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The Pac Tom documentary!
(28 Dec 2022 at 11:01) |
It is done! I finished the Pac Tom project to run the length of every street in Pittsburgh in October, and (yes it took months) also this video documenting the project and finale:
How I ran the length of every street in Pittsburgh: PAC TOM
The Pac Tom site now has the final data, but the video is the definitive way to see it!
I added the downloadable Soundtrack for completionists. I was horrified to find, when watching this video with some friends after I uploaded, that I had accidentally muted one of the audio tracks for the "final" version. You can rectify this by playing "Street (Trap Remix)" at exactly 11:58. |
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OLD: Why can't the band skate?
(31 Oct 2017 at 22:58) |
I have a bunch of old, almost-finished projects kicking around on my hard drive, including a number of recordings of Sick Ridiculous and the Sick Ridiculous tracks that we wisely recorded sloppy versions of just before Nels moved to Belgium (and then elsewhere). Since I haven't plugged in my Roland SC-880 and something changed about the sample rates my sound card is willing to play (?), it's been a bit of a pain to mix and master these, but today I figured out a workaround for one of those problems. So I finished off this old track "Why can't the band skate?"
Why can't the band skate?
We made this track for dwrensha's (and his twin brother's) birthday on 11/11/2011, making it our third or fourth birthday song. That was six years ago (in fact I was reminded by the sequel of this birthday party coming up shortly) but the thing about Sick Ridiculous is The Band is Still Active and Never Forget and A Watched Pot Never Boils! So, Solicit MP3 from emporium. |
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Tom 7 Entertainment System - Persistent Blister
(31 Aug 2017 at 23:44) |
It's right down to the wire, but I managed to actually finish one of my several concurrent projects, another T7ES EP:
Tom 7 Entertainment System - Persistent Blister
I like the four-song format, since I tend to collect songs throughout the year and it's a pretty efficient way to discharge some #1 club hits while forcing myself to finish some stinkers to pad the discography. The songs:
1. ceors' - This is the only one I'm sure I like. I came home after having a discussion or argument with my friend William about jazz, feeling nonspecifically mad about his formalist approach, and hate-wrote this "jazz" song which is weird and which I quite like.  for #1 club hit.
2. theme from california - I can't remember the difference between this and theme from chiptopia
3. theme from limerence - This one has a track labeled ANNOYING. Can you figure out which one it is?
4. theme from chiptopia - This is whichever one theme from california isn't
I did do a pretty slapdash job on the mastering (not to mention the cover art, though do you see my typographic joke? this album is twice foreshadowing an upcoming project, in fact), so I reserve the right to upload new versions of these if I listen to them tomorrow and can't stand some mistake. When I link them up from the t7es homepage or new bandcamp page, you'll know that they're certified fresh on the tom7atom7eter. |
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AAD-28: It involves liquefaction
(04 Jul 2016 at 10:14) |
Good day fine listener! I have created a new album, and It involves liquefaction!
82# pee: It involves liquefaction
That image is kind of how my ears feel right now. This one was difficult for me, and I'm assessed a penalty of at least -1,000 POINTS for Album-a-Day rules violations, including a 6 hour bike ride in the middle of day 2, and probably exceeding 24 total hours of work. But I like don't think the rules apply to me man.
Some things that made this one hard: I'm definitely out of practice playing the guitar, writing guitar songs, and recording. Most of the guitar songs were a slog and sound derivative to me, and hurt my guitar fingers. I wrote a lot of techno songs, which came out more easily, but the default tempo has increased from 100 to 120 BPM, and I think I get more readily bored with repetition, and so I'd often find myself spending a solid hour at the piano roll and then find that the song is only 1 minute long. But I finished, and there are some parts I like!
Some songs of note: Business Logics is my attempt to write jazz (ha ha). Dude ascending a staircase was the only guitar one that came out Metamucil-style. Bromides was my absurd attempt to cram the zillions of suggestions for song ideas and titles on Facebook into one song. Song about owls for children is by request for my nieces and nephew, and I'm trying to channel TMBG here, but obviously failing. You can mix and match or listen to the whole thing; it's only 20 minutes.
Note that #28 makes this a whole month of solo AADs, if that month is February and it's not a leap year.
Here is a zip file with all songs. |
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New T7ES mini-album: DTMF Jam for Dummies for Dummies
(30 Apr 2016 at 20:13) |
Good day! Since moving (I think I have mentioned here that I bought a house last year?) I have not actually hooked up much of my music gear, probably because I'm wary of the outcome where they get shittily fixtured because it seems like too much work to organize them into some modestly better arrangement, and so they stay embarrassingly messy (i.e. XLR cable across the middle of the floor) for years. So I'm trying to only take stuff out of the boxes when I have a good place to put them. This includes my Roland SC-880, which is a fancy MIDI machine that I pretty much only use to generate sawtooth waves and square waves for my Tom 7 Entertainment System "band." So for a while I've been without the sawtooth waves, and this is weird because a very common habit of mine is to sit down for an hour and write a little idea of a jam and then not finish it and leave it on my hard drive. So since this thing is not hooked up, I've been screwing around with software synthesizers, which are of course completely capable of making sawtooth waves and so much more, but also have way too many knobs for my liking and often generate stupid and annoying sounds. So I made a bunch of songs and left them on my hard drive, and then today I gave myself a monster headache by finishing some of them up and dodging the clipped bits and putting together a mini-album, since it's been a few years!
DTMF Jam for Dummies for Dummies
All these songs use ridiculous synthesizer sounds, which I feel is sort of cheating, but maybe you like. Heart emoji indicates favorite, with Facebook Phone being like on the rainbow dolphin sex end of the spectrum and Wires comin' out being on the alien death disco side.
1. Theme from Facebook Phone
2. Permanent signal
3. Superior olive
4. Theme from Bosch proportional servo valve
5. Wires comin' out everythin' ev'where
You can of course download the whole album in a zip file. I also just updated the T7ES site which it turned out was missing my second-most-recent album. I believe it's comprehensive now. |
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Sick Ridiculous and the Sick Ridiculous: Arena League of Their Own
(09 Aug 2014 at 17:21) |
Ahoy! Even though bandmate Nels has moved to Brussels, he still comes back to Pittsburgh a few times a year and every once in a while we sprout out a new recording.
Sick Ridiculous — Arena League of Their Own
This is a song celebrating Arena League Football, the highest level of professional indoor American football in the United States. I have never been to an AFL game, but this is an earnest tribute to what we believe the sport must be like: Real serious athletes with day jobs, struggling on the brink of relevance and solvency but with an austere commitment. In other words, the Sick Ridiculous way of life. Here is the MP3 in glorious extreme stereo.
A couple more of these recordings coming, but they are like those time-release pills with lots of little pills inside! |
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New! Tom 7 Entertainment System: In-nor-out burger
(04 Sep 2013 at 00:19) |
Behold! A new Tom 7 Entertainment System EP!
T7ES — In-nor-out burger
We have very minimal standards for EP-ness both in terms of number of songs and number of seconds—but—the highest regard for quality. This here is four new musictunes of the thick and stereo variety, namely,
1. Beverage voucher good for one alcoholic beverage redeemable only onboard
2. Theme from asp in wall
3. An negotiation
4. Iced coffee 5
The first and last tracks are my favorites. When recording this one I've become pickier and pickier about sound quality and finally tended to an annoying noise problem I've been having with my sound card for years. I was thinking RF interference from the computer's bus, because it happened in tandem with on-screen computer-activity, but it turned out to be a ground loop. Now the recordings should be super clean for connoisseurs. (Something tells me no "connoisseurs" listen to my music, but if so, they should get the music zip file.) |
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Ludum Dare #27: Point One Hurts
(31 Aug 2013 at 12:26) |
Last weekend I made another Ludum Dare game in 48 hours, because it's one of my favorite things to do. The theme was "10 Seconds" so my game is "Point One Hurts". As usual this one can be played in the browser:
Point One Hurts
The game is more challenging than usual, due to my own bad planning. There's something to figure out there and it definitely can be won (and some people have enjoyed figuring that out!) but I didn't save enough time to work on the way the game presents its ideas to you. That's actually my favorite thing about game design: Interactively leading the player to figure out what's going on. Here, I just need to give the hints that you need to use the arrow keys and Z and X, to pay attention, and that your gaming instincts may betray you.
The part that came out best is the music, so play with headphones or download the themetrack MP3s. |
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New T7ES: If you antietam, join 'em
(06 Jan 2013 at 15:13) |
Tom 7 Entertainment System - If you antietam, join 'em
One fresh spanking new Tom 7 Entertainment System chipdude: If you antietam, join 'em. I set off to create something atmospheric but I definitely have a problem with restraint, so eventually it becomes a staccato arpeggio jam as usual. I hope you enjoy it. |
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Sick Ridiculous - Soup 'n Uts
(02 Nov 2012 at 18:20) |
Sick Ridiculous and the Sick Ridiculous - Soup 'n Uts
I have a bunch of new Sick Ridiculous et al. recordings which I will share as I mix them. It takes a while and I never feel quite satisfied with the results, but I can't just hoard them on my hard drive! This is a song about soup and anaphylaxis that we wrote for the Pittsburgh artist event "Soup n'at" (n'at is Pittsburgh vernacular for "etc.", roughly). It's called Soup 'n Uts. |
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