Notescast

Crack of StonesI made sounds in two ways here:1. Hitting two rocks together. One of them broke while I was playing them.2. Lifting and dropping this milk crate full of rocks.I looped the riff I recorded with the lifting and dropping a bunch of times, then I clipped out some sounds from hitting the rocks together and arranged them to be sort of in time with the lifting and dropping loop.I then tried recording more hitting and tried layering but decided against my instinct to make it busy and full. There was great reverb in my backyard that my recorder couldn't quite capture, but it did get some nice crackingness.Oh, yeah, this was in response to this prompt.

Train Has Joined the ChatI live near train tracks, and sometimes I have to pause recording something because a train is going by.So for this background noise prompt,I went out and recorded the train, then planned to write a song and record it while playing back the train recording. I ran out of time, sort of predictably, so I improvised three guitar tracks while playing back the train with a beat.(Improvising with guitar pretty much happens any time I'm short on time.)None of the guitar tracks were recorded while listening to any of the others, but I decided to keep two in anyway, to make it all a little more bewildering. The guitars are panned left and right, and the train gets the center.

Screened PastoralIn response to this prompt, I came up with a pastoral-ish horn chord progression. Then, to represent the horizontal fibers of the window screen, I wrote a set of notch filters. To represent the vertical fibers, I turned them on and off on a fixed interval.By then, it was 11:30 PM on Monday. I improvised a bass part, but only had time for two takes, then had to mix. So, there it is.The bass playing is not very connected to the chords. If I had more takes, I'd pay more attention to the chords.The filter writing went surprisingly well. I have never written one in web audio, and everything worked the way I expected. I half-expected to have to bail on the filter.

I still don’t have a third riff to go with these two riffs, so I thought I’d try to improvise one out. I think maybe I have the direction right at least.

FLFLAASSHFFLLAASSFHLFALSPer this prompt, I "remixed" the original Flash Gordon title track, which apparently was derived from a Liszt piece.I picked three pairs of loops from the track. (And a few others which didn't work out.)Each pair is a loop and a slightly truncated version of that loop so that they're all out-of-phase. Then, I terraced their entrances and put in a double time section.

Puzzle LurchingI found a couple of half-finished tracks from a few years ago. The first was labeled “Murk” and had horns and a kettledrum. I think it was meant to be some kind of swamp-marching music. The second was named “The Puzzle-2” and was supposed to be music for a puzzle game. It had a recorder, harp, and synth bass.The bass fit right in with the horns, which was a pleasant surprise. My synth horn playing was not quantized, nor particularly tight, whereas the bass was written directly on the piano roll, so there is some tension there, which I like.I had to do a fair amount of shuffling around to get the recorder and harp to fit in rhythmically, but harmonically, it was not a bad fit. Those parts being sparse helped.I added a ritard at the end for dramatic effect to wrap it up.

Expect Delays, KartsFor this one, I created a variation of Trying Your Best Grand Prix!.It’s both a simulation of a race that has lots of stops and delays and of a band that can’t get it together.I had a good time, and I hope it’s not too painful to listen to.

Expect Delays, KartsFor this one, I created a variation of Trying Your Best Grand Prix!.It’s both a simulation of a race that has lots of stops and delays and of a band that can’t get it together.I had a good time, and I hope it’s not too painful to listen to.

Michael Barone's (the host of Pipedreams) voice has changed a lot in 40 years. Here's an intro from a show in 1986 and one from this week in 2026.

Save Time OnlineFor a wacky prompt to make hold music for cars outside of a tunnel, I did the whole thing with the safe chord progression, mid-slow tempo, and announcements about how you should hang up (in this case leave the car line).There's a tension between making something really sound like hold music and making something you don't want to hang up on. In order to avoid hard decisions, I went with always making it more hold-music-like, except for the vocoder.

Onyx's Shut 'Em Down has almost the same chorus as Public Enemy's Shut 'Em Down. I wonder if this was acknowledged.

I did end up getting my Voice Memos off of my phone (let me know if you actually want to know how), and I found this jam! The guy when he was five is on harmonica, I'm on guitar, and Katt is on triangle.

Fanfare for the SlugMade last week in response to a prompt about making a soundtrack for a slug documentary. I went for something descending and textured.

I came up with one of these fantasy quest riffs.

The second piece was a lot harder. The piano had a high ring on a low C#, but he didn't let it bother him.The real challenge was that he decide to improvise the middle section. Let me tell you, even improvising at home with no one listening is rough. I've never improvised live, myself. The guy got stuck a few times, but he never bailed.Incidentally, I remember Pantera jamming at a show. They got in trouble, then it all came crashing down, and they did stop completely. They were probably super drunk, though.

The piano recital went pretty well. I didn't record it well, but I at least recorded it OK.This is Dance Intermezzo. I thought he got a lot of feeling out of the high parts.

IntroThis week's prompt was to make something epic. I made an intro track, of the sort that '80s albums used to open with, but with just-intonation-based harmonies that went well off the 12-TET grid.Several things went wrong:- I wrote a program to make the synth harmonies and thought I might be able to play them on the fretless guitar. Ha! It was like trying to stand up inside a rotating ice orb.- I thought I’d be able to easily add drums later, but I didn’t realize my program played a little more slowly the further it went on. It’s a little less noticeable when it’s fast, so I cut the slow part.- Mixing synth horns and guitars with distortion turns out to be really hard. Respect to Bathory and Celtic Frost’s engineers!Anyway, I wish it had been grander, but I ran out of time and cut it down to the bit that worked.

And to show they’re not snobs, the high school orchestra does a solid Indiana Jone.

Even the 7th and 8th graders played an adult-level Entrance of the Queen of Sheba.

There was also a performance of a Vivaldi concerto for two cellos. At least one of them was a freshman. They nailed it. No one in my high school was anywhere close to this.

I went to the middle school and high school orchestra and was a genuinely blown away. There was a high school quartet that played this Ravel piece without a conductor. The rhythms are really tricky, and there’s tempo changes all over. This recording is shitty, but they sounded great.

Organ EngineThe Junto prompt was music for takeoff.I was just on a plane this Saturday, and I noticed that it’s an experience packed with low pitches and noise. So, instead of taking the pitch of this pipe organ sample upward, I had it drop as the piece went on. (Pitch up is the usual metaphor for elevation up.) I made the chords bigger as it goes along, too, once again, using the tonality diamond.

This was a very cool-sounding bird.

Complete DigestionThis Junto prompt was to do something you do too much even more. So, I came up with a Slayer-type riff and then improvised a half-time breakdown after it. Then, I dropped to a half-time of that for a quarter-time feel. I repeated the process until things got really slow.Now, that I think about it, though, while I always try a half-time breakdown after a fast riff, I don't think I ever finished a song with one. I always end up deciding it's too much like something else and drop it.

I had to go through a big crowd of business guys, so I said “A.I.” repeatedly. I think it helped to create the kind of ambience that helps them thrive.

Kepler KolaFor Junto prompt, I tried to create the sound of the opening of a can of Kepler Kola, keeping in mind the vibe of the Video Cola channel on Blippo+.To do this, I put together a small software instrument that plays the sample pitched up at various intervals. The higher you move the slider, the more intervals it plays.I improvised a few takes with it, then I used a filter in Bitwig to boost some of the harmonics, for just a little touch of pitched flavor.

I’ve had these three riffs for a song for about a while (maybe a year?) and a lot of half-formed ideas for a bridge that I keep picking up then putting away. So, for the latest Junto challenge, I pushed out a new riff, said I'm going with that, then recorded the song on my phone (with some possibly ill-advised improvisation). Now, I can see what I think of it later, then iterate.

The middle school string ensemble really did justice to Jupiter at the festival.

Jupiter is coming along.

Improvising Hive.This is my attempt to jump back into the Disquiet Junto. I wanted to do another piece that uses the tonality diamond, which takes the mathematical relationships in just intonation and extrapolates them to create finer divisions of pitch, so I extracted some code from The Sound of Ocean Heat Energy and built a small instrument that draws its pitches from the 11-limit diamond again.At first, I had it play pitches on mouse over, but that turned out way too sensitive, so now it plays only when you click a cell.I improvised on it, then edited a bit. Here’s a video of the raw improvisation in case you’re interested.

Inspired by Bolt Thrower being excellent despite keeping it simple, I’ve been trying to write riffs that way. I think they are more solid than what I usually come up with.

One of those up the scale riffs. Feels better to play than to listen to.

I’m a fan of the guy’s seventh chord warmup.

I'm calling this microtrack I just came up with A Short Life.

The guy sometimes just starts riffing mid-practice.

Kid intonation makes Hall of the Mountain King a touch scarier.

Avant Keyboard Cat

The guy worked out a major variation of Korobeiniki (Tetris).

Hey, a 15/8 groove.

Rests, the loudest part of the whole piece!

Trying Can Can with the full orchestra.Watching these kids’ rehearsals drives home how much music context matters to the music experience. You know music comes from people. In this case, I know that they’re kids and that they’re learning. Sometime I only know that it’s some bedroom ambient guy with a computer. Whatever I know informs everything I hear. That’s why this mistake-packed playthrough is so much more compelling than some A.I. regurgitated “perfect” bit of audio.

Can Can, a work in progress

Sounds heard from the Longy bathroom

Maybe running a VPS is a bigger deal than I say it is

The guy independently discovered spiccato.

There’s some really big octave+ stretches for the left hand in Kakariko Village.

Piano store ambience

Here’s some riffs from my “Used Riffs” folder.

I made these digital/machine-type sounds with my nostril!

The 5th and 6th grade summer camp string orchestra consisted of:- Four violins- Two violas- Eight cellos- One bassI guess cello is having a moment!Suffice to say, those aren't the proportions they have in Serious Orchestras, but obviously you gotta let the kids play what they actually want to play, and that config didn't sound bad at all.They also had a subset of the high school orchestra play, and they were very tight. I have never played this well in my life. My high school orchestra came nowhere close to this level. Anyway, it was a good idea to have them play. I think both middle schoolers to be and parents were motivated by it.