Archive for the 'Music' Category

Muffy’s Collaborative Roadbird

Posted by Wyck on September 7th, 2009

I just completed a musical project with Muffy St. Bernard.  Muffy gave me a single track that was mostly ambient drones with some sampler stuff and some drum loops.  I layered over it with some electric guitars, cello and synth.
I had quite a bit of fun with the vocoder too, it’s such an amusing toy.  […]

Borrowed Kaos

Posted by Wyck on June 8th, 2008

A friend and coworker of mine, Chris Mennie, was kind enough to lend me his new toy, the Korg Kaossilator. It’s a nifty little synth and digital loop recorder with a rather unique interface. It has an X-Y touch sensitive pad, along with a twisty knob and a couple of poorly positioned buttons […]

Rendering Audio From MIDI

Posted by Wyck on February 2nd, 2007

Something I always wanted to do was to write a program that took a MIDI file and output an audio file. This is obviously a massive undertaking to do well, but I wanted to see how far I could get in a few days. I downloaded the MIDI file spec, and a couple […]

WKRP in Cincinnati

Posted by Wyck on January 8th, 2007

Baby, if you’ve ever wondered what I’d do to a 1978 TV sitcom theme song… then take a listen to today’s musical offering.
A long time ago, I loosely picked out some chords to go along with the WKRP in Cincinnati theme song (props to Tom Wells, Hugh Wilson, and Steve Carlisle for […]

Street of Busted Fantasies

Posted by Wyck on December 18th, 2006

I’ve been on a bit of a kick where I try to reproduce things I hear. Sort of a musical life drawing class. It’s been interesting. I need practice playing the guitar–particularly in eliminating the finger slop. I need help engineering guitar sounds. I need some basic mastering lessons too. […]

Examining My Voice

Posted by Wyck on December 1st, 2006

At the request of a friend, I examined a few things about my voice.
First, my vocal range. I just about destroyed my voice today trying for hours to dig deeper than my lowest note, or push my voice to break the high pitch barrier. What I found out is that I have almost […]

When A Musician Gets The Chicken Pox

Posted by Wyck on November 27th, 2006

I got the chicken pox for my 21st birthday. It certainly wasn’t what I asked for! Getting the chicken pox as an adult is far more serious than getting them as a child. I didn’t realize that having them could affect so many things about your body. From your brain to your intestines. […]

Mad World

Posted by Wyck on November 20th, 2006

Some songs are really poignant. Every time I heard this song it just stopped me in my tracks. So last week I started learning it to play it on the piano. The song is Mad World from the Donnie Darko soundtrack (music by Michael Andrews, lyrics by Gary Jules). Donnie Darko […]

Today’s Special

Posted by Wyck on October 27th, 2006

So I was listening to my accordion-ukelele piece from last week, and I was thinking that a long time ago I had written and recorded a song that had both accordion and mandolin (synthesized) sounds in it. It has been kind of eating me up, so I decided to go looking for it.
I found […]

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Posted by Wyck on October 13th, 2006

When I’m sitting in my music room, I usually keep the ukelele on my lap just to keep from having idle hands and ears. (Incidentally, when I sit at the computer, it’s the Rubik’s cube.) When I sit there playing that little guitar I always stare into the corner where the accordion sits […]