Photo-a-day 2013
Whilst I continue to plug away at completing and editing the rest of ‘Some Other Scotland‘, I’ve taken on a lighter challenge this month, one which is outside my usual area of interest. Katharina’s wonderful selection of photographs for Obscurities…
Obscurities
After some fine-tuning of the music from the ‘10 Weeks : 10 Sounds‘ project, I have compiled it into an album that is now ready to download from Bandcamp. The music is embedded on the right-hand side of this site,…
NodeBeat and Clarinet
The second challenge for ‘10 Weeks : 10 Sounds‘ is a little more complex than the first and resulted in three long pieces in a fairly laid-back smoky jazz-club sort of style. NodeBeat is a graphical sequencer for the iPad…
10 Weeks – 10 Sounds: A Challenge
I have been gathering quirky little instruments and musical odds and ends for quite some time and, whilst many of these have made their way into my songs, there are still some that remain stubbornly under-used. We were discussing this…
Top 10 – My Synths
Inspired in part by Sonicstate’s top 20 greatest synths and Matrixsynth’s The Most Underrated Synths, here is my alternative. This is my top ten list of synths. Not the greatest by any margin, though there are some classics in there.…
An Ancient and Distinguished Instrument
I came across a Yahoo group yesterday that I thought might be of interest (Novelty Music), and this morning heard back from founder member Paul Moore. Paul has a one-man-band and plays the ‘Zob Stick’ which, upon further investigation, turns…
The New Yobstick
At last, I finally got around to finishing the new yobstick. It’s quite a departure from previous efforts – lots of natural wood and more emphasis on playability instead of durability. I’ve only played it for a short time tonight,…
Welcome Mr. Wheezy
Since the days of the Green Shed Studios and the big Farfisa organ we had there, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the sound of the organ. Nothing else sounds like a proper pipe organ being…
Farfisa Frenzy
For some reason, perhaps Google have recently updated their index, there has been a large jump in visits to the blog here, 90% of which are from a Google Images search on Farfisa. The post from April this year Makkie’s…
Moog Envy
Being a bit of a skinflint, almost all of my musical gear is either second-hand or end-of-line stock, but I’ve got a deep hunger for the new Moog synth. It’s the last project from the legendary Dr Bob, and what…