Sarah and I went up to Green Bay, Wisconsin this weekend for the wedding of a couple of friends from college. We drove up to Chicago last Thursday night after I got off work to stay at another friend’s place there, and give them a ride to Green Bay.

Now, there’s a saying that Chicago has two seasons: winter and construction. And there’s a lot of truth to it. Last time we were there, it was winter and the high temperature was hovering around 0 degrees. This time, the drive up there, which is usually about 4 1/2 hours, took over six hours. We hit major construction and traffic on the way there. In fact, every leg of our trip was plagued with traffic jams. The drive back from Green Bay, which was supposed to be about 7 1/2 hours, took more like 10 1/2 hours. Yikes!

I’ve lived in Chicago before, and I have a lot of fond memories there — but this trip served as a reminder of just how much I prefer living in a smaller town. A place where parking isn’t an issue and the roads aren’t packed with vehicles all the time. A town that sleeps. And, a place where getting out of the city doesn’t involve driving for an hour or more. I have re-adapted to a much slower-packed lifestyle, and I love it. During some more frustrating moments, I found myself thinking of the Fred Neil song “Badi-Da:”

I get so tired
Hanging round this town
Oh this old city life
Sure brings a fella down

ba da da da da da
ba da da da da da da
ba da da da da da
ba da da

I sure get tired
Trying to sleep at night
Oh these old city lights
They keep on burning bright

ba da da da da da
ba da da da da da da
ba da da da da da
ba da da

I get so tired
Hanging round this town
Oh this old city life
Sure brings a fella down

ba da da da da da
ba da da da da da da
ba da da da da da
ba da da

On a positive note, Chicago was absolutely crawling with bicycles. I don’t remember seeing nearly as many bicycles when I lived there a few years ago. Was I not paying attention, or has bicycling exploded in popularity in Chicago in the past few years? Even late at night, we saw tons of cyclists.

It seemed like, based on what I saw, Chicago is probably a good place to ride, if you can somehow stay safe amongst all the insane drivers (and there are a lot of them).

I wish I had something to say about Green Bay, but we saw very little of it since we spent almost all of our time on wedding-related activities. It seemed like a nice city, much smaller than Chicago but big enough that it seems to have a lot going on.

The wedding, of course, was fantastic. This couple was the first of my close friends from college to get married, and I couldn’t be happier for them. Sarah and I will be next, in just over a month!

Sarah and I were at Kmart last night, and I looked around the toy section to see if they had any cool toys that I could use for music-making purposes. I’ve been on a circuit bending kick, or at least I’m trying to learn how to do some circuit bending. Circuit bending is taking existing devices and messing up their circuits to get them to do different things, such as changing the pitch, adding effects, making glitchy sounds, etc. It’s generally done to toys, although ones from the 80s-early 90s are best, since newer ones often have all the circuitry on a single chip.

Anyway, I found this awesome toy, a “Zoundz,” made by Zizzle. It was on sale for $15, marked down from $49.99. The idea is, there’s a white surface with three “hot spots” in which you place various “pawns.” Each pawn makes a different sound, and will play different melodies or beats depending on which hot spot you put it on. The hot spots also light up/blink in various colors. You can also adjust some effects, and using the cube pawn, you can record 5 seconds of your own audio. You can also plug in a mic or iPod and play it through the Zoundz. You can see a video of a Zoundz in action on their site or in this YouTube video (not mine).

The Zoundz is pretty cool as-is, but of limited utility for making music. It comes with pre-programmed loops (except the recordable cube). I hope that I can find a way to hack this thing to play my own sounds, allowing me to use the pawns to control it. I haven’t looked inside the device yet, but this seems a little ambitious to me at the moment. I definitely need to tackle some easier projects first.

I’m looking forward to the arrival of the Barbie Karaoke Machine I am getting from eBay, as it’ll be a fun circuit bending target, and hopefully a learning experience.

I’ve already had some circuit-bending success, adding audio outputs to a cheap keyboard I got at Wal-mart, and doing some semi-successful experiments with this old equipment I bought at an antique shop. It appears to be a Dictograph from the WWII era, and would have been used for eavesdropping/spying. It has several elements that are either speakers or microphones, which I am hoping to use as mics. I got one of them to work (sort of) already, although I had to yell to make it pick up my voice. It had a great boxy sound, and I’d love to use it for something, so hopefully I can get it working a bit better.

Well, February Album Writing Month is over now, but before the end of the month, Halaka posted one of our recording sessions as a FAWM double album. It’s over an hour and a half in length, and so requires two CDs if you burn it. You can download the tracks from The Margarine Committee’s Unauthorized Business Plan. You can also stream the entire double album (you’ll still be able to choose certain songs to listen to).

I played smileyface synthguitar and synth proper for this session, and you can hear numerous screw-ups on my part, but also some good parts, I think. I even played a few cool guitar lines, which is pretty good given that I’m no guitarist.

Some things that I think are highlights are Henry the Waste of an Ape, Weeping Widows, and Dour Digital Delay (which play as something of a trilogy to me). Dour Digital Delay probably has some of my best synth playing on it.

The more I look at the track listing, the more I realize that I like most of this stuff, so it’s hard to say what else is the best. I guess I’d have to say that the death metal Margarine in the Road is pretty awesome, Kattan is Unable to Locate the Musical Pulse with an Illuminable Battery-Operated Hardware Device is pretty funky, I am the Mackerel just plain rocks, and Cock Rock City is hilarious.

Seriously, though, I recommend you just listen to the whole thing. You’ll be a better person for it.