AN UPDATE...

WELL, FRACTAL FANS, it can come as no surprise that my output has dimished this year. Whether this is a temporary slowdown or a permanent sea change remains to be seen. But it's certainly true that my interest has been diverted of late: primarily to a sound editing program, Audacity, freeware and open source, and brought to you by the same people that host the fractal program Apophysis that's been my prime creative tool these last couple years.

It's a full-featured sound editing program, capable of everything from multi-channel original recording and mixdown to simple tasks like chopping the applause off live tracks and flattening out the volume variations in classical music to turn it into background go-to-sleep stuff. Somewhere inbetween is the following mashup, which I include simply because I like it. Always did love those sci-fi echo loops, and I still can't get over the way digital allows you to alter speed and pitch independently -- a capability we would have killed for back in the days of analog tape (yes, I'm a veteran of real-to-reel)