– If you wanted to be scared about the state of our civilization, take a look here, at Worldometers. For me, the scariest thing is the tiny, tiny difference between “Energy Consumed” and “Energy Produced”.
– I have a total crush on Processing, because you can do things like this. (From Flight404)
– I’d also like to point you to African Rhythms Radio, run by David Love Jones, owner of the mind-boggling Vinyl Records, in Vancouver. If you have an emergency and need to get down as fast as possible, you know where to go.
– Finally, I finished THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE, by Haruki Murakami, about a week ago, and I’m pleased to say that it is a good book, and that Murakami can certainly write. I am less sure about his ambiguity of antagonist, and the way the book goes batshit insane in the third act, but he’s good is and is worth reading / re-reading.
My friend Kenzie Clarke and I just had our track, ‘Responsibility’, released on PercTrax. You can hear a clip of it here. It’s snappy and vocal and minimalish and sassy. You’ll dig it, honest.
(The above art is from here, care of the Brazilian graffiti scene, and is pretty much amazing.)
Also: They’re Tracking You. This is brilliant shit, care of the mad scientists at Turbulence.
It’s……Interface Thursday! Interface Wednesday Night! Whatever. It beats doing math homework. The above image is the ReacTable, which, if you’re one of the 5 people who have not seen it, can be found here. Now then:
CreateDigitalMusic brings the hyper-whitespace noise with this bubble-gum driven step sequencer. They rightly say that the really cool underlying thing is the camera that recognizes the colors of the gum balls. There are only about 1001 of places you could take that.
Analog Industries, meanwhile, has the same sort of thing, done with skittles. Let the candy wars begin.
Ariana, over at Whitechapel, posted this wonderfully throwaway comment:
“Someday, someone will build a touchpad that’s dancefloor-sized, and let the crowd’s movement make organic tracks. That will rock so hard.”‘
That, obviously, got me thinking. But I cannot, for the life of me, figure out a way to make the idea work. It’s an ancient techno / computer music cliche, but it’s the very definition of “non-trivial problem”. Anyone got any inspirations?
Finally, I had an idea for “my” interface: It involves a circle, with notes, chords, and samples sliding slowly from the inside to the outside, and a radar-style bar that rotates around and plays things, depending on their rotation. I’m kind of cribbing from Glasbead, but I think it could be a suitably separate thing. More details notes will appear as I have time to think on it more.
…whatever that means. For me, it means that I burned some tunes for my show on the 31st.
Robsounds – Nightvision [Unsigned]
Copy – Just Expect [Audio Dregs]
Copy – It’s A Little Too Late [Audio Dregs]
Robsounds – Scatterdays [Unsigned]
Mike Oldfield – Far Above The Clouds (Timewriter Remix)
Chymera – Umbrella (Funk D’Void Remix) [Ovum]
Limbo – Synch Clip 2 [Unsigned]
Ogi Gee Cash & Synchronized – Down Below [Proton]
Pole Folder – In My Mind (Lemon8 Remix) [Restart]
Russian Linesman – Bratislava Story (Avus Remix) [Undercut]
Russian Linesman – Bratislava Story (Margot Remix) [Undercut]
Noel Sanger – Natural Perfection [Dissident]
Keenan & Anderson – Runaway (Steve May Dub) [Navigation]
Gareth Emery – Outrageous (Shiloh Remix) [Baroque]
ZZT – Lower State Of Conciousness (Justice Remix) [Turbo]
I’d also like to remind any and all of you local techno-makers that there is a producer meet-up tomorrow (Tuesday, January 22nd) evening, 8 PM, at the Serious Coffee at Yates & Broad. Bring your self, samples of your music, a willingness to talk about your music and methods with other people, and a desire to drink hot beverages.
Also, I finished a ridiculous cut-up piano composition. (I will post pictures soon.) Kevin Thomson was brave enough to sight read it, and it sounded wonderful and I’m forever in his debt. I think I’m going to try to get it performed, somewhere. Will have to talk to people about the details of that though. More as it breaks.
School just happened to me. Owch. So:
This is a concept guitar, by a man named Amit Zoran. Essentially, it provides a different resonating chamber for each string. I happen to think that’s a pretty mindbending idea, but that’s because I don’t usually think about acoustics and acoustic changeas a method of synthesis. Obviously, I spend too much time in front of my computer.
I went to see Oholibah and Her Lovers last night, an opera put on by a horde of people from the School of Music…but not the School of Music itself. Overheard politics aside, the “naked opera” was monumental in the very best sense of the word. The libretto was edited together from Old Testament, and the production as a whole worked out to a cross between Cecil B. DeMille and Wagner, complete with the Song of Soloman, Voice Of God, and a Cast Of Thousands. Wonderful stuff.
Finally, I’m playing at Hush on Thursday, January 31st, opening for Yoseff. You should come.
Oh oh! Chris Reiche dropped some artistic and ontological science today when he said that “We’re not modernism or post modernism or post-post-modernism any more. We’re at individualism now.” I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out what he means by that Zen little koan.
First things first: Come and see me opening for Shiloh at Hush, tomorrow. They’re fantastic, I’m fantastic. Simple. Now then:
Networked Music Review has a link to some gloriously otaku in-game music playing in Lord Of The Rings Online. I don’t know how much support Second Life gives to this kind of thing, and I have a feeling that the latency is still bad enough to prevent duets. However, as latency improves, online ensembles will become more and more plausible. I will, in fact, bet you money that they’ll eventually turn into their own games / interfaces / programs, etc. At the moment, MacBooks come standard with webcams. What if they came standard with mics and ‘GarageJam’ software? ‘GarageJam’ being, of course, GarageBand plus a friends list and an “Let’s Jam” button for when you’re bored and want to play / make / create music with a friend.
Damn. Now I’m all excited about that. Moving on to video games. GamaSutra did an interview with the guy who designed Elite. In it, he talks about emergent gameplay, AI-driven missions, proper “non-linear” stories in mainstream games, and so on. Meanwhile, Grand Text Auto linked to a bunch of articles about table-top gaming and how story evolved in them. Greg Costikyan’s essay is a really good read and a really good history lesson.
Those have got me thinking, mostly about quantization of narrative, to give it a high-falutin’ title. I will post more about it, later, when math is not calling my name as much, and when I can form thoughts better. Most of what I want to say is dealt with in those two linked articles. Read them!
Micah – Greenstone (Sad Mix) [Proton]
Pigon – Promises [Dial]
Martin Skogehall – Viagra Falls (Djinxx Edit) [Mezzotinto]
Sasha – Who Killed Sparky [emFire]
Mark Ankh – Dreaming (Medway Remix) [Sound Evolution]
Naveen G – Torsades [Emote]
C79 – Silent Violence (Quiet Riot Remix) [Pacific Front]
Simon Baker – Bandit [20:20 Vision]
Pryda – Odyssey [Pryda]
Cobblestone Jazz – Dumptruck [Wagon Repair]
Cortney Tidwell – Don’t Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan Pearson Remix) [Ever]
Silver City – Bari Girl (Ewan Pearson Remix) [GU]
Moonbeam – What Dreams May Come [Mezzotinto]
Future Funk Square – De-Mystified (Andy Page Remix) [Default]
The Youngsters – The Third Knife [20:20 Vision]
Radio Slave – Bell Clap Dance [Rekids]
BBE – 7 Days & 1 Week (Rollo & Sister Bliss Remix) [Kosmo]
School started today. Oddly enough, the worst part was getting used to a new math prof. Speed, then, is the order of the day:
– I’m playing at Hush on Friday, January 11th, opening up for Shiloh. You should come.
– NYE was fantastic. John Howard and Death To Sexy rocked Hush, then Dust and I brought down the house at the Sunset Room, and then I went to bed. Then I somehow ended up drinking at a friend’s house at 7 PM on New Year’s Day. Ooops.
– Braeden and I are working on a mix. The ball is in my court for tracks 2 & 3: more as it breaks.
– Ideas: If you were a music student, would you want free webspace from the University, as an online resume / promotion space? What if there were mics in all the practice rooms, with a “post to website” button that would upload what you were just practicing to said webspace? What if there were headphone cues in practice rooms, so you could work on your quartet / quintet / sextet across practice rooms, without needing 037 or 016 to be free? Or do you all just want more practice rooms? (Credit is due to David (?) for the micing practice room idea, which is where all of this started.)
Much to my surprise, I find myself a music student. While I’m not entirely sure how it happened, I can tell you that the School of Music at UVic is a mind-boggling place for a science kid who likes techno to end up.
See what I mean? These are deeply serious people. If you’re a typical music student, you have to audition to get in, you have an appointed lesson for your instrument once a week, you have to play for masterclasses and recitals of all shapes and sizes…and you have to hold down decent marks in five courses. Woosh. I do not exaggerate when I say that the skill level that undergraduates display would rate a master’s degree in, say, computer science.
The music school is also a bit of a cult, or maybe “closed system” describes it better. It lives in this odd, self-perpetuating, historical vacuum, filled with the ghosts of surly German men. These ghosts loom overlarge, watching as music students reproduce their centuries-old melodies and harmonies with such perfection that only other music students will notice their flaws.
Some of these students then become teachers, and go out into the world and indoctrinate small, innocent children into their way of life. A subset of these children eventually end up at UVic as music students and a further subset of these new music students become teachers, and the cycle begins anew. It’s like salmon spawning. Only with more bassoons, more strict counterpoint, and fewer bears in rivers.
God, I love bears. Let me also make it very clear that in addition to loving bears, I don’t think that the cult / conservational aspects of the school of music are a bad thing, even if they can sometimes come on a little strong. I do, however, think that everyone should go down to Hush or Lucky or somewhere and get right crunked out from time to time. A little bit of populism never hurt anyone.
(I would take this chance to write about musical styles as a memetic virus, but that’s neither here nor there. Will get to it later.)
If you’re me and you snuck into all this through the back door marked Music & Computer Science, it can be a little overwhelming, and more than a little humbling. I lack the skill, even after DJing for almost 7 years, to perform at the required level, and Brahms didn’t write any sonatas for laptop and turntable, for some reason Way to go, Brahms. What a dick. (I’ll just have to write them myself.)
