Notescast

Screened Pastoral

In response to this prompt, I came up with a pastoral-ish horn chord progression. Then, to represent the horizontal fibers of the window screen, I wrote a set of notch filters. To represent the vertical fibers, I turned them on and off on a fixed interval.

By then, it was 11:30 PM on Monday. I improvised a bass part, but only had time for two takes, then had to mix. So, there it is.

The bass playing is not very connected to the chords. If I had more takes, I'd pay more attention to the chords.

The filter writing went surprisingly well. I have never written one in web audio, and everything worked the way I expected. I half-expected to have to bail on the filter.

I still don’t have a third riff to go with these two riffs, so I thought I’d try to improvise one out. I think maybe I have the direction right at least.

FLFLAASSHFFLLAASSFHLFALS

Per this prompt, I "remixed" the original Flash Gordon title track, which apparently was derived from a Liszt piece.

I picked three pairs of loops from the track. (And a few others which didn't work out.)

Each pair is a loop and a slightly truncated version of that loop so that they're all out-of-phase. Then, I terraced their entrances and put in a double time section.

Puzzle Lurching

I found a couple of half-finished tracks from a few years ago. The first was labeled “Murk” and had horns and a kettledrum. I think it was meant to be some kind of swamp-marching music. The second was named “The Puzzle-2” and was supposed to be music for a puzzle game. It had a recorder, harp, and synth bass.

The bass fit right in with the horns, which was a pleasant surprise. My synth horn playing was not quantized, nor particularly tight, whereas the bass was written directly on the piano roll, so there is some tension there, which I like.

I had to do a fair amount of shuffling around to get the recorder and harp to fit in rhythmically, but harmonically, it was not a bad fit. Those parts being sparse helped.

I added a ritard at the end for dramatic effect to wrap it up.

Expect Delays, Karts

For this one, I created a variation of Trying Your Best Grand Prix!.

It’s both a simulation of a race that has lots of stops and delays and of a band that can’t get it together.

I had a good time, and I hope it’s not too painful to listen to.

Expect Delays, Karts

For this one, I created a variation of Trying Your Best Grand Prix!.

It’s both a simulation of a race that has lots of stops and delays and of a band that can’t get it together.

I had a good time, and I hope it’s not too painful to listen to.

Michael Barone's (the host of Pipedreams) voice has changed a lot in 40 years. Here's an intro from a show in 1986 and one from this week in 2026.

Save Time Online

For a wacky prompt to make hold music for cars outside of a tunnel, I did the whole thing with the safe chord progression, mid-slow tempo, and announcements about how you should hang up (in this case leave the car line).

There's a tension between making something really sound like hold music and making something you don't want to hang up on. In order to avoid hard decisions, I went with always making it more hold-music-like, except for the vocoder.

Onyx's Shut 'Em Down has almost the same chorus as Public Enemy's Shut 'Em Down. I wonder if this was acknowledged.

I did end up getting my Voice Memos off of my phone (let me know if you actually want to know how), and I found this jam! The guy when he was five is on harmonica, I'm on guitar, and Katt is on triangle.