1. Brave has some of the best Pixar film music since Ratatouille, and an excellent depiction of a lute — placing it alongside Ghibli’s Whisper Of The Heart for interesting (non-tropic) music.

  2. I have this bad musical habit of always hearing music in my head as sung vocal notes (dum de daa, etc.). New project is to train myself to constantly experiment with reorchestrating it in as many different forms as I can.

  3. I’m loving the feedback loop of using the things I build.

    Wasn’t blogging much → improved typography, design → want to write more and better.

    Started using my tune stream → discovered a bunch of problems → fixed them, now I can practise more effectively.

    Lessons?

    1. Hacking on stuff does have a wider beneficial effect on life, provided you’re making stuff which matters.
    2. Stuff which matters doesn’t have to be life changing in order to matter
  4. I need some musical help! What time signature is this clip in? It’s been rolling around in my head for the past three weeks but I can’t figure it out.

    
    K:Amin
    AB cd- dc _ed cd cB cd |fe de- ec2 AB cA _ed cd :|
    

    The problem seems to be around the 19-20th notes — that’s how I play it but it means there’s an extra quaver. Otherwise it could almost be alternating bars of 7/4 and 8/4. Any ideas?

  5. Human Theremin using conductive ink

    Using hand built circuitry I was able to turn my sister into a fully functioning theremin, the idea being that eventually the equipment could be used by dancers to create music that relies entirely on choreography and body movement to generate sound as they dance. In this way the visual performance and the audio become intrinsically linked and thus the viewer is able to ‘see’ the sound as it is created.

  6. Just did a bit of tweaking to my and it’s performing better than it has for weeks! The weather today must suit it perfectly — it’s all nice and crisp. Might have to go and play in the park after lunch.

  7. sophiedennis looks like it went really well! Did anyone video it? Morpeth rant looks like a nice tune, I’ll try learning that on the gurdy this evening.

    The Unquiet Grave is one of my favourite traditional songs — have you heard the Dubliners’ version? I think my parents had a wonderful live recording of it on a cassette tape which I can no longer find :(