June 29, 2008

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Breezy -- Some synthetic wind chimes for this lazy Sunday.

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June 28, 2008

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Interference -- noisy ambient, if there is such a thing.

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June 25, 2008

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Won't You Come Out To Play -- My uncle is visiting (again!). While enjoying our post-pizza cannoli, our conversation turned to the Beatles and my podcast. So, with a little help from my uncle, we took the last four notes of Dear Prudence, slowed them down, layered them on top of themselves, added a looping drone from Within You Without You, and finished it with children coming out to play, courtesy of dobroide at the Freesound Project.

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June 23, 2008

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Persistence -- only seven days left. It's almost over.

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June 18, 2008

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Lullaby -- so tired.

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June 15, 2008

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Sigh -- only 15 days left...

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June 13, 2008

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Etude -- So many of these pieces have been etudes, I tried to avoid using that as a title, but now that the end is near it doesn't seem to matter.

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June 12, 2008

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Hard Shell -- Hard on the outside, soft in the middle.

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June 8, 2008

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Clouds -- This is a little generative sequencer I've built in MaxMSP. It chooses which notes to play when (with a little user guidance at the beginning...). The synth sound is still on the simple side, but that's the next project. For now, enjoy this chill little minute.

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June 7, 2008

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Robot Dream -- is there such a thing?

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June 6, 2008

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Simple Sin(e) 9 -- Lately I find these kinds of sounds very reassuring, though I couldn't say why.

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June 5, 2008

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Simple Sin(e) 8 -- Simple Sin(e) is back! With the end of the podcast in sight I'm gearing up for my next project, which will feature the synth tools I've been building to make this series of pieces... stay tuned.

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June 4, 2008

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Bubblespace -- For today's piece I experimented with an unusual sequencer tool called Refmatrix. After generating some random patterns I cut and pasted the bits I like into this spacey little piece.

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June 3, 2008

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City -- you can hear traffic all night long...

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May 31, 2008

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Deep -- Close your eyes and hum along.

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May 29, 2008

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Drone 2 -- see Drone.

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May 28, 2008

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Slow -- time passes slowly while waiting...

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May 26, 2008

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Memorial -- Today is the day that we honor those who have bravely fought for our country.

The trumpets you hear are from a piece I wrote a few years go after Alan Moore's graphic novel Watchmen. The various explosions are from Freesound user ERH.

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May 22, 2008

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Drone -- I've been reading and thinking about minimalism and droning music the past couple of days and wanted to try it out. Enjoy.

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May 21, 2008

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Slip -- no words today.

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May 20, 2008

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Longing -- sometimes they write themselves.

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May 15, 2008

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Pause -- How few notes does one need to make music?

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May 13, 2008

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Nocturnal -- another late night improvisation.

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May 12, 2008

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Hopeful -- late night piano improvisation.

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May 9, 2008

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Judson Church is my final danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Dance-A-Day will complete its year on Sunday. We've made 43 videos together over the last year. Wow.

In addition to scoring this final video, I also got to be the cameraman for the dancing. We were attending a show at Judson Church, an important venue in the dance world. Afterwards, Boris made this video (with some guest performers) so that he too could dance in Judson Church.

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May 3, 2008

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Impromptu -- It's exactly what it would seems to be.

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April 27, 2008

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Tokyo Redux is a remix of an earlier work of mine, Where Is Tokyo?, which in turn is a remix of an even earlier work, Elegy for Sophie.

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April 24, 2008

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Sooth -- Four pitches, each appearing in only two octaves, were all I needed for this simple minute.

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April 22, 2008

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WTC -- Tonight, flying home from Ohio, my plane followed a path north along the Hudson River, giving me an amazing view of Manhattan. One of the first things I noticed and identified is the place where the World Trade Center once stood.

It was very disconcerting that my first time seeing the site was from a passenger jet passing overhead.

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April 19, 2008

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Waiting -- Yesterday I waited in line at the DMV for over two hours to get my New York State Driver's License. As everyone with a license knows, this process can bring about a dulling sensation of despair. Today's piece explores that sensation.

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April 17, 2008

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Fragments -- The setup of my workspace in this new apartment allows me to use my keyboard. Where I lived before there was no room for it unless it was sitting on the radiator, which is generally not a good practice with plastic encased electronics. Now that I have it out again I like to noodle around on it, playing the few bits of songs that I can.

While preparing for this minute, my fingers fell into a song I'd written in high school and then revised in college. The problem is that I can only remember the first part of the first phrase (not much at all). So I recorded myself playing around with it and ended up with this new version for today's minute.

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April 15, 2008

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Tax Day -- This music has nothing in particular to do with the filing of taxes, but I had to call it something... ;-)

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April 13, 2008

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Blocked -- Writer's block (or in this case, composer's block) is a fact of life. Often when I'm having a hard time creating something I'll just play around randomly at my keyboard, hoping to find something interesting or useful. Today's piece is one minute from about thirty or so of me poking around at the keyboard. Don't think of it as a piece about writer's block, think of it as writer's block made audible...

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April 8, 2008

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Internet Woes -- I did not post anything yesterday because I was having trouble getting my brand new internet set-up to work properly. It works now, so here's this little anthem to my troubles....


I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.
I will not put posting off until the last minute.

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April 4, 2008

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MLK is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Boris marked this occasion with a dance at the future site of a memorial to King. I created this soundscape using a sample of King's voice, "Like anybody, I would like to live."

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March 28, 2008

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Cherry Blossoms is today's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. A little celebration of Spring here in chilly Ohio.

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March 21, 2008

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Nerves Relax -- the final installment in this little series...

I did not get my act together enough this week to get this to Boris in time for a danceaday collaboration. You should still cruise over to his site and see what he's been making though.

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March 17, 2008

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Danny -- Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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March 16, 2008

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Spring Fever -- another fever-themed piece, this time with birds.

sample attribution: evening in the forest.wav by reinsamba

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March 15, 2008

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Feverish -- Yesterday (when this piece was supposed to be posted) I came down with a fever very suddenly, making it difficult to concentrate on composing anything. So I just held off until today and made this little anthem to feverish disorientation.

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March 13, 2008

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Simple Sin(e) 6 continues my little series of FM pieces. Today I wanted to go for very subtle changes, making the piece more reflective than buoyant.

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March 10, 2008

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Watery -- Well, it finally happened... I missed a day. Damn. Traveling yesterday after a long weekend made it slip my mind until i was drifting off to sleep last night. Oh well, today I must compose two minutes to catch back up.

The first re-uses a water sample that I first explored a couple of weeks ago. Today though, I have subjected it to the kind of manipulations I usually reserve for beat-based samples.

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March 9, 2008

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Seen Memory -- Thursday night I had an awesome performance with Esther Palmer (Seen Performance) and Amiti Perry. I mixed some loops and found sounds into a meditative soundscape. It was a lot of fun. Today, I celebrate that performance with this minute of remembering.

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March 2, 2008

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One Inch:8 -- this time it's from the song Vessel.

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February 29, 2008 (Leap Day)

There is no new 60-second piece for today. If there was this project would need to be called 60x366, which it's not.

Instead I am posting two other pieces today, each of which is built from earlier one-minute postings. The archives of 60x365 have become a kind of menu that I can use for collaborations and commissions. These pieces were each created for specific performances, using the 60x365 archives as a source for material.

First is a piece called Twine [listen]. I made it for dancer/choreographer Kristin Hapke using five earlier pieces: Simple Sin(e) 1, Simple Sin(e) 2, Stasis, Glass Canon, and Here, I'll Play It Again.

The second piece is called Creamy Pink Thrill [listen]. It started as Boop Boop Beep and evolved into a Gameboy performance piece.

Enjoy.

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February 26, 2008

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Greetings from Minneapolis. I am traveling this week to visit/participate in the 2008 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts. Tomorrow morning, nine selections from this very podcast will be featured on a concert of appropriated music. I will report back on it when I post tomorrow.

Anyway, today's piece is called Waterworld, and no, it has nothing to do with that Kevin Costner movie...

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February 25, 2008

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One Inch:7 -- it continues with The Warning.

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February 22, 2008

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Blue is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis, continuing his series of dances for Black History Month. For today I decided to pay homage to the blues, that African-American form that is a cornerstone of our culture. This piece is a re-examination of a piano composition I composed several years ago, itself a re-examination of the blues. Enjoy.

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February 20, 2008

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Shimmer -- I used the same sound source to make this piece as well. Fascinating, no?

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February 19, 2008

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Remembering -- A while ago, I posted this sketch of an uncompleted piece. I thought for today we'd check in and see what I've done with it since then. Enjoy.

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February 17, 2008

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Echo - I feel like this sometimes. Do you?

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February 16, 2008

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Silver moonlight streams
onto taut piano wire.
darkened notes ring out

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February 13, 2008

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One Inch:5 - another in my series of Nine Inch Nails remixes. Can you guess how many I plan to make?

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February 9, 2008

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Rub -- 60x365 is bringin' back mono.

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February 8, 2008

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Fight is this week's danceaday.com collaboration, continuing Boris's series of dances for Black History Month. Today's piece samples from bassist/composer Charles Mingus's Haitian Fight Song. If you are unfamiliar with his work, I'd recommend that you start with these albums:

Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Blues and Roots
Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Mingus Ah Um

His autobiography, Beneath the Underdog is also well worth a look.

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February 1, 2008

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SQ is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. To honor Black History Month Boris is doing a series of dances at black history sites around Washington DC. Today's takes place at the Mount Vernon slave quarters. I've scored this dance with samples from a recording of Berta, Berta by Branford Marsalis.

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January 31, 2008

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Cut
sound of scissors, looped.
notes hang in arpeggios.
torn fabric textures.

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January 17, 2008

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Nostalgia - I don't usually like to post works-in-progress here, but time's gotten away from me so I'll put this piece up now and polish it more later. Stay tuned.

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January 10, 2008

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Tail -- here's some feedback for a Thursday evening.

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January 8, 2008

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Simple Sin(e) 5 -- After a break from it, I've decided to revisit my Simple Sin(e) series. Each of these pieces was made using a custom software patch and is built entirely from the sound of sine waves.

Check out the rest of the series:
1 Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ 2 Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ 3 Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ 4 Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Inexplicable Pain Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Nostalgic Relief

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January 7, 2008

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Amen Buzz -- I wanted to transform the amen break into an ambient soundscape. If you listen carefully, you will hear that it is much more than random noise...

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January 4, 2008

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Old Tape is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis, the first of 2008. I tried to make this sound like an old piece of audio tape that had been recorded on many times. It fits the mood and style of the video.

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January 2, 2008

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Bells -- I was feeling very zen-like today.

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January 1, 2008

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Resolutions

Happy New Year!

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December 30, 2007

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Grow -- With today's piece I enter the second half of this podcast project. I decided that this is the perfect opportunity for me to compose a piece using notes and pitches rather than simply using sounds and samples. It may seem like a subtle and meaningless different for the listener. For the composer though, there are some important differences, the foremost being that I first created a notated score from which I performed the music for this recording. Enjoy.

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December 28, 2007

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Smile Song -- For Christmas, I got to visit my four-month old niece, Eiley. I recorded her cooing and giggling and set that to music for today's piece. Check her out, sporting her 5of4 logo shirt. You can get your own shirt at Cafe Press.

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December 27, 2007

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Flying Home -- We flew home from California today. Thiry minutes in line to get through security. An hour and a half waiting at the gate with loud, crying children. Five stupid hours on an airplane. Creativity is at a low ebb tonight, so more airplane sounds.

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December 22, 2007

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Flying -- We take a break from my podcast "tribute" to holiday music to bask in the sound of airplane engines. Many people fly during the holidays, adding to the season's stress.

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December 20, 2007

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Bellsong provides some ultra-minimalist, ambient sleigh bells for your holiday mood. Enjoy.

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December 16, 2007

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Carol -- Wow, this is the latest I've posted a piece yet...one hour to spare. (We spent a good portion of the day in the car, travelling on some very icy roads.)

Anyway, today I continue my 12-part holiday series with the ambient choral offering. Enjoy.

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December 9, 2007

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Birds is the title for today's piece. I made it using a sampled bird call and modulated sine waves.

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December 7, 2007

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Dance no.1 is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. It's our 24th podcast. In preparation for next week's 25th collaboration, I revisited the music from our very first podcast. In case you've forgotten, you can find it here.

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December 5, 2007

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Sketch -- I came home from work today, excited to have some time to compose, finally. I jumped right in and worked on some sounds for a collaboration with