Soundtracks for Everyday Adventures [Bandcamp Album Page]

Lullatone – duo Shawn James and Yoshimi Seymour – have a way of wiring directly into some wonder-filled, joyful place. And we know as artists that requires not just an impulse, but a way of connecting emotionally with ideas. With their release earlier this year, we heard their terrific Elevator Music – but also noted that they spent a little effort even on creating a comfy workspace to keep the music coming.

Lullatone Have New Music to Make You Happy, DIY Keyboard Stand to Make You Tidy

Shawn writes to let us know their newest release, soundtracks for everyday adventures, has arrived. It keeps the hypnotic, charming minimalism of past works, but to me, there’s a new maturity here both in the sound and writing, as the tunes become wordless, poignant ballads on day-to-day life. (“Buying strawberries” is oddly melancholy; “finding a leaf in your girlfriend’s hair” and “the best paper airplane ever” takes on some urgency. That airplane might inspire someone to become an engineer for Airbus.)

In the wrong hands, this kind of music could veer into “twee” sweetness, make your tooth ache, or even be cloying. But that’s why I love Lullatone’s work: it’s unpretentious, un-ironic, serious fun. It’s overwhelmingly, genuinely heartfelt.

And the duo are serious about keeping their life and happiness as high-quality as their output. Check out a feature on how they’ve integrated music in their “work/life” balance while parenting on the Herman Miller blog, going into greater depth on the ergonomics of their setup as we covered it earlier:
Ideal Live/Work Space: Shawn James Seymour and Yoshimi Tomida of Lullatone [Herman Miller Lifework blog]

That’s something I think we can all appreciate.

What’s also great is seeing their music inspire other joyous expressions, like this montage of laughter (seriously):

If you’re still grumpy, see a doctor.

And now, newly happy, I think us kids should be really good and go clean our studios so we can make some music.

Very often, computers and music gear greedily consume whole corners of the room. Here’s a tidy alternative, modest in space consumption as well as in cost.

So, what’s so wonderful about DIY creations by our friend Sasa Djuric (aka fibra)? It isn’t just that his stands are recycled from monitor stand parts. It’s not just because the free ReBirth for Windows and an Asus netbook make for a wonderfully affordable computer music station. It’s not even that his cases for the x0xb0x 303 clone and a MIDIbox project are beautifully executed, or that magnets on the stands more effectively support those gadgets and place them in an ergonomic position.

What’s wonderful to me is that these designs relate the scale of those music-making objects to human hands. You just want to put your fingers on these devices and make some music.

From the Flickr set, Sasa explains:

This universal stand was part of the monitor once. I attached a piece of thick still and and 2 neodymium magnets recycled from hard drive.

[on the now-free-as-in-beer software running on the Asus netbook] …yes, in the name of good old times. ReBirth was my very first step in music making. I couldn`t even imagine I`ll build myself clones of all those machines.

He tells CDM:

I used 2 stands that are leftovers from monitors that are installed into an info kiosk. One is bigger than other which is allows me to cascade few machines. This was a really quick project as I used what I had laying around. Thick piece of steel is wood joint. Magnets are from a hard drive; the
tin plates glued on the eee and other machines are cutout from CDROM drive case, rubber comes from a blood pressure meter…
pretty much everything is recycled.
Besides the x0xb0x and eee you recognized, you can also see a ClockBox – MIDI clock generator (midibox project).

Really beautiful work – economic use of materials, clever design, and it could let you put a drum machine in your kitchen so you can cook music and food for a brilliant evening.

More on the elements of this project:
The x0xb0x is a fully open-source 303 bassline clone
The clockbox is a project based on the Midibox platform (see site, blog)
The Liliputing blog has great netbook coverage
ReBirth lives on as freeware at the ReBirth Museum. This is Windows, but if you don’t want to swap Windows onto your netbook, you can run it in WINE on Linux. (have to try that myself!)
Flickr set

All photos by Sasa Djuric, used by permission.