73. Pending Project List

Because I feel like it, I'm putting up a list of every single project I have not just an idea that I'd like to do, but even have a reasonably well-worked-out plan for what I'd do, how I'd do it, and even a vague sense of how much it'd cost. Feel free to steal these ideas for your own; I'm a consequentialist about them, and I'd largely rather that they come into existence by someone else's hand than that they never arise. I've grouped some of them together when it seemed natural, and then given a sketch of what I want to do and why.

Assorted microtonal arrangements: there's a few decently well-known songs that I've listened to and gone "yes, delightful, but what if they were weirder and better?" and I still haven't got around to arranging, let alone recording.

  • Several songs in 31-edo, which I often prefer to call "modernized quarter-comma meantone". (Because that's what it is.) I think that something like the richness that old organ music has would meaningfully improve a few songs I've encountered that have some kind of harmonic interest. I can't really describe what it is about a given song that makes it stand out to me in that way, but I know it when I see it, to varying degrees. "The Holly and the Ivy", "Stare at the Sun", and "Old Nassau" are in this category.
  • On a similar note, I once arranged and recorded a four-part vocal arrangement of "I'm Pushing On the Upward Way" for Granda Kim (the grandmother mentioned in "7. For Grandma Kim, Who Has Lived Through The Singularity". I'd like to specifically notate it in MuseScore so that I can get a proper chorus to sing it. Maybe the Bay Area choir I'm in? Or some of its members? I promise, it's not hard, microtonal singing is way way easier than it seems! You just need to have pretty good pitch control and be singing something that's meant to sound reasonably good. I have a video about 31-edo to show you, and you'll get to make an old lady very happy.
  • "Giant Steps", specifically in 27-edo. 27-edo is a sharp-fifth tuning and thus not meantone, but a few songs by Brendan Byrnes (like "Eons") have convinced me that it's one of a very few exceedingly lovely tunings. In particular, 27-edo is the only such equal-tempered scale that I know of that's both divisible by 3 and NOT divisible by 12, and thus basically just fancy 12-edo. This is especially important for "Giant Steps" - its repeated motifs rely on a II-V-I functional relation, repeatedly jumping to chunks of the circle of fifths spaced at equal thirds of the circle. What might happen in the only other major tuning that you can do that in?
  • On a very different but still related note, microtonal wind chimes. What happens if you have beautiful just-intonation scales as your tuning? Or selected notes from 22-edo? Could be cool!

Assorted more classically maker-y things. The windchimes at the end of the last section could just as well have gone here. Sometimes there's just some object that needs to exist and doesn't yet, you know?

  • I've meant for a long time to build some kind of neat dwelling-spanning kinetic sculpture steel marble rally sort of thing. There'd be a central lifting motor, obviously, and flip-flop distributors, and loop-de-loops, and funnels, but also I'd want there to be a part of it to be some kind of interestingly microtonal glockenspiel for the balls to clank along, and a part that's basically a binary counter, and a part that's effectively a clock whose time is kept by steel balls as they arrive and clever arrangements of counterbalanced things that only tip over and release their marbles once there's enough of them together. Go look up a video of the Boston Museum of Science's kinetic sculpture, or the one at Boston Logan Airport, or the one that used to be at Philadelphia Airport; you'll get what I mean way better than I can easily convey in words.
  • Do something real with hyperbolic blue paint. It's neat that I made it, but just making for its own sake was never the point and is not enough. I'm actually mulling over a plaque design for a Lighthaven donation that it'd work beautifully in.
  • For that matter, mix up new hues of hyperbolic paint past just blue and green. I made a lovely hyperbolic teal for use on my calling card case which is currently in the works, but I already have the principle down pat for how to make a hyperbolic color of paint and I should totally be able to make red, or yellow, or magenta. It wouldn't be hard, even if it'd be basically impossible to make them particularly mixable.
  • Make a 3D model of a proper whiteboard marker magazine, and then print it. It'd need to be in two parts, obviously, and might go together with screws. There'd need to be cutouts for the shape of Expo marker caps, maybe even a few different designs for different numbers of markers. There'd be a place to put a small rectangular magnet in below one of the large flat sides and a way to attach a good eraser on the opposite side. The whole thing would have nice curved corners.
  • Figure out designs for small change for Favors that would be appropriate for 3D printing. Print them and use them.
  • Make aperiodic ceramic bathroom tiles. Could be a classic like Penrose tiles, or a new contender like Einstein's hat. Glaze them in tasteful choices of color palette, or I could even get really cute with it and go for classical Korean celadonware. Then... actually use them for a bathroom.
  • The big-ticket plan: crowns. Cool-looking crowns on a budget. Use argentium silver or brass as a base material, then plate them in rhodium or gold as appropriate. Use specifically synthetic gems - I'm thinking moissanite, corundums (rubies and sapphires), and maybe even things like iron meteorites, petrified wood, jade, and tritium tubes. I have a very sketchy design for a tensegrity crown based loosely off of Silla-dynasty crowns, and of course there's always replication of cool crowns from history or film and custom bridal crowns, if I wanted to monetize. The assembly would likely require some platework and casting, and of course some lapidary work, and maybe even a little bit of cloth or silicone for cushioning.

Finally, foods! I've already got at least two solid specialties, but I'm always trying to improve them, and there's other projects I've only barely started.

  • For perfecting, there's sixspice buns - the recipe for which has changed a tiny bit since last I posted them - and healing surge stew, which I haven't had occasion to make in over a year. There's also kkanpungi, which I have an excellent recipe for that's still not quite right. I heavily favor the use of romanesco broccoli for the vegetable to pair it with, and I think it adds a lot. Now that I think of it, there's also kimchi pajeon (butter or bacon fat, sparkling water, three entire alliums), guacamole (dried lime, more alliums, serranos, and no tomatoes), heaven appple pie, Rome-mocking lentil stew, and superstimulus sauce (teriyaki and then some and then some more).
  • I'd also like to figure out how best to make relatively authentic butter sauce a little more straightforwardly than I've managed so far. Butter curry is among my favorites from modern Indian food culture.
  • A really good shepherd's pie is on my radar as well. Ground beef with demiglace gravy, kernel corn, a proper mirepoix, a luscious twin-alliums mashed potato, and a cheese topping... it'd be pretty straightforward to make and likely excellent.
  • Some other classics I'd like to master: tomato soup, gyu-don, raspberry brownies, beef wellington, chicken pot pie (funny story: a chicken pot pie-ish thing I once made from leftovers is how I first learned what "deconstructed" meant in a food context), potatoes au gratin, cheesecake, corn chowder (with potatoes and some green chili or poblano), mac and cheese, and matzo ball soup. (Dang. I should really get myself some matzo ball soup while it's the season for it.)
  • Some experimental cocktail craft. Gin and tonic and then some; perfume-garden (chamomile, rose, geranium, violet, elderflower); mulled wine; gin bucket; a couple of intriguing ideas for cocktails assorted instances of Claude have come up with (including Tealight, Lantern, Scrying Glass, Coyote's Gift, Framework, The Corpus, The Prior). Maybe even figure out what to do with Figure Eight (don't worry, you wouldn't know it). Some brewing, too, if I can swing it - I've always wanted to make a proper raspberry dessert mead, and to start playing around with other possibilities - pine, sixspice blend, other obscure fruits.
  • Finally, eigenfruit pie. This one is kind of a secret for now, but suffice it to say it'll be delicious once it's ready for prime-time.
Maybe I'll get to all of these. Probably I won't. But I consider all of them worth doing and I hope I manage to get as many of these done as possible before I lose the interest or ability to craft powerfully. I hope have your own lists to pursue, and I hope that you work your way steadily through them.

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