Today's theme is people going about their business on the street.

It fills me with DEE-LITE™ 39F Pride Fluid to announce that I have produced my first video game soundtrack. The game is The Indie Game Legend, by Paul Hubans. It is an homage to The Guardian Legend (NES, 1988), and a satire of the social scene among the higher-profile developers on the TIGSource forums. The music, tuned to Paul's vision and direction, is mostly pseudo-chip rock inspired by the original game.

Download The Indie Game Legend to experience all the emulated old-timey goodness you can handle:
http://phubans.wordpress.com/

I have made the tunes themselves available as well. Find them in the projects section as usual.

I plan to write more soundtracks as the opportunities manifest. Keep synced.

Last night I returned home from an 18-day tour of the Pacific northwest with Corpus Callosum, my band and one of the greatest commitments of my life so far. We played a show all but a couple of days on the road, and grew even more tightly woven as partners and friends, if at all possible. Following is a list of minor epiphanies that I personally experienced while on this, my longest and busiest trip away from home yet.

1. As my friend AJ of BATTLEHOOCH has also learned and proclaimed while abroad, "There are good people everywhere". Additionally, there are pockets of like-minded people in unexpected places.

2. There are a lot of Christians in the USA. Also, one's religious beliefs do not necessarily affect one's ability to get along fine with another. Differences may be superficial.

3. I have never studied, to any serious degree, a non-keyboard instrument. I'd like to learn clarinet, bass clarinet, rackett, or classical guitar (these ORs are inclusive, of course).

4. Most people have at least one pet. This pet is usually a dog or cat, but it can also be a goat. I am reminded that I would like to have a pig and tortoise.

5. If all goes well with my senior thesis/project, I will be MAKING ROBOTS. Both of those words excite me.

6. Cannonballing into a challenge, as into a cold pool, is far less uncomfortable and far more rewarding than resistance and reluctance. Duh, right? News to me! Hearing wisdoms is different from learning them.

7. Spending a lot of time with your crew can make you get along better rather than worse, even if you suspect otherwise.

8. Digging a grave, even if only for a goat, is a somber cardiovascular exertion.

Today's theme is somatic dissonance.

For a while, I've had this odd relic lying around. It's a pack of Nintendo Game Pack cards, made by a company called Topps back in 1989.

They're not exactly trading cards, but more of mini-games in card format. You scratch off bubbles to "win" a fight of some kind, modeled after any of the then-popular game franchises. Thrilling!

Unlike video games, you can't try again if you lose. By playing at all, you also lose the cards' collectibility value... if there ever was any.

Here is a goofy little tool I concocted in Max/MSP which creates swirly, broken sounds. It modulates the playback rate of an audio file stored in a buffer (whether a single drum hit or an entire song), just as frequency modulation synthesis does with a carrier oscillator. The modulation rate can be slow enough to make vibrato or rapid enough to generate FM artifacts.

There are many parameters which can be set manually or made to change randomly on their own. To start, load one of the example sounds and play around with the various presets -- I usually switch on #4 and zone out for hours.

If you don't have Max/MSP, you can load this patch with the free runtime (Windows, Mac OS X), though you won't be able to edit it.
http://cycling74.com/downloads/

* Note 1: All comments and feedback are welcome. (Also, I haven't tested this in OS X, so if the display comes out messed up, please let me know.)

* Note 2: I slapped together the patch during an electronic music class this summer (which I took purely for credit, as it was, for me, largely redundant knowledge). The class was taught by Dr. Michael Zbyszynski, a unique and inspiring fellow who has often contributed his skills to the Max community.

Today's theme is rare creatures.