The latest release in the Exquisite series, my collaboration with John O’Brien, is now available. More Exquisite continues and expands on the work done for Exquisite Coast, which used a tight set of technical constraints as an artistic challenge to encourage a deep exploration of an instrument. While Exquisite Coast focused on a single instrument (the Make Noise 0-Coast synthesizer), with More Exquisite (as we did with Less Exquisite), we have expanded the concept to allow for a second synthesizer, the Moog Werkstatt, as well as a small complement of external synthesizer modules. Though the sonic palette has grown, More Exquisite continues in the same spirit of sonic creation within a strictly defined set of constraints. As before, a prompt piece is created, then the connections and settings of the instruments—the patch—are shared and used to create a response piece.
Learn more and get it now on Bandcamp.
Though you may have seen the album develop over the past three months, I am now declaring the album Slower finished so you may now get my latest release in its entirety. Clocking in at just over an hour, it’s my longest solo release since 2004’s Adams & Bancroft! I enjoyed the process of releasing the album over time rather than all at once. That this is possible is a great benefit of a platform like Bandcamp, so much thanks to them for creating a platform that can host experiments like this.
April is going to find me working on other projects, but I will return to this idea soon. In the meantime, I’ve got another similar experiment going with John O’Brien in our Exquisite series that you can watch develop on our Bandcamp.
Both albums are free/pay-what-you-want, as all my releases have been for some time now.
Thanks for listening.
Less Exquisite is now available on select streaming services.
And of course it’s still available at Bandcamp for those who prefer a download to a stream.
John O’Brien and I have a new release in our Exquisite series – More Less Exquisite. While the original Less Exquisite (also available on our Bandcamp) continued the original pattern of creating pairs of solo pieces asynchronously that we developed in Exquisite Coast, More Less Exquisite is our deep exploration of Less Exquisite in real time. Twice a month, until we decide we’ve had enough, we will record a new version of the piece and add the track to this album.
Get it now on Bandcamp.
Stay tuned for more Exquisite releases coming in 2023!
I’m ringing in the New Year with the first track of an album that will grow over the coming months. Slower is a continuation of the work that started with the Character Weekend and 1 Vox series. This time, however, each track proceeds at a more measured pace. Not quite drone, not quite ambient, Slower develops sounds with patience. A new track will be added every week or so until…well, I decide that it’s done.
Get it now on Bandcamp.
no notifications
no achievements
no stats
no streaks
just little words
little words is a jigsaw puzzle with letters. it’s a game with a simple goal: to break big words into smaller words. the game resets at midnight and noon local time.
little words is the second game from rustle works, a software studio created by betsy nagler and me.
The Moog Mavis synth has been added to Exquisite Coasts, a shared patch game I developed with John O’Brien that uses a tight set of technical constraints as an artistic challenge to encourage a deep exploration of your synthesizer(s). In addition to the Mavis, you may play Exquisite Coasts with the rest of the compact semi-modulars from Moog (Mother 32, DFAM, Subharmonicon, Werkstatt) as well as those from Make Noise (0-Coast, Strega, 0-CTRL).
Learn more and join in at ec.rustle.works.
Feeling Bandcamp Friday fatigue? Then enjoy a free gift from us. All albums from the Exquisite series (Damon Holzborn and John O’Brien), Donkey (Hans Fjellestad and Damon Holzborn) and my solo releases are free/name your price through the holiday weekend.
Have a great Labor Day! Thanks for listening.
A new batch of Tentacle prints is available at The Artling. More Tentacle related projects coming soon, including limited edition prints. Sign up for our email list to be kept in the loop.
Earlier this year, Amir Hariri and I released the first sets of images from Tentacle, an algorithmic drawing project that creates gestural abstractions using contour drawing techniques. We have now made the first set of prints available at The Artling. More prints will be released over the next few months and look for more Tentacle related projects later in the summer, including limited edition prints. Sign up for our email list to be kept in the loop.
I’m excited to introduce Tentacle, an algorithmic drawing project created in collaboration with Amir Hariri that creates gestural abstractions using contour drawing techniques.
A few years back, my friend Andrew West was visiting me in New York. While he was here, he also had plans to visit Amir, an old friend from his art school days. It occurred to Andrew that Amir and I might have similar interests in art and technology so he introduced us. We started getting together from time to time to talk about art, particularly algorithmic art. The conversations weren’t limited to visual art; George Lewis’ interactive music system Voyager featured heavily in early conversations. It turns out Andrew was right, Amir and I shared a similar aesthetic and approach. Soon enough, philosophical discussions started to turn into design discussions and those designs eventually turned into code. We’re now ready to start sharing what we’ve been working on. Learn more >>
Sneaking in just before the end of the year, Exquisite Coast Two is the second in a series of albums of synthesiser improvisations created in collaboration with John O’Brien. In the spring of 2020, as the Covid-19 lockdown got under way, John and I started talking about ways to collaborate remotely after realizing that we both owned a Make Noise 0-Coast semi-modular synthesizer. By sharing patches—the state of the synthesizer, including the positions of the knobs and how the signals are routed from one part of the synthesizer to another—we created pairs of solo pieces that shared a common configuration. Each week, we made two recordings: one based on an original patch—the Prompt—and then a Response based on the other person’s patch.
You can get it now on Bandcamp.
Exquisite Coast One is now available on all major streaming services.
And of course it’s still available at Bandcamp for those who prefer a download to a stream.
I’m excited to announce the release of a new album in collaboration with John O’Brien. In the spring of 2020, as the Covid-19 lockdown got under way, John and I started talking about ways to collaborate remotely after realizing that we both owned a Make Noise 0-Coast semi-modular synthesizer. By sharing patches—the state of the synthesizer, including the positions of the knobs and how the signals are routed from one part of the synthesizer to another—we created pairs of solo pieces that shared a common configuration. Each week, we made two recordings: one based on an original patch—the Prompt—and then a Response based on the other person’s patch.
Exquisite Coast One is the first of many albums in a series that we will roll out over the next year or so. You can get it now on Bandcamp.
You can play Exquisite Coast too! If you and a friend have any of the small semi-modular synthesizers from Make Noise or Moog and would like to play the game yourselves, we have publicly released the web app we used to notate and share patches. Visit ec.rustle.works to learn more.
Exquisite Coasts is a shared patch game created by Damon Holzborn and John O’Brien (original announcement here) for the Make Noise 0-Coast semi-modular synthesizer. We have now expanded the game to include additional synthesizers from which to choose. Now, in addition to the 0-Coast, we’ve added additional small semi-modular instruments from Make Noise (Strega, 0-CTRL) and Moog (Mother 32, DFAM, Subharmonicon, Werkstatt). Learn more and join in at ec.rustle.works.
I’ve made the first major(ish) addition to Quaxtrip since launch. Rather than use a hardware mixer to get my synth setup into the computer, I tend to go directly into my multi-channel audio interface and do the mixing in software. Since Quaxtrip’s release I’ve developed an evolving set of patches to manage my personal integration with Quaxtrip. Figuring that there are likely others who work the same way, I decided to build this functionality into Quaxtrip. When you launch the mixer, you can combine up to eight stereo or mono channels to send to your remote peers as a mono or stereo mix.
There are a few other changes to the patch as well. Two separate mutes — local and remote — were added to the Local Input. This allows you to isolate the remote signals for local monitoring or prevent your signal from being sent to the remote partner(s), respectively. There also were changes to the send and receive objects you can use to hook into Quaxtrip in your own patches. This is a breaking change, so sorry about that, but the old strategy was too confusing.
There was also a minor bug fix or two, so I do recommend all users download this version.
I am planing more features in the coming weeks or months. Here’s some of the stuff I’m thinking about adding:
If you think of anything else you’d like to see added to Quaxtrip, don’t be shy. I’d like Quaxtrip to be useful for Max experts and novices alike, so I’ll do as much as I can to make it useful for a wide variety of users.
Find installation instructions and join the conversation over at the lines forum.
Quaxtrip is a set of Max patches that makes low-latency uncompressed audio and messaging interconnections over the internet, intended for musicians wishing to play together remotely.
Quaxtrip runs Miller Puckette’s Quacktrip Pure Data patch within Cycling ‘74’s Max. Quacktrip, in turn, is an implementation, in Pure Data, of Chris Chafe’s JackTrip network protocol, based on jacktrip.pd by Roman Haefeli and Johannes Schuett. It establishes a low-latency, point-to-point connection between two sites, with no audio compression. Quaxtrip allows up to four of these connections, allowing an ensemble of up to five players at once.
Learn more and join the discussion on the Lines forum or download the patch at GitHub.
Coast Express is a MIDI settings manager for the Make Noise 0-Coast semi-modular synthesizer. I previously released a version for Max but now I’ve added a version that works in the browser. Visit https://ce.rustle.works/ to learn more.
[This is the second in a series of scripts I’m sharing while I learn to write applications for the new Monome Crow, a Eurorack module that connects to Norns or computers running Max, Max for Live, and other serial-enabled applications. Crow also stores a complete script, so that without a USB connection it can continue to run, responding to CV input and ii messages.]
A example script demonstrating a method to generate weighted random numbers. In addition to the min/max value settings, the method has three parameters that control how the randomness is weighted:
Download the script and find more details at the Lines forum.
[This is the first in a series of scripts I’m sharing while I learn to write applications for the new Monome Crow, a Eurorack module that connects to Norns or computers running Max, Max for Live, and other serial-enabled applications. Crow also stores a complete script, so that without a USB connection it can continue to run, responding to CV input and ii messages.]
Despite the fact that I have plenty of LFOs in my rack (🤷♂️), I chose a dual-clock quad LFO as my Getting to Know Crow and Lua project.
Summary:
Download the script and find more details at the Lines forum.