I settled down to work on an entry to the remix compilation at the Wandering Ear field recording netlabel.
The challenge was to take some beautiful nature recordings called things like "duck cycle" and "birdsong in St. Paul" and do a remix.
I spend a lot of my hobby life trying to work around things. Often I find myself taking noise and trying to make it into music. I also often like to take nature sounds and blend them in, "naturally" as it were, into melodic musical interludes.
I rather think, though, that a remix called "Clear-cutting", featuring a rather sawmill-ish sound, is not necessarily the most intuitive answer to yield the Jeopardy question "What happens when you morph ducks and songbirds in your sawcutter synth and your sampler?". I am not a lumberjack, and it is not necessarily okay, but it does give me a nice buzz.
I suppose I sometimes have to remind myself of my limitations, including the somewhat involuntary experimental bent with which I approach the simplest things. I am less Edison than ectoplasmic, as I pursue my other-worldly fun. I promise that someday I will just do the "right thing" make a melodic sample, loop it delectably, and create IDM from crows' song. But my own workarounds in life enlivens murders of crows in other ways.
We depart for our New Year's trip tomorrow, on the Texas Gulf Coast. We hope to see birds, and perhaps catch a fish or two. I can use four days of good hikes and quiet moments. I hope that I can post a picture or two, in medias res or upon its conclusion.
I wish everyone a week with more birdsong than clear cuts.