You’re On Fire
Fun band. Fun video.
Character Weekend 02
Here’s the next installment in my series of character pieces. This time I’ve left the Monotrons and instead used an instrument I created using my work-in-progress iPad app for developing synths using RTmix.
From the Archives: Adams & Bancroft
I’m in the process of making my catalog as easily available as possible. I’ll be posting old albums as I have time. First up: my 2004 solo release Adams & Bancroft. Listen for free at SoundCloud. Or, if you’re itchin’ to give me money, get it at Accretions or Bandcamp.
iPod Elevation Duet
This is the sound my iPod makes when it gets together with my Elevation Dock (thanks to a bad cable). Could’t have said it better myself.
Field Note: Changing Floors – Disquiet Junto 0037
My usual process for making field recordings is to carry a microphone around in my pocket and wait for a nice moment to come to me. Since this project required a specific environment I had to come up with a different approach, assumming I didn’t want to spend four days in a department store waiting for the right moment. The strategy I chose was rather opposite of my usual approach which focuses on isolated moments. Instead, I thought I’d move through the chosen space and get a variety of different soundscapes. As it turns out, a large department store is filled with more wind currents than one would think, making recording while moving through the space difficult. The escalator, however, proved to be a relatively calm space so a short trip between floors allowed for a nice way to move through several environments.
This Disquiet Junto project was done in association with the exhibit As Real As It Gets, organized by Rob Walker at the gallery Apex Art in Manhattan (November 15 – December 22, 2012):
http://apexart.org/exhibitions/walker.php/
More on this 37th Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2012/09/13/disquiet0037-asrealasitgets1/
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
Disquiet Junto
News Update
I’ll be participating in The John Cage Variety Show Big Band directed by Miguel Frasconi at The Stone in NYC on Wednesday. It’s part of 12 days of events so be sure to check out the calendar to see what else is happening.
Wednesday, September 5
8 and 10 pm
The Stone
Avenue C at 2nd Street in the East Village
Miguel Frasconi (glass, electronics) Daniel Goode (clarinet) Kathleen Supové (piano) Chris McIntyre (trombone) Cristian Amigo, Richard Carrick (guitars) David Watson (bagpipes) Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon) John King (viola) Erin Rogers (sax) Guy Barash (computer) Shannon Fields (voice) Damon Holzborn (electronicss) special guest TILT Brass.
Celebrating the composer on the day of his birth, 100 years ago. Pieces will include Sonata for Clarinet (1932), In a Landscape (1948), Fontana Mix (1958), Aria (1958), Music for Amplified Toy Pianos (1960), Variations II (1961), Atlas Eclipticalis (1962), Solos from Song Books (1970), Child of Tree (1975), Composed Improvisations (1990), One7 (1990), and an ensemble performance of 4’33” (1952).
Next, in case you missed it, I’ve posted the first small batch of short pieces to kick off a series of character works for solo electronics. This week features all three versions of the Korg Monotron. Future installments will feature iOS software I’m creating and other small noisemaking devices with a focus on simple yet expressive interfaces.
Character Weekend 01
This is the first in a series of small sets of short pieces. This weekend features the Monotron triplets: Monotron, Monotron Delay, and Monotron Duo. These three small bundles of analog joy are much more fun and expressive than their diminutive stature would suggest. I have found them to be effective reminders to keep things simple, so it’s only fitting to let them kick off this series.
Industry
If Karlheinz Stockhausen had started his electronic work with Theremin instead of with Meyer-Eppler’s sinusoidal additive synthesis, then the synthesizer industry wouldn’t be so musically retarded these days.
– Michel Waisvisz (1990)
Burnin’ the Place Down
A smart rant from Chris Randall over at his blog Analog Industries. In all the argument there has been over the past couple of decades about the value (monetary, of course) of recorded music, this is the smartest attitude to for an artist embrace:
As an artist, if you choose to fight this battle over monetary value, know this: you will lose. That is a foregone conclusion. In fact, you have already lost. All of that nonsense with numbers and who’s getting paid and whether life is fair or not is all inside baseball, and the average person (the one ultimately footing the bills, it must be said) couldn’t give two shits. To them, pieces of art are tied to memories and experiences; they are either trying to recapture the emotions they felt when they first experienced the art in a particular context, or trying to create new emotions to go with new contexts. They are willing to spend a certain amount of money, for altruism’s sake, if it’s convenient. (And “convenience” is something we’ll get to in a bit.) But ultimately, the art’s value to them is at a much more internalized place than the high-brain abstract world of monetary worth.
I’ll go one step further, and say that the situation is not even worth grumbling about. In fact, it should be embraced whole-heartedly, and celebrated for the freedom gained.
The takeaway is this:
It falls to you to be as convenient as possible to the Emily Whites of the world. Don’t treat her like a second-class citizen or a thief. She has no fucking idea what you’re going on about with this guilt trip. She just wants to hear that one song that she heard right after that thing happened. Give it to her. Make her FEEL. She’ll remember. Of that, you can be certain.
And the resulting commandment:
Make art.
Put it in front of as many people as possible.
Engage the resulting audience.
Repeat.
It’s worth it to go read the whole thing. It a little like what Seth Godin might say if he were a musician, a potty mouth, and had a bizarre, out of proportion hatred for Cory Doctorow.
It’s Two-thousand and @&$^! Twelve, Dumbass
No I won’t go to my computer to view your content. I don’t care why you’ve chosen not to make your video (or article) available on mobile, that’s where I’ve chosen to view it.
Mutable Instruments Ambika
Here’s a preview of the other upcoming bit of noisemaking gear from Mutable Instruments (the other I posted the other day).
Via Palm Sounds.
Anushri Demo
Both the Anushri (in the video above) and the forthcoming Akimba from Mutable Instruments look very much worth watching. Olivier is a master at doing a lot with a little. My Shruthi-1 and Sidekick are little bundles of analog goodness (or, for the former, analog-digital hybrid).
Black Hat hacker gains access to 4 million hotel rooms with Arduino
With less than $50 of off-the-shelf hardware and a little bit of programming, it’s possible for a hacker to gain instant, untraceable access to millions of key card-protected hotel rooms.
SJS-ONE Arduino-based Synth
SJS-ONE is an open source 8-bit mono synthesizer from Devsound in Sweden that uses an Arduino as it’s brains. Looks to be nicely hackable (i.e. within the reach of the less geeky).