Quite a few years ago now, I started building an instrument based on feedback in my computer. I was away in some other town at the time. I was selling my time, and regretting it. I desperately needed a way to express something other than servitude. I’ve kept working on this project ever since, and it has evolved and changed a lot over the course of maintaining this project. I enjoy the environment that the instrument has become very much. It feels a lot like having a conversation with an old friend at this point. Most days I’ll use what I’ve already built to make music, but every now and then I’ll want to try a new idea of some kind. I’ll then rebuild some aspect of how to control things, using a different approach, or I might add new functionality, or I might tweak the behaviour of some aspect of the synthesis. This work is very rewarding for me and I hope I get to keep exploring this for a long time. My ambition is to make a new audio file every day and to post that here, in my archive. This routine helps me stay balanced. This project gives me the opportunity to return to a particular way of listening that I enjoy. As I am returning again and again to the same place, I am fascinated by how I get to experience new things each time. I am reminded of the story of the stone garden in Ryōanji. It’s impossible to view all of the stones held within the garden from any vantage point. The set of all possible configurations of this system is similar in that it is very large. I like to keep busy. I never want to have the kind of problem where I’ve lost touch with what it feels like to complete a piece of music. This way, the last time I felt it, is never more than a day away.

∞