Cloud and Water

Dear Diary

I come back to Zen Guitar often, jumping around the pages, reminding myself of its wisdom. I envision myself as unsui, traveling monk, truth-seeker, embodying the spirit of cloud and water.

This Xenome Diaries project is a Zen guitar journey. I wear the white belt, starting as as close to the beginning as I am able by picking up a new guitar and tuning it in a new way. I am playing through all possible harmonic combinations, not to memorize or master or feed the ego, but to experience the endless possibility contained in twelve notes.

This is a spiritual path. I will stumble, and occasionally lose the way; I already have. But I know that once I dust away my ego and listen to my inner song, I will be reminded that the true path is always the one right in front of me, and the path goes on forever.

Progress

About the track

This is a 20-minute meditation, harmonically based on C-805. I did record video for this track. Unfortunately, in reorganizing the studio, I forgot to reattach the audio feed, so it was unusable. Better luck next time, I suppose.

I tried a number of new things for this track, most notably using Wotja to generate a lot of the ambient background and some of the piano. I removed the expression pedal from my Ravish pedal, so that it only generates sympathetic strings when I’m actually playing guitar, and in addition to recording the sound from that, I also bussed it through MIDImorphosis to drive Factory.

Alchemy Pro is playing “200 Critters” from the factory bank.

Tools and stuff

Licensed audio samples from Loopmasters and Sony.

Gear: Strandberg Boden NX 7, M-Audio Air 192/14, iPad Pro M2, iPad Air

Pedals: Gamechanger Audio Plus, SSS SRV, Strymon Deco, tc electronic Subnup, electro-harmonix Mel9, electro-harmonix Ravish

Apps

Arthur Kerns: midiLFOs

Audio Damage: Eos 2, Other Desert Cities, Replicant 3

Audiomodern: Gatelab

AudioThing: Gong Amp, Mantis, Noises, Speakers

BLEASS: Granulizer, Delay

Camel Audio: Alchemy Pro

Fred Anton Corvest: FAC Alteza

Intermorphic: Wotja 23

Jam Origin: MIDI Guitar 2

Korg: Module Pro

Kymatica: AUM, AudioShare, AU3FX:Push

Moog: Moogerfooger MF-104S Analog Delay, Moogerfooger MF-107S FreqBox, Moogerfooger MF-108S ClusterFlux

Olympia Noise Co: Patterning 2

Secret Base Design: MIDImorphosis 2

Sugar Bytes: Factory, Looperator

Woodman’s Immaculate Maple Syrup Studio: WoodnGate

Xenome 805

805 is a 3-note Xenome containing the root, major 6th, and major 7th. While there is no common name for this set of notes, the Universal Encyclopedia of Scales calls it Dorian Trichord Mode 3.

C-805 scale diagrams

Xenotuning

6-String Guitar

Keyboard

Magic Square