H. Montgomery
@halfflat.bsky.social
PhD Ethnomusicologist. Writes about sound, urban change, and experimental music in Austin.
Just macerated some herbs and barks for my first DIY amaro recipe and it’s astonishing how close just smashing a few specifics in a mortar and pestle — angelica, anise, clove, licorice, cinchona — gets to the aroma of some of the classics.
April 3, 2025 at 5:58 AM
Just macerated some herbs and barks for my first DIY amaro recipe and it’s astonishing how close just smashing a few specifics in a mortar and pestle — angelica, anise, clove, licorice, cinchona — gets to the aroma of some of the classics.
I feel like the Ted Greene V system is finally getting me to learn all the chord inversion I wish I had learned years ago.
November 27, 2024 at 9:35 PM
I feel like the Ted Greene V system is finally getting me to learn all the chord inversion I wish I had learned years ago.
@andrewweathers.bsky.social I'm just now getting to Neglibgiblism and the low-mid fuzz on "crawlth" feels like it's making direct contact to the inside of my skull. Incredible textures so far.
November 13, 2024 at 4:29 AM
@andrewweathers.bsky.social I'm just now getting to Neglibgiblism and the low-mid fuzz on "crawlth" feels like it's making direct contact to the inside of my skull. Incredible textures so far.
Some goofy sketches I’ve been making lately for a homebrew ttrpg setting. Loosely Dark Sun inspired.
October 24, 2024 at 1:15 AM
Some goofy sketches I’ve been making lately for a homebrew ttrpg setting. Loosely Dark Sun inspired.
Many frustrated attempts at correctly proportioned limbs later…
September 22, 2024 at 4:45 AM
Many frustrated attempts at correctly proportioned limbs later…
Got a big block of plasticine clay from austin creative reuse for $1 and spent yesterday imagining a guy
September 20, 2024 at 6:54 PM
Got a big block of plasticine clay from austin creative reuse for $1 and spent yesterday imagining a guy
Finally getting somewhere with this tree sonification project. Gonna slowly add field recordings to it and figure out a better demo mode eventually. https://austinsurroundsound.neocities.org
August 23, 2024 at 10:17 PM
Finally getting somewhere with this tree sonification project. Gonna slowly add field recordings to it and figure out a better demo mode eventually. https://austinsurroundsound.neocities.org
Managed to understand javascript just enough to take my first steps at sonifying Austin's tree inventory via the Web Audio api. Super basic patch right now, collecting trees into geohashes and "playing" each geohash by scaling population size to pitch and envelope data.
diode.zone/w/k9ouaVbQ1D...
diode.zone/w/k9ouaVbQ1D...
Tree Sonification Web Audio Api Test
A quick demo of my sonification sketch which I rewrote from Pure Data to the Web Audio API.
diode.zone
July 28, 2024 at 7:59 PM
Managed to understand javascript just enough to take my first steps at sonifying Austin's tree inventory via the Web Audio api. Super basic patch right now, collecting trees into geohashes and "playing" each geohash by scaling population size to pitch and envelope data.
diode.zone/w/k9ouaVbQ1D...
diode.zone/w/k9ouaVbQ1D...
In the planning stages of sonifying some survey data of Austin trees. Thinking of devloping a unique score for a bunch of geohashes based on the trees in each hash, and then modulate based on the position of the listener. I didn’t realize how fun geohashes were! 14 years late to the party.
July 22, 2024 at 2:22 AM
In the planning stages of sonifying some survey data of Austin trees. Thinking of devloping a unique score for a bunch of geohashes based on the trees in each hash, and then modulate based on the position of the listener. I didn’t realize how fun geohashes were! 14 years late to the party.
The thing about sketching is that it’s incredibly humbling 99% of the time, but occasisionally something will just come out and surprise you.
July 11, 2024 at 5:52 PM
The thing about sketching is that it’s incredibly humbling 99% of the time, but occasisionally something will just come out and surprise you.
I’ve been trying “openvibe” to bridge my mastodon and bluesky timelines into one app — despite the many UI paper cuts and terrible name (🙄) it does seem to at least be able to do that task to a first approximation. Hoping that one of my prefered client apps will take on the challenge at some point.
July 10, 2024 at 5:23 PM
I’ve been trying “openvibe” to bridge my mastodon and bluesky timelines into one app — despite the many UI paper cuts and terrible name (🙄) it does seem to at least be able to do that task to a first approximation. Hoping that one of my prefered client apps will take on the challenge at some point.
Wrote a little review of Miquel de Palol’s “Trois Pas Vers le Sud,” which I picked up in France right before I got Covid and burned through once I got back. zarabanda.neocities.org/blog#trois
Halfflat: the Blog
zarabanda.neocities.org
July 8, 2024 at 2:10 AM
Wrote a little review of Miquel de Palol’s “Trois Pas Vers le Sud,” which I picked up in France right before I got Covid and burned through once I got back. zarabanda.neocities.org/blog#trois
I’ve been really enjoying going through some of Ted Greene’s “V System” for 4 note chord inversions and spacings on guitar. I’ve tried to study inversions systematically here and there but this is way clearer than anything I could have come up with.
www.tedgreene.com/teaching/v_s...
www.tedgreene.com/teaching/v_s...
TedGreene.com - Teachings - V-System
www.tedgreene.com
June 11, 2024 at 6:48 AM
I’ve been really enjoying going through some of Ted Greene’s “V System” for 4 note chord inversions and spacings on guitar. I’ve tried to study inversions systematically here and there but this is way clearer than anything I could have come up with.
www.tedgreene.com/teaching/v_s...
www.tedgreene.com/teaching/v_s...
Really compelled by Korolëva's "premonitions". The way the animal voices and field recordings are tuned & bent into sometimes poignant, sometimes terrifying shapes is astounding. A very fine line that is easily overdone, but it works for me here. f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/premon...
premonitions, by alëna korolëva
1 track album
f-o-m.bandcamp.com
June 4, 2024 at 3:28 AM
Really compelled by Korolëva's "premonitions". The way the animal voices and field recordings are tuned & bent into sometimes poignant, sometimes terrifying shapes is astounding. A very fine line that is easily overdone, but it works for me here. f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/premon...
Incredible recording of Sandy Ewen's prepared guitar approach. I don't understand whether she was using stereo amps during the recording or what, but the way the guitar serpentines through the stereo field is tremendous. noticerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/a-bead...
A Beaded Gesture, by Sandy Ewen/Jason Nazary
4 track album
noticerecordings.bandcamp.com
May 31, 2024 at 1:12 AM
Incredible recording of Sandy Ewen's prepared guitar approach. I don't understand whether she was using stereo amps during the recording or what, but the way the guitar serpentines through the stereo field is tremendous. noticerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/a-bead...
So lingq recently changed its translation model to DeepL which means you occasionally get funny errors like this: When transliterating the Chinese Sūn Wùkōng, the literary character that Son Goku is based on, it gives up on the context and just transliterates to Goku.
April 17, 2024 at 6:51 PM
So lingq recently changed its translation model to DeepL which means you occasionally get funny errors like this: When transliterating the Chinese Sūn Wùkōng, the literary character that Son Goku is based on, it gives up on the context and just transliterates to Goku.
Cold comfort, but based on my recent captcha failures AI is going to fail the question "Is this a motor scooter or a motorcycle?" 100/100 times for a while yet
April 12, 2024 at 10:24 PM
Cold comfort, but based on my recent captcha failures AI is going to fail the question "Is this a motor scooter or a motorcycle?" 100/100 times for a while yet
Took an ill-advised look through an old gregg shorthand manual I bought several years ago near the start of my fieldwork and now I'm fixated yet again. https://greggshorthand.github.io/analphbt.html
April 9, 2024 at 1:54 AM
Took an ill-advised look through an old gregg shorthand manual I bought several years ago near the start of my fieldwork and now I'm fixated yet again. https://greggshorthand.github.io/analphbt.html
It's awesome software design that MS Word pastes all kinds of text I don't want formatted as formatted by default, but completely fails to do this reliably between Word documents, aka the only time I would ever want to preserve formatting
April 1, 2024 at 11:05 PM
It's awesome software design that MS Word pastes all kinds of text I don't want formatted as formatted by default, but completely fails to do this reliably between Word documents, aka the only time I would ever want to preserve formatting
Picked up the Spanish translation of Ígur Neblí again (it was a bit too difficult for me last time I tried) and the only reference point I have for its neofuedal setting is if Gene Wolfe’s obsession with Catholicism were replaced with Kafkaesque bureaucratic paranoia. Super compelling so far.
March 29, 2024 at 5:05 AM
Picked up the Spanish translation of Ígur Neblí again (it was a bit too difficult for me last time I tried) and the only reference point I have for its neofuedal setting is if Gene Wolfe’s obsession with Catholicism were replaced with Kafkaesque bureaucratic paranoia. Super compelling so far.
I’m not a huge fan of the big newsletter sites, but one of the best things about them is that by default they have RSS enabled so you can just append “/feed” to most of the urls and pull it into your reader of choice.
March 27, 2024 at 4:49 PM
I’m not a huge fan of the big newsletter sites, but one of the best things about them is that by default they have RSS enabled so you can just append “/feed” to most of the urls and pull it into your reader of choice.
Congrats to all the music theory teachers who get to explain word painting, resolving leaps, and mode mixture to students this semester with the chorus of “imperfect for you.” Clock starts now, you’ve got maybe two weeks before it’s stale I’d say.
March 8, 2024 at 10:24 PM
Congrats to all the music theory teachers who get to explain word painting, resolving leaps, and mode mixture to students this semester with the chorus of “imperfect for you.” Clock starts now, you’ve got maybe two weeks before it’s stale I’d say.
Just applied for a contract position as an "editorial assistant," and wouldn't you know it, only in a follow-up email from the employer did they note that it's for reviewing an AI chatbot, not actually editing or assisting a human being.
February 27, 2024 at 5:49 PM
Just applied for a contract position as an "editorial assistant," and wouldn't you know it, only in a follow-up email from the employer did they note that it's for reviewing an AI chatbot, not actually editing or assisting a human being.
I’d be curious to read an investigative piece about what the hell people are actually doing in these positions which are all over Job Boards. I’m very down on AI’s utility generally, but if you actually believe in the efficacy of this stuff this ad might as well say “Hiring: Universal Scab”
February 15, 2024 at 10:47 PM
I’d be curious to read an investigative piece about what the hell people are actually doing in these positions which are all over Job Boards. I’m very down on AI’s utility generally, but if you actually believe in the efficacy of this stuff this ad might as well say “Hiring: Universal Scab”
Came across some old French translations of the Lord of the Rings at Half Price Books this weekend. I never realized that many of the names built from English compounds are creatively rerendered into French eg, Bilbo Baggins of Bag End -> Bilbon Sacquet, de Cul-de-Sac, Samwise -> Samsagace, etc.
February 5, 2024 at 2:11 AM
Came across some old French translations of the Lord of the Rings at Half Price Books this weekend. I never realized that many of the names built from English compounds are creatively rerendered into French eg, Bilbo Baggins of Bag End -> Bilbon Sacquet, de Cul-de-Sac, Samwise -> Samsagace, etc.