Morning of Unfun

There are many more pleasant ways to start your morning than the one I just used.

Having been up late last night helping Michael Rockstar record an EP and transfer it from 4-track to the computer, I stayed in bed as long as I possibly could. Once awake, I moved around the house as slowly as possible, eating waffles and veggie sausage with a plan to move out onto the porch and continue reading Speaker for the Dead in the light and warmth of this preternaturally un-autumnal day.

Under the seat-right rocker of the rocking chair I intended to sit in, I discovered the corpse of a little pigeon, just beginning to show outward signs of death. After conquering my fear of bird flu, I fetched the snow shovel from the basement and a New Seasons paper bag from the kitchen and moved the victim to the trash can. I then returned to the porch to hose down the contaminated area with Lysol. That's when I discovered the maggot party that I brought to an abrupt end when I moved the bird.

Unfun.

Keyless Keyboard

You're familiar with fretless basses? Yesterday - under the delayed influence of having seen the Moog documentary a week ago, and the current influence of see/hearing Sigur Ros - I was thinking that somebody should invent the equivalent mode for the piano/synthesizer. A keyless keyboard. There's lots of input modes for keyed instruments that allow you continuous flexibility of pitch (e.g. pitch wheel), but it seems to me that none of them are as intuitive or flexible as simply having a "keyless" keyboard on a synthesizer would be. Given envelope modelling and such, you could even have a pretty close approximation of a piano without a fixed tuning - putting to rest the whole tempered-scale-as-foundation-of-music-based-on-western-instruments issue that I'm sure keeps you up at nights.

Does this already exist? Anyone know how to build this? I'd make you a delicious sandwich.