My wife and I were talking recently about how we feel like we’re floating in a constantly numbing “Groundhog Day” fugue state. Instrument building is a super effective way to change my entire frame of mind, much like getting deep into an improvisation or track editing session. So while it’s not anywhere closely related to my day job, my unconscious probably doesn’t see it that way. Regardless, it serves to dissipate the stress all around me.

It’s 909 day so it’s time for a synth post! Though not a drum machine, an equally cool device all the same. Here’s the story of how I finally found the perfect solution for prettying up my beloved MicroBrute by replacing the cheap rubber knobs.

Cicada, cricket, grasshopper, frog. However that particular indeterminate carpet of sound occurs, it is a permanent feature of the American South. I grew up in this soup, so hearing this familiar symphony again after nearly two decades of being away felt surreal and magical.

This is a great interview of an awesome figure in electronic music, done just recently (2011) in Madrid by the Red Bull Music Academy:

A lonely computer music lab, between practice and Early Music Ensemble rehearsal. Sitting at my workstation, the phosphor lines glow back in friendship, inviting the experience. On some other terminal across an expanse of ocean lay the eyes and hands of another typist. For one reason or another, connected to the same server, our consciousness met through ‘talk’ and the revelation hit me that this new network – in 1991 barely used by anyone but scientists and art geeks – not only passively gave…