WERE GOING TO GO TO THE POORER PART OF TOWN AND HAND OUT CASH! FOR REAL. NO KIDDING. REALLY.

Yunus -'Social Entrepreneur'-get idea

I'm working on a new plan along the lines of the Mission Fund (recent Macarthur 'genius' Grant recipient), and similar to 'Social Entrepreneur' & Nobel prize winner  Muhammed Yunus in India, simply starting a network of volunteer-comprised 'lending circles' that will get together monthly, pool their ubiquitously uniform contributions, and give them out as a single loan to a low-income individual they decide merits it.

So, looking for volunteers to lead, organize, and participate in said Lending Circles.
How it works:
-meet once a month,  (no requirement for physical attendance, just donate and participate)
-donate 100$ each
-circle makes a decision with total amt (at least $1000), and loans it to
 an individual in need for little or no interest.
-only 4-7% default
-Mission services the loan and reports payments to credit bureaus (so
 little or no work/time required outside of meetings of any volunteers or
 participants in circle)

Im going to host the first meeting of my circle, which will also have a secondary
purpose and portion of the meeting.  After the primary meeting adjourns, some
of us will reconvene and discuss/deal with any business of the larger area
with the 'leadership circle', small set of rules/guidelines for operation, and
any other order of business that comes up and is agreed upon as appropriate to
the purview of that group. For example- the last time I formed a group to do this,
we focused on/gave preference to individuals seeking the loan as part of an
entrepreneurial effort or to otherwise assist them in beginning or improving a
commercial enterprise (starting or running a business).  That was what we as a group thought
was most important to assist in the community we were working in at the time.
However, each group will have the ability to determine their own course and
decide their own priorities and preferences.

What do YOU(POTENTIAL VOLUNTEER) GET OUT OF IT?
-YOU GET TO KNOW YOUVE REALLY TRULY HELPED SOMEONE OUT WHO NEEDED IT AND
WAS WILLING TO PUT HONESTY, HARD WORK, AND EFFORT INTO IT. 
-YOU'LL KNOW YOUVE HELPED THEM< INDIVIDUALLY, AND THE COMMUNITY, IN THE LONG
 RUN AS WELL AS RIGHT NOW.  By helping individuals living in low income
 communities establish credit, you will clearly be helping that person out for
  years to come.  That is not all.  Additionally, you'll be giving the entire
 community they live in help that is direly needed.  Better credit ratings
 have been proven to help individuals in communities establish local
 enterprises that in turn contribute to the community as well by providing
 jobs, filling empty commercial properties, infusing liquid wealth into
 neighborhoods dying of thirst, and eventually improving the standard of
 living in those neighborhoods.
 Once that process begins to move forward and takes hold in a neighborhood
 that needs it as badly as some do in Richmond, all of Richmond will benefit
 as well.  It's just simple, common sense: If one person gets a hand from
 another in their community, they will be more likely to help others there
 in turn.  So the circle will turn around and around- slowly at first, but
 gaining speed every time, so that soon it will be carrying its passengers
 to the goal.

This is a REAL thing that we as individual human beings can do to change the
world around us for the better.  This is something that is within our power
to do for the world that surrounds us and for the future that our children
will live in.
As I'm certain many feel, I feel responsible for the world I pass to my son. 
In a decade, when he is in High School and preparing for college (hopefully)-
I ask myself: "What kind of environment will all of us have handed these
children to deal with?"  and "Will we give them any guidance for dealing with
the violence, environmental disaster, disease, and basic human suffering that
they will face?  Or "Will they have to figure it out all on their own?"
Or much worse: "Will it all be so overwhelmingly bad that no one will be ABLE
to deal with it?"

Well, I know I personally do not have the resources to change the Earth this
morning. 
BUT I DO know that I can have $100 in a month. 
I can do that, and I can CLEARLY see how it will help someone out.
I can just as clearly see how they will be able to help others out
as a result.
I KNOW that is real, positive 'Change' with a capital 'C'.

Honestly, I'm telling you (whoever is reading this), that makes me feel like
I'm a better person because it makes me feel like Im doing somethiing to
change the world that my generation & those before are saddling my son's
generation with.

Is that worth $100?  Absolutely.
Is that worth the TEMPORARY lack of $100? DEFINATELY.

PLEASE CONSIDER JOINING AS A VOLUNTEER OR AS A VOLUNTEER/HOST FOR A CIRCLE
IN YOUR AREA.
Contact me to do so or for any questions at:
newvoodoocustoms@gmail.com
(I WILL respond, and if you prefer to talk via tele, text, skype, etc--simply
 send me an email telling me and I will reply with my number-its just ssilly
 to publish anything but an email account you have prepared to accept spam)

THANK YOU FOR READING THIS AND I HOPE YOU DECIDE TO GET INVOLVED!!


Sincerely-
Jim.

Calling it: I predict commercial success for BORNS (BRNS) b/c of song "American Money" off new Dopamine album

Clearly I cannot figure out how to do the "O with a line thru the middle like I'm a Viking O" deal, as I keep spelling the musician's name 'Borns'..but whatever.  The name of the song is "AMERICAN" money, so he'll just have to live with "American spelling".
Anyway, either the musician-who is a elderly 23 or somesuch, and obviously takes some pains to pursue the somewhat overdone (especially after the recent passing) Bowie 'Ambi-sexual-sometimes-I-get-confused-for-a-lady' look or his management/PR have decided to market his music as "psychadelic" similar to MGMT.

Borns, looking appropo & androgenous (personally, 

I think tying yr shirt above yr belly is trying a bit hard)

Don't worry if this idea turns you off though.  Like many pop acts ("punk" ones like Paramore or "american folk" ones like certain 100% European bands, etc), its really only image-deep.  The 'psychadelia' is pretty much limited to bringing a few echo/delay effects on vocals that would normally be in the background, to the fore so that they are audible...and to (as usual and as in other acts referenced above) the hairdo and costuming of musicians.  In Borns, for the most part, you basically have a young, androgenously attractive & slim, man singing pop songs about love, breaking up, and love.  There is HEAVY use of pitch correction, vocal doubling/backing, and keybed pads matching melody underneath chorus vocals.  There are catchy, foreground, 70-100bpm, simple drum beats/loops and tried-and-true intro/chorus/verse/chorus/break/verse/chorus pop song structure.  There are few, if any, bad words, and NO challenging subject matter.  There is trendy designer clothing, fashionable 'NOW' style in everything from the fonts used to the video directors employed.  Pretty much par for the 'pop' course right?
Well...here's the thing:  There are 3 or so songs that not only partially diverge from that formula, but that are actually GREAT.
Still undeniably Pop, but I'd feel comfortable saying that they are Pop-electronic..w/a touch of psychadelic.  The problem with the psychadelic is that it is VERY hard to be truly psychadelic AND have discernable lyrics that people can sing along to.  As a result, the two genres essentially oppose each other and have a VERY hard time coexisting.  Hence acts like MGMT tend to either have some pop success and continue in the mainsteam direction or veer off in the psychadelic direction.  Seldom do they have more than an album's worth of material that successfully straddles the two.

In this case, I would argue that, truly, Borns doesn't do any of those things.    He has about 8 pop album filler/potential volkswagon commercial type tunes, and then he's written or recorded 3 other tunes which are extremely good and are each some alternate subgenre of commerical music.  For instance, "American Money", the clear monster success on Dopamine, is a Art-Electronic-Pop song very much along the lines of many predecessors like The Eels most notably. Then there is the catchy, sped-up R&B beat-focused pop of "Holy Ghost" that has its most clear contemporary in Grimes work on Art Angels.  The last of the three songs I am referring to is "10,000 Emerald Pools".  Im not going to go into it because my fingers are getting tired from typing and I think ive made my point.

What I think is really the best thing about acts like Borns becoming popular and getting listened to by many, many, young kids is that in the long run Pop garbage like 'Electric Love' lead them to better things like 'Holy Ghost' which leads them to art that has had less penetration into the popular genre and hence less exposure to the average teen demographic.  I can even imagine a world in which some disaffected teen listens to Borns and ends up surfing links, message boards, and youtube, to end up at Skinny Puppy! (No, Really! I checked out a Borns vid on youtube and one of the links of like vids was for a Skinny Puppy vid off their last full album!)

So, go ahead, check out Borns.  The above-mentioned songs are good and catchy, and you can use my reasoning to feel good about it!  Hell, even if you steal it off the net or whatever, you can use his youth and the fact that he is the wealthy son of a wealthy northwestern european diplomat ,to justify that as well.  Cuz its not like he needs the money, right?

Just remember when you hear it later that day at the 7-11 or someone walking by your car comments on it..that I called it first!

Im kidding of course. 

WANTED: Volunteers and Donations for NEW Campaign & Foundation to DECREASE HUMAN BREEDING/OVERPOPULATION:

Here's the concept- Myself and a few others are going to form a nonprofit foundation or other type of nonprofit entity that will be focused on having some effect on the ever-exponentially-increasing human population of our ONLY inhabited planet. 
I think its become quite GLARINGLY CLEAR that the sheer number of human beings on this planet is having deleterious effect on the livability of the entire planet.  In other words:  The huge amount of people here are making it impossible for ANY people to live here.
Something has to be done.
I, and many others, have children now.  So I can no longer simply say "well, i'll probably be gone by the time its so bad that ____" (which is probably untrue anyway).  So I feel like I absolutely MUST do something that affects this GIGANTIC, OBVIOUS problem of a deteriorating environment.  By the time its undeniable and apparent to anyone, it will definately be too late...even if that time is only a decade or two away.
Clearly, we can't leave it to politicians.  Even if there was ONE we could trust, she or he would not be able to individually go against the current of the rest and accomplish anything impactful.
So here's our idea:
This foundation will (and we are still open to submission on methodology & implementation of same) encourage people to STOP HAVING MORE KIDS.
-We are NOT talking about discouraging the continuation of the human race period, but talking about encouraging every couple to have ONE child rather than EIGHT or even TWO.  IF we can accomplish this, even in a few cases, then there will be a DECREASE in the end accounting.  For example, if a couple (meaning 2) people has 1 child only...and that one child in turn has only one child with another individual..and so forth..then in a few generations we will begin to see an exponential DECREASE in overall population, WITHOUT barring anyone's inherent right to reproduce.

The first plan we have come up with and attendant notes follows:
(after another week or two encouraging comment, we will look at whether to go to a crowdfunding site or explore other options for initial funding)

 PAY PPL TO STOP BREEDING
-1 level for 'Promise' or 'Pledge'-where essentially give ppl a ring or somesuch
that is fairly nice but not so nice as to be pawnable..perhaps real silver
w 1 of 12 'birthstones'?
--here, we DO NOT expect 100% compliance with 'pledge' BUT their wearing
the ring or bracelet, etc (tshirt?) functions as marketing & social
incentive

-2 Second Level for getting 'tubes tied' or whatever.  In other words, a PERmaNENT
or as much as can be, solution.
--ALSO should function as HUGE marketing campaign, without even havng to pay
anything for it.  Once we send out press releases detailing foundation's
2nd level..or even the first..then are SURE to be ppl 'outraged'.

THE POINT: 3.5 million people in the next decade will lose their jobs to
'automation' like automated stores, online retailing, robotic manufacturing,
or even autonomous cars!
           1/3rd of the population of Africa-an ENTIRE CONTINENT-is both malnourished
           and undernourished. This is, of course, not a perfect number, and indications
           are it is LOWER than reality..but even so-it represents MILLIONS SUFFERING
           ON A DAILY BASIS
           Gobal warming, carbon waste, coral bleaching, deforestation, melting
           ice caps, acid rain, etc are ALL a result of TOO MANY PEOPLE in some
           fashion, to some degree.  For example, would there be deforestation
           if the total population of, say, Brazil, was 1 million instead of
           MANY TIMES that?  No, almost surely not.

2 New & Unique Pedals: Robot Assassin v2 Tube Drive/Modulation/Octave-Pitch & Psycho-Delic Delay/Vintage FET/Si Buzz&Germanium Fuzz

Robot Assassin Tube Overdrive/modulation/pitch&octave

Finished a couple of new guitar pedals-

Robot Assassin from above

Both are COMPLETELY ORIGINAL & UNIQUE (as far as I know, anyway).
One is the 'Robot Assassin v.2', a tube overdrive w pitch & modulation-which can be used for vocals as well as for guitar.  I'll be making a version for each, with the Vocal version having a slightly different tone stack (the 'normal' sound before changing tone via a control will have different frequencies emphasized/dropped, and the tone controls will affect different frequencies more suited to voice than guitar) from the guitar version, and the tone controls & switches will be different for both as well.

Psycho-Delic - 1st prototype.  Could BARELY fit all the controls !

Second, the 'Psycho-Delic', a analog-type delay, LFO, Looper, and Vintage type Germanium/Silicon dual channel Fuzz.  Its pretty insane and I may not make a lot of this version since it has so MANY knobs and switches and so forth.  There are just TOO many controls and the prototypes Ive made that have gone to musicians who have been using them live & in the studio have come back with the number of controls and their interaction as the primary problem.  So there will be a more stripped-down version -perhaps a 'Naked Psycho-Delic'   or Pschyo-delic Mini, etc
The original has a delay which can be set to almost infinite delay (basically set to loop), with the amount of feedback and the on/off of the feedback potentially controlled by the second footswitch-which is a momentary off/on one.  Meaning you can send the feedback control to the switch, and if you have the feedback control turned up, it will simply loop the entire time your foot is on the switch..alternately you can set the feedback to turn on itself and use the footswitch to control how crazy it gets.  The other option with the second footswitch is to set it so that you can modify the pitch of the delay with it-so that the slapback or echo, etc pttch dives down or squeels up.
The pedal also has a LFO with shrpness, shape, frequency, speed, and depth controls which can be switched from directly intersecting the delay circuit to replacing the original delay depth pot (knob).  The power switch of the LFO also activates a LED (red in the 2 prototypes) which flashes in sync with the lfo's cycling frequency.
All of the sound coming from the Delay AND LFO (if its powered up) can be sent straight out, or shunted to the Fuzz section of the circuit.  That switch also powers on the Fuzz at the same time, activating a differently colored LFO (white in the prototypes).  The Fuzz has two channels- a FET buzz/fuzz, which can be set to be either generally fairly clean and not heavily distort the sound..or can be set to so heavily garble the sound that the guitar will sound more like a buzzing scitar or metal sawblade, and a Silicon/Germanium Fuzz which can go from lightly adding some dirt to a throwing the delayed sound into a screaming dust devil  of insanity.  Both channels have individual gains and the S/G fuzz has multiple other controls that : turn the diode clipping off/on, alter the eq-boosting the high or low end, change the fuzz from Silicon to Germanium, and change the amount of fuzz as well as its thickness.  The other FET fuzz channel has two subchannels/substages- a buzz and a fuzz, both of which have various standard controls with one overall main gain as well as a low-end boost switch.  Both Fuzz (FET and Vint S/G) channels have a 'Mix' control that precedes them so that the sound out from the delay can be sent from 0-100% to either channel, allowing the user to choose to balance both or use either primarily with just a touch of the other to color the sound.
As you can see i n the photos-all this leaves the pedal with perhaps too many knobs, controls, switches, and lights.  Unless you're like a lot of Synth-heads (like me) can be-who like tweeking the sound of something and enjoy having a HUGE amount of possibility to MANGLE your sound into a Hellstorm of Insanity-you might want to wait for the light version.
Either way, check out the short & sweet video of it in action in the lab:

finished painting : See previous posts for more

I'll post a couple of pics here, but just ahead

Recent finished portrait-similar but diff -like subjects

of time (been asked last times I posted pics of paintings)-its already been passed along to the subject and her guy-
For whatever reason, people seem to like the various styles of portraiture I spit out more than other things, maybe because a lot of the others have more disturbing subjects and scenery.

New Sections in NEW VOODOO MUSIC ETSY SHOP : Vintage Tubes and Vintage Parts

Decided to add section in Etsy shop to sell some parts and so forth that we have extras of-but not tons of. Things like SID chips and other bts for chiptune/chipmusic synths and devices, Tubes for Pre/Audio/Guitar Amp & Pedal use, Tubes for Gains, and Vintage Transistors for Fuzz pedals and other Audio purposes.

Later on I will be adding : Vintage and other Tone Capacitors for Guitar use, Vintage audio and decoupling caps, vintage resistors and precision resistors, as well as other ICs like voice modulators and delays.

New Design/Custom Synth Module in progress: Vintage Voice hybrid digital/analog osc/wave gen w/analog filters

New Design/Custom Synth Module in progress: Vintage Voice hybrid digital/analog osc/wave gen w/analog filters like Ensoniq Esq-1,Oberheim OBX,Rhodes Chroma Polaris/Fender Chroma Polaris, Mirage, etc.
I'm using Curtis Electronics chips Voltage Controlled Amplifier, VCO, and Filter chips like CEM3360. All of the ones I've employed for the 5 of these I am making are actually FROM the synths of the Era-I got the CEM3360 from a MemoryMoog main circuit board, for example.

So they are 100% vintage, 100% from the era (late 70's-late 80's), and 100% LEGIT.

Anyways, without giving away any sorta trade info (as always, its a possibility we could go into production with a version of these later or perhaps employ similar design or circuit in another instrument), here's a rough idea of the plan:

1)Basic sound blocks:
   a)Using the Curtis chips, I'll implement a waveform generator with a LIMITED set of waveforms (probably 2).For example, half a CEM3360 can be used for this

   b) Using an Arduino Nano or Teensy 3.0 and Mozzi programming (see sensorium.github.io) I'll generate a limited set of digital waveforms or perhaps only a single PWM or Sine wave that will have a few elements controllable/alterable like resolution or depth
   c) Then i'll use a blending circuit controlled by a slider potentiometer (likely 100kA) to allow use of either, both, or a combination of the two anywhere in between those two options.

2)Filters etc:
  a) Obviously these will be Analog, generated by the CEM chips and another analog circuit I often use-they will be modular within the module, meaning the synthesis block's sound can be patched into them or not.
   b) There will also be 2-one that simply has a few quick on/off options: low-pass, band-pass, etc & a second one which will have the standard variable options concerning cutoff freq and so forth.
3)Control Voltage
   a) there will be 3 ins:
a1) one to control the note on and freq of the synth section a2) and another to control the more complex filter a3) a third to allow sound into the filter (as mentioned above) thus further increasing the complexity and possible uses of the module by allowing either sound from the other section of the same module or from another outside source to be filtered by the analog filters.


That's the basic design so far and its coming along ok. Let me know what you think of the idea and of the design ive done preliminarily (see below)