So, the ketipung repair has turned out to be partially succesful:

https://youtu.be/TyF6qkMC5SM

The main part of the repair is fine: gluing a thin circle of goatskin on the underside of the larger head worked well.

The problem was reassembling the drum. I tried to put it all back together dry, but it was impossible to rethread the tensioning thongs. After soaking, the ring of smaller head appeared to shrink, and I could not get it to properly sit back on the rim. It was also an incredible effort to try to get the tensioning thongs back in place and pull them tight enough. I ended up with the end of the straps about eight inches looser than they had been.

The woven tensioning rings had collapsed in the process of soaking, and I was struggling enough anyway with trying to get the thing back to gether without figuring out how they were supposed to fit. I used some cable ties instead.

However: the drum is more or less useable now, which counts as some sort of success. I'm going to do some more work on the tensioning rings, there must be a better way than those cable ties…

The 'ketipung' is the smaller of a pair of drums that are used together in the Javanese gamelan.

The original ketipung that came with our gamelan was damaged many years ago. For as long as I have been with the group it has had a 3cm gash in the larger head, and also a similar size split around the edge:

Covered up with gaffa tape the drum was still more or less playable, but far from ideal.

A good number of years ago now we were able to source a replacement drum from Indonesia, and this one has languished in the cupboard. I decided it was time to have a go at a proper repair!

My plan was to dismantle the drum and attempt a glue and leather patch from the inside of the head. This seemed simpler than trying to make an entirely new head: wiser heads than mine advised that this was a much tricker job than it looked!

First step was to get the drum dismantled. This involved soaking the whole thing in a bath for an hour or so, which loosened up the leather thongs enough so that I could release three of them and take them off the drum:

I sourced an 8 inch circle of shaved goatskin online from a supplier of djembe/bodhran heads. The existing heads are water buffalo, but from previous experience with another drum, I felt that the much thinner goatskin would be good for the patch.

After a lot of reading around about glue options – pva? latex? cyanoacrylate? diisocyanate? – I decided on contact adhesive, which was recommended in many places by people who work with leather. I decided to trust a well-known household brand that I was familiar with, rather than order a specialist product:

By good chance, I found a bowl of the exactly the right size for me to mark and then cut down the goatskin to fit. I followed the glueing instructions carefully, in particular making sure to allow enough time for it to be touch dry.

According to the instructions the bond is instant and requires no support, but I decided to bodge together a disc of plywood and the heaviest thing I could find in the house (an old alter bell) to hold it together while curing.

Ok, let's come back tomorrow and see how we did!

So here it is: the new static version of jsimonvanderwalt.com!

My first website was started around 2001 and was hand-coded in html.

Sometime in 2013-ish I moved to WordPress, a database-driven CMS. After messing around for a while with hosting wp myself, I got fed-up with constantly self-managing updates and security issues and decided just to pay for wordpress.com.

As the web developed, I became less and less fond of wordpress. I hated the block-based Gutenberg editor, which is just frustrating for someone who already ^ thinks in html.

Around 2014 I started livecoding. Through my involvement in that scene, I became aware of two things: Markdown, and the idea of a 'static' website, like the ones that I was seeing used for documentation of domain-specific languages for music. Markdown was perfect for me: for years I have anyway been in the habit of doing all of my writing first of all in BBEdit, with markdown-like shortcuts for bullets, headings and emphases.

Finally: one of the main purposes of this website is as a repository for around 30 years of creative work as a musician. Having this as a static website means that I can host a lot of the actual content – particularly .pdf files and audio – as part of the site itself, rather than relying on external silos. I have some reason to hope that, when I'm no longer around, all the stuff that I have made will still 'be there' in some coherent form.

Just heard that my new piece 'El laberinto' for voice, bass clarinet and general MIDI is going to be performed by Stephanie Lamprea and Alex South at the Scottish Awards for New Music 2023 on 1st September.

I say 'new piece' – effectively this is revisiting and recontextualisation of an earlier piece 'El laberinto de mi mente'.

Here's what I've written about the new version:

The world has changed a lot since 1998, and I feel much less comfortable about my place in it. Was I only able to become a ‘composer’ thanks to the the middle class white male privilege that gave me the confidence, agency and status to do so? Is there any value to my work, or is it just a self-indulgence? Am I privileged to be able to even ask that question?

The writing for the voice and clarinet is inspired by a tradition of wordless virtuoso unison lines most commonly associated perhaps with Carnatic/jazz fusions. The accompaniment makes self-consciously nostalgic use of General MIDI sounds in a Standard MIDI File, rewinding back to those naively happy days of plain text, ISDN dialup and minidiscs.

During January 2023 a number of people active in the livecoding community participated together in a 'patternuary' https://club.tidalcycles.org/t/patternuary-2023/4474/1 aiming to make one pattern every day during the month.

Some people worked in TidalCycles https://tidalcycles.org/, while many chose to use the Strudel platform https://strudel.tidalcycles.org/.

Some of the patterns were posted on the Tidal Club thread above, while many otherers appeared under the #patternuary thread on Mastodon https://post.lurk.org/tags/patternuary.

Given the strong likelihood of bitrot, I created a single video https://archive.org/details/jsvdwpatternuary2023 that captures brief excerpts of all of the patterns I made: mostly in Strudel, but also in SuperCollider, Pd and one composition notated in MuseScore.

The audio is also released as an album on bandcamp: https://tedthetrumpet.bandcamp.com/album/everyday-jan-63

(Most of) the code is available as a gist https://gist.github.com/tedthetrumpet/0410ae1cd2ad0a2837a36aca94e5b5ea

So, here's how it turned out: attempting to 'livecode' Audacity by saving a file out periodically to SuperCollider. A slow start, but gets more interesting towards the end of the twenty minutes.

Also available here https://archive.org/details/nightstream-dec-2022-tedthetrumpet

Had a slightly crazy idea for the TidalClub Night Stream on 2022-12-21 – could I livecode something in Audacity?!?

Obviously the answer is basically no, as you can't edit anything in Audacity while it is playing. So, instead, the plan is to use some of the things in the Generate menu to improvise some sounds: the Risset Drum, Rhythm Track, DTMF Tones and so on.

Once I have a minute's worth I, save out a mixdown to disk. Then, I have a script running in SuperCollider that waits a minute, then reloads the latest file exported from Audacity. So, in theory, I have a minute to create the next layer in Audacity while the last layer is playing.

For some reason, I decided to bill the performance as a 'dangdut', so I also have some simple algorithmically generated dangdut-ish material ready to go in SuperCollider that can be played alongside the much more abstract Audacity material.

Quick proof-of-concept video:

https://youtu.be/x2XVkoGofQ8

I've been teaching some of the composition students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland how to livecode in Estuary, and we're going to do a short set as part of The Longest Night. Here's the test I just did for that, which sort of counts as another one of my tiny estuary jams – not a very interesting one!

I seem to have started doing that thing where I post a small piece of work each day: so far, four very short jam sessions in Estuary:

https://youtu.be/MeCpvXLMQe4

https://youtu.be/b5MQBuA5SWA

https://youtu.be/ddkhm-JRj5I

https://youtu.be/dRgQwRuUYsM

This posting shows how I was able to get the sounds of the pelog half of the Spirit of Hope gamelan here in Glasgow to work in GarageBand on an iPad.

First install an app called 'SoundFonts' from the App Store: it's £4.99.

Go to this link https://archive.org/download/sohgamelanbalunganpelog, and download the file called SoH Gamelan balungan pelog.sf2

The file should end up saved in the Downloads folder in iCloud Drive.

Open the SoundFonts app and click the + button.

This took me straight to the correct file in iCloud Drive: you might have to browse to find it though. Select the file to import it to the SoundFonts app.

Once you select the sound called 'balungan_pelog' you should be able to play it. You might need to change octave to get all of the sounds, there should be slenthem, demung, saron and peking.

Repeat the process above to download the other soundfont, that includes gongs, kenongs, kethuk and drums. Here is the link https://archive.org/download/so-h-gamelan-gongs-drums-etc-pelog

To use the sounds in GarageBand, you need to find – I don't know what it is called, this track browser thing! – and select the 'External' pane.

Select the SoundFonts icon

And you can now play and record tracks using the gamelan samples in GarageBand!