Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 283
August 27, 2018
Listening to le Carré
Surveillance is both a phylum and an order of sound. It is both a context within which sound occurs, and a subset of the way sound functions. We listen intently, and we overhear; we overhear on purpose, and by chance. Our ears are focused by what we want to hear, and by what, as the pristine familiar phrase so succinctly summarizes, catches our ear.
There is very little overt, carefully detailed attention to sound in Our Kind of Traitor, the 2010 thriller by master spy novelist John le Carré — despite the fact that throughout the book, secrets are documented on little tape recorders, and phones are tapped, and everyone with the slightest bit of skin in the game is paying fierce attention at all moments, deciphering words and the tonality in which they are couched. With the exception of a few key moments, that action goes unexamined. However, when le Carré does choose to apply his scalpel of a pen to discerning the act of listening with the same consideration he applies to manners, posture, class, the intersection of international and personal politics, and all things sartorial, he of course excels. Here are five such instances from Our Kind of Traitor:
1. In the Wind:
He could hear the three winds battling round Dima’s glistening bald head. He could see the treetops above him shaking. He could hear the crashes of leaves and a gurgle of water, and he knew it was the same tropical rain that had drenched him in the forests of Colombia. Had Dima made his recording in a single session or in several? Did he have to brace himself with shots of vodka between sessions in order to overcome his vory inhibitions?
The “he” here is a second-tier spy — nth tier in the circles of hellish bureaucracy that define the modern intelligence service, but second in the small crew that make up the book’s team. The spy’s name is Luke. Here he is listening to a tape recording by a would-be defector, a Russian money launderer by name of Dima. We witness Luke’s craft and shortcomings, his perceptive skills and his self-pity, working hand in hand as he listens to, and projects his own experience onto, a recording Dima has made. The recording is Dima’s entreaty to the British spy service. In a way that a written document might not, the sound both provides additional detail about Dima’s situation and transports Luke, momentarily, into his own troubled past. (“Vory” is the term for a Russian crime syndicate of fierce loyalty.)
2. For Ears Only:
“Has Hector been listening to us?”
“I expect so.”
“Watching us?”
“Sometimes it’s better just to listen. Like a radio play.”
The Hector mentioned here is the book’s spymaster. The interlocutors in the bit of dialog are an inquisitive source and the mid-level spy Luke, who is under Hector’s command. Luke reinforces the unique power of sound when taken on its own, devoid of other sensorial data. He also posits a connection between the story being told by le Carré and the concept of the characters experiencing their own lives as if in a scripted drama, touching on matters of fate, and of Luke’s emerging notion of having less control over his own than he would like. (Elsewhere in the book we learn that Luke fails to enjoy the Harry Potter books — an anhedonia that reinforces his separation from his young son. There’s enough fantasy, we’re told, already in his life. There’s something especially British about John le Carré describing a British spy’s inability to appreciate Harry Potter.)
3. For Whom the Bell Tolls:
Perry pressed the bell and at first they heard nothing. The stillness struck Gail as unnatural so she pressed it herself. Perhaps it didn’t work. She gave one long ring then several short ones to hurry everyone up. And it worked after all, because impatient young feet were approaching, bolts were being shot and a lock was turned, and one of Dima’s flaxen-haired sons appeared.
The person who does the listening in this moment is also the one with the least agency of the assembled protagonists. Gail is the girlfriend to Perry. Perry is the book’s initial hero, except in the moments when it lets Luke, Hector, and Gail be the heroes of their own threads of the narrative. Perry and Gail are caught up in Dima’s negotiations with British intelligence. Here, they have gone to collect the family of Dima. Gail’s legal experience often comes into play when she pitches her voice one way or listens to someone else’s. Here her listening skills are brought to bear on her not uninformed paranoia.
4. Go to the Tape:
Then quite suddenly — it was in the evening of the same day — the weather changed, and Hector’s voice rose a notch. Luke’s illicit recorded played the moment back to him.
Luke again here, now in seclusion with Perry, Gail, and Dima’s brood. He has been taping audio late in the book, both his own notes about goings-on, and phone calls with his boss, Hector, who is calling in with updates regarding how he is navigating the halls of power in Dima’s interest. Here, for the first time, Luke revisits a tape, to confirm a suspicion he noticed in the conversation he just had only moments prior. The instance ratchets up Luke’s anxiety, and projects the isolation they all are experiencing.
5. Left in the Cold:
And either there was someone inside to close the door on them or Luke did it for himself: an abrupt sigh of hinges, a double clunk of metal as the door was made fast from inside, and the black hole in the plane’s fuselage disappeared.
That fifth and final sonic moment occurs pages before the book ends. It’s a fateful moment. The book has returned to the point of view with which it originated, the novitiate Perry — Perry, who has learned much as the book has unfolded, including how to listen, and what to listen for. And then it’s a full stop. What happens next is simply, to use one of le Carré’s favored terms, a void. It’s a void for the reader to fill in. The answer may be left to how well the reader has been listening.
August 26, 2018
Stasis Report: Ellen Arkbro ✚ Olafur Arnalds ✚ More
The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist. It started out just on on Spotify. As of last week, it’s also on Google Play Music. The following five tracks were added on Sunday, August 26.
✚ “Mountain of Air” from For Organ and Brass by Ellen Arkbro, of Stockholm, Sweden. It was released on the Subtext label back in April of this year: ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Memory Block” from Music for DOS by Simon Stålenhag, of Sweden. Per album title, the music was recorded using an old-school Pentium 266 Mhz (which was state of the art roughly 20 years ago), running the music software Impulse Tracker. Boing Boing featured the album this past week. The album was self-released two weeks ago: simonstalenhag.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Momentary” from re:memeber by Olafur Arnalds, based in Reykjavik, Iceland. It was released last week on the Mercury KX label: mercurykx.com.
✚ “Aerosols for Pluviculture” from The Biode by Robert Rich, based in Mountain View, California. It was released back in February of this year on Rich’s own Soundscape label: robertrich.bandcamp.com.
✚ “On the Day You Saw the Dead Whale” from Hundreds of Days by Mary Lattimore, based in Los Angeles, California. Dave Depper of Death Cab for Cutie singled it out recently in an interview. It was released on Ghostly in May of this year: marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com. “Never Saw Him Again” from the same album previously appeared in Stasis Report from June 4 through June 24 of this year.
Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly an hour and a half. Those retired tracks (by Daniel Aged, Ethan Gold, Kano, Simon McCorry, Orquestra de las Nubes, and Marta SmiLga) are now in the Stasis Archives playlist (currently only on Spotify).
August 24, 2018
“Unknown SoundCloud Producer Dead”
If you watch Insecure, Issa Rae’s excellent HBO series, you know the music of Raphael Saadiq, who has scored it since it debuted two seasons back. Part of the impact of Saadiq’s work on Insecure is how the back beat of the show works seamlessly with whatever the characters might themselves be listening to. The latter is the craft of music supervisor Kier Lehman. Sometimes the distinction is entirely unclear, much to both Saadiq and Lehman’s credit. And this season of Insecure, its third, music production is becoming a narrative tool of interpersonal ambiguity.
Part of what makes the character Daniel — whose role has expanded significantly of late — so important to Insecure is that while music was already important to the show from the start, now there’s this nuanced secondary figure we see making music, and stressing about making music, and building a career in music — and, this past Sunday night, fearing his own eventual obituary’s headline if he doesn’t get his act together: “Unknown SoundCloud producer dead.”
Just moments earlier, Daniel had beatboxed into the ear of Issa’s character at a nightclub. His stated intent was to layer his sense of what would enrich the music of the performer they were witnessing at that moment, were they to every collaborate. However, in order to be heard over the club, Daniel had to lean extra close to Issa to do his beatbox impression. It’s a rare feat for beatboxing to signify subconscious intimacy and compositional refinement, even more so for those to occur simultaneously.
An especially artful moment came at the close of the episode (“Familiar-Like,” the new season’s second). Daniel is at his production desk. Issa walks to him from the living room while music plays. It’s the music Daniel’s making, but it’s also the moment’s music: relaxed, sophisticated. The ambiguity is rich. Is he doing work or sending a message? Is she helping or replying? The show doesn’t tell us directly, because the characters don’t know either, and that’s the point. Music in filmed entertainment all too often tells the audience precisely what to feel. Here it’s accomplishing something much more complicated.
August 23, 2018
Disquiet Junto Project 0347: Remix Remodel
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, August 27, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 23, 2018.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0347: Remix Remodel
The Assignment: Update a track by one Junto participant by adding beats from another Junto participant’s imaginary drum machine.
Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jason Wehmhoener for having helped put together this project.
Step 1: Two weeks ago in the Disquiet Junto, people made beats for their own imaginary drum machines. Last week in the Junto, people used other people’s beats from the prior project to make their own tracks. This week, the third week of this multi-part project, you’ll remix a track from the second week using beats from the first week.
Step 2: Listen through the tracks from last week, and choose the one you want to remix:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0346
In addition, there may be some other tracks from the project in the Lines discussions, here:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0346-drum-machinations/
Step 3: Listen through the tracks from the first week’s project, and choose the one whose beats you want to use in your remix of the track you selected in Step 2. The beats appear at the start of each of the participating tracks in the week’s SoundCloud playlist, here:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0345
In addition, there may be some other tracks from the project in the Lines discussions, here:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0345-sample-time/
Step 4: Having chosen tracks in Steps 2 and 3 above, confirm the tracks are downloadable. If one isn’t, either get in touch with the musician who made it, or choose another track.
Step 5: Remix/rework/remodel the track you selected in Step 2 with beats you selected in Step 3.
Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0347” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0347” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0347-remix-remodel/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Other Details:
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, August 27, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 23, 2018.
Length: The length of your track is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0347” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: It’s important for this project that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information — as well as the name of the individual whose beats you’re using, and a link to that source track:
More on this 347th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Remix Remodel / The Assignment: Update a track by one Junto participant by adding beats from another Junto participant’s imaginary drum machine) at:
Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jason Wehmhoener for having helped put together this and the preceding two projects.
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0347-remix-remodel/
There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.
Image associated with this project is by Bradjward, used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license:
August 22, 2018
Small Box, Big Sound
In the expanding realm of live synthesizer performance videos, even the more informed among us sometimes can’t see the ensemble forest for the module trees. Despite the assembly of knobs and cables in this video, uploaded by State Azure, the activity is limited to just two pieces of equipment packed into a tidy little box in the foreground, two little modules designed for the manipulation of sound. The slight twists and adjustments on State Azure’s part align in various ways with interstellar spaciousness, wind chime chill, and dusty static, though by no means are all the correlations self-evident. There’s an understandable disconnect between how something so small can make something so vast, something so compact can make something so internally varied and vibrant. But still, watching those manipulations unfold in no way diminishes the elegance of what transpires sonically. It’s a graceful series of maneuvers that direct the sounds from start to end.
This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at YouTube. More at stateazure.bandcamp.com. State Azure is based in Southampton, U.K.
August 21, 2018
Fence Filter
There is noise, and there is noise. The “and” suggests an “or,” a binary, but it is, of course, more of an ear-of-the-beholder situation. The sheer antic nature of the five-minute recording “hcsr.pananenanap” by darreichungsform, both track name and artist name seeming like error codes from an unfamiliar operating system (an association not out of whack with the audio itself), is both inviting and distancing. The randomness of the music has the vibe of chunky white noise, all panic-inducing, and yet, if you settle in, also invigorating. In addition, buried within it are bits of evident melodic and tonal activity, stepwise melodies and wormy synth sounds and other treats. It’s a bit like how the glimpse of someone’s yard can be taken in if you time the way your eye catches the spaces between the slots of the fence that separates you from it. Of course, the foremost separation here is aesthetic. The noise is like a blustery day: if you accept it on its own terms, there is beauty to be had.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/darreichungsform.
August 19, 2018
Stasis Report: Now On Google Play Music ✚ Spotify
The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist. It started out just on on Spotify. Now it’s also on Google Play Music. The following five tracks were added on Sunday, August 19.
✚ “Bread and Wine” is from the score by Peter Gabriel to the 1988 Martin Scorcese film The Last Temptation of Christ. It’s one of three films that Gabriel — once upon a time the lead singer of the progressive-rock band Genesis, and later a formidable part of the foundation of MTV’s vision of pop culture — has scored. The soundtrack release is titled Passion: Music for the Last Temptation of Christ. Another of Gabriel’s is Long Walk Home: Music from Rabbit-Proof Fence, the 2002 film. In both cases he chose a title other than the film’s for his score’s release. The third, his first, is Birdy: Music from the Film, from 1984. They’re all of note right now because they finally appeared on streaming services this past Friday, August 17. It was the same day the estate of the late Prince released almost two dozen albums across streaming services, so the news got a bit buried. The first two had a big impact on me. Birdy came out my last year of high school (I remember hearing his music in the background as a local news TV station’s film reviewer talked about the movie, and I recognized it as Peter Gabriel’s immediately) and Passion my last year of college (we were fresh off the debate about cultural appropriation that had surrounded Paul Simon’s Graceland; Gabriel had the grace to release an album of the material his score drew from, Passion – Sources).
✚ “Self-Recognition (For Pauline Oliveros)” is from Diminution by Leila Abdul-Rauf, released on Malignant Records in mid-April of this year. Abdul-Rauf lives in the San Francisco Bay Area: malignantrecs.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Scraped (Kara-Lis Coverdale ‘Serpentine Rework’) is off the three-cut EP Arborescence {remixes}, based on the “Serpentine” track from the 2017 album Arborescence by Úlfur. The EP also includes remixes by Oren Ambarchi and Alex Somers. Arborescence {remixes} was released in July on the label Figureight. Úlfur is an Icelandic musician now based in New York. Kara-Lis Coverdale is based in Montreal, Québec: ulfur.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Lapis Lazuli” is from Lady’s Mantle by Jake Muir, who is based in Los Angeles. It was released in July on the label Sferic, which is based in Manchester, England: sferic.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Anno / Four Seasons: Meadow (Spring)” is from Anno: Four Seasons by Anna Meredith & Antonio Vivaldi (“in which original pieces of work by the classical-electronic composer are intertwined with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons”) by Anna Meredith and Scottish Ensemble, and in the case of this track some birdsong as well. The record will, no doubt, be considered alongside Max Richter’s 2012 reworkings of the same Vivaldi music, Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons (Deutsche Grammophon). It’s worth wondering if the attraction ambient-minded composers find in “The Four Seasons” is related to the merits of the original composition itself, or to the background-music reputation it has garnered over the years, or some combination thereof. Meredith is based in Camberwell, UK, and the Ensemble in Glasgow. The album came out last week on the Moshi Moshi label: annahmeredith.bandcamp.com.
Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly an hour and a half. Those retired tracks (by Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie, Ekin Fil, Sarah Davachi, Jet Jaguar, and Rezzett) are now in the Stasis Archives playlist. (Note: one track on the Spotify list isn’t on the Google Play Music version, because it isn’t showing up on the service: Simon McCorry’s “The Third Stone,” off the album Song Lines.)
August 16, 2018
Disquiet Junto Project 0346: Drum Machinations
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, August 20, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 16, 2018.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0346: Drum Machinations
The Assignment: Make a beat with new drum machine sounds provided by other Junto musicians.
Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jason Wehmhoener for having helped put together this project.
Step 1: Last week in the Disquiet Junto, musicians made beats for their own imaginary drum machines. The beats appear at the start of each of the participating tracks in the week’s SoundCloud playlist, here:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0345
In addition, there may be some other tracks with beats in the Lines discussion, here:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0345-sample-time/
Step 2: Check out the tracks in Step 1. Choose one track whose opening drum machine sounds hold the most appeal for you. Then confirm the track is downloadable. If it isn’t, either get in touch with the musician who made it, or choose another track.
Step 3: Make an original piece of music employing the sounds from Step 2.
Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0346” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0346” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0346-drum-machinations/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Other Details:
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, August 20, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 16, 2018.
Length: The length of your track is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0346” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: It’s important for this project that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information — as well as the name of the individual whose beats you’re using, and a link to that source track:
More on this 346th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Drum Machinations / The Assignment: Make a beat with new drum machine sounds provided by other Junto musicians) at:
Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jason Wehmhoener for having helped put together this and the preceding project.
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0346-drum-machinations/
There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.
Image associated with this project is by Jeff Howard, used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license:
August 13, 2018
Serrated Ambient Music
This gorgeous, pulsing, lightly fractured, seven-minute video of serrated ambient music performed entirely on an Elektron Digitakt was posted by Tom Hall late last year. In it, rapidly cycling bits of noise turn from sharp slivers to lush texture, from harsh to comforting, and back again. The pace is either anxious or genteel, depending on where you ear focuses. Does it attach to the internal motion of these micro-moments, bits of noise and drone churning past each other, or does it fix itself on the underlying big picture, a peaceful tonal space in which stasis is the ruling structure?
This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. The video was first posted on Hall’s YouTube channel last October. More from Tom Hall, an Australian based in Los Angeles, at tomhall.com.au, instagram.com/tomhallsonics, and soundcloud.com/thall. His album Spectra was recently released on the French label Elli Records.
Introductory Loop-Making
Another little weekend project straight out of any Electronic Music 101 textbook: make a tape loop with an old cassette. I’d never done this before. The cassette tape is from an old batch of unused 90-minute Maxells I have on hand. The loop was recorded on a Panasonic Standard Cassette Transcriber RR-830, a relic of when I’d record interviews on physical cassette and then transcribe from those cassettes. That Panasonic device has a foot pedal, which used to make the start/stop process of transcription a tiny bit more bearable, especially because it can micro-rewind an adjustable amount with each pause.
The audio of my first tape loop came out OK on the first try — I recorded a short strum on an acoustic guitar — but there was an issue with playback on the RR-830: After two or three cycles through the loop, it would come to a stop. I had high hopes of using the RR-830 in a performance setting, given the potential for that foot pedal, along with other attributes of the device, like control over tone and playback speed. (Another issue: there was a not so little gap in the audio, and it was suggested to me to record the audio first on a longer stretch of tape, and to then make the loop from a subset of that tape. I’ll try this approach next time.)
At first I thought the issue with the playback ending on the Panasonic had to do with a poor job on my part constructing the cassette. So, I took it apart and made it more taut by trimming the length of the tape a bit, as well as reinserting the second plastic reel. Still, the Panasonic ceased playing after two or three cycles. To test the newly refined tape loop, I put the cassette in the old, bright yellow Sony “Sports” Walkman, and it played well, over and over and over. Perhaps there’s a setting on the RR-830 that will make it less sensitive, and therefore capable of playing the loop on repeat dependably.
Making the loop was more painstaking a process than I’d expected, even after advance warnings from various experienced people. The standard cassette tape has loose parts, held in only thanks to the tension supplied by five tiny screws. In addition, getting the tape to the correct length, and connecting it into one continuous piece, requires a level of dexterity almost — but, fortunately, not quite — beyond my manual dexterity. I got it to work, which was a lot of fun in the end. The sound quality is excellent, which is to say it is rich with texture, not high-fidelity.
And if you want to try it out, the tape-oriented musician who goes by the name Amulets has a helpful video on YouTube. There’s also a good tutorial at instructables.com.
