Skip to content

Music production

Field Value
Status Active
Type Personal / creative

Description

Originals and live work; evolving toward a producer / entrepreneur framing alongside performing. Music is central stress relief — a deliberate counterweight to work intensity, not a side hobby on paper only.

Harmonica (learning, 2026): Serious daily / every-other-day practice — exercising new motor patterns and watching muscle memory improve slowly (patience as the metric). Harmonica is also breath training: deep, slow, controlled exhale work that maps to greater lung capacity over time, which feeds singing and general cardio (same “happy body” story as projects/happy-body, different modality). Singing the blues is therapeutic in its own right.

Sleep apnea overlap (2026-06-13): Harmonica is a legitimate upper-airway muscle trainer — embouchure + oropharyngeal pressure build tone that may reduce airway collapsibility during sleep (same intervention class as myofunctional therapy and didgeridoo studies). Harmonica is especially relevant because it trains both inhale and exhale resistance (most wind instruments are exhale-only). Does not replace clinical care for existing OSA, but for tone-driven collapse it's meaningful stacked therapy — see projects/sleep-apnea.

Harmonica — technique path

Phase Focus
Foundation 1st position — clean single notes, blow/draw rhythms and timing.
Next Draw bends; then 2nd position (cross harp) and 3rd position (slant harp).
Now Muscle memory and musicality mainly in 2nd and 3rd — still pushing cross (major and minor feels) and slant before piling on new systems.
Later 12th position and overblows (explicitly deferred until cross + slant feel solid).

Keys on hand (diatonic): Low F, G, A, B♭, C — the F slot is low tuning (longer reeds, heavier breath); practice rotates across keys for ear / embouchure variety and song keys in band context.

Possible (low urgency) output: a how-to / technique video series — market is crowded; only worth doing if it stays fun or clearly helps someone.

Harp Mic — clip-on harmonica mic (2026-06)

Shipped build: custom clip-on harmonica microphone for live play — hands free, stage-volume signal in a full band mix without cupping a vocal mic.

Piece Detail
Electronics Shure SM58 cartridge (salvaged), inline guitar volume pot, rewired XLR cable — no batteries or proprietary wireless
Enclosure 3D-printed base + lid; modeled in OpenSCAD with Grok-assisted parametric iteration (clip tension, cartridge pocket, pot clearance)
Prototype path v1 — hacked plastic harmonica case for clip angle / capsule placement; v2 — printed shell after geometry locked
Cost ~$30 from scratch; near-zero when reusing SM58, pot, and cable from spares
Repo dmoniker/harp-mic — harmonic-mic-3d-V2.scad (set part to "base" or "lid" before STL export)
Write-up + STLs darcymenard.com/projects/harmonica-mic

Fits common diatonic brands (Seydel, Hohner, Suzuki, etc.). Gig gear for projects/rusty-cage and solo harp practice.

Metronaut — iOS practice app

Live on App Store (2026-06-21) — Metronaut on the App Store · full detail on projects/metronaut. Repo: dmoniker/Metronome (MIT). Free; second live iOS app alongside projects/lunarcast.

Key features

  • Complements band work under rusty-cage; broader “music + business” lane than trio gigs alone.
  • Wellness overlap: breath, patience, stress relief, vocal/cardio spillover — documented here so “music” isn’t siloed from the health stack.
  • OSA overlap: harmonica practice = upper-airway muscle training; see projects/sleep-apnea.

Tech stack

Raw sources

  • raw/projects.md