Spectrograms and Pickups

Crossroad Practice

And here's a bit of "Crossroad" practice!

https://youtu.be/oRz80YW2duI

Robert Johnson Cairn

Great report from Bob Langley on Nationwide in 1970 about a cairn memorial to the Delta Blues maestro, ROBERT JOHNSON.
Built by 19-year-old Bruce Gardner in the Scottish Borders.

But where is it, and is it still there?

I found a "Drumelzier" on Google Maps and compared the satellite view with the black and white video view. Result!

But I can't zoom in close enough to see if the cairn is still there.

Bruce would have been born in 1951 so he would be 67 now - is he still alive and does he still live in Drumelzier?

Here's the video:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04hcfkz

Ernest Tubb

A bit of Ernest Tubb, but I needed the cowboy hat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmbJFxZFUdE

Arecibo Sound

Google had a doodle for the Arecibo Message the other day so I looked it up.

It was a message for alien life sent in 1974 to the star cluster M13 some 25,000 light years away! The message had 1,679 binary bits at a frequency of 2,380 MHz with 10 Hz modulation. It was at the speed of 10 bits per second, or 600 bpm.

I played the pattern on my Yamaha keyboard using the Vox Humana voicing and frequency scaled down to A note, 220Hz, because we can't hear 2,380 MHz! I recorded that onto my Tascam recorded and edited it in Audacity. I recorded it at 100bpm, but Audacity speeded it up to 300bpm, half the speed of the actual message, because it sounded best.

I wanted a static fuzz effect so I used an English Electric Lightning jet engine sample from my Samsynth Blue Noize Project. I chose the Lightning because in it's time, it was cutting edge but it's a bit obsolete nowadays like the Arecibo Message.

That was good but not very musical so I added a "Lost In Space" woo-woo sound using the oscillator in my Blue Noize Machine.

I used some stereo panning in Audacity so wear those headphones!

https://soundcloud.com/samsswingnskank/arecibo-sound

Tubb Fest!

Ernest Tubb Fest at the Ubiquitous Open Mic last week. I played 'Thanks A Lot' and 'Just A Drink Away'. It was great but I didn't have the big cowboy hat!

I was playing through an Ammoon American amp-simulator pedal into the PA system. The Ammoon is the same as the more expensive Joyo American which is a copy of the more expensive Tech 21 Blonde! It lets you get a variety of amp sounds into the clean PA without having to carry a big amp around. I dialed in a slightly dirty Fender sound, and I think it sounded pretty good and was convenient because you can power it off a 9V battery.

Here's the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7ZNoi9WF4A

Pedal:
https://www.ammoon.com/p-i1712.html

Planets Synth.

I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 about rhythms, and they used the orbits of the planets as a musical rhythm, so I decided to do the same using an oscillator synthesizer.

I adapted my old synthesizer written in HTML and javascript that runs through a web browser.

Firstly I worked out a frequency for each planet proportionally scaled on their distance from the Sun. Because of the huge distances of the outer planets I had to use a different scale for them.

For the planets' beeps per minute, I worked out a proportional tempo based on the orbits. I found a good tempo for Mercury first (240bpm), then calculated the other planets based on that. Again because of the huge numbers, I have to use a separate tempo range for the outer planets, otherwise the inner ones would have been beeping too fast or the outer ones too slowly.

Once I had that sounding good I thought it would be great to add modulation based on the number of large Moons each planet had, and also some delay.

Here is the final result.

https://youtu.be/KfGFkjA1yYU

Audio track for looping through a bass amp!

https://soundcloud.com/samsswingnskank/planets-synth

BBC Radio 4.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/b0bgfqx7

Junior Jazz

This week I attended the Junior Jazz Summer School at the Royal Welsh College of Music.

There were young musicians of different ages working together to present a public end-of-week performance in the college.

It was very good because you had lots of assistance from the tutors and they made it really fun, plus you could choose which jazz types you wanted to do. There were about 30 young musicians attending and they were all really nice and enthusiastic.

I played the following songs:
Dark Eyes by Django Reinhardt,
Little Sunflower by Freddie Hubbard,
Blues In The Closet by Oscar Pettiford.

Here are some tasters from the end-of-week public performance.

https://youtu.be/ILbXynZjquU
https://youtu.be/KFzmfhCRgX4
https://youtu.be/BHDPmHWnHp8

https://www.rwcmd.ac.uk/other/rwcmd_community/summer_schools__short_courses/courses/junior_jazz.aspx

John Robson Competition - The Video

I have made a cutout stop moton animation for my John Robson competition entry.
I cut out a stickman and photographed individual photos, then put them together in Adobe Premiere.
Here is the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbgqhLwHJtg

John Robson Competition

John Robson is a guitar teacher with a Youtube channel.
He has a competition at the moment where you have to play your own version of his demonstration tune.
I have entered!
Here is my entry:
https://soundcloud.com/samsswingnskank/john-robson-competition

The video about the competition is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1xSNyGSJps

TASCAM

I have a new recording device, a Tascam DR-40.
It's so easy to record. Just put it in front of the amp speaker and press 'record'!
Really good quality through the built-in condenser mics.
Previously it was a major faff to record, loads of wires into an audio input box into a PC.
Here're some test tracks using my bass guitar played through a Fender Rumble 25 amp.

https://soundcloud.com/samsswingnskank/bass-guitar-test-1-munsters
https://soundcloud.com/samsswingnskank/bass-test-2-weather-report
https://soundcloud.com/samsswingnskank/bass-test-3-bird-land

Tech Will Save Us

Experiment with "Tech Will Save Us" stutter synth kit.

https://youtu.be/kDrklCYzMUY

The Munsters

My version of 'At Home With The Munsters'.

The lyrics were written by Munsters scriptwriter Bob Mosher, but they weren't sung on the TV programme. They were on the 1964 concept album called 'At Home With The Munsters'.

I used my Yamaha PSRE333 keyboard, Vintage Mick Abrahams SG guitar and my home-made synthesizer.

https://soundcloud.com/samsswingnskank/at-home-with-the-munsters