The Callo lilies are blooming.
Author: Jim Blodget (page 9 of 15)
We had beautiful weather yesterday. We visited the iris garden north of us which was in full bloom. I brought my small sketchbook and decided to try several small sketches instead of one larger one. These were quick color impressions.
Jim
I figured out how to upload an audio file to my WordPress install using my iPad and link to it in a blog post. It’s a two step process. First, I record the audio clip in MasterTracks DAW and email it to Dropbox using the free Send to Dropbox service. I then use FTP Client Pro to copy the audio file from Dropbox to my WordPress install on DreamHost.
I’m using BlogPad To write this post and I’m using a shortcode to display the audio file in a player. I have the Jetpack plug-in which takes care of showing the audio player cross platform.
Jim
I can choose a picture from the Media Library like this one of my harmonica.
And I can insert an audio player if the audio is already on the server.
Here is a gallery.
Front Yard Sketch
We had a bit of sun yesterday (and today). It felt good to sit on the front porch, read a book, and sketch on my iPod Touch. Just trying to capture some of the colors and shapes in front of me. Later, after I went inside, I transferred the sketch to my iPad and added some detail.
iPod Touch, Brushes, iPad, Procreate.
Winter Blues
I used the new brushes in iColorama to create this piece.
In 1981 my mother gave me this Casio VL-Tone musical instrument. It was one of the first electronic musical instruments and (drum roll) it was also a calculator. I still have and it works. It has several instrument sounds and rhythms. It also has the ability to shape your own waveform by setting the ADSR (Attack, Delay, Sustain, and Release). You can record melodies up to 100 notes long and play them back automatically as you played them in or you can play them back one note at a time.
In this sample I used the Swing rhythm and I set the ADSR to sound like a banjo. The instrument has a line out which I connected to my iMac. I recorded in Audacity.
Jim
I’m experimenting with NanoStudio on the Mac. It’s a free sequencing program and it comes with an amazing collection of synthesized drum and instrument sounds. I’m still learning to use the program. This is my first sample mix of Happy Birthday.
Jim
My second piece on SoundCloud. Made on the iPad with Mixtikl, Thumbjam, and MultiTrack DAW.
Here’s a bit of music where I did absolutely nothing. None of this is me. I found a PDF of a lead sheet of music for the song “Nobody Does It Better” online which I downloaded and scanned with PhotoScore. I then sent the song file to Sibelius First which is a music notation application. I saved it out as a general MIDI file and imported it into Garageband. This gave me the melody line. I added Garageband loops in other tracks to add drums, bass, and electric piano. Presto, instant music.
Here’s the PDF:
Nobody Does It Better.pdf (76K)
and the resulting MIDI file (saved as AIFF and converted to MP3):
This is a test to see what happens when you link to an audio file (m4a) in the public Dropbox folder.
[audio src=”http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2992304/Classical%20Kalimba%20up.m4a”]
Well, it works. That’s cool because that means you can store audio files on Dropbox (for free) and display them in a WordPress blog.
Jim
Seeing what happens when I link to a SoundCloud page.
Created this piece on the iPad 3 using Mixtikl, Thumbjam, and MultiTrack DAW apps.
Jim
Yesterday I made a new travel watercolor palette out of a small Altoids can. I managed to squeeze in 12 colors. Here it is surrounded by my previous palettes. It’s about four times smaller than anything available commercially.
The one on the left is made by Daler-Rowney in England. The ones above are my previous homemade palettes (6 colors each) made out of containers that had saffron in them. I used InstaMorph plastic to fashion the dividers. The one on the right is a Koi watercolor set made by Sakura of Japan.
The hardest part was sculpting the dividers and the mixing area in the lid with the InstaMorph plastic. It becomes pliable when you heat it in hot water (150 degrees F), but it only remains soft for about 3 to 5 minutes. After that it cools down enough to get hard again. So, you have to keep dunking it in hot water to soften it up again. The problem is it slumps when it gets soft so you have to reshape everything again. Here’s a closer look.
The colors I used (from top to bottom, left to right) are: ivory black, Payne’s gray, burnt umber, burnt sienna, Prussian blue, cobalt blue, alizarin crimson, cadmium red, cadmium yellow, lemon yellow, sap green, and a violet that I mixed up from a 50/50 mix of cobalt blue and alizarin crimson.
I don’t know why nobody sells a small travel palette like this that you can fill with your favorite paints. Every artist I show it to wants one.
Jim
This is my first try at playing a melody on the kalimba. It’s the Bach Cantata 147, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
I’m playing this with my thumbs. It’s hard to play with consistant volume on each note and even more difficult to play with feeling.
I also used the Tempo app on the iPad to increase the tempo.