Lord I'm a flake. I need to program due dates into my yahoo calendar and tell it to nag me. Hey well, if you (whoever is reading this) want to play the wineglass in the Other Minds concert on friday March whatever, drop me a line, and I'll send you the rehersal schedule if anyone sends it to me. If you want to be recorded free-associating about public transit, or rather talking about what you think about (or would think about if you are a car commuter) while riding on the train, well, then email me in that case too. Tomorow afternoon would be a good time for that. Or after 10:00. Or, you could just record yourself talking about what you think about on BART (think voice over for movie or something) and send me/post a WAV or AIFF file (mp3 ok encoded at 160 or better), that would be extra groovy. Put the mic right next to your mouth for a good close-mic effect. If you put the mic around your nose or a bit below your chin, it will not catch air bursts (called "plosives") from 'p' sounds. Don't run processing on it. I'll put on some reverb for a dreamy effect. Or hell, put on your own reverb, i don't care. I procrastinated too long! I need male voices. Maybe one voice will be fine. Speaking in a non-english language would be super excellent. I need a five minute example tape for Singapore. tomorrow, I'll post about the benefits of planning ahead and remebering deadlines. :p

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