Like father, like son

Internet feline celebrity Shironeko is famous for photos depicting him in a state of perfect, meditative bliss:

I think this photo removes all doubt as to the identity of the father of Kuro, the youngest member of Shironeko's clan:

SelectORacle

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have to ramp up my CSS knowledge.   This looks like a useful website.

http://gallery.theopalgroup.com/selectoracle/

Ever wondered what a particularly complex CSS selector really means? Here's your chance to find out! 

The Sound Test Room gets it own website

The Sound Test Room

Doug at The Sound Test Room has been a fixture of the IOS musician community, with his many tutorials on various IOS music apps. Nice to see him get his own website.

Evans Health Lab video on low back pain

http://www.evanshealthlab.com/low-back-pain-video/

Zen Cat fight scene

Shironeko, aka "Zen Cat", "World's Most Relaxed Cat", "Basket Cat", is best known for photos and videos showing him in blissful repose, usually inside a basket or with a plant-based object on top of his head.

Tonight's Sunrizer sequencing experiment

Tried sequencing Sunrizer from Cubasis. No pure piano-roll entry apparently - have to enter the notes from the keyboard, then edit the notes in piano roll. Anyway in Sunrizer, I selected the gamelan tuning, then entered notes in Cubasis. A few notes from the Cubasis keyboard triggered notes in Sunrizer, and others did not. There might be a bug in the Scala keyboard mapping in Sunrizer, but need test with other MIDI controllers to be sure. I was also unable to save the Scala tuning with the patch. Then I tried sequencing Sunrizer from Symphonix Evolution Pro but had less success. The first note triggered a stuck note in Sunrizer that did not stop until I killed it as a background app. I'll try contacting the respective developers. This as all left me with a greater appreciation for the ease of use of sequencing in Gadget.  Experiment result: Failure. No way I'm going to make the Sunrizer contest deadline. Good luck to the contestants!

Also, at some point in the near future I want to try exporting MIDI from Korg M01D on my Nintendo 3DS. It'll be interesting to see which IOS sequencing app will be able to successfully import it.

Good Audiobus forum thread on how to learn modular synthesis

http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/3969/how-to-learn-modular-synth

Track from Experiment Zero

Saw the band Public Service Broadcasting play, and was led to check out this album.

Update on my ring training

This is a followup to my previous ring training post.

I've realized that to make further progress with my ring pushups, I need to improve my shoulder strength and stability.  I also want to work in more lower body training to help strengthen my back and hips.  So this is what the routine looks like now:

Warmup - Joint mobility as recommended by the beginner ring program mentioned in that post.

Pullups (neutral grip) - 3 sets of 6-11 reps (my current pull-up max is 11)

Ring Pushups - 3 sets of 6+ reps

Partial L-Sits - 3 sets of 3 5-second straight-leg holds per side

Kettlebell Military press - 4+ reps per side
Double Kettlebell Front Squat - 6+ reps

I do the military presses for the shoulders, catch my breath for a few seconds, then do the front squats.  I then rest for a minute before doing another set.  I do 3-5 sets.  Kettlebell weight is 16kg per kettlebell.

I will stick to this routine until I achieve 3 sets of 10+ reps in the military press.  Then I will go back to doing more sets of the ring pushups (going for 4 or 5 sets instead of just 3).  When I achieve 15 reps in the front squat, I will switch to reverse lunges with double kettlebells.

Looptical review

Looptical is really good for writing straightforward songs. It's very easy to create sections of songs, then append them together to create the overall song. I rarely ever write music this way, so I found that my song kinda sounded like several loops strung together. However, Looptical made it really easy to overdub some stuff to connect sections a little more. Yes, I could have messed with MIDI or whatever to try get a wider selection of sounds than the sample-based tones provided with Looptical, but I wanted to see what I could do with just the internal samples and effects. The Event Editor is limited in that you can transpose, quantize or erase notes, but you can't change the pitches or velocity of individual notes. I do see there is a "Human" slider in the velocity section of the Notes editor, but I forgot to try to see what does. As far as the Interfaces go, this was the first time I tried to record something with a virtual guitar strum interface - it's pretty good considering you can't do Hendrix-like hammer-ons or other embellishments in your chordal playing. I slipped in some experimental fun with a short solo using the Granulator interface.

I also promised to rate this app, in addition to writing a song on it, which I did: 4 stars. Very friendly popup mini-tutorials, and there's an in-app manual - not having to be online to read the manual always scores points with me! What would make it a 5-star app would be more editing capability in the Event Editor, though admittedly I cleaned up my mistakes by simply using Undo (and re-record) a lot. On one section I simply slowed down the tempo and recorded at the slow tempo before speeding it back up to the song tempo.

The main melody and the chords of this tune jumped into my head on a sunny morning, while walking around the vicinity of a particular intersection in one of the world's great cities. The song is thus named after that intersection, not after a couple. 

Anyway, here is my instrumental pop/post-rock tune, done entirely in Looptical - this will probably be the last non-experimental music I post up in a while ;) :
https://soundcloud.com/governorsilver/kimberly-and-nathan-looptical