Jennifer Brookes: I heard about this non-profit called Rwanda Partners through my friend Joel. The organization bands together with folks in Rwanda who support and desire healing and restoration through poverty reduction and ethnic reconciliation. I collaborated with Joel, good friend Tojo, and Eric on this short invitation to a Rwanda Partners auction at the Woodland Park Zoo at the end of this month. It’s going to be a nice summer night of wine tasting, yummy food, and entertainment. Tickets may be purchased by clicking here if you’re interested.

Eric Peterson: For this piece, I tried to work in the suggested realm of “jingly, catchy, and inviting.” I also recently received a copy of “Pop Quiz” by Portland-based band The Ocean Floor, which is gorgeous and refreshingly inspiring (purchase a copy here, if you please). While a lot of the record shines its jazz influences, one portion of one song in particular caught my attention, and I tried my best to emulate and extrapolate on it while maintaining some semblance of originality.

Jennifer Brookes: I moved into my new apartment at the beginning of the month, afraid that I wouldn’t have the same glorious roof access as my previous apartment. After some searching I found a way to access the roof, and was lucky enough to celebrate my first 4th of July in Seattle on top of it. These are the fireworks that explode in the sky over Lake Union every year.

Eric Peterson: The power went out as I was getting ready to record this week’s piece. They’re not very common, but when they do occur, they’re either momentary, or last several hours. This one was of the latter assortment. Rather than putting off the recording until the power came back on, I attempted to record this week’s piece using the microphone on my laptop before the battery on my laptop died.

Jennifer Brookes: As this stop-motion project progresses, for me, each video becomes less of a forethought piece of art and more of an artistic outlet. I’m not sure if I like that, as it is not intentional, but these things happen with long term projects. Instead of setting aside a special time to shoot a video, I take my camera with me everywhere and automatically shoot in stop-motion style. This video attests to this idea, because while shooting these pictures, I had no intention to turn them into a video. Here, you’re catching glimpses from my road trip with Amanda Walker from California to Colorado.

Eric Peterson: This weekend, Houses played a show in Aspen, which is a mountain town about four hours outside of Denver. While enjoyable, it was very exhausting, and it also meant I was gone during the time I normally record each week’s piece. This project has taught me a lot about how to make the most out of the least. This week’s piece, due to time constraints, was recorded entirely on a microcassette recorder that my dad used to use to record telephone conversations.

Jennifer Brookes: Welcome to Encinitas, California. I tried to make this video about a month ago the last time I was here, but I think the brightness of the sun literally caused my camera to malfunction, and I lost every documented photo from this town. Encinitas is my good friend Amanda’s hometown. She’s moving to Denver for the summer to live with a couple of Eric’s bandmates; I’m only here to serve as company on a long drive through the midwest. This video is a recap of Amanda’s last afternoon at the beach with her friends before escaping to landlocked Colorado. Sunshine and hugs and good feelings all around.

Eric Peterson: Shelby Handler is the cousin of my longtime friend and bandmate Patrick Kelly. I’ve always heard much about her, but until recently, hadn’t actually met her. While there are a number of serendipitous ties between Shelby, Jenny, and myself—primarily unexpected mutual friends and cities in common—what I want to highlight here is Shelby’s poetry. In Denver, she made a name for herself in the youth slam movement. Now, she attends the University of Washington in Seattle where she’s organized UW’s first collegiate slam team. Beyond her slam poetry, Shelby is also a phenomenal “regular” poet. This week features Shelby reciting an extremely short, original piece. The 30 second format does her poems no justice, so I encourage you to click here to read one of my favorites of hers.

Jennifer Brookes: Pike Place Market is a fun and overwhelming place to be on nice days. Buskers might be the best part (but don’t take my word for it). Most of the street performers at the market are there on a daily basis, it’s their sole income. Jonny Hahn, the piano player, has been playing at the market for 24 years, and the four gentlemen (A Moment in Time) singing a cappella outside of the original Starbucks have probably been there since I was born. Not once have I been to PPM without seeing either of these performers. The only busker that was new to me was Emery Carl, the man at the end of the video playing harmonica, jingle bells, maraca, and two guitars, all while hoola hooping TWO hoops and telling jokes about his ex-girlfriend. Amazing.

Eric Peterson: The program I use to record music comes bundled with a set of virtual synthesizers and sampled instrumentation which you can control using a MIDI keyboard. You can record MIDI notation that is played back as a guitar, for example, then later in the process, with the click of a mouse, change it to sound like an organ or a saxophone. Many of the sounds are pretty unrealistic or cheesy, and as a result, it’s easy to pigeonhole yourself into unoriginal styles. The goal this week was to learn how to blend these synthesized instruments with real instruments in a way that resulted in a natural sound. Can you guess what’s real and what’s fake?

Jennifer Brookes: It’s practically summer here in Seattle, and one of the most popular summer hangout spots in the area is Golden Gardens. It’s literally packed on nice days. Fortunately, my friends and I went on a rainy day, so we only had to share the beach with a couple of dogs and a small boy who smashed our sand castle shortly after it’s construction was complete. He was sorry.

Eric Peterson: I’m finally done with classes; I’ve still got quite a bit on my plate, and as a result, it doesn’t quite feel like summer, but I’m constantly reminded that it actually is by the extreme heat that’s found its way over Denver these past few days. I’ve wanted to do a song similar to this week’s for some time (with something of an old-time feel, based around a ukulele), but I just haven’t been able to put together anything of acceptable quality until now. Maybe I was just waiting for summer to hit. This song was originally written in 1905 and has been re-arranged and re-appropriated time and time again by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Petula Clarke, and enumerable others. It’s an excerpt from In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.

Jennifer Brookes: This Memorial Day weekend I went on my first Washington camping trip, to San Juan Island, with a bunch of friends. This video is it in a nutshell: an almost constant drizzle, exploring the high and low tides of the Pacific, braiding hair and burning fires. Naturally, most of the best parts weren’t caught on film: baby white seals, delicious campfire food, camel sightings, and lighthouses.

Eric Peterson: This past quarter, I took a class that more or less teaches a program called Max/MSP, which is geared toward musicians, digital media artists, and other individuals who want to do complex, live manipulation of audio and video without having to learn a great deal of low level, textual programming. There are a number of notable musicians who utilize Max/MSP, including Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead, seen here playing a guitar solo which is affected by a program he wrote in Max (called a “patch”). This week’s piece, rather than being composed, was generated using a Max patch that I wrote for the class. It works by analyzing incoming frequencies from an audio source, converting them to MIDI signals which are then sent to a keyboard to be played back. These particular sounds were created by setting up a microphone against the speakers of the keyboard itself, creating a sort of disjointed digital feedback loop.

Jennifer Brookes: Last semester I spent a lot of time doing automatic drawings, which is sitting down anywhere with a pen and something to write on and drawing whatever was in my head. This video feels a lot like an automatic drawing in photographs. Knowing that I had to shoot a video but without a planned idea, I mindlessly walked to the pier and took pictures of everything that caught my eye. Instead of thinking about what I was doing, I was counting the seconds it took for anything to float or fly or sail or soar in and out of my camera’s line of sight while I held it stationary. Coincidentally, it looks like two or three of my previous videos, because that’s how my automatic mind works.

Eric Peterson: Playing in Houses has been an interesting experience for me for a number of reasons. Part of it is that piano is not my primary instrument by any stretch of the imagination, but also, the band’s style (once summed up as “indie rock and whatever was in your parents record collection”) isn’t what I’m familiar with. It may not be completely apparent, and although I haven’t seen it surface much in my compositions, I have noticed that my performance has been affected by it. This week, I tried to bring in a little bit of Houses influence, but it ended up taking a bizarre turn into funk territory.

Jennifer Brookes: Graduates pursuing fine arts at Cornish end the year with a giant BFA show, celebrating and publicizing the culmination of their final year in art school. This is one of the pieces in the 2010 BFA show, made by Tarrah Arthur. Each piece is made out of wood, brass, and 91 (in total) found music boxes. They’re extremely well crafted and beautiful and make you feel like you’re going crazy as you listen to each tiny music box slowly die out. If you’re interested in seeing the show yourself, the Design Department exhibition is open at Cornish’s main campus until May 22nd, while the Art Department exhibition is open at the 9th Ave Studios until May 29th. Hours are 12-5 PM, Mon-Sat. Do it, it’s free.

Eric Peterson: Recently, I’ve been going back through some of the older pieces we’ve done for this project. The pattern that I’m noticing in the music I come up with is that the amount of imagination I put into the songs has dropped significantly since the beginning. All of the songs also tend to feel fairly rigid. This week’s is another bare piece, but I spent a good amount of time “noodling” to try and get something a little more imaginative (which seems counterintuitive–shouldn’t imagination be spontaneous?). This is probably the closest thing to stream of conscious I can get musically.

Jennifer Brookes: This week’s video revisits a few familiar faces and places, if you’ve been keeping up with the last few months of our project. A few Cornish friends and I are taking advantage of the just-finished school year and going on a summer adventure, starting in Seattle, stopping through Denver, and ending in Los Angeles. You’re looking at the first few hours of this adventure, Amanda Walker (from weeks 22 & 32) playing her guitar in the airport/my backyard and Jenisa Ubben (from week 27) playing my old piano. The piano in the video is the same instrument that Eric recorded week 4 on. Coming full circle.

Eric Peterson: A couple of weeks ago, while I was cleaning out the basement (in anticipation of the I Am the Dot recording session), I found my old red Casio PT-82, which is a keyboard that is older than I am. There is a whole subculture of people who collect vintage Casio Keyboards because of their unique sounds. While the last vintage Casio I used certainly has a wealth of practical and interesting sounds, this keyboard came well before that golden age when the company was still figuring out how to convert calculators into musical instruments. As a result, all of its sounds are shrill, barely resemble what their labels purport, and can only be played one at a time (chords have to be constructed by layering notes atop one another on separate takes). This week, my goal was to create something using nothing but this keyboard, but also try and make it as inoffensive to the ears as possible.