Tranzfuse

Looking Back, Moving Forward

tranzfuse — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 03:37:05 +0000

Oh, time. Where do you go? You indeed continue to move along at an ever more rapid pace, that is for sure. Steady as she goes.

2010. Did we make contact? I have no idea, but a hell of a lot happened, I know that much. What was going on around here? Let’s see. I celebrated five years of marriage to my lovely wife, Marsha; we took a nice vacation to Vieques, Puerto Rico; we welcomed our 2nd daughter, Mila, into the world; I grew a beard; I wrote some music; I got better at JavaScript; I got promoted to lead front end developer at work; I built a modular synth; I bought a new audio interface; I bought some new headphones; I bought Max 4 Live; I built a pretty cool online scrapbook; I drank some beer. Some other things probably occurred that I can’t recall. I spent the month of August by myself. I grew a beard back in January. You know, important stuff.

The big goal for 2010 I had set for myself was to write a song a month. Well, I didn’t quite get there, but I didn’t totally fail. I had a 50% success rate, which isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s not a passing grade or anything (I had a second child for god’s sake!), but I made progress. Progress is good. Carving away. Little by little. I learned some things, which is key. Constraints are a very good thing. Deadlines are a very good thing (sometimes). Song writing and song creation is not so easy. Continuous practice and repetition are the keys to creativity and improving your craft. It may not seem you like you’re improving day by day, but rest assured, over a period of time, you sure as hell are.

So what does 2011 have in store? I actually don’t know, believe it or not. What I aim to do though is continue writing music and learning my way around my modular synth and figuring out synthesis more. I believe I will stick with the song per month goal. It is not an overly ambitious goal, but it is not an afterthought either. I want to get better at song arrangement and composition. I’d like to create a song I feel good enough about to get it out on SoundCloud and pass around to friends.

I want to do a little more field recording. I was disappointed that the Blue Mikey 2 mic for iPhone turned out to not get such great reviews. I was hoping to use iPhone, along with the excellent FiRe recording app, as my field recording setup of choice since I always have my iPhone with me anyway. Wondering if I should try that mic anyway?

I also hope to spend some time digging into Max 4 Live. This is like opening Pandora’s box, but I am curious about sound design, the Live API, Processing.js, messing with video in an Ableton context, and other things I’m not even aware of yet.

I want to spend more time just listening to music. I know that sounds whacky, but it’s difficult to make time to just listen to music these days. I mean actively listen, not passively while doing something else (like work). I miss it.

From a web development standpoint, I’d like to iterate on my scrapbook project. I have a few ideas as to how to turn it into a more interactive “app” that people may enjoy. The iPad platform seems like it could be a good fit. But the desktop browser will work just as well.

I’d like to get a bit better at application design and object-oriented coding, at least as it applies to JavaScript. Well, PHP too, but that’s another matter. I’ve been working on a JavaScript-based media framework to support a handful of media players, such as a dynamic lead, carousel, photo galleries, audio and video players. It’s powered by jQuery and Ben Nadel’s excellent corMVC framework. I hope to begin rolling it out at work in the next month or so.

I also plan on taking a swing at design. I started a new design for my blog over the holidays, but the file got corrupted somehow, which made me sad, so I took a break. I intend on getting started back to that shortly. Once the design is complete I plan on building a new WordPress theme from scratch.

My other goal for 2011 is to take my family camping. Marsha and I love camping and we’re ready to introduce our daughters. We want to start them as soon as possible, so why not this year?

We also try to travel somewhere new each year. It may be Spain this time around.

I should probably exercise a little bit too. Time to get the bicycle out.

Well that’s enough about that, I could go on forever about things I’d like to do or get into, but ya gotta pick a few. I have some specific goals in mind for the year, and some more wide open areas I’d like to spend time exploring. Time to get out the project management software and prioritize.

Happy New Year.

Modular Synth Project

tranzfuse — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 19:35:57 +0000

Way Behind

tranzfuse — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 03:20:20 +0000

Well I’ve missed the last two ’12 Songs’ projects for September and October, but for good (enough) reason. I ended up buying and building a modular synth. More information to follow very soon, but hopefully musical results are not too far off either.

Lab Project #3

tranzfuse — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 03:57:16 +0000

I’ve decided to experiment at the opposite end of the technology spectrum and buld a mostly analog modular synth. This will take a while to do, but I have spent the last month or so researching and obsessing over lots of information and details covering incredibly in depth areas of synthesis and noise making tools and techniques. I have stumbled onto a world I was barely aware of until recently. It has somehow taken ahold of me and won’t let go. I will provide updates as I figure out my moves.

12 Songs in 2010: August Project

tranzfuse — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 03:25:49 +0000

Yeah yeah. Late late late. I know. Same story. I think I actually finished this in August, it just took me this long to get around to bouncing and exporting to MP3:

Take 1

August 2010 Project

Notes:

Sound quality is not too bad.
Song develops nicely, but arrangement still isn’t there quite yet.
Applied the Vintage Mastering 1 audio effect rack to Master track in Ableton. Made no adjustments to it.
Exported from Ableton with no normalization. Sample rate 44100, No Dither.
Opened exported Wav in Audacity. Applied normalization with -6DB DC Offset (still unclear about DC Offset) and then ran compression with default settings. Exported as MP3.

12 Songs in 2010: July Project

tranzfuse — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:55:08 +0000

Here is a rough draft of where the creative process has lead me this time around. It is not quite what I envision for a more fully realized take, but I found this sketch interesting enough. I borrowed some sample snippets from a lesser known song by a well known group from the 80s (and 90s). I am unsure if this qualifies it as an edit or song (or theft), although labelling it as such doesn’t matter too much right now anyway.

Take 1:

12 Songs in 2010: Edits as Opiates (Take 1)

Notes:

Mixing and “mastering” is still somewhat cryptic to me. I have A LOT to learn.
Still very tracky and loopy. I want my songs to develop more.
Arangement continues to be an interesting challenge. I have a sense of how I’d like things, but I am not quite able to produce the results that I hear in mind yet.
The tail was cut off, be sure to fix that up for Take 2.

12 Songs in 2010: June Project

tranzfuse — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 02:04:18 +0000

The month of June brought a new kind of song into my life. While I was involved in the creation process I can’t really take the credit…my wife did all the hard work. Meet Mila, our second daughter, she’s as lovely as sunshine.

Having a child is a wonderful gift, but it is no small task. Needless to say, my 12 songs project was temporarily interrupted, but I hope to get back on track for July.

Meet Mila Estrin Smith, born June 22, 2010 at 12:03AM

SVEK! Complement

tranzfuse — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 02:17:19 +0000

This DJ mix was a follow up podcast to the original SVEK! mix that was first available as a part of my pals’ podcast series over at abrooklynlife.com way back in 2006. This mix was available as podcast only on May 24, 2006, but later added to the blog for download. This mix contains a bit more of the earlier Svek label’s catalog and is definitely some of my favorite music from the label.

The first song, Kaos, which was released on Svek 012 on 10″ vinyl in 1997, was one of the first minimal house records that I picked up on and started my fantastic adventure through dub, minimal techno, house and beyond. Needless to say, this was a highly influential record for me, and if I remember correctly, the first Svek record I ever bought.

Svek 012 Record A-Side Artwork

Tracklist:

Stephan G & The Persuader – Kaos – Svek 012
Brommage Dub – Side B – Svek 013
J. Dahlback – The Lonesome Dub – Svek 008
J. Dahlback – What is the time, Mr. Templar – Svek 011
Stephan G – Shass – Svek 009
J. Dahlback & J.L. Huhta – Midnight Express – Svek 010
Szerementa Programs – Numume – Svek 044
Conceiled Project – Definition of D – Svek 040
Mr. James Barth – Part of Me – Svek LP001
Mr. James Barth & A.D. – Above the Skyline – Svek 025
A.D.N.Y – Mi Gente – Svek 018

Lab Project #2

tranzfuse — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:52:05 +0000

Oh yeah, this web site is an ongoing project, so I wanted to document it here. I am slowly constructing a WordPress child theme (called “red headed step child”) based on Justin Tadlock’s excellent WordPress Hybrid theme framework. I am enjoying learning the infinite possiblities of the WordPress platform, CSS, and deepening my understanding of PHP. I imagine I’ll update this post more as I continue to dig in and evolve the site over time.

My to-do list:

Improve category landing page layout
Actually create a wholistic design for my site/child theme
Improve post excerpt formatting
Expand navigation to include Scripts/Tools tab (I think)
Incorporate sidebars/widgets
Include a bit more photography
Improve WPTouch design for mobile device experience
Add Lightbox jQuery plugin functionality for photos
Design a Tranzfuse logo/favicon

Lab Project #1

tranzfuse — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 01:32:25 +0000

I’m currently working on a scrapbook, which is doing the following things:

Fetching my 25 most recent Twitter tweets via the Twitter API
Fetching my 25 most recent Flickr photos via the Flickr API
Fetching tracks marked as field recordings from my SoundCloud account via the SoundCloud API
Using a few CSS3 tricks for box shadows, transform, and rotation
Using the Google web fonts API to style the Twitter text
Using jQuery UI to add dragging capabilities
Using the jQuery lightBox plugin to display an enlarged version of photos

My to-do list to improve it:

Cache API data to improve performance and reduce API calls to Flickr, SoundCloud, and Twitter web services DONE!
Create version of brown scrap paper image with box shadow effect to apply when being dragged
Contain dragging to viewport only, this seems to occur because of the rotation applied DONE!
Add icons to show interactions that are possible (drag this, open this, etc)
Consider Soundcloud API integration for field recordings DONE!
Convert to WordPress plugin with options panel for customization, maybe a full blown WordPress theme down the road (if it makes sense to do so)
Expand to include timeline feature that shows items from different web services grouped by date
Do a bit of cross-browser testing
Convert to HTML5 doctype, potentially introduce audio tag and JavaScript audio player features for SoundCloud files
Improve PHP, move to OOP design