Sunday, April 05, 2009
I've been on vacation. Traveling and walking about, in weather.
When you are in your space, you can plug your music into the car or hotel room's sound system, and use music to lubricate what's going on, participating in the acoustic world. When you move about outside, you can jack your music into your ears, but then the music isn't part of the general ambience. You don't hear the conversations around you, the wind in the leaves, the phone chirping, the truck accelerating. You are jacked directly into the music production, the mixing desk, the mastering lab. It's just you and the music. The music doesn't participate in your world.
For my birthday I got a Buddha Machine.
It's a gadget in the form of a transistor radio that plays loops of Cologne style electronica. There's a button to cycle through the dozen loops, a switch to adjust the speed the loop is played at, a switch for volume/off, and a socket to jack it into your sound system. It's a nice ingredient to the ambience of a room, when we're reading or playing a game. Sofia already had a similar device that plays buddhist chants, and is sold outside temples in Taiwan.
I wanted to be able to add my own loops, so I searched for an MP3 player with a speaker. I was surprised I couldn't find anything in the form of a pocket sized transistor radio, but I found the Zen Stone.
Being the size of a zippo lighter, it is very easy to carry around. It plugs into a USB port to copy files, no special software required. It has a random play setting, volume, skip track and skip folder buttons. Now I can participate in my acoustic ambience when I'm about; wandering and wondering what's the soundtrack of a zen stone in a zen garden?
¶ 8:15 AM 
When you are in your space, you can plug your music into the car or hotel room's sound system, and use music to lubricate what's going on, participating in the acoustic world. When you move about outside, you can jack your music into your ears, but then the music isn't part of the general ambience. You don't hear the conversations around you, the wind in the leaves, the phone chirping, the truck accelerating. You are jacked directly into the music production, the mixing desk, the mastering lab. It's just you and the music. The music doesn't participate in your world.
For my birthday I got a Buddha Machine.
It's a gadget in the form of a transistor radio that plays loops of Cologne style electronica. There's a button to cycle through the dozen loops, a switch to adjust the speed the loop is played at, a switch for volume/off, and a socket to jack it into your sound system. It's a nice ingredient to the ambience of a room, when we're reading or playing a game. Sofia already had a similar device that plays buddhist chants, and is sold outside temples in Taiwan.
I wanted to be able to add my own loops, so I searched for an MP3 player with a speaker. I was surprised I couldn't find anything in the form of a pocket sized transistor radio, but I found the Zen Stone.
Being the size of a zippo lighter, it is very easy to carry around. It plugs into a USB port to copy files, no special software required. It has a random play setting, volume, skip track and skip folder buttons. Now I can participate in my acoustic ambience when I'm about; wandering and wondering what's the soundtrack of a zen stone in a zen garden?
¶ 8:15 AM
