DiggyDog's Progress

Well, The Barnyard CD is about ready for release.

We are thinking about artwork now. Not as much melodic theremin on it as I had hoped but it is pretty interesting anyway.

We also have a Myspace page for a little side project we are doing but I want to wait until we get a couple of theremin-related songs posted before I roll it out to you guys.

Tonight we are going into the studio for a session with two vintage Yamaha analog synths.

One of my cohorts just picked one up at the flea market last weekend so I am going to lug my CS-50 over there we will see what they can do.

Speaking of flea market finds, has anyone ever picked up any good theremins at the flea market?

I have this vision of an old dusty RCA theremin sitting there with a sign that says "old radio - $50.00 obo".

Well, it's hard to call last night's session "music" but we had fun anyway.

So far, both peices involve cell phones. Last night we used some ring tones and made some calls in close proximity to each other and played with the feedback.

All this was layered over a soundscape of two track each of Yamaha and Moog analog synths.

(My Yamaha has a prblem with one of its voice cards but it actually behaved itself last night).

Sorry this is not theremin-related but I know some of you enjoy analog synth stuff as well....

One more tidbit aout my fascinating life and musical exploits.....

Barnyard is going to be playing at a benefit for the Humane Society.

This will be the first time we have played for non-humans that I know of.

I'm sure it will be a howling success!

There were a couple of dogs around when I was rehearsing for my gig, and they went completely bonkers. :-)

Also there are a couple of blackbirds that regularly watch me practice. They stare at me all askance as if to say "What sort of weird bird do you think you are then?"

I have a hilarious video somewhere of the time I took my Etherwave to my aunt's house. Every time anyone played it the dog would come running into the room, check everything out, and then glare angrily at the amp. When anyone played any high notes she'd bark at it until they stopped.

My dog has givne my amp some funny looks from time to time.

He also walks around behind it to see where the growls are coming from.

There will most likely not be any animals involved but we are playing our usual Art Walk gig tonight at the London Bridge Pub in beautiful downtown Jacksonville.

It will be a duet with me and "Fiver" Jay Peele.

He is playing guitar, Moog, cellphone, toy keyboard, trumpet and flute.

I will be playing bass, Speak and Spell, kid's toy instruments, and of course, theremin.

Also, I am dragging out "the beast" tonight.

My ancient Yamaha CS-50 will make an appearance.

This thing weighs more than the rest of my equipment combined!

It may be for sale soon if any of you have a strong back and a penchant for old analog sounds....

OK, well I haven't posted anythign here becaue the gig was so abysmal.

My partner had blown out the speaker on his guitar a few nights before and didn't notice it until the night of our gig. His sound was terrible at anything more than a light volume.

The pub is under new management and apparently they didn;t know how to work outdoor speakers so we were intermittenly accompanied by the recorded music they were playing inside.

My son played along on a few tunes too many. He's a good boy but he's only seven and doesn't have a whole lot of patience for things like learning and rehearsing songs. He sometimes make noise on the theremin or drums while I play bass.

Usually it's OK but that night he kept playing the Yamaha and the misses was inside heling the economy by drinking up large quatnities of beer with her girlfriends so she wasn't there to usher him away or distract him.

I finally gave him the Speak and Spell to play. (Before the lectures begin on parenting, the Artwalk gigs are pretty open-ended and experimental. I have given the boy permission to play with us on these gigs if he wants. At a more formal paying gig he knows better than to come up on stage uninvited.)

Which brings me to the one thing that I expected to go wrong that didn't. The Yamaha worked perfectly! The voice card that has been giving me problems has apparently healed itself for the itme-being and was right on pitch with the others so I had four oscilators working relativelu in tune with each other.

I say relative because the cs-50's are not know for their perfect pitch once you move them.

Usually, once it warms up, one of its voices starts dropping in pitch so every fourth note played is out of tune but now it's good again.

Is it possible that I bumped something back into place that fixed the problem I have been having?

"Is it possible that I bumped something back into place that fixed the problem I have been having?"

Is it possible that a similar approach (http://people.lulu.com/storage/users/5/1005/blogs/2151/leah_hammer.jpeg) might fix the problems you had with the human members of your entourage?