…such a fire.
As summer rolls in, I’m still making emo, emo sets. Get this one here.
1: xxxy – The Earth Got Round [RMBA]
2: Incyde – Axis [Hotflush]
3: Junior Boys – You’ll Improve Me (Caribou Remix) [Domion]
4: Martyn – Ghost People [Brainfeeder]
5: Sigha – Fold [Hotflush]
6: Zomby – Natalia’s Song [4AD]
7: JASE From Outta Space – Do What You Want (Infusion Remix) [Shine]
So we went to NIME: it was pretty good.
Some concert highlights:
– Mark Applebaum’s masterful APHASIA stole the show, concert wise, with razor-sharp gestures and an amazing tape part.
– We had not one but TWO naked men on stage with EEG monitors. A good conference.
– Our own vibraphone / robot drums / likembe jam by Shawn Trail with lights & code by Gabby Odowichuk wasn’t half bad, thanks for asking.
– Some crazy people from Tokyo made a Reactable with robots: a table with these autonomous things rolling around on it that made music when they came close to one another. They pretty much won the conference, overall.
– A man played a sponge. It was pretty good, actually.
– No one sampled a pinecone….but some pieces were TERRIBLE, for me.
– A man did play a Beach Boys medly on a restored Theremin ‘Cello. So that was good.
And conference highlights:
– Some guys from LSU are working on pinning instruments to locations: potentially cool stuff.
– A dude (from Cambridge!) presented a paper on why trackers are rad.
– I got to see BORDERLANDS, the granular synth app, in person, and I can say that it is almost TOO powerful: it’s great work, on every level.
– Favorite installation: MUTATIS MUTANDIS, by Tristan and Noel from U of Kansas, which was a full-room meditation on glaciers, complete with a 300 pound block of ice.
– POCO POCO is a really classy tweak on a traditional sequences: the node hop up when they play, and the user can rotate them to alter parameters during playback. That doesn’t do it justice, so here’s a video.
– A brave man from U of Saskatchewan is working on tools for classical musicians (conductor trackers, etc): I had to tell him that his tools are great, but that classical players hate technology.
– Alexander, from UDK Berlin, had a really nicely limited skin conductive system.
– Nick from MIT has amazing machine-learning code, as does Ben from Urbana.
– Diemo made a granular synth using….grains of sand. Ten thousand points!
– Jeff Synder’s JD-1 is a gorgeous, gorgeous controller: especially the sequence controll / looper. Non-linear sequencers are really on my mind.
– Jiffer from Stanford had a really clever sequencer that could do polyrhythms and isorhythms. Sign me up.
– People are actuating rhodes and vibraphones electronmagnetically. Welcome to the future?
– A guy from…..Virginia, maybe, made a generative sequencer for planetariums in python. I didn’t get to see it running, alas.
– There was a man playing on a drum set made out of rubber balls of various sizes.
– A guy named Palle can drive modular synths using electrodes on graphite drawings. This is cooler than it sounds.
– There was a neat paper by Luke Dahl about “Wicked Problems”, which are a class of problem that you should look up.
And general thoughts:
– Difficulty! Do new instruments need to be easy to learn? Or just hard to master?
– If your piece is a “structured improvisation”, you had better be able to SHRED on your instrument.
– If your instrument is totally disconnected from the engine that creates sound, it is probably not an instrument.
– What is conciously added to your interface, and what is emergent?
– If your instrument can’t play a line of Bach, it is probably not an instrument.
– If you’ve not tested your tool on end users, you are doing it wrong.
– But if you’re the only user, that’s OK! (Dangerous, but OK.)
– You should probably practice more. And write more solid code.
– Iterate, iterate, iterate.
– Stage presence! Both in terms of papers and performances!
– If your piece is a two-minute tech demo, that’s OK! Don’t make it longer!
– Understand that your opinion about art is an OPINION.
I’d like to invite you to GET EXCITED AND MAKE TECHNO: a series of discussion, hangouts, & masterclasses happening over eight weeks in Victoria, BC. You can read more at the above link, and you can sign up here!
With apologies to James Bridle
1: Kraftwerk – Trans-Europe Express [Kling Klang]
2: Modeselektor – Grillwalker [Monkeytown]
3: Mono/Poly – Needs Deoderant [Brainfeeder]
4: Kuedo – As We Lie Promising [Planet Mu]
5: Amon Tobin – GOTO 10 [Warp]
6: Jakes – 3rkout [Punch Drunk]
// Machinedrum – Where Did We Go Wrong [Planet Mu]
One of those sets when you realize that “shit, I don’t have any music at 107 BPM”.
-So I made a Weavr. That is to say, I made a robot that trolls the internet for what it thinks I am interested it. It’s doing an awful job so far, which is nice, I guess.
– Along those lines, the mighty New Aesthetic tumblr is closing. This is a damn shame, but very apropos at the same time.
– DREAM|CITY: I finished my field recordings and sent them to Connor, and made an alpha version of the webapp. Things proceed apace.
– John Peel’s record collection is on the internet. Read that again, and be prepared to spend a lot of time with it.
– I’m going to NIME! I’ll be gone from the 16th through the 28th, I hope.
– I’m playing for Sub|Division on June 15, which will probably be my last gig in Victoria. Come on out, do: I’ll have more on that as I know more about it.
Last term I tried to discover how to DJ, based on computer analysis of over a hundred mixes. I made a cute webapp for it: it doesn’t really work though.
So I thought I would just ask. DJs! How do you pick what track to play next? Email me: I want to know. djfractal at gmail dot com.
I’d also like to know:
– What sort of music do you play?
– How long have you been playing for?
– Do you use Serato, vinyl, CDs, Traktor, Ableton, or?
– How old are you?
– Where do you live?
…but the first question is by far the most important. Get at me.
– I made a prototype imagegrabber for the webapp for DREAM | CITY. Big ups to the Google Street View and Flickr APIs.
– Sketched out Tornado Songs IV: next step is to print out the first three songs and pore over them making corrections, tightening, etc.
– I got a set called THE NEW AESTHETIC recorded! Will post it soon.
– Our algorithms may become dangerous at any minute.
– Amazing things on the internet: collaborative pentatonic jams, care of Dinahmoe.
– WEAVRS. I have no idea what these are, but I aim to find out.
– Need to big up Sub|Division for a great show with Max Ulis and the Big Reds, and Hush for an amazing night of house from Natron, Full Function, and Transient.
– Oh man, it’s the end of April. How did that happen?
– I’ve got lyrics down for Tornado Songs VIII and alllllmost done for IV: now I just have to write the damn things.
– On that note, I’ve been accepted to the Bozzini Quartet’s Vancouver edition of Composer’s Kitchen, so at least the string writing for Tornado Songs will be tight.
– Finally got my latest set, ‘Arguing For Your Limitations’ recorded. Get it here.
– Did a bunch of field recording for a project with Connor Ashton called DREAM | CITY. More on that as it breaks.
– Valve’s employee handbook got leaked. It is fascinating.
– The Byrds and the Beegees tells you what your parents were listening to when you were conceived. Yes, this won the internet for the week.
– Planetary Resources is apparently real. Paging D.D. Hariman and Art Clarke, please.
This is a DJ set about people making poor choices. It is, for better or for worse, not autobiographical. It is a lot of tech/house jams. Download here.
1: Zebra Katz – Ima Read [Mad Decent]
2: Nick & Danny Chantilain – Is Killing Me [Ovum]
3: Scuba – Feel It [Hotflush]
4: Click Box – Nebula [Minus]
5: Azari & III – Manic [Turbo]
6: Body Language – Falling out [Smoke N Mirrors]
7: Steffi – Yours [Ostgut Ton]
8: Steffi – Sadness [Ostgu Ton]
– I am done the paper for ISMIR: it’s about timbral changes in DJ sets. Ten thousand thanks to George Tzanetakis for working on it with me.
– Four Tet’s new DJ set, Conference Of The Birds, is exceptional: cosmic, folky, driving: music for dancing without being Dance Music
– My friend & inspriation, Cassandra Miller, has a new website, which makes me want to update this website in the worst way.
– I finished some music for Steven Ness’s orca game, which will be out soon for iPad.
– BORDERLANDS is a mind-stoppingly good granular synthesis app for iPad, by a guy named Christopher Carlson, out of Stanford.
– Finally, Tycho at Penny-Arcade put up some wonderful words about Doing Things:
“You have to get back on the horse. Somehow, and I don’t know how this kind of thing starts, we have started to lionize horseback-not-getting-on: these casual, a priori assertions of inevitable failure, which is nothing more than a gauze draped over your own pulsing terror. Every creative act is open war against The Way It Is. What you are saying when you make something is that the universe is not sufficient, and what it really needs is more you. And it does, actually; it does. Go look outside. You can’t tell me that we are done making the world.”