up from the deep.

no more blue.

2009-07-21T14:36:00.004-04:00

there was a recent post on matrixsynth where someone attempted to strip the anodized paint from his Korg EMX using oven cleaner. it didn't work. but further research indicated that it might work for me, since my EMX is an older version with the "old" paint.i should note that i've owned my EMX for a few years, and the blue color has bugged me since day one. so i threw caution to the wind and

180°.

2009-02-26T11:06:00.004-05:00

my friend terry is an artist and photographer who's been kicking around the palenville area since the 70's. he always says, "remember to look behind you." and i remembered this morning, and laughed. but hey, nice.

i was a stoner for nissan.

2009-02-11T02:22:00.002-05:00

and my larynx screams "adventure."

bass.

2008-11-20T03:30:00.005-05:00

this string of lights gave up the ghost last week. so now i can play the bass again.

light/shadow.

2008-10-28T10:44:00.004-04:00

stinkbugs. that's what my mom calls them. they seem to be active now, i've seen a few crawling around our window screens.well, this one got inside and assaulted me at my desk. bounced off my monitor, directly onto the notes i was scribbling. so i took a picture.the exposure was too long, but the flash managed to create a strong shadow. ghostbug.

the old back yard.

2008-10-09T10:48:00.008-04:00

mmmm.

a stogie, a tall-boy and four shooting stars.

2008-08-07T01:48:00.001-04:00

and to think i almost went to bed early.

lightroom is nice. lightroom is evil.

2008-07-25T11:56:00.002-04:00

vacancy.

2008-07-22T15:53:00.003-04:00

this hotel/inn is in tannersville, ny. it's eee-normous, and totally abandoned. except for the people that must be living in there.anyway, i grabbed a few shots as we were driving by a few weekends ago. dare me to go in and take more pics.

not to belabor the point.

2008-06-16T10:43:00.003-04:00

shortly after lunch yesterday (father's day), my mom aimed her camera out the kitchen window and snapped this picture.i grew up on this property, and this picture makes no sense. i'm starting to wonder if mom has been taking photoshop classes.

orange you glad i didn't say banana.

2008-04-25T11:43:00.003-04:00

so.. "green" is a verb, now?as in, "yes, we're in the process of greening our pre-victorian cottage."or, "i'm going to green this mercedes wagon and the exhaust will smell like egg rolls."sorry, that's just lame. i yellow the concept.

quarantine at the game farm.

2008-04-24T00:52:00.004-04:00

liz and i were on one of our "drives" last weekend. hop in the car, pick north, south, east, or west .. then attempt to get lost somewhere "out thataway."we'll almost always end up on some old dirt road in the woods and liz will say "do you think we're allowed down here?"well:no. we're not allowed.my mom used to take me and my friends and their moms to the catskill game farm when i was

big bird.

2008-04-15T14:41:00.006-04:00

we had a visitor on the deck last saturday morning.this would be a less-than-subtle hint that it's time to take the bird feeder down... until the interested parties are hibernating.

no soap radio.

2008-04-09T14:51:00.004-04:00

moonlit.

2008-04-01T22:43:00.004-04:00

this is probably a creepy picture, but i like it. 'twas thanksgiving last year, at my parents' house. the first time i've ever heard coyotes howl in real life... there or anywhere.and this is in williamsburg, brooklyn, 05/07. note that there's nobody "playing."

theft from above.

2008-03-31T08:11:00.005-04:00

liz's mom gave me a bird feeder for my 39th b-day! i hung it just outside the kitchen window. it was up for a few days before i got my first customer... a tufted titmouse. go ahead and say it out loud... "tufted titmouse.""tufted titmouse."but it took another week for the heavy hitters to get wind of the new snack bar:so that's nice. my camera was about 6" from its eye when i took this, and

snow and dub.

2007-12-13T19:18:00.001-05:00

so what is it about cold weather and big heaps of snow that puts me in the mood to crank massive attack and crazy french dub all day long? nobody really knows.i think it may have to do with that blizzard back in '96. we were holed up in our second floor apartment in randolph new jersey, fire in the fireplace... trip-hop was the sound of the moment, i think we had kruder & dorfmeister playing

pretty creepy, jim.

2007-12-12T21:53:00.000-05:00

i got an alesis ion synth a while ago. it's a cool synth. it's marketed as a "virtual analog" and it does that bit really well... probably the best of the VA's i've played. but it also does crazy FM digital noise. so, it's pretty versatile.one night i was programming the ion, looking for "creepy sounds", and it was going pretty well... FM sounds are, by nature, 360-head-spin,

this won't do.

2007-12-08T11:49:00.000-05:00

i need a car. been too busy with busy-ness to deal with that rather large purchase. but i'm headed out to kick tires today.i was taking some photos for our corporate holiday card today, and took the one below. pffft! it fills me with the warming glow of the holiday's warming glow. makes a nice desktop, too.oh, and the way blogger has its tab-order set up causes me to send out a blank blog

let's catch up, shall we.

2007-11-05T22:07:00.000-05:00

liz and i moved to saugerties, ny, last week. to a nice house with "rooms" and "doors that close." so far, we feel like we're on vacation. the catskill mountains are in our back yard, the leaves are all orange and yellow, the bears haven't eaten us, yet...liz and i have been married for one year, as of yesterday. to celebrate, we ate alot.we started with breakfast at home (i'll open "stan's

updated kitchen with modern appliances.

2007-10-23T20:18:00.000-04:00

this is what the galley at the new place looks like. i... really, really dig it.DIG it, man.i've got a collection of 'vintage' 1950's and 60's betty crocker cookbooks that i bought mostly for the names of their myriad jell-o recipes, and the accompanying washed-out photos. things like "rosey red salmon loaf" and "porky climbs mt. custard."methinks this kitchen has seen its share of rosey and

upstate NY is nice.

2007-10-05T13:45:00.000-04:00

so... we're moving there.pics soon.

dispensing with class.

2007-09-05T12:08:00.000-04:00

it's been too long since i've posted anything. so here's a picture of something my mom gave me last christmas.

why ableton live rules, part 74-c: follow mode.

2007-08-03T16:59:00.000-04:00

this is why.yes. "follow actions" .. whereby any stack of loops are programatically triggered (fully random in this example, though there are all sorts of 'follow modes'.) also, if "legato" is selected for the stack, the 'playhead' will stay at the appropriate place in the measure when the next loop is triggered.in other words, the playhead picks up where it left off in the previous loop. this

the jackhammer... harbinger of suck.

2007-08-03T16:06:00.000-04:00

it was great while it lasted.but the day we all knew would come has finally arrived:they finally got around to putting the parking signs back up on what was previously our 2-blocks-of-parking-heaven. i guess this means that they can now more easily come by in their super-effective gutter-zamboni (sarcasm never translates in the written word. never.)or maybe it means that the greenpoint precinct

do this more often.

2007-07-27T15:15:00.000-04:00

there's a bar called 'lost & found' about 100 yards from our apartment. i was bachelorin' it last night, so around midnight i decided it was time for stroll. i saw a crowd gathered outside the doors of said establishment, so i walked in for a closer look.this was the scene inside: rock.i threw back a lagunitas IPA, the band finished, i left. a perfect end to the evening.

fatty balls, delivered.

2007-07-19T14:46:00.000-04:00

one of the three local pizza joints here in greenpoint has only "ok" pizza, but *ex-cellent* calzones. (and as the review says, the folks there are super friendly. )also, an added bonus when ordering from these guys is they'll give you a sack of freshly-fried zeppoles for one american dollar.zeppoles? delivered? for a buck? yessir. 5 to a bag.more sit-ups for me.

hunting half and half.

2007-07-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

a few years ago, some friends of mine gave me a "hunter dan" doll. it's a plastic toy for the kids. comes with compound bow, a portable tree stand, binoculars, and a set of antlers on a string. oh, and a full camo bodysuit, with a stocking cap.but... why a set of antlers on a string? well you see, some deer hunters believe that they can attract a buck during 'the rut' (which is bambi-speak for

pissed moth.

2007-07-09T14:37:00.001-04:00

this moth is pissed.pissed moth wants to steal my AC.

i am so hip.

2007-07-07T14:19:00.000-04:00

"cephalopods are an up and coming motif.".. from an NYT article about the renegade craft fair, which happened in w'burg a few weeks ago. my lovely wife was among the 200 "craft-babes" that make up the event.

colman's = yellow wasabi

2007-07-06T16:24:00.000-04:00

best mustard ever:forget about all others. and skip the pre-mixed version of colman's that comes in a glass jar. you want the powder, so you can whip up a fresh batch whenever you need it.just thought i'd share. carry on.

honeymoon'd

2007-07-03T20:43:00.000-04:00

well, liz and i finally got around to it. 11 days in st. lucia, at an excellent hotel/resort called ti kaye village.no tv, no internet, 3-5 hours of snorkeling per day (i have a problem), great food and friendly people everywhere. and sun.one of the aforementioned friendly people lent me his underwater-capable camera so that i could snag some pics of the critters i was studying (thanks, chris!)

baaahahaha. ha.

2007-06-14T19:01:00.003-04:00

N2CC vs DSI Evolver

2007-06-13T15:53:00.000-04:00

if you don't own or plan to own one of the Dave Smith Instruments 'evolver' line of synths, you can skip this one. really.so, since the very first night i went bleary-eyed playing with my evolver, i've wanted to have direct midi control of the note value of each of its 4 oscillators... (btw, the little geek slapfight going on over here reminded me i wanted to post a bit on this.)so i poked

limb-like flippers

2007-05-24T09:50:00.000-04:00

coelacanth!i caught a gar, once. not nearly as cool.

i'm scared of this kid.

2007-05-17T16:49:00.000-04:00

wow. up to now, i wasn't privy to the current technology of r/c hecklopterz. surely, these will be used against us by our future robot overlords.

happy mother's day

2007-05-14T12:46:00.000-04:00

to celebrate, here's a shot i grabbed of my brother's old ford f-6 dump truck... which is sitting in my dad's back field, decaying beautifully:

frosted waves

2007-05-09T11:12:00.000-04:00

my bud fred calls me a 'filter whore.' i suppose i am.i picked up a gently used frostwave 'the resonator' off of craigslist yesterday. i've been wanting one for years.couple of observations:it's BIG. physically half-again as big as the pictures on their website made it seem. that's good, afaic. big knobs in a desktop-style angled steel box. enough heft that it won't be skating across the

movies VS rain (lots of)

2007-04-26T01:06:00.000-04:00

As some may know, a big ol' wet bastard of a storm hit the northeastern US a coupla weeks ago. anyone with a rivulet of media awareness knew that we were in for THE BIG ONE and we should BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES.the wise rented movies and stocked up on bloody mary mix....i am, apparently, a good batten hatcher. we stayed pretty dry, with just a small pool via the one [of three] leaky storm

you make bath-time lots of fun.

2007-04-20T01:18:00.000-04:00

remember d-lusion's 'rubber duck' aka 'RD-H30+'?it's freeware these days. go git. it sounds great. oh, you're too cool use an obsolete, directX, windows-only abandonware synth? fine. leaves more for me. to me, its defunctness makes it seem more like... hardware.

entombed.

2007-04-19T23:55:00.000-04:00

wake up... workie workie.wake up. workie workie. work.wake up. workie workie workie.that's been the grind here for the last (more than a) few months. "busy" is good for the wallet and not so good for anything else. not complaining.. just sayin'.and so it goes. a bud of mine has started a cool project. the peter principle. an eensy weensy poem and some visuals and footnotes and explanations

pretty sure it was the 'jalapeno.'

2007-04-07T12:01:00.000-04:00

ack! thpthoo, hack hack.

2007-03-28T17:03:00.000-04:00

i have just tasted the worst thing that i've ever tasted. it was a jelly bean. i was talking on the phone, and not paying attention to the jb's i was popping, and this thing went into my mouth, and i have no idea what it looked like. but it tasted like boiled cat ass.the bag of jellybeans is new. i am, therefore, doomed to taste this foulness again, having no idea which one is the

as predicted and hoped...

2007-03-20T11:14:00.000-04:00

korg released a firmware update for the kaoss pad 3 (kp3) yesterday.here's what it's supposed to fix:Contents of the KAOSS PAD KP3 System Firmware Version 1.03[Bug Fix]When the KAOSS PAD went into a “standby state” while connected to a Mac, there was apossibility of not being able to recover, or “wake up” the KAOSS PAD (symptom: noresponse from the KAOSS PAD). This has been fixed.[Bug Fix]When a

careful, now.

2007-03-19T11:16:00.000-04:00

in case you, like me, rarely read those 'end user license agreements' when installing new software and services.. check this bit from googles "picasa web albums" EULA:By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Picasa Web Albums, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, distribute and publish such Content through Picasa Web Albums,

see?

2007-02-22T13:00:00.000-05:00

they are getting bigger: 990 lb colossal squid caughtwhat will they call the species of squid that's bigger than the "colossal squid"? 'cuz you know they're out there.

conEd making life interesting again.

2007-02-22T12:51:00.000-05:00

for the 14th time in the last year, conEd is re-ripping up my street. it's as if nobody says, prior to the finishing and filling in and re-paving "so.. we're sure we got it right this time?"there was a documentary on PBS last night about the building of the subway in NYC. it was cool. i learned that, for four years, manhattan was a dynamite-blasting warzone. but it was only four years, and the

been busy.

2007-02-18T23:44:00.000-05:00

i've opened the "new post" window on this "blog" thing several times over the past week, only to be pulled off into some other task.so anyway, a few things:a good [organic] wine: bonterra 2003 cabernet sauvignon . i know nothing about wine, i only know what i like. and i liked this one a whole lot. just <$20 a bottle. goes great with cow. synth1 is probably one of the greatest "analog"

firewire gunk II

2007-02-13T22:51:00.000-05:00

ok, i was wrong.i was doing a mix today with headphones and noticed a faint ghost of the digital zipper trash i was hearing in my previous post. i guess plugging the motu unit in via the wallwart made the yuck-noise less apparent, but didn't nix it completely.so i switched to the 4-lead cable that i use with the laptop. that's the ticket, at least for now. i'm guessing that NOT having the 2

firewire gunk.

2007-02-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

i noticed a while ago that my motu ultralite firewire audio interface imparts grungy digital noise when being powered by the firewire bus. you can only hear it at high gain, but still... it's there, and who knows what else is going on with the audio signal. if i power the motu via the wallwart power supply, POOF, no noise.i forgot about this discovery, though, and have since done two voiceover

sound forge 8 VS audition 2

2007-02-05T17:43:00.000-05:00

i was a sony sound forge user last week, and for the 6+ years prior. as of this weekend, i'm an adobe audition user, and i'll never look back.that is all. impetus for the switch was that i needed a good noise reduction plug-in. waves wants $800 for theirs, and i find its controls cryptic at best, completely maddeningly useless at worst. another company wants $1700 for theirs. well, the noise

mmm, train noises.

2007-02-02T19:33:00.000-05:00

took the zoom on an errand to manhattan. grabbed this while i waited for the G.yeah, nice.

gleep.

2007-01-31T00:49:00.000-05:00

design gone wrong.

2007-01-29T09:47:00.000-05:00

let's talk about coffee makers.i have a mr.coffee auto-drip machine that my mom bought for me as a "house warming" 4 apartments and 11 years ago. it still makes great coffee, but a while back the pot warmer element started working intermittently. until that day, though, it made two pots of coffee every single day without a hitch.so...i bought a new mr. coffee auto-drip machine. it's purty..

on its way...

2007-01-21T12:14:00.000-05:00

the item pictured above will replace the lugging around of the following:laptop w/17" screen ... 1,432 lbs.firewire interface ... 14 oz.RE27 microphone (aka "the donkey dick") ... 632 lbs.mic stand ... 94 lbs.i'm fairly psyched. i've been doing enough location recording in the last 6 months to justify this purchase. it should pay for itself by the end of the week. why'd i wait?actually, i know

wooooooo.

2007-01-21T11:28:00.000-05:00

so, it's official. i'm doing the 'audio' part of an art installation for a showcase in buffalo, ny, called Beyond/In Western New York. it starts in september '07 and runs for a coupla months. the exhibit will be at the Albright-Knox Gallery.concurrently with the above will be development for a book (with audio) and/or cd-rom containing another series of work from the same artist. more on her

nice box

2007-01-19T15:01:00.000-05:00

hey, winter NAMM '07 has some interesting stuff going on.i really like the concept of korg's new mixer/firewire interface/controller, the zero-8. i like that it separates each channel strip into a discrete controller (see that selector knob at the top of each strip.) i also like that korg appears to be improving its quality with respect to audio circuits (preamps) and AD>DA. the x/y kaoss pad

the filter man

2007-01-19T14:06:00.000-05:00

doug curtis passed away on 1/11. he was the founder of curtis electromusic specialties, and his CEM chip family was used by many (most?) synthesizer manufacturers back in the analog synth heyday. dave smith opted to use a special CEM chip relatively recently in his current evolver line of hybrid synths.i own an evolver. the filter is awesome. i also own an akai ax80 (my eldest, circa '86) ..

thanks, ConEd, for the load in my pants

2007-01-16T17:19:00.000-05:00

last night... around 11pm, i was pulled from my la-z-boy stupor by a really REALLY loud noise, coming from outside somewhere. it sounded like, oh, i dunno... it sounded like godzilla was giving mothra what-for, somewhere over in manhattan.it was the conEd plant, directly across the east river from me. they were venting steam or some such highly pressurized gas. it got a lot of people up and

purge.

2007-01-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

i'm cleaning up my desktop's drives for the big move into the studio. not that the pc cares. but i thought i'd give it a fresh clean start in its new home.went through all of my vst fx and vst instruments. wow... that was eye-opening. cleaned out tons of stuff that i hadn't used in a while, and everything that i'd never used. now i'm down to a tidy handful of plugins for each job you'd want

NAMM's a comin'

2007-01-07T12:54:00.000-05:00

so 'winter NAMM' happens on 1/18/07. all of the big and not-so-big music equipment manufacturers will parade out their new wares for all to see. and the marketing folks will sharpen their pencils and give us nuggets of ad-copy brilliance.a couple of predictions:1) roland will unveil some new thing that is alot like every one of their old things, but a little different. it will be, or at least

... about the face and neck

2007-01-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

i'm an ass.i've been flu-ish all week, and yesterday morning i got pissed with the not-sleeping that was happening, and i got up too fast. started down the steps from my loft, lost balance, nearly saved myself with a left-handed monkey-swing, but ultimately lost grip and hit the floor leading with my head/neck/upper torso. at least i think that's what happened. i landed neck first on a rack

on getting old(er)

2007-01-02T11:27:00.000-05:00

whenever the weather changes, i get sick. not SICK, but really "bleah." on sunday, i was tethered to a box of kleenex. then it started to rain and i felt ok. last night (as the rain was leaving and the clear/cold front moved in) i was gacked up again.i've noticed this more and more over the last year or so. just sayin.' this never used to happen.creak.

saddam hung, greenpoint hungover.

2007-01-02T10:55:00.000-05:00

man, the video rental joint smelled like pickled livers last night. oof. i guess the hipsters around here aren't too cool to go out and drink their faces off on new years eve, just like everybody else. i was feeling fine, yesterday, thanks. our NYE festivities included "pirates of the carrib II" and a quick visit to the local from 11:40pm to 12:10am. (just long enough to not feel like total

expresscard spells productivity.

2006-12-21T09:40:00.000-05:00

nobody told me that, on my dell 9400, the little slot where pcmcia cards go isn't actually a slot where pcmcia cards go. it's an "Expresscard" slot.so the card i ordered goes back to newegg. and i spend 4x as much for the same thing in the newfangled configuration. BONUS! NOW WE'RE MAKING MUSIC.mebbe expresscard has the juice to power my motu sans-wallwart? i'll poke around the interwebs

hot compaction action.

2006-12-21T09:29:00.000-05:00

they're repaving my street.i was awakened this morning by a roller going back and forth in front of the building. it was one of those small roller/compactors that makes up for its lack of size by vibrating the hell out of itself and everything around it.california had a small earthquake last night. we had one this morning. the loft, she was a shakin'.

for the want of a (4 pin to 6 pin) nail.

2006-12-14T15:18:00.000-05:00

i own the motu ultralite firewire audio interface. it's neat. and it works really well, which is more than i can say for a couple of other firewire devices i tried prior to buying it. anyway, i own this thing and it's great. thing is... i lost my 4-pin to 6-pin firewire cable. (my dell laptop has the 'mini' 4-pin connector, and the motu has the standard 6-pin.) so it's just sitting there, a

yule.

2006-12-11T19:29:00.000-05:00

smells nice:

korg does dongle

2006-12-11T19:05:00.000-05:00

the korg legacy collection (and presumably, all new software titles from korg) has gone over to the evils of the syncrosoft usb dongle. so.. i won't be updating my copy any time soon.weird, though, that two of korg's bigger competitors (in the software realm) have, almost concurrently with korg's move, dropped the dongle idea altogether. both native instruments and ik multimedia have decided

on the topic of GUI design

2006-12-11T08:41:00.000-05:00

who, being of sound mind, would drop $2500 on DAW software that looks like this in the year 2006?and let's look at a $450 plug in. it sounds great. seriously, everybody loves how it sounds. but:in closing:there's a reason audio hardware is made to look "just so." the same should (and does) apply to audio software. so... hire a designer. hell, hire me. or hire sean.

pah rum-puh pum-pummm...

2006-12-09T12:44:00.000-05:00

well, it finally got cold here in brooklyn.so now it feels like "the holidays."liz and i are going to go get a christmas tree this afternoon ...so i'm firing up some holiday music. 'tis the season!snapcase - designs for automationcult of luna - salvation (i just discovered this record. gah gah gah $#%*&!@)unsane - blood runlater, maybe i'll throw on some neurosis to keep it twinkly.

kaoss pad 3 = nice. . . flawed, but nice.

2006-12-05T11:52:00.000-05:00

i got my kp3 a couple of weeks ago from these guys. yep, the marketing mooks would call me an "early adopter" (i ordered it the day it became available in the US) but they'd be wrong. i've been wanting a live sampler with these features for a long time.. so i was just waiting.anyway, a quick review:good:it's sexy. black, metal, red lights everywhere.it sounds great. nice sounding effects.

calvaire (a movie review/spew)

2006-12-04T23:26:00.000-05:00

just finished watching 'calvaire', which came highly recommended by the video counter guys. it was creepy. not scary, but creepy. in that "let's scare jessica to death" 70's horror movie kinda way. you know wha'i'm'sayin': the town is populated with freaks, and they're all in on it, and you're pretty much screwed.this is one of those. with some reading. (unless you're fluent in hick french

fading ableton

2006-12-04T09:12:00.000-05:00

had a laptop dj gig this weekend... and gave sonalksis's "freeG" fader plug-in a go: http://www.sonalksis.com/index.php?section_id=99using it in live 6 (which has tiny fader controls) was cool. honestly, i thought this plugin was fairly useless when i first laid eyes on it, but after battling with live 6's tiny faders (and its absolute hatred for the wacom tablet), i've changed my mind.if you