As y’all know I’ve hacked a lamp switch to start and stop music so I can do it screenlessly but the other day I added a new feature: “stop after playing the current song completely”. Instead of abruptly pausing. It’s so calming compared to a jarring end. One would think subtle things like that wouldn’t matter.

So the first button short press is now a three way toggle between “playing normally”, “end after this song”, and “paused now”. Long press is a li’l overloaded because it means “stop fully right now, and also load the previous playlist but don’t start it until I press play”.

Middle two buttons short press are next and prev album, respectively, and long press is next and prev song. I know it’s a li’l awkward and non-standard to long press to a specific song but more often I just wanna skip the current one and I much more often wanna skip around album-wise. And I’ve made it so that if two songs or streams don’t have an album metadata they do count as different so I can easily jump between them. Most of my playlists are full albums queued up sequentially but this feature is good for when I do wanna make one of individual songs or even radio station streams.

Last button short press switches to the next playlist and plays it right away. So normally if I want tunes, I typically don’t press the top button; I more often press the album skip back or forwards or the playlist forward. Long press last button specifically plays the song “Thrift Shop” by Postmodern Jukebox, our “time to clean up” song for when game nights end. (PMJ have songs where I like the original and their cover, and they have songs where I hate the original and love their cover, like this one and “Rude” and “Closer”.) I originally also could start lofigirl on here but the hifiberry version of mpd I have installed can sometimes glitch out when there are YouTube streams anywhere in the playlist. They needed to live on this hardcoded button since their stream URLs change all the time and yt-dlp -g got the fresh ones.

I can also control the mpd from tablets if I do want to jump to a specific song easily or seek within songs or play something that’s not in a playlist. If I can stomach screens for three seconds. And from cron; it stops fully at ten pm no matter what, a feature I had before the lamp switch. That actually was the impetus for the switch hack in the first place; I figured out I could just leave music playing and then turn off the entire amp (it’s a Tivoli model two, the original one, I think they’ve reused that model name but this is the mid-00s model two but with the power supply changed to get rid of the DC hum) instead when I wanted a break, but then starting it each morning was a problem.

As for the set of playlists, I can change it pretty easily. When I do have screens out I can just queue up any albums with the mpc wrapper scripts I’ve used for ten years (inspired by how Muine which, it’s insane how that player paradigm didn’t become standard) and if I want to save it as a playlist I can from a script. Or I can change stuff out on the existing playlists or delete them entirely. I don’t want too many. The playlists can be a mix of single songs, full albums, or even radio streams (obv I need to skip past them when I’m done listening to them since they don’t end).

People don’t always get cubist art thinking it’s just a jumble of images deliberately goofy like a Potato Head gone wrong. But one of the original ideas was to show different perspectives at the same time; it kinda developed out of Muybridge and early motion picture attempts.

Painting time itself, like this Duchamp painting of someone walking down stairs.

This misunderstanding of cubist art sometimes applies to self-proclaimed cubist painters themselves, ilke Kasimir Malevich who in his early days was a complete poser, a band-wagon–jumper who tried to make cubist paintings without grokking the purpose so it looked more like Max Headroom–style polygon images that still were only locked in one moment of time like any old normal portrait but uglier. Once he abandonded that misguided path he went onto make groundbreaking concretist paintings that I love so learn the lesson kids: do your own thing.

I’m a fan of cover songs because I see them as additive; a sparse echoing haunting arrangement of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” gets all the more richer because of how Jim Steinman’s bombastic version still also exists. A cover evokes the original and a good cover also makes it so that the original from then on also is enriched with the sentiments of the cover.

“Girls just wanna have fun” have had so many takes over the years and now when I hear one version I hear ‘em all. From Hazard’s nostalgic bittersweetly celebratory stance against patriarchy, through Lauper’s party “set us free” anthem, through Greg Haswell’s haunting cry of frustration over lack of connection.

I’m writing this because I just saw Ghost’s version of “Jesus He Knows Me”. Great song but it’s great because it has the context of Genesis’ pitch perfect portrayal of mid-80s televangelist hypocrisy. On its own, the new video comes across more like “the counterculture and club scene is just full of sin; sex and drugs are bad(?), and the punk goth kids are Christian priests in disguise(??)”, almost comes across a li’l homophobic, whereas the original song and video was a teardown of the entire “prosperity theology” scam along with a more class-conscious critique and with allusions to specific, contemporary events.

The song needs the orginal to give the full context of the scream of rage that it actually is, but since covers are additive like facets on a gem or perspectives in a cubist painting, having both versions makes both versions better.

So with that in mind (what the original had that’s gone in the new take), the new version also adds something. It comes across more as a man struggling with what he really wants. The version with Phil Collins unveilos the televangelists in all their smugness and comes across as totally deliberate; the Ghost version adds a sense of how utterly lost they really are.

Also, musically it kicks.

I was eighteen when I first heard Only Happy When It Rains. (I know it had been out for three years, but I never heard Garbage until Push It came out.)

I should’ve heard it as soon as I was born. I could’ve saved myself 18 years of trouble.

There are few things as consoling as actually being sad when things are bad. Not just sublimating, but actually validating.

There is this saying, attributed to 洞山良价 / Dòngshān Liángjiè (if so, that was 1200 years ago):

When it’s hot, be hot. When it’s cold, be cold.

I guess also when it’s bad, be sad. It’s so basic but sometimes so difficult to realize. It’s easy to get tripped up and start thinking “this is wrong, being sad is wrong, I need to stop it”. OK, now I have two problems.

Oh come t’inganni
se pensi che gl’anni
non hann’ da finire!
Bisogna morire.

2021-01-19

Watching guitar reviews for a few weeks but I’m now leaning towards keeping my old guitar. It’s gonna be difficult to find an electric guitar I like as much. (I also have a nylon acoustic, sweatshop made Rivertone that was super cheap off the Cl_s Ohls_n rack but I love everything about that guitar (except how difficult it is to mic). I am grateful to whomever put that thing together.)

A non-Fender s-type, three tone sunburst, white pickguard, maple neck my friend Lina found in a dumpster in Iceland (where I’ve never been), I got the impression that it was outside some

student housing, like dorm rooms on moving day. She found it mid 00s, so the guitar is at least that old.

I have finally learned what words like “action”, “stall”, “bridge”, “nut” and “pot” mean (outside of the context of playing poker).

Here is the sitch with this guitar.

• The trem bar a.k.a. whammy bar is lost. I’ll eventually wanna get a new one.
• I’m happy with the action. That’s a relief because “bad action”, “setup action”, “adjust action” etc has been such a constant refrain on the Internet and I didn’t know what it was so I just assumed mine was gonna be bad and it was gonna be a schlep.
• There are some things about this guitar that makes me think it’s some sorta real vintage guitar (like, it only has a threeway pickup switch, most newer strats have at least five. And the pots don’t push or pull. It has SSS pickups). There’s no headstock logo of any kind. The metal plate on the back near the neck says Made in Japan. There’s no skunk stripe and the pickup switch has no plastic handle, it’s just metal. But the one thing that screams “cheap” is the frets. They need filing. Every single fret on both sides is sharp and snagging. The height is fine.
• The three pots need cleaning and/or replacement. They are for sure bad.
• The jack and/or pickups also might need cleaning and/or replacement. They are probably bad but… I know the pots are trash, all three. That’s just painfully obvi.
• The nut is broken (the piece that holds the bass string has broken off—that happened during my time with it) and that was a huge problem when I had NST and a fat C string. It rattled. It works fine for DADFAD which is what I’m playing now.
• The outside of the pick guard, buttons, and pickups all need cleaning. All the plastic parts basically, front and back. That has been a problem since I got it. It’s basically always been gross. I’m just bad at figuring out how to get things clean. I’ll need to look that up.

Now, we did soldering in high school and I hate it. Probably least favorite activity. So I’ll need to ask an ex or a friend. And that means waiting until after pandemic probably.

• Identification thread on Strat-Talk

2021-02-02

Last friday I cleaned out the guitar properly with soap. It’s awesome to have the vintage, yellowed knobs and pickup covers be clean. I love the agedness and the yellowing, I hated the dirt but now it’s clean and nice.

This guitar is from the 70s, I learned (on Strat-Talk). I should tune it up and try it out to see if nothing got busted up, broken, shorted or corroded from the cleaning. Also the strap fell off and the guitar fell guard down and the pots and bridge dented my floor.

Eventually I def need to get new pots, I wanna get new pickups and a new jack, I wanna keep my threeway pickup switch but I want to put a new blade cover on it. And I need to get a whammy bar.

This morning I was checking out a tutorial on how to fix the sharp frets. I was hoping that was gonna something I can do on my own, but I don’t think I can.

Fixing this is maybe gonna get more expensive than just getting a Squier. I should keep a running total. But so far $0 except for strings and a pitchkey.

I forgot to write in the diary

A few years between now and last entry I took it to a guitar shop that cleaned the pots. It sounds great now. It probably cost more than a new guitar would’ve…?! But then again I would’ve had to do the same tune up with a new guitar eventually.

2024-08-11

I ws chasing down the noise issue with my guitar setup and I finally found it so here’s a note to self (although I must write this down in my paper notebook as well because I’m more likely to look there).

1. On the SmplTrek, don’t have both Monitor and Ext Src on. One is enough, the latter is best.

2. Set the gain on the rec source screen to low! Any higher sucks and is super noisy with single coil. I add gain or level with a send effect, that sounds much better, and with the input knob, I can even crank the guitar’s volume knob or the fish drive’s volume knob up. The poison turned out to be the gain setting on the rec source screen.

After trying all the other places it could’ve been (guitar volume knob, tone knob, fish drive one of five settings, and in the SmplTrek it could be one of seven places, turned out that the issue was only one of those fourteen places. That’s a relief, usually with a single coil guitar every single volume knob is a minefield with few sweet spots (that’s normally the tradeoff with single coil) but here there was only one that was bad. With that set to low I have lots of room to play around with the other settings.

This record is gonna suck and will probably never be released. It’s gonna go straight to /dev/null. But I do wanna try to finish it. As a learning exercise.

Morse code is ternary but here is an easy binary code to use next time you’re in prison:

Tap code

Only uses taps and pauses, and never sequential pauses.

The 5×5 grid is a pretty optimal way to keep sequences low which is probably what you want.

Arguably an 8×4 box instead helps if you wanna learn ASCII at the same time since it sorta maps to octal, i.e. “E” would be “tap taptaptaptaptap” But, it’s 1 to 8 instead of 0 to 7.

We used to use just 7 bit ASCII straight up but it’s difficult to count the number of pauses that pass sequentially. An easy finger mnemonic for binary ASCII is to learn to count to four in binary (00, 01, 10, 11) and then use two 0-indexed 4×4 boxes (phalanges of both hands) and the sixth bit from the right sets lowercase.

Speaking of bit, today I learned that it used to be a value of money (a piece of eight) and two bits of a dollar was easy enough to figure out, it’s a quarter. And for odd bits, since there is no 12.5 cent coin people just used dimes. This would’ve worked well if the system was hermetic and you could just define a dime to be half a quarter and two dimes to be a quarter but of course they still had to interface with the larger world. So no one would wanna give you a quarter for two dimes.

Here’s R L Stevenson on the topic, in 1892:

In the Pacific States they have made a bolder push for complexity, and settle their affairs by a coin that no longer exists – the bit, or old Mexican real. The supposed value of the bit is twelve and a half cents, eight to the dollar. When it comes to two bits, the quarter-dollar stands for the required amount. But how about an odd bit? The nearest coin to it is a dime, which is, short by a fifth. That, then, is called a short bit. If you have one, you lay it triumphantly down, and save two and a half cents. But if you have not, and lay down a quarter, the bar-keeper or shopman calmly tenders you a dime by way of change; and thus you have paid what is called a long bit, and lost two and a half cents, or even, by comparison with a short bit, five cents.

This reminds me of how in the Arabian Nights there are dirhams and dinars and they are both in use but it’s not always straight-forward to exchange between them.

It’s a bit odd that binary bits are called bits, i.e. eighths, they should be called halves since binary is a system based on halving. Why the heck’s there eighths?

Solderpunk writes in to add:

I stumbled upon the answer to a question I’d never actually asked before, but in retrospect should have been obvious - why on Earth are octaves called octaves, if “oct” means eight? Okay, sure, eight is a power of two, but why not name them something more directly related to the basic concept, which is all about halving or doubling? The answer, as you may well already be aware, is that when - and only when! - considering a heptatonic scale, you need to go up/down eight consecutive notes to go up/down an octave. The name makes no sense from the perspective of scales of any degree other than seven. Of course, this is by no means the only case of “scale hegemony” in music terminology/notation - just one I hadn’t noticed before and one whose discovery just happened to coincide in time alarmingly well with your post!

Here are the DX7 patches I made back in the day. I almost feel bad for releasing them as CC-BY-SA 4.0 (which I am hereby doing) because they feel so personal; the good ones that is. Some of them are unusably bad to the point that I don’t know why I kept them, but weepfriend is the quintessential Idiomdrottning sound, ghostknock is great for minor chords, and mellanchor can add its characteristics to a song♥︎ And there are a handful that I don’t remember using but that do inspire me now—like snotty (uh, you can rename these patches if you want).

Please enjoy them♥︎

• idiomdrottning-classix.dx7

My history with the DX7

When I was in a band I didn’t know how to make music. I just wrote the lyrics, sometimes hummed a melody. The keyboardist in our band used and loved a DX7, both as a midi keyboard (it’s fantastic) and (more often) as an instrument in its own right. When the venue had a piano we’d use that instead, but, he did like the DX7 and he would talk about famous songs where it was used or mentioned in lyrics.

Two years or so after the band’s dissolution, I went to a PureData workshop and the demo exercise was a simple one-operator FM synth. A few weeks after that, I visited Kymatica in his studio and he taught me how to make patches on the TX7. We spent a full day in his studio making patches (I didn’t save any of them, it was just to learn). (Reading about it now, it seems like you can’t make patches directly on TX7 but looking at photos of the PR-7 separate programming unit, that looks familiar.)

I had Hexter at home so I could start making patches right away. At first I used txedit which was a TUI app that had the huge drawback that I never figured out how to load existing patches—every single sound had to be made from scratch and I had to get it right or I’d never be able to edit it. Nowaways Hexter has a patch editing mode which I use instead—because I can actually edit and start from existing patches.♥︎

Long story short, these were all made for and tested with Hexter rather than the original.

Making music for the first time in a decade!

1. Skipping the 10’s
2. Comedienne
3. Hollis Brown
4. Dansa min hjälte för snart ska du dö
5. Kiln-fired brick silica
6. Ghosts outside doors and windows
7. Promises, promises

As a follow up to Guitar fretting patterns with DADFAD tuning here are some more patterns, for when you tune the F up to F♯.

The three new patterns

Dots (•) indicate on-scale fret positions. Open strings are also always on scale with these patterns.

The ♢♯ (diamond sharp) pattern

String	1	2	3	4	5
D		•		•	•
A		•	•
F♯	•
D		•
A		•	•
D		•		•	•

The ♡♯ (heart sharp) pattern

String	1	2	3	4	5
D		•		•	•
A		•		•
F♯	•
D		•
A		•		•
D		•		•	•

The ♧♯ (clubs sharp) pattern

String	1	2	3	4	5
D		•		•	•
A		•		•
F♯		•
D		•
A		•		•
D		•		•	•

Signature → Capo+Pattern

A zero indicates no capo. A number followed by a suit indicator indicates a capo at that fret and which fretting pattern to use.

signature	capo+pattern
♮	3♧♯,5♢♯
♭	3♡♯
♯	0♢♯,5♡♯
♭♭	1♧♯,3♢♯
♯♯	0♡♯,5♧♯
♭♭♭	1♡♯,6♧♯
♯♯♯	0♧♯,2♢♯
♭♭♭♭	1♢♯,6♡♯
♯♯♯♯	2♡♯
♭♭♭♭♭	6♢♯
♯♯♯♯♯	2♧♯,4♢♯
♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯	4♧♯

When there are alternatives, use the lower capo number for a fuller sound or the higher capo number for a brighter sound.

You can additionally put a partial capo on the bass strings (or retune them).

Capo+Pattern → Signature

capo	♢♯	♡♯	♧♯
0	♯	♯♯	♯♯♯
1	♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭	♭♭
2	♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯
3	♭♭	♭	♮
4	♯♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯♯	♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯♯
5	♮	♯	♯♯
6	♭♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭

Together with DADFAD

Combining these two tunings (maybe with a pitch-key on F/F♯, or just with a good ear and quick fingers) and six patterns gives you the full circle of fifths within the first two frets of capo.

capo	♦	♥︎	♣	♢♯	♡♯	♧♯
0	♮	♭	♭♭	♯	♯♯	♯♯♯
1	♭♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯	♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭	♭♭
2	♯♯	♯	♮	♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯
3	♭♭♭	♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭♭♭	♭♭	♭	♮
4	♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯	♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯♯	♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯♯
5	♭	♭♭	♭♭♭	♮	♯	♯♯
6	♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯	♭♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭

signature	capo+pattern
♮	0♦,2♣,3♧♯,5♢♯
♭	0♥︎,3♡♯,5♦
♯	0♢♯,2♥︎,5♡♯
♭♭	0♣,1♧♯,3♢♯,5♥︎
♯♯	0♡♯,2♦,4♣,5♧♯
♭♭♭	1♡♯,3♦,5♣,6♧♯
♯♯♯	0♧♯,2♢♯,4♥︎
♭♭♭♭	1♢♯,3♥︎,6♡♯
♯♯♯♯	2♡♯,4♦,6♣
♭♭♭♭♭	1♦,3♣,6♢♯
♯♯♯♯♯	1♣,2♧♯,4♢♯,6♥︎
♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯	1♥︎,4♧♯,6♦

Demo

Here is a demo of the ♡♯ pattern:

Love Minus Zero

The three patterns

Dots (•) indicate on-scale fret positions. Open strings are also always on scale with these patterns.

The ♦ (diamond) pattern

String	1	2	3	4	5
D		•	•		•
A		•	•
F		•
D		•
A		•	•
D		•	•		•

The ♥︎ (heart) pattern

My favorite! D minor, or an E minor with a capo on second. Use index finger and pinkie finger on the bright A string, and then middle finger and ringer finger on middle D and on F respectively. Great pattern because you don’t have to dip into the bass strings for the root note.

String	1	2	3	4	5
D		•	•		•
A	•		•
F		•
D		•
A	•		•
D		•	•		•

The ♣ (clubs) pattern

String	1	2	3	4	5
D	•		•		•
A	•		•
F		•
D	•
A	•		•
D	•		•		•

Signature → Capo+Pattern

A zero indicates no capo. A number followed by a suit indicator indicates a capo at that fret and which fretting pattern to use.

signature	capo+pattern
♮	0♦,2♣
♭	0♥︎,5♦
♯	2♥︎
♭♭	0♣,5♥︎
♯♯	2♦,4♣
♭♭♭	3♦,5♣
♯♯♯	4♥︎
♭♭♭♭	3♥︎
♯♯♯♯	4♦,6♣
♭♭♭♭♭	1♦,3♣
♯♯♯♯♯	1♣,6♥︎
♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯	1♥︎, 6♦

When there are alternatives, use the lower capo number for a fuller sound or the higher capo number for a brighter sound.

You can additionally put a partial capo on the bass strings (or retune them).

Capo+Pattern → Signature

capo	♦	♥︎	♣
0	♮	♭	♭♭
1	♭♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯
2	♯♯	♯	♮
3	♭♭♭	♭♭♭♭	♭♭♭♭♭
4	♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯	♯♯
5	♭	♭♭	♭♭♭
6	♭♭♭♭♭♭/♯♯♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯♯	♯♯♯♯

If you have an easy means of tuning the F to F♯, you can also take a look at Guitar fretting patterns with DADF♯AD tuning for three more patterns.