Tiptoe Tiger E49 🐯| Your Suspected Prowess
Edition #49 | Mud makers, Strung along, Colorful flourishes, New classics, Congotronics
Hello precious Tiptoe Tiger readers,
Sorry the lack of Tiptoe Tiger last week. These have been busy days and the time has been sliding into the gutter amidst other big projects. Translation: I goofed.
Chiefly among these big projects has been my poetry and drawing book, Imaginary Archery Club. Some of you were deft enough to buy a copy during the pre-sale window, however, if you were not, the book officially goes on sale tomorrow, March 6th!!! You can purchase it on this website, right hurrrrr (on Thursday, of course, no sooner).
AND, if you live in NYC or are currently visiting, I’m throwing a release party at a bar in Bushwick on Thursday March 6th. If you want to come, please reach out (reply to this email or reach me on instagram)! I’d love to have you there.
Back to Tiptoe Tiger, we have three editions left after this one until we more or less close up shop on this newsletter, so please enjoy…
This week:
Adobe Alternatives
Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker
Yuriev Florian
NotaGen
Paradiso - Konono No1
Adobe Alternatives
I haven’t been an Adobe customer in some years and I definitely don’t miss their special way of making you, the customer/sucker, feel exploited. Now, apparently, they even charge you a fee to cancel your subscription early. The next Mangione may well be a graphic designer.
Anyhow, I found this big GitHub list with a ton of alternatives to Adobe Products.
Enough Rope by Dorothy Parker
As I was trawling the public archive, I came across a poetry book by Dorothy Parker from 1926 titled Enough Rope.
I had never read Miss Parker’s work but I myself was seized with enough rope as soon as I read the first two lines:
Lilacs blossom just as sweet
Now my heart is shattered.
This would be great poetry to introduce someone to poetry with; she writes plainly and very effectively.
Yuriev Florian
I came across an online gallery of Ukranian artist, Yuriev Florian’s work and I’m really loving it.
NotaGen
I’ll start with my usual caveat here: I generally try not to feature AI here. But sometimes AI strikes me as interesting enough to include here, so here we are.
A group of Chinese researchers has trained AI on sheet music, enabling AI to produce its own original music from sheet music. Not necessarily a breakthrough, and the songs aren’t incredibly impressive yet but this is at least another beat on the path to AI’s eventual mastery over music composition and production.
Here’s an orchestral piece written by the AI:
And here’s a link to the full paper for the curious.
Paradiso - Konono No. 1
Now for some real, human music.
I found out about this band from David Byrne’s book, How Music Works (excellent book). They’re from the Democratic Republic of Congo and have an awesome raw sound that comes from using DIY gear like self-constructed amplified kalimbas. Cool as hell.theri
“The group's amplification equipment is equally rudimentary, including a microphone carved out of wood fitted with a magnet from an automobile alternator and a gigantic horn-shaped amplifier.”
Thank You!
Well that’s another week of Tiptoe Tiger! Three more left. I hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter. ;) Thanks for reading.
I hope to see plenty of you tomorrow at my partyyyyyy!
You better believe it,
Rob Hogan
Tiptoe Tiger’s Hubba Hubba
Dear Tip,
One of my faves from Dorothy Parker is "Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses." I don't really know if this is true: I've never worn glasses to test it out. Thanks for sharing -- have a great partttty!