Another banner year, spread across multiple projects, ranging from #bonkwave to #RFFF25 to #NHAM to #TIBtv, to a little solo stuff. I don’t know how long any of this will last, but I’m relishing it while I can. Skip to Design | Community

Music

In more or less chronological order, I think:

• I co-wrote You Are Not Alone with @CCirco@ravenation.club for the Comfy Collaborations #RadioFreeFedi tribute album organized by @futzle@old.mermaid.town
• I released a couple of extra tracks based on You Are Not Alone.
• I released a new song, Cities
• I wrote jingles for NHAM Mixtape Radio and Not What I Call Radio Bonk Wave
• 2 of my bonkwave songs were delightfully remixed
• I released The Rite of Bonk for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-Bonks of Spring 1 album
• I collaborated on Hi It’s Spring (production) with Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social) for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave Spring album
• I gave a few related songs a common home by releasing the Cities EP (which got a lovely review on NHAM by @babumenos@sunny.garden)
• I performed the sknob bonks cities live livestream for Radio Free Fedi Fest 2025 #RFFF25 (and covered other fedi musicians)
• I contributed some vocals to Happy Bonk Day 2025 as part of a great lineup of BonkWave Allstars herded by @axwax@chaos.social
• I released Ukulele Bonk on the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream 1 album
• I released Wannawadda on the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-A Midsummer Bonk’s Dream 2 album, part of the first ever Bonk Wave Sample Challenge
• I produced (and played on) Better Than That by Sam, which was also released on the Bonk Wave summer album (and I also make a guest appearance on the fantastic video Sam made for the track)
• I wrote and recorded a song I’m quite proud of for the upcoming Four Seasons of Bonk Wave fall album (which should come out this winter or next spring, in typical #bonkwave fashion)
• I released a new song, Choo-Choo Train
• I wrote 4 new songs for an upcoming concept album or EP, and have been chronicling my progress on Mastodon. We’ll see how far it goes and how long I can resist the urge to release them...

Design

I used to do quite a bit of UI and web design back in the day, experience which I put to good use this year:

• I designed album covers for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave album series, with real-time feedback from the bonkwave community, and essential contributions from @Traiken@mastodon.social
• I designed web and fedi assets (and the NHAM RFFF25 LiveStream graphics) for NHAM
• And I did the version 1.0 redesign of the NHAM website (CSS mockup, Sam had to actually implement it)
• Which gave me the impetus to finally recode and redesign my antiquated music site from scratch, which I’d been meaning to do for about a decade ; check out the new sknob/music, and read all about the redesign in a series of posts right here
• I made a bunch of hand-drawn NHAM animations for the NHAM program slots on The Indie Beat Television (#TIBtv)
• I made a bunch of more general NHAM promo videos for #TIBtv

Community

On top of the musical collaborations with @CCirco@ravenation.club, the bonkwave community and Sam mentioned above, I participated in the following initiatives to promote music and musicians on the #fediverse:

• I did some virtual leg work vetting artists and asking for their consent to be listed in the Indie Art Support Community (IASC) directory which is built on the shoulders of @radiofreefedi@musician.social (and you can apply by pinging @hello@fedi.indieart.support on fedi)
• I was involved in prepping the launch of the NHAM fedi music discovery site, and I’m also an admin of the site (for which I wrote a few posts too, like The Best Spotify Alternative and Imposter Syndrome)
• I handled the technical plumbing for and co-hosted a NHAM Mixtape livestream for Radio Free Fedi Fest 25 #RFFF25
• Last but certainly not least, I was part of the group of fedi musicians corralled by @limebar@mastodon.social to prep the launch of The Indie Beat Television, a 24x7 “Fedi MTV” (brainstorming, transcoding and tagging a ton of videos, pixel-pushing, and contributing a few musical snippets to station IDs and such). Don’t forget to follow @TIBtv@tv.theindiebeat.fm on the fediverse!

As I said in a mid-year progress report:

I can’t believe how lucky I am to be part of the incredible fedi music community and to have met and collaborated with so many delightful, open-minded, super-creative people, who have opened my eyes and ears in so many ways.

All in all a fine way to keep my head above water in these troubled times, and a constant and much-needed reminder that there is plenty of good, and good people in the world, and that we have agency.

Thank you everyone ❤️

I didn’t see that one coming... Having all the albums and songs on a single page means that by default, when you link to the page from somewhere else like a messaging app or your #fediverse feed, you always get the preview image specified in the <meta property="og:image..."> tag in the page header...

But then it dawned on me. Since I’m already using PHP to prep my XML playlist, it should be possible in theory to use PHP to dynamically change the og:image property based on the incoming URL.

Problem was, I’m an absolute PHP beginner.

Undaunted, I went ahead and figured it out, and tada, it works. If you call sknob.fr/music/?mysong, the og:image meta tag image is dynamically changed to mysong.jpg.

Out of laziness, I kept the somewhat complex image organization from the v4 version of the site (yes, I aim to clean that up eventually, but it’s not a trivial task), which means that the code won’t always find an image, in which case it defaults back to the default image. Same if you type in a garbage URL.

I’m really happy about this, because that was one thing that bothered me about going the single page route. I even sometimes shied away from posting links to my site on Mastodon because of it.

No more!

Before anything else, I moved the project to Git, and created a (private) repo on Codeberg. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. – Changed the Download, Copy Link and Share on Mastodon links in the song details to nice SVG icons. Before: After: – Added a Copy Link icon next to the album titles, so you can post links on the #fediverse or send them to all your friends and loved ones :) – When navigating from elsewhere using a link to an album, the target album cover is surrounded by an outline. – Stopped the page from scrolling when an album cover is displayed full-screen. Doesn’t work in Safari. Quite a PITA to fix. I may or may not bother in the future. – The (small round) album covers are now “sticky” to make it easier to see which album the songs belong to when you scroll. Note that this is deactivated in portrait mode on phones. – Small code changes (offset scrolling, hiding the covers during search, since they were moved in the page hierarchy to make the position: sticky work).

Read the lengthy, gory v5.0 Release Notes if you dare.

I’ve only released one solo track (and one solo EP) so far this year.

But that’s only because I’ve been involved in so many other collaborative projects!

• I did some virtual leg work vetting artists and asking for their consent to be listed in the Indie Art Support Community (IASC) directory which is built on the shoulders of @radiofreefedi@musician.social (and you can apply by pinging @hello@fedi.indieart.support on fedi)
• I collaborated with Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social) and others to launch and run (and write a few articles for) the NHAM online music magazine dedicated to promoting the indie/fedi music scene
• I co-wrote You Are Not Alone with @CCirco@ravenation.club for the Comfy Collaborations #RadioFreeFedi tribute album organized by @futzle@old.mermaid.town
• I released a couple of extra tracks based on You Are Not Alone.
• I wrote jingles for NHAM Mixtape Radio and Not What I Call Radio Bonk Wave
• I designed album covers for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave album series, with real-time feedback from the bonkwave community, and essential contributions from @Traiken@mastodon.social
• 2 of my bonkwave songs were delightfully remixed
• I released The Rite of Bonk for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave-Bonks of Spring album
• I collaborated on Hi It’s Spring (production) with Sam for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave Spring album
• I prepped (design and technical plumbing) and co-hosted a NHAM Mixtape livestream for Radio Free Fedi Fest 25 #RFFF25
• I prepped (design and technical plumbing and rehearsal) and performed the sknob bonks cities live livestream for #RFFF25, which featured covers of other fedi musicians
• And I wrote/and or collaborated on 4 more tracks for collaborative projects that haven’t been released yet

Honestly, it blows my mind.

I can’t believe how lucky I am to be part of the incredible fedi music community and to have met and collaborated with so many delightful, open-minded, super-creative people, who have opened my eyes and ears in so many ways.

And I just felt the urge to say so, and to keep track! 😅

(Maybe I should keep updating this post throughout the year, or maybe I’ll just finish it when the year is up. We shall see...)

Announcing a livestream after the fact is pretty dumb, but spoons.

Be that as it may, like last August, I was asked to participate in Radio Free Fedi Fest 25, #RFFF25, which is still ongoing as of this writing. Prepping was complicated because of the worst June heatwave on record (unintentional pun), and because this livestream was preceded a week earlier by the NHAM Mixtape livestream for #RFFF25, which I managed technically and co-hosted with Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social).

My legendary stage fright also showed up for the gig, but it actually mostly dissipated after the first song (as did my voice).

Still, a lot of people came to listen and seemed happy with the show.

Here’s what I played:

Cities EP - Entangled - Let Me Off - Bercée d’illusions - Cities Interlude - I’m Staying Home This Christmas¹ Bonkwave - The Rite of Bonk - C’est quoi (le Bonkwave) ? - La sieste/Don’t Mind Me - Bonkwave medley * Radio Bonkwave Jingle * Happy Bonk Day² * Martian Kazoo Polka³ * Hi It’s Spring⁴ - Anagram Encore - Living The Dream

¹ Written by Deborah Pickett (@futzle@old.mermaid.town) ² Written by @keefmarshall@mastodon.online ³ Music by @keefmarshall@mastodon.online ⁴ Written by 8 year old Sam

My heartfelt thanks to @radiofreefedi@musician.social and The Hamster, and to all of you who tuned in.

Unlike last year, I didn’t forget to record the stream, so if you missed it (how could you?!), the raw, unedited recording is available in the Live Performances section of NHAMtv.

You Are Not Alone was composed and recorded by C.Circo and myself for the Comfy Collaborations tribute album, which was coordinated by Deborah Pickett to celebrate the legendary #RadioFreeFedi Comfy Channel. The album features collaborations between various artists who connected through the now defunct seminal #Fediverse radio station. It is full of comfy gems, so be sure to give it a listen and read the liner notes.

You might also want to read about how You Are Not Alone came about and was made.

And finally, as a totally superfluous but hopefully fun bonus, my Faircamp site contains a couple of extras:

• You Are Not Alone (disco reprise), which is built on top of the lovely weird loop at the tail end of You Are Not Alone, and echoes the themes from the main song.
• You Are Not Alone (reconstructed), which gives you an idea of what the source material sounded like before it got superbly refracted by C.Circo, in case you were wondering.

I’m thrilled to be part of the #Fediwave Live Artist Streaming Series, brainchild of the fabulous Radio Free Fedi.

Be sure to tune in Wednesday August 8, 2024 at 19h00, rugged scrublands time (UTC+2), for some fine franglophone musical creations performed solo, #live and unplugged for the first time ever in public!

Thanks for tuning in everyone!

This just in: SKNOB Smashes Unplugged Performance for RFF!

My new song, Living the dream, was especially written for this year’s fabulous #Fedivision song contest, and I am now finally allowed to reveal it to the world!

BREAKING NEWS: my song made the top 10!!!

May 27 Now that the contest is over, you can find Living The Dream, my official #fedivision2024 entry which made the top 10 (at number 9) out of 72 tracks \o/, at the following fine locations:

• My music site
• My no longer super-secret hidden Faircamp page
• My Bandcamp site (free download or name your price)

Thanks again to the #fedivision organizers and to everyone who went out of their way to vote for my song and/or say nice things about it ☺️❤️.

(Strangely enough, this song is a musical version of a blog post!)

EN #music #song #blogpost FR #musique #chanson #billet

English

Since there is no search function here (as of yet?) and because I can never settle on a single language (a franglophone curse), I’m using #tags extensively to try to make things easier to wade through.

If the tags at the start of a post are in English, there’s a fairly decent chance the post is also in English.

Examples: #blogpost, #fediverse

Exceptions: #music being a so-called universal language, most song-related posts use a somewhat linguistically random mixture of tags. However, I use #song for English songs and #chanson for French songs.

Just click on a tag to see a list of corresponding posts.

Français

En l’absence de fonction de recherche (pour l’instant ?) et puisque je ne parviens jamais à me cantonner à une seule langue (le drame du franglophone), j’utilise les #hashtags à foison pour tenter de rendre les choses plus praticables.

Si les hashtags en haut d’un billet sont en français, il y a d’assez bonnes chances que le contenu le soit aussi.

Exemples : #billet, #dessin

Exceptions : il paraît que la #musique est un langage universel, donc la plupart des annonces de morceaux utilisent un mélange de tags plutôt aléatoire. Toutefois, j’utilise #song pour les morceaux en anglais et #chanson pour les morceaux en français.

Cliquez sur un tag pour voir la liste des billets correspondants.

Soooo, I have been blogging since before you were born (probably), and I have this giant, bloated WordPress blog with years worth of broken links, missing images, obsolete Flash embeds, embarrassing old posts, and what have you.

I recently updated it to the latest version, and it works, but...

I hate it. With a vengeance.

I hate writing in it, I hate how unwieldy and slow it is, so much so that I have never publicized it on fedi.

Meanwhile, I keep seeing WriteFreely posts in my Mastodon feed, and I like reading them, the look, the typography, the simplicity.

I wish I could host my own instance, but I don’t have the bandwidth right now, so I finally bit the bullet and opened a blog on this server, and added a few recent posts to it.

Easy-peasy. Such a pleasure to use!

And if you’re reading this, it probably means I’ve actually publicized it on the fediverse.

Which doesn’t mean I won’t change my mind and nuke it.

Time will tell...