This past Sunday was the fourth installment in my new era of jams (I should just call them jams). I think it was pretty good, and it was also very different from the first three. I pre-arranged all the sequences and just turned them on and off and fussed with timbre during the set. This was mainly because, while rehearsing with “Cazenove” in mind, I ended up getting a couple patterns that I liked and decided I should just use them, rather than hoping that another attempt would be as good.
I had also already decided not to use any of my "expressive" controllers for this set—no velocities or mod wheels or aftertouches or nothing. I used the keyboard on the Digitakt to input some notes, but there's no velocity sensitivity, so it was very rudimentary. A couple pitches I just dialed in manually, programming rather than playing. This was due to having discovered that velocity and modulation really didn't factor into that BICEP song!
I also recorded a couple hasty vocal samples right before recording, just with a mic directly into the Digitakt inputs. I added a little bit of post-processing to the recorded samples but they're probably the most directly my voice has ever been used in one of my songs. Kinda scary. (The vocal treatment was more Overmono than BICEP, I think.)
So after realizing that these four jams were all so different, the next experiment I want to incorporate into this series is not being so different. I want to try to make something that's very similar to something I've made before, and I'll probably choose this most recent one. Because it felt successful, and also because everything is still set up for that one lol. So, same voices, maybe different drum samples, maybe I'll try composing during the set instead of before. Maybe I'll bring in the vocal processor. It can't be exactly the same. It can't be exactly in my Q zone.
I think I had a little bit of a breakthrough tonight on the diorama. The other day I arranged some of the dog's toys in the corner of the room just to entertain myself and realized I had created an intriguing situation. It's not exactly a narrative, but it invites a wonder about what the those critters are up to. It reminds me of a quote from Marc Davis, probably from his excellent bigass multi-volume coffee table book, I think from when he was working on punching up the animal scenes for the Disneyland railroad. He moved the existing beavers and foxes and squirrels around, not changing their appearance or poses or animations or anything, but simply put them together in groups of two or three. By implying a relationship between two otherwise-unrelated characters, you get a story! (I took a photo of the dog toy scene to share here but then decided I don't want to lol sorry)
I've also spent a lot of my idle time this week on a piece of software, to complete the trifecta of my hobby genres. It's something I started thinking about a few years ago and haven't done much with apart from continuing to renew the clever (imo) domain name. I think the first version is just about ready to launch, maybe before next week's update. I won't say too much about it yet but let's just say that if you wished you had a Letterboxd for Television and weren't satisfied with the many Lettersboxd for Television that are already out there, you might like this thing. But that's all I'll say for now! You can try to connect those dots yourself! Have a nice week!