Dispatch #14 (April 2024)
By David Eisinger · View original post
Busy March! My whole family came into town for a long weekend, then we headed down to Wilmington to run a race and spend time with Claire’s sister, then I was off to Vegas for the basketball tournament, and we capped things off at Lake Norman with Claire’s grandmother.
We had such a good time at the race last month that we all decided to sign up for the Steve Haydu St. Patrick’s Lo Tide Run. I didn’t do quite as well (results, certificate) but I had a great time and I got to catch the last mile or so of the 5K with Claire and Nev (my tiny runner).
I picked up a Roland SP-404 sampler – this thing’s super neat. It gives me something I can plug a guitar or microphone into, has a bunch of built-in effects, and plays nicely with the Novation Circuit Tracks (I can trigger samples with the MIDI sequencer, and I can run sound from the Circuit to the SP-404 to add effects). Here’s a track I made with them called “Asperatus”:
I added some shelves to my existing workbench to hold all my music gear. Feeling pretty good about this setup assuming I don’t buy anything else (😬 yeah right).
I read a bunch of great books this month. The standout was certainly Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (read The Glass Hotel first). I also enjoyed Tress of the Emerald Sea – classic Sanderson shit.
I had a couple things printed this month. I made this e-ink photo frame a couple years back, and for the second year in a row, I sent all the photos off to Mixbook for a run of full-color, hardcover books I sent to my family. The frame’s lasted longer than I anticipated, but these’ll last longer. Also, most of my musical equipment provides its documentation as digital PDFs instead of printed manuals. I sent the PDFs for the Circuit Tracks and the SP-404 off to print-my-pdf.com and got back nice, wire-bound printed copies. I’ve made it about half way through the Circuit manual and learned a bunch already, something I’d never do w/ a 100+ page PDF on my computer. As Manuel Moreale says in a recent post:
The more we digitize the world the more analogue, physical objects become important.
This month:
- Adventure: Claire and I are headed to Lisbon, Portugal for a long weekend; hoping to catch a Benfica match while we’re there
- Project: declutter and organize – gotta clear out some space for some big stuff coming this summer
- Skill: SP-404 – so much to learn here (recording tight samples, selectively applying effects, resampling, etc.)
Reading:
- Fiction: Pawn of Prophecy, David Eddings (recommended by Wouter Groeneveld)
- Non-fiction: aforementioned Circuit and SP-404 manuals
Links:
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