new adventure in life

12/1/2018

Hello Friends at Electronic Cottage!
This is my new audiovisual creation:
new adventure in life
It is available exclusively here at Electronic Cottage.

I created new adventure in life
from Thursday, November 22
through Friday, November 30, 2018
in Gainesville, Florida.
Above is a slideshow of photographs
that I took with my iPhone 6
during those nine days.
Below are recordings that I made
with a Sony ICD-PX470 stereo digital dictaphone.

The four audio players below contain
high-quality 320 kbps MP3 streaming audio files.
These should work well for people with fast Internet speeds.

For those of you with slower or less reliable/consistent Internet speeds
I have provided 128 kbps MP3 audio players below.

The second track features Lumen K.
Stanley is featured throughout.

On tracks 2-4 I played
Monotron, Monotron Duo, Monotron Delay,
and Moog Model D iPhone app synthesizers
through a JBL Clip 3 speaker.

I will make the audio recordings available as downloadable WAV or MP3 files upon request.

21 Comments

Electronic Cottage
Editor
Hal McGee

I have been making my own homemade experimental music since 1981.

I was an active participant in the 1980s Cassette Culture scene, and I operated the Cause And Effect Cassette Distribution Service and label, and recorded solo as Dog As Master, and in a duo as Viscera.

From 1989 to 1991 I published six issues of the original Electronic Cottage print magazine.

In the last 36 years I have recorded, produced and released more than 300 solo audio works, collaborations and compilations. In the last two years I have revived my personal zine, HalZine.

email
website

Michael Ridge

12/1/2018 09:35:53

Can't wait to check these out when I'm back home later!!

Rafael González

12/1/2018 12:27:40

I love your adventures!

Leslie Singer

12/1/2018 15:55:32

I’ve been jones’in for a new Hal McGee dictaphone piece. The slideshow is a great intro—setting the stage for the audio adventure. I really enjoyed listening to the great mix of noise and discourse. Wit and wisdom worthy of Dr. Amp. IMNSHO!

Penny

12/1/2018 22:22:09

Hope u are getting better. Btw your voice even though u are sick. It does sounds good. I like that u call your dictaphones a companion and ritual.

Thank your for your stories and thoughts.

Per-Arne Hognert

12/2/2018 01:35:00

Great and fun stuff as usual, Hal! Sorry to hear you've been ill. Sounds like a real bad case of the cold too.

Listened to this early in the morning and when you suddenly shouted loudly at Stan to not eat off the ground. Dang! That really woke me up. :)

Hal McGee

12/2/2018 04:15:00

Hello everybody, thanks for listening! Do you all like this format of slideshow plus streaming audio? I published this new audio creation here on this page because I want to demonstrate that any of you can do the same thing. If you have a new audio recording that you want to to share with the EC community you do not need to use an outside service such as Bandcamp or Internet Archive. We can host it and publish it right here on the EC website. You can send your audio files to me via WeTransfer or Google Drive and we can make streaming audio players like you have used here. We can also make your recordings downloadable. Check out the posts by new EC member Tom Furgas. He is making his music streamable and downloadable here at EC. One more thing: do you like the way I did my recordings here? I kept them raw — I did not layer them into thick assemblages like I usually do?

12/4/2018 19:37:04

Hi Hal! Just wanna say that I enjoy both this style as well as your usual thick assemblage mixes. It's nice with some variety.

Hal

12/5/2018 03:23:00

Thanks, Per-Arne! I appreciate your feedback. Yep, variety is a good thing.

12/5/2018 16:29:49

I think the idea is great and I love your assemblages! Good work, Hal.

Jim Barker

12/3/2018 18:15:17

Always good stuff from you, Hal. Concerning your observations about the correct way to return bills, I have no preference concerning this. In fact, I hardly use physical money anymore. Two reasons. One is that it's much easier to do cashless transactions with my credit/debit card, most places have this now, even charity shops and buses. And number 2, recently in the UK new £5 and £10 notes have been introduced, and they are a nasty plastic, slithery kind of note, which is really easy to lose, and is really hard to fold. I don't like them, so cashless is doubly better.

12/5/2018 03:26:09

Jim, thanks for your reactions. I use credit card if I don't have enough cash on me to make a purchase. I think most people here in the USA use some kind of debit or credit card to make purchases on a daily basis. Me, for some reason, I still prefer cash. Maybe it's wee bit of paranoia at work here, because I think that it's harder to track cash transactions than plastic card.

Frank

12/5/2018 22:20:00

Hi Hal,

Since you asked, I like the style that you did with these recordings, but... I prefer the more mixed collages. As I told you before, your collages, they relax me. It's like they give my brain a 'fun job to do' and at the end(and during), I am in a relaxed state.
Second, 95% of the time I listen with my headphones... these recordings play more to my left ear(might be my headphones).
Anyway, I did enjoy these, but it feels like somethings missing.

12/5/2018 23:53:19

Thank you, Frank. Your comments are quite helpful. To be honest, I too personally prefer the more mixed collages or assemblages.

12/9/2018 20:48:04

Update... it must be my headphones, that play on the left! I just was listening to the newest of CRGIII and same problem.

12/9/2018 22:26:28

Frank, you are correct. After I completed the transcription from the dictaphone I discovered that the mini mixer that I was using an interface was defective.

Chris Phinney

12/6/2018 20:08:26

Hal,

I am enjoying these new dictaphone pieces very much, gotta love Stanley, treats, barking at neighhbors & getting off the path,the shit irritated out of me, he loves it, I like the slideshow as well, & the handheld synths are pretty damn cool. Nice to listen as always to a new one by you.Much different than the mixed assemblages but very refeshing as well my friend.

12/7/2018 23:33:29

Hello Chris! Thanks for listening and for your comments. These dictaphone pieces are enjoyable and EASY to create. Most of all they are FUN to make and hopefully FUN to listen to! I know that I am a simpleton, but in this world of ours there can never be enough fun. Glad you like the slideshow. That's a neat feature. I can vary the speed of the slideshow so that they pictures change faster.

Adam J Naworal

12/8/2018 02:32:04

Great stuff as always, Hal! You prove the old saying that life itself is a work of art!

12/9/2018 08:21:34

Thanks for listening, Adam!

Lumen K

12/9/2018 07:55:05

Fantastic! I especially like the Monotron Delay playing here. This is a nice variation on your other assemblages, giving us a single strand instead of the mix.

12/9/2018 08:21:08

Thanks for listening, Trevor!