yr4wk6 moog & voice

yr4wk6 moog & voice from longcat on Vimeo.

yr4wk2

yr4wk2 moog, hammond, voice from longcat on Vimeo.

tuesday night...

i'm gaining...

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yr3wk51 moog & juno

yr3wk51 moog & juno from longcat on Vimeo.

i really love the canal video that's in this improvisation... it was a lovely sunny day coming home along the regents canal last thursday... my camera sat just on the waters edge, rush hour on the canal, in the 15 minutes i left it filming there were many, many people, walking or cycling past...

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yr3wk48 tonematrix & moog

yr3wk48 moog & tonematrix from longcat on Vimeo.

if you haven't played on this tonematrix i heartily recommend it, (you need the latest flash)...

enjoy x

Longcat Hadron Collider version 2 chapter 1

Longcat Hadron Collider 2.1 from longcat on Vimeo.

there's an owl that toots at 7:45 am...

it woke me up...

so i came to see if chapter 1 of that large scale improvisation had uploaded...

and here it is x

yr3wk43

yr3wk43 moog rogue, mopho, piano from longcat on Vimeo.

recorded last tuesday... the day before the moog rogue went home to HK (and indeed the opus 3 came home to me)...

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yr3wk39 moog & juno

yr3wk39 moog opus 3 & roland juno 6 from longcat on Vimeo.

yr3wk37 moog, juno, hammond

yr3wk37 moog, juno, hammond from longcat on Vimeo.

this from thursday morning, a couple of weeks ago it was the juno on it's own, now it's joined by the moog and the hammond organ...

i find in certain sections of this my arm looks really odd...

i formally welcome anamoglam to these pages, although he(?)'s been watching for a little while it seems...

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yr3wk33 john martyn gone my week

yr3wk33 moog opus 3 improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

once again no words all week, just videos... sorry,

this one recorded on friday morning before work, i'd got up earlier than normal to allow enough time to get the tube in with the moog (the harmonic series demonstrated with the moog filter) but then i decided i could do that next week and use the extra time to do my improvisation, being as i didn't know how long i would need in the evening doing my tax return...

so i did it, i like it, turned off the computer and the camera's and cycled into work,

found a Roland Juno 6 in the cupboard @ work and it turns out it belongs to MM, he who helped me fix my rhodes back then, and who promises he's going to help me fix the moog too... we've been making music together over the internet a bit recently and he said i could borrow the Juno... which is great, it's a similar era synth to my moog, a little later, not a moog, but still a great sound...

i'm going to use it next week to demonstrate the harmonic series like i was going to bring my moog in for and then i'm taking it home...

i had a lovely hour or so with it on friday after teaching, just wandering about in it's sound...

in other news i popped down to brighton on monday night to record josiah on the lullabye, also i took grace to school on tuesday morning... lovely to see them, josiah going through it a bit just now...

i've been so busy since then that i haven't unpacked the audio i recorded down there, the lullabye probably near to being done now, just have to get my editing head on and give it a few hours...

directly after brighton i went over to the studio in kennington to meet T and sweep up the place, it's amazing how different it looked after a day of organising things...

i also bought a book on tuesday - a new one by michael ondaatje called devisadeo...

i really love his writing and i'm very glad to be inamongst his words again...

on thursday i went out after teaching to celebrate one of my students 16th birthday, hanging out with the teenagers for a couple of pints...

then friday... oh, we've talked about friday already, except for the tax return which i did that afternoon, surprisingly easy for once...

when i was applying for housing benefit recently i came across the relevant payslips i knew i would need for the tax return so it was kind of all laid out for me already, but it's still a beautiful thing to be done one of those things,

i helped felinity through it a few weeks back and that made it easier when i came to do it for myself...

floopy came round friday night (last night) and he told me john martyn had died on thursday, very sad, i'm going to load up the shuffle with him and nothing but him for a little while...

we had a great night, dinah, floopy and me, at one point i put solid air on the shaky turntable and we offered john martyn our laughter as the record player occasionally skipped up to 45 RPM for a moment, it was magical and poignant and a good way to mark his passing...

very, very sad though, such a wonderful song writer & singer...

anyway... i hope you enjoy the improvisation..

x

yr3wk32 with john sinclair

yr3wk32 with john sinclair from longcat on Vimeo.

recorded on wednesday, the day after the inauguration of barack obama, the day after the crazy gigs @ cafe oto...

i also recorded his voice for the lullabye project, slightly tricky as it's a very effective lullabye and he'd been gigging for a couple of days,

listening to my lullabye in his ears he found it hard to stay awake... we found a way round it...

EQ, old, old friend who hasn't been in my life for a few years came round to record on the lullabye too yesterday, i want to get josiah on it too, and dinah.. redo my bit...

it'll be in baby spanner's ears in a week or so...

gigging tonight with the spanner jazz punks (different spanner) in crouch end... cut down version of the band...

then EL & maybe JPW coming tomorrow for next week's improvisation, slightly early...

what a nuts week, starting last sunday i was improvising, gigging, improvising, recording, now gigging, improvising once more...

it's a good way to live one's life...

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yr3wk31 + john sinclair + dog shit

yr3wk31 rhodes & moog improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

so i played last night with john sinclair and the blues scholars... quite scary, but very good, john is a real sweety...

i looked down at one point, after having been to a place outside to get food and having my piano chair taken for a few tunes by someone else...

i could smell shit...

and i could see shit on my shoe...

this being the 3rd time it's happened in recent weeks, once really early in the morning just going out to put gas on the card... the 1st time in ages and it really irritated me...

then last week down in kennington looking at the desk and the place again i smelt it and looked down and there it was...

and i remember wondering if i was due another one these things coming in 3's as they sometimes do,

and the 3rd came sat at a piano, playing on the edge of free/blues/jazz with an ex-criminal...

i hope this current spat of shit is over with, it seems like it was years before this that it last happened, have the dog owners of this city been careful for a few years and now they don't care?

the gig is repeated tonight, today being the inauguration of that famous man over in americy... do come down if you fancy it,

cafe oto in dalston... £12...

yr3wk29 grace

yr3wk29 NY day moog, rhodes voice
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

recorded on new years day but it took a few days to arrive here... i just got back from a night away with my lovely goddaughter and her fantastic mum...

me & grace hung out alot, going to the beach this afternoon to give josiah a chance to get something done, picking up pebbles, filming...

i also gave her a little keyboard lesson before i left, she's only 5 so it wasn't huge, just where is C... enough for now...

me and josiah stayed up until 5 last night talking and listening to music from 2003,

1st the concert we gave in july of that year with H on cello, in my ex'landlord's frontroom...

we were really good... she was very pregnant... (with grace)

then the concert from the same place in january, days before she found out she was pregnant... (with grace)...

then a studio CD made by the band i was in back then Kyo... a great band...

altogether very nice to see both of them in their own ways... and lovely to hear my own music from 6 years ago...

x

Yr3wk28 moog, rhodes, voice

so, black christmas has just finished on channel 4 + 1, i haven't been up before 1:30 pm for 4 days and i'm now in the family homestead in blewbury,

everyone else went to bed at least 2 hours ago...

sleep cycle mayhem tomorrow...

i recorded this improvisation before i came down today (well, yesterday now),

i was expecting to edit the video once me & dinah return to london on sunday but it was just too tempting, an itch i had to scratch, so i did a very straightforward edit and left it rendering, with dinah uploading it to dailymotion from my computer later on...

i'm sipping sherry and about to go to bed... enjoy, happy christmas...

Yr3wk28 moog, rhodes, voice
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

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Yr3wk24 longcat with m

just to record waking up today...

dinah up and getting ready to leave @ 8:30am... she brings me a tea and wakes me with kisses at exactly the moment it's ready to drink...

then more kisses a little later just before she leaves...

drifting in and out of sleep now... balthazara wakes me up around 9:50am and we commune for awhile, i find something on the back of her neck, some thing like a tiny scab, just in that place where mum's pick up kittens, the place cats are programmed to accept...

so for awhile i'm stroking her trying to find this small patch of skin there and she's purring really loudly, she settles into the valley of the duvet between my spooning legs and my torso...

pretty much awake now my final alarm goes off @ 10:20am and i clamber out bed...

Yr3wk24 longcat with marco
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

this being sunday's improvisation, i'm going over to SLP in south london to meet uncle T and plan out tomorrow's recording shortly x

Herbert Deutsch invocation

more on the moog,

it was designed after Bob Moog left the moog company in'77, designed by herbert deutsch who had worked with mr moog back in the 60's on the 1st moogs,

bob moog died recently, herbert deutsch is very much alive, he teaches for hofstra university, and i tracked down his email address...

i sent him a hello, with a link to last week's improvisation (featuring the moog),

i sent it on saturday and on monday he emailed back...

"thanks for the improv and the red wine. The opus sounds nice. might be a bit better shape than my old one. Keep up the improvs. I don't think they are "a little bit stupid".
Herb Deutsch"

in that improvisation i was sipping wine (rose as it goes) and midway through (around 10 minutes in i think) i accidentally stopped the recording with my foot, i fixed it but i was kind of muttering about being "a little bit stupid"...

this has kept me a little bit lifted off the ground for a couple of days...

not only did this man who designed my moog, reply to my email, but he watched the 20 minute improvisation as well...

x

other moog related news being that the string section, which it was sold to me as being not working, has life...

i've known of a kind of life it has for a week now but i found other life, in a different form, and it sounds fantastic...

this has just come through leaving the beast on all the time... it's gradually finding itself... i did open her up the other day and clean her a bit and that might have done something... who knows? anyway,

this happens when all the outputs are turned off, it shouldn't be making sound, but it's bleeding through, and it's exactly the sound i want to work, it's just not going through the right amplification bits...

when it works (which it will), there is a circuit which looks out for really high resonance and switches something off, to avoid distortion...

this ghost in the machine sound doesn't have the turning off circuit, so it distorts like nobody's business and this is how i found it...

yesterday i recorded a brief improvisation with the ghost sound, turned up a whole load... turned up some more once in the computer, running it through noise reduction twice to scare off the hiss that came with it...

i love it...

i think i'll put it on my myspace, but maybe the out there version of my myspace...

i'll let you know if it goes up, it's worth hearing at least once...

on listening to it it occurred to me that it was like an invocation...

i've called it invocation to a long dead god and i'm thinking of something like the god that the prehumans invoked, before homo-sapian, some early homo erectus...

maybe they could make a sound that pleased this god, or could call it... but with our evolution into homo-sapian out throats and mouths evolved to such an extent that we could no longer make the sound and the god fell away...

that's the god i'm invoking with this tune x

circuit boards

so i found a service manual for my moog on the net...

i've been playing around and trying to work out exactly what's wrong with it, then going to the "circuit description" which explains what goes where, then going to the functional block diagram which has a general pattern of all 3 circuit boards...

trying to work out exactly where the fault is...

and i think i'm narrowing it down...

of course once i've worked out a couple of likely suspects i'll need to get myself a multi-meter type fella and open her up... (again)

i opened her up a little on tuesday night, after i'd recorded the improvisation, but could see nothing obviously wrong... although to be fair i didn't see the top of the control circuit board, just the other 2, so there could be something visibly wrong with that once i get to see it...

the whole thing needs a clean anyway, lots of the switches are a little dicky, particularly the continuous ones...

it's very exciting...

x

Yr3wk23 moog, rhodes, voice

Yr3wk23 moog, rhodes, voice
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

recorded soon after midnight on tuesday night, but taking this long to get up there partly to give last weeks improvisation with jair-rohm a bit of time...

with the moog that i'd got earlier on that day...

a whole lot of spinning around going on x

Yr3wk22 rhodes, NORD synth & electric upright bass

Yr3wk22 rhodes, NORD synth & electric upright bass
Uploaded by longcathadroncollider

recorded on saturday with JR on electric upright bass, the last we'll see of this particular NORD rack 1 synth,

but fear not the moog is here, i got it this afternoon, wearing my moog T-shirt, carrying the Can record that was part of the deal...

i popped in to marylebone station to see M (sister in law) who was in town, for the 1st time i heard her answer the phone as MK, that was kooky... she's looking very well...

i might do this weeks improvisation tonight, with the moog, floopy's camera is probably going to norway with floopy later this week so it'd be good to take advantage of it being here...

strange that i've been home for an hour or so and i still haven't played it...

x

moog google mars

the moog is mine...

today i saw D and he agreed to the price,

i took in my keyboard case to see whether it would fit the moog and it did, it was really mental cycling in with it,

the moog is currently nestled in that case, waiting for me to come back next thursday to pick it up, whereupon i will be bearing the 1st instalment of money and the Can vinyl which is part of the deal...

i'm so excited, i might not be able to wait until thursday,

and google mars... found it this morning and i love it x

waking up (or not)

so i slept through my alarms yesterday, i've got this groovy little 2 day work pattern for the minute that starts on a thursday and ends this afternoon and from monday to wednesday i was kind of sick, eating jai krishna food 2 nights in a row...

spent wednesday in my pajamas not leaving the house,

so i woke up with no time at all to spare and not showering would have got me to work faster, but i hadn't washed in two days and for two nights running i'd deliberately sweated a lot to get this cold thing out of me..

if ever i needed a shower...

i got to work ok, and clean... did my 1st proper sessions over @ hammersmithwork which was less trying i think than previous years, although it still can get trying before it gets easier if it wants to...

i improvised on my own afterwards on D's moog which he offered to sell me for a very reasonable price... not a price i can afford on two days work a week but at some point in the future that baby is mine... there's a certain record by can that i possess that D wants and that's going to have to be part of the deal...

and here i am,

dinah woke me with a tea, thankfully, didn't have to rely on the alarms although i think i would have done it ok today... she's now gone off to work and i don't leave the house for an hour... it feels really wierd, bright sunlight, time to spare...

my main computer is currently rendering the improvisation, 24 minutes of it, dailymotion have persuaded me to try it at a higher bitrate so it's slower again than the previous two hugely slow renders... i set it going before i went to bed @ around 1:30am and it's due to finish around noon...

i wonder if this push for better quality video will mean people with slower machines won't be able to see it right? and in that setting does the sound come through ok, i think it does... and the sound is the main thing... anyway, tea... breakfast...

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