Welcome To Summer

7/11/2025 Here's a quick self-test: if you believe that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, then you are somehow exposing yourself to some extremely cruel and vile individuals who have fabricated this hoax for their own profit at the expense of people who have just gone through the most terrible thing a human can go through; losing a loved one, especially a child. The vile individual I'm referring to in this case is Alex Jones who runs the cancerous Infowars (infowarts is more like it) web site and video show (he was kicked off of YouTube). I watched the Max documentary "The Truth vs. Alex Jones" last night, and was astounded to learn that a full 24% of Americans believe this terrible lie. Meaning that at least 24% of Americans are exposing themselves to this truly despicable misinformation on a regular basis. Try to imagine that you sent your 6 year old child to school only to have the child murdered there but then have some huge asshole come along and further torture you by sic-ing a bunch of shit heads at you, telling them (screaming at them) that these murders never happened and that you are an actor. To call Jones a piece of shit would be an insult to shit. At least shit can fertilize something good to grow. The only thing Jones fertilizes is violence and mistrust. Jones was ordered to pay 50 (odd) million to the first two families that sued him but over 900 million dollars to other victims in the suits that followed. And they truly were victims: Jone's rhetoric made their already strained life hell with his followers believing his lies and doing truly despicable things to these families. Alex Jones and his InfoWars are terrible things that you should stay as far away from as possible. (Of course, in Trump's America, Jones has declared bankruptcy and has yet to fork over his penalties yet remains online spewing his venom. Jones is a disease America has contracted that it can't seem to cure.)

I've been feeling a little uninspired musically lately so I've taken a few weeks off and have been putting together my first real game framework using my StecTools library with the help of my 6 year old grandson, Oliver: "Infinite Wrestling Attacks" (his name). Oliver is taking kung-fu lessons and is often bouncing off the walls so we'll have him demonstrate some moves for us to help reel him in. As he was showing us the moves, he was giving them names ("Rocket-kick", "Mega-jab", ..) so, as we've been encouraging him to read and write, had him start writing down all of his moves (attacks). After a while, I started thinking it looked like a spread sheet so I figured I'd put together a little app for him to write them down, and the project was born. So far it's quite basic but has yielded tons of improvements across the library including development using JavaScript's canvas which I've been using to render controllable characters with arms and legs that is becoming its own framework. So far I've only connected it to the browser voice synthesis to make the mouth move but will be binding them to game actions and eventually, midi. I confess that I've been holding back on some great work I've been doing with WebMidi over the last year that will emerge in the fullness of time including, perhaps, some kind of midi-marionette using my little character module.

Which brings me to keyboards, specifically, my Nord Stage 3 which I've been exploring for interesting sounds for some songs I'm working on. Though I hadn't heard the album in 20, perhaps 30, years, I somehow felt that I was looking for sounds like the ones used on the fabulous 70s album "Spartacus" by the German prog band Triumvirat prompting me to go see if I could find it on YouTube. Sure enough, multiple versions emerged and I'm pleased to announce that it is even better than I remembered it. In addition to amazing keyboard sounds and technique, the drumming is just insanely good. And recorded well. Recorded in early 1975, this was the early days of synthesizers and clearly the phenomenal Jürgen Fritz was working with some of the same keyboards as Kieth Emerson as the tone and styles are very similar. It's worth noting that the drummer, Hans Bathelt, was also the lyricist. It's unfortunate that the bassist and lead singer for this and the previous album, Helmut Köllen left the band to start a solo career after this album only to tragically die from carbon monoxide poisoning two years later listening to a demo tape in his car. Anyway, the album Spartacus has really great keyboard and synth sounds from back when they were new and not so easy to recreate. It, and a few other choice albums, have done their work and recharged my juices so I should have something new for you soon.

Also, again, please report extortion or any other Internet-based crimes against you (i.e. email) to the www.ic3.gov (the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)) . The information these criminals leave behind can help law enforcement find them. It's worth noting that these assholes are effectively using a form-letter to extort you and do not have anything other than your email address. Some are clever enough to make it look like it came from yourself but it's just bullshit. They are just trying to get you to take the bait. Note that it's important to NEVER respond to someone who attacks you electronically and this includes simple things like unsubscribing.

Be well and stay the hell away from Alex Jones/Infowars and fucking Fox News what ever you do. - Bob

Tone Generator

Beep, boop, boup. Yes. This does nothing but generate annoying test tones.

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ST Metronome

My online metronome lets you set the tempo, choose a sound and to save different settings for quick recall. Check here for more info or go directly to the metronome here.

4/10/2025 Updated! The ST Metronome now includes a precision mode, the ability to set the number of beats per second, a reverb level adjust, an accent level adjust and more.