October Requiem

Put it on and do something else and you are in your own movie with an amazing soundtrack. Is it a track? Or an EP? An ambient gem, for slightly dystopic yoga sessions, half an hour of beautiful cinematic soundscapes evoke…well you’ll just have to see. Good for dreaming, sleeping, meditating. Furniture music, you do not have to pay it much attention, but you can if you like and that rewards too. Listen to the whole epic free or buy if you will at Bandcamp: [October Requiem]. LMK your experience of it in the comments.

Here is a minute of it so you can get the idea:

Exploring Bias-X: Magic & Warts of AI Sound Engineering

Hogwarts AND Hog Warts

Quick review of both the magic and the warts of Positive Grid’s Bias-X. We chase a single sound a couple of different times using the new AI feature, along the way finding out where Bias X still has far to go. The sound we are chasing is a classic Vox Chime. For more on that, and how the Vox chime differs from the Fender jangle, see this livestream: https://youtu.be/5k74DFYpzJo?si=I_OEhMy8pTtYcdvY.

The Magic: AI really is fun to dial in sounds with as long as you are good at a little prompt engineering; It sounds great.

The Warts: CPU hog, need to be connected to the internet, so MS, Google, FB, and everyone all want to call home and glitch out your audio, unreported latency

Richard Hamasaki’s “I am a Plastic” Video from HIFF

I just found the link to Richard’s award-winning short film of his “amplified poetry.” That’s me playing my digital guitar setup underneath the vocals and over the drone of Richard’s Moog. If you are curious what a digital guitarist is, take a look at my YouTube channel of the same name. I am pretty sure I also did the mastering for this track.

From Richard’s Vimeo:

Screened live at the 41st Hawaiʻi International Film Festival (November 4 – 28, 2021); an Official Selection and Award Winner for the Best Shorts Competition in 2021 (La Jolla, CA); an Official Selection Semi-Finalist for the 2021 Munich Music Video Awards (Germany), and screened in person during the International Poetry Film Festival in Venice, CA on April 30, 2022, Richard Hamasaki’s film and amplified poem features concrete poet & artist Thad Higa & digital guitarist Rich Rath. “I AM A PLASTIC” was originally published in Read Water: An Anthology (San Diego: Locked Horn Press, 2020).

RIchard Hamasaki

Sleepwalk #7 take 2, Won’t wake the baby.

* Where: https://youtu.be/zmL6pAlWmLQ
* When: I hope you can stop by next Thursday night around midnight (Or Friday Morning if you are on the East Coast!)

7th installment (take 2) of “Sleepwalk with the Digital Guitarist.” When I explained to my 9-year-old nephew that my show last Thursday was called “don’t wake the baby,” and that I messed up and there was no sound turned on for the whole hour I played, he remarked, “maybe you did that ‘don’t wake the baby’ thing a little too much.” It was a great set, sorry about the glitch, so I will try the same thing again this coming Thursday. I am just going for a mellow vibe and we’ll see what happens. Part of it will be on the new 12 string, but I will probably switch it up a bit too. I won’t wake the baby though, promise. But this time with the sound on. 🙂

Just before Midnight, THursday May 28, til about 1 AM Honolulu time. That’s 6 AM opn the East Coast and 3 AM on the west for you early risers and late nighters!to one, Thus

Sleepwalk with the Digital Guitarist # 6 this Thursday night

danelectro 59x12
Danelectro 59×12

Sleepwalk with the Digital Guitarist #6” I’ll explore all things Mersey/Athens/Brit Invasion/Hoboken exploring the jangle and the chime by introducing the newest member of the family, my Danelectro 59×12 twelve string run through different amps and such. What is the difference between “Needles & Pins” throaty Vox chime (or hard days night, or …) and the fendery jangle or early REM (or anything from 80s Athens or Hoboken)? What difference does the guitar make? How about different amp Sims? (although I’ll do the amp shootout some other time!)

If you want an idea of what the sleepwalks are like, here is Sleepwalk #3: