As Reel As Reel Gets

If you’re like me and came up through the trenches of analog sound recording, you may appreciate this:

In my audio classes, students like to do wild things with sound by clicking on plug-ins and software add-ons, unaware that many of the sonic effects that delight them so (pitch, delay, echo, flange) were originally created by physically manipulating magnetic tape recorded and edited on reel to reel machines. This is a generation who’s probably never held a cassette tape or back-cued a vinyl 12-inch, so they have no memory of rocking the reels or anchoring 6 foot tape loops with mic stands and grease pencils. Since those days of jump-cutting with a bloody razor-blade are long gone, I was tickled to find video of this interactive sound installation by Signal to Noise that incorporates strands of pre-recorded magnetic tape:

To quote the video’s accompanying information: “As the glove comes in contact with the tape, sound is generated and can be manipulated via touch and movement… the pre-recorded sound on the tape is a random collage of compiled material including a range of musical styles & found recordings. This piece is informed by works such as Nam June Paik’s Random Access Music and Stockhausen’s tape experimentations as well as the notion of using analogue tape as an instrument.”

I was not able to find out much about the artists who created the piece, other than finding their project blog, Signal to Noise, so you can see more on the development of the installation there.

But since the artists make mention of tape experimentation and musique concrete, let’s go back in time to 1979 with the BBC and see what creating aural montage with tape splicing was like (bonus points for the Doctor Who theme, of course):

As much as I love my software and computers, there are times when I do miss physically man-handling sound, chopping up and twisting the tape, dragging it past the play-heads, threading it backwards through the pinch rollers, all without benefit of a visual waveform as a guide. Best thing was wearing discarded pieces of blue editing tape as a fashion accessory. What a crap-shoot it was most of the time, but many happy accidents occurred as well. When I was done with a sound edit or mix, I knew those plastic reels contained real blood, sweat and tears, not just eye-strain and a vague headache. Really, the only thing I don’t miss is nicking my fingers with the razorblades, but I still have the old scars to remind me.

- Jocelyn

Synth Britannia, When Britannia Waived the Rules

Now THIS really makes me want to bust out the dark eyeliner and dive deep into the stacks…

Synth Britannia from the BBC: “A documentary following a generation of post-punk musicians who took the synthesiser from the experimental fringes to the centre of the pop stage.”

According to the BBC’s fantastic info page (which includes video interviews, blogs and a wonderful track listing), the program aired last month, but through the miracle of the interwebs, we all can relive the salad days of synth pop. Here are the first 2 sections, and the rest can be found in the related videos column on YouTube:

This totally reaffirms my nerdy childhood love for all those Kraftwerk and Gary Numan records. Taking the punk aesthetic & applying it to machines, the artists from this era were pioneers in pop music and musical technique. Everything I hear in this film sounds as fresh and exciting now, as it did on the wonky cassette player I had as a kid. I doubt the “electro-indie” stuff playing in Urban Outfitters and on Gossip Girl will last as long. It’s a history lesson for trendoids who think they’ve re-invented the wheel.

Thanks to the good people of MAKE Magazine online for tipping everyone off to all this synthy joy.

- Jocelyn

A Hard Drive’s Night

At last month’s MMiX Festival, on the Oct. 9th night of concerts, a flock of laptops descended upon the main space at Theaterlab and “sang” some of the most enchanting machine music I’ve ever heard.

That’s probably an odd image but it does stick in my mind as a way to describe what it’s like to see Dan Trueman and his Mini-Laptop Orchestra perform. I hadn’t really heard a bunch of computers chirp, warble and drone in harmony before.

This group of 8 MacBook musicians was assembled by Dan Trueman, founding member of The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk). They’re a subset of PLOrk who performed pieces specifically composed for the unique sound of the laptop orchestra. After all, they can’t really duplicate a real orchestra doing the William Tell Overture. They were joined by Eric Beach and Josh Quillen of So Percussion, and the sweet sounds of Dan’s Norwegian fiddle which resulted in a striking combination of futuristic computer sounds and vibrant acoustic instrumentation.

Below you can listen to the Mini-Laptop Orchestra’s whole set from the MMiX Festival, which featured the following compositions:

Blinky by Rebecca Fiebrink

Bells and Whistles by Michael Early

Beesch by Jascha Narveson and Boom Dinger by Sean Friar and Cameron Britt

Goodnight by Josh Quillen

Quick note on how the laptop orchestra makes music: the orchestra’s members manipulate audio using the computer’s own sensors that detect pressure, velocity and spatial position. Tilting the computer, striking the touch-pad or keys can bend or shape the tones or notes being produced. The musicians use multi-sided speakers which transmit audio in all directions to simulate the way a traditional instrument might emit sound. You can find out more about PLOrk and hear a lot more of their music on their web-page at http://plork.cs.princeton.edu/.

- Jocelyn

Guitarma Chameleon

Instead of spending thousands of bucks and clearing a ton of floor space to house your personal arsenal of guitars…what if all you needed was ONE guitar and a drawer-ful of sound-cards to get as many different axe sounds you wanted?

Well, I’ve been looking at this project from the MIT Media Lab created by Amit Zoran with instrument-maker Marco Coppiardi. It’s called the Chameleon Guitar, and essentially it’s a guitar body with neck, strings and frets. However, the heart of the guitar body is a swappable soundboard. You can change it to different sound boards made of various kinds of wood, or other kinds of materials. Electronic pickups attached to the soundboard gather unique information about the  insert’s response to the vibration of the strings, which is then fed into computer algorithms that can use that data to simulate the sound of different shapes and sizes of resonating chamber.

As the creators say, they can make a guitar sound the size of a mountain…or a mouse. Gibson Dreadnought? Baby Taylor? Sure. This could provide incredible flexibility for a guitarist in performance situations, as switching instruments would take 10 seconds and be as easy as popping in a new soundboard.

The video above might be Zoran’s first proof of concept video posted on YouTube, but if you check the MIT news page, there’s much more detailed information and updated video available at this link: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/chameleon-guitar-0203.html

Seriously, wouldn’t you have a lot more room in your apartment if you had a Chameleon?

- Jocelyn

Max for LIVE

Just a word that the Max for LIVE public beta is now available for download:

http://www.cycling74.com/downloads/maxforlive

Have at it!

Fiery Redhead vs Pyro Punks

When I heard that Kathy Supove was going to be performing with Toy Killers at the Stone on Halloween, I thought, “Toy Killers? Hmm…might be before my time.” I think I was still playing with toys when these guys were in full swing during the late ’70s and early ’80s. So I set off to see if I could find out more about them.

Lo and behold – YouTube has everything you know? – there’s a video trailer for a CD of unreleased Toy Killer material that came out last year. The band was/is made up of madmen percussionists Mark E. Miller and Charles K. Noyes, who apparently liked to literally tear it up and burn it down during their downtown performances. Mayhem ensued!

The pyromaniac pair made some industrial punk, no-wave noise with a host of downtown musicians like Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Nicky Skopelitis, Bill Laswell, Arto Lindsay and the Golden Palominos. Actually, you can listen to a bunch recent demos from Miller and Noyes on their MySpace page. They sound just as clangy, buzzy and aggressive, but I didn’t hear firecrackers or blowtorches going off. Fire codes are a bit different these days, but it will be perfect Halloween fun to see Kathy (ahem, Kathleen) Supove go head to head with this infamous duo.

- Jocelyn

Monome-Nucleosis

One of the most prominent new musical tools I saw in use during the MMiX performances and workshops last month was the Akai APC 40, a controller with buttons, knobs and sliders that was created specifically to work with Ableton LIVE.

The APC hasn’t been out that long, but already Ableton users have developed some far-out finger skills on the device, which almost remind me of keyboardists or guitarists with that kind of high speed dexterity on their own instruments. Some examples:

You could say the APC 40 is similar to the very popular monome, which made it’s first appearance on the electronic music scene as early as 2005. But the monome does not include knobs or faders, using just the minimal grid of backlit buttons on a square box, which is an open-ended interface that can be configured as toggles, groups, or sliders for pretty much any audio application. At this point, the active community of monome users and developers has started using the device for more sophisticated open source video, text and game applications.

Not to be left out in the cold, Novation releases their own Ableton controller this month. It’s called the Launchpad, designed to work with Ableton:

The Novation design seems to split the difference between the APC and the monome, but it probably won’t be as open as the monome. I haven’t found anything solid yet on whether it will work with anything other than Ableton, but I expect someone will figure how to hack it. But the basis for all these controllers are those backlit chicklets, like it’s the most natural musical act to press something and make sound, whether it’s keys, frets, pedals or silicone buttons.

- Jocelyn

Getting Scientific at the Stone

A tip of the hat to a friend of MMiX who’s got some special performances coming up…

Elan Vytal (a.k.a. DJ Scientific) will drop a set tonight, Thursday, Oct 29 at The Stone in NYC, busting out the turntables and laptop to perform as the group LB (Pound) with electric violinist, Matt Szemela (a.k.a. String Theory). Elan and Matt have been cooking up an eclectic mix of urban beat juggling and melodic string popping that blends all kinds of underground and concert hall sounds in one high energy performance. It’s a rockin’ house party turned high art and you won’t want to miss it.

Also, on NOVEMBER 8 at 3pm, Elan Vytal performs at the Flea Theater’s Music With a View series curated by the great Kathleen Supove. The event is called “Instruments of Your Dreams”, a showcase of various artists working with unusual musical instruments. It features performances by Phyllis Chen (toy piano), Judy Dunaway (balloon), Doug Van Nort (laptop ensemble), Elan Vytal (turntables) and guest moderator, Ralph Farris (composer/arranger/violist of experimental indie string quartet, Ethel).

You may know that Elan Vytal is a long-time collaborator of acclaimed violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) and a member of DBR & The Mission. Both artists recently performed together for a First Fridays event at WNYC’s Greene Space. Here’s a taste of that night’s jam which highlights Elan’s skills on the turntables:

- Jocelyn

Ben Neill’s “Inevitable Improvisations”

“The question for me has been what are the most important aesthetic tendencies to emerge out of the recent landscape of digital musics and media?” – Ben Neill

http://vagueterrain.net/journal15/ben-neill/01

Check out Ben Neill’s recent article in the new .microsound edition of the online journal Vague Terrain. In it, Neill discusses the importance of improvisation in the various approaches to creating live interactive digital music and art.

In Case You MMiXed Out the First Time Around

Wondering why in the world you missed some of the incredible performances at the MMiX Festival 2 weeks ago? Well, I’ll help you redeem yourself because there are several opportunities to see some of those composers and musicians who participated in MMiX at some deeply cool gigs this week:

***First off, composer, violinist and loop-meister, Todd Reynolds, performs with his string quartet and The Meredith Monk Ensemble TONIGHT at BAM’s Next Wave Festival. To quote Todd’s own description of this special performance:

“Songs of Ascension is Meredith Monk’s seminal work for her own vocal ensemble and string quartet.  It’s the first time Meredith has used string quartet as part of a larger work, and of course, as Meredith is one of my most-revered interdisciplinary and musical heroes, I am honored to be a part.  Early on, Meredith asked me to collaborate with her on this project and to put together the perfect string quartet team with great-spirited, flexible, excellent players, willing to seek virtuosity in the clear and simple, willing to memorize an hour’s worth of music and treat physical space as if it were the greatest musical score…”

Performance starts at 7:30pm and you can find out more about it at the BAM website or visit Todd Reynolds’ own blog, right here.

***Tomorrow night, Thursday, head downtown to The Stone for MMiX Festival curator, Patrick Grant, who will perform at 8:00pm. After rocking it out ensemble-style at MMiX, Patrick takes it down a notch for this appearance. Here’s the plan, according to Patrick’s Facebook event:

“PATRICK GRANT: IN BOCCA AL LOOPER – Armed with a keyboard, guitar and a laptop, I’ll be performing a solo set of music that grooves to the looping and layering of angular interlocking riffs, mash ups of both urban and world beats, and pop timbres used in the service of avant tonality. A sonic soup for the mind, body AND spirit. I hope you can make it. More info at http://www.patrickgrant.com.”

The Stone is located at the corner of Ave. C and East 2nd St., NYC (F train to 2nd Ave.), $10 at the door. The Stone is curated in the 2nd half of October by Kathleen Supové and its artistic director is John Zorn. If you stick around for the 10:00pm show, you can also catch Bora Yoon performing in HUMAYUN KHAN & GUESTS: Humayun Khan (Indian classical vocal improvisation, Afghan sufi) Said Tinat, Shahin Shahida (guitar), Bora Yoon (vocals, tanpura), Haroon Alam (tabla, percussion) Douglas J. Cuomo (guitar, electronica).

***Finally, get the weekend started right with Joshua Fried/Radio Wonderland performing at free103point9’s annual fall festival of radio art and experimentation at St. Mark’s Ontological Theater:

“Radio Wonderland: Joshua Fried turns the very bits and bytes of commercial culture into the driving backbeat to our dance of independence. In this developing solo, Fried abstracts live FM radio with laptop, electrified shoes hit with sticks, and a computer-hacked steering wheel (from a Buick 6).”

That’s Friday at 8:00pm, $7-$10 on a sliding scale. Shake a leg in the aisles people!

So that’s it, what a wealth of performances to expand your mind and entertain your senses! Don’t say I never tipped you off to any of the cool stuff.

More MMiXers to come…

- Jocelyn