The American Museum of Natural History created a short film called
"Remote Reconaissance of Another Solar System".  I am pleased
the film uses my song "Exurb"as its soundtrack.

When I first began making music with synthesizers, I found myself particularly intrigued with non-linear, "non-musical" devices--with software that would let me morph sound directly rather than merely play melodies in the song-structure sense.

Now I tend to mold samples into sounds that I sequence into melodies. Sometimes this process is for me the
creation of a simple, child-like melody. Sometimes the child-like thing crosses into offbeat percussion--not the complex percussion of poly-rhythmic instruments,but the odd percussion of sequenced bits of
things being tapped.

My piece for Classwar Karaoke 21, free over at the Free Music Archive, features lots of
percussion which goes wrong in what I hope are the right ways.

I am delighted that Level Zed, a game design company, used my ccMixter song "Exurb"
in its new game, called Dummy Escape.

The game is available for android in the Google Play market here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.LevelZed.DummyEscapeLite

and available for the Apple market here:

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dummy-escape-lite/id589863802?ls=1&mt=8

Many thanks to Slava at Levell Zed for including my song in the game. It's another example of the fun things that Creative Commons sharing can mean. Thanks also to Mixters Institute of Kitchen Percussion and Kaer Trouz, whose samples were shared by them and used by me in the song.

Game image courtesy of Level Zed.

I love January 1. When we lived in southern California, we would go to the Seal Beach Pier with a friend and watch the seabirds, boats and marine mammals while failing to catch any fish. Today I drove with a friend to Hagerman National Wildlife Reserve, a wetlands area just south of the Texas-Oklahoma border.

This holiday season has been quiet and meaningful, after a year that proved more difficult than some years.  At year's beginning, I am pleased to announce that the digital label We are All Ghosts included my song "Memory" in its year-end compilation.  I am pleased to be included, but also pleased to be included among other artists to whom I listen and with whom I feel an affinity in outlook, if not always in style and approach. My thanks to Thomas Mathie for including my track in the compilation.
I am a person to whom memories are very important, so the song title was as natural as breathing.

I am pleased that my song "Remote" is featured on the 20th Classwar Karaoke compilation.

I like to be part of a huge whole of disparate and interesting sounds. The entire compilation is located here:

I believe in open spaces. Not only the geographic spaces, like the open fields of my north Texas USA home area, but also the metaphoric open spaces. For me, open spaces have come to symbolize the quiet, thoughtful journey of observation--the quest to see where others might pass on by. Open spaces also has a sharing component for me--the spaces in which friends pass songs back and forth.

My new extended play release is called "Open Spaces". It's been released today on the Scottish label We  are All Ghosts. It's comprised of seven songs making up around 23 minutes of music. Each piece was constructed by using a simple hand-held woodwind instrument to create a sample, and then using a software synthesizer to render the sample into a song.

The EP is being released under a Creative Commons BY (attribution) license for easy sharing.
Free copies of the EP are available at Archive.org. A free-or-donate lossless version is available at
Bandcamp. Those who like to listen to a streaming version may stream it below.

My thanks to Thomas Mathie, owner of We are All Ghosts, and creator of the artwork on the
EP.

Tom Ray and Doug Whitfield run the Music Manumit Podcast. They were kind enough to feature me on a recent episode. I enjoyed speaking with them about sharing culture, Creative Commons, netlabels, my music, and music in general.

Here is the link:

http://www.musicmanumit.com/2012/11/gurdonark-121113-music-manumit-podcast.html