Someday, we'll all be artists

Some recent comments on the Coalescence and Luxation video got me thinking.

"I wish all music could have that much syncronicity to it. and project it onto a large wall, and just listen to a bunch of kool tracks like what you made, and then put it in the monome and mix the a/v up.... it would be like fantasia"
- noisemaker

"it made me think of a concept for a new kind of media record label sort of thing."
-soundcyst

Radiohead and NIN have recently demonstrated that consumers are willing to pay a reasonable price for content. This is achieved by bypassing the traditional avenues of distribution. However, many people are wondering how this model will apply to an artist of less-than-superstar status.

The answer is: I don't think it will. A new economy of content will arise, paid for not with money, but with creativity and recognition. The idea that an artist makes something to be purchased, consumed, and never to be altered or changed is feeling old-fashioned to me, and possibly completely alien to generations that follow.

At the same time, we're all creating content. Will this give rise to a nation of dilettantes? Perhaps not. If you strip away promotion and distribution, the only remaining service provided by a record company is filtering. Filtering is increasingly becoming the domain of people who set up content channels. You don't have to randomly search for interesting videos, photos or information, you can find channels that match your interest, and they'll aggregate the good stuff for you. I came across some fantastic new videos when Coalescence and Luxation was added to some channels. I became aware of these channels, due to my recent content creation, and that drove my consumption. Watching the videos, inspired me, circling back to creation. Check out Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake.



Content creators are branching out. Someone who may have considered themselves exclusively a musician may be tinkering in electronics. People who used to exclusively make videos are now making their own music. Information is more easily-accessible than ever, and the tools are amazingly powerful. Consider what is happening in the monome community: you have people from all over the globe teaching everyone else new tricks. Users make software, make music, hack firmware, write tutorials, post videos - or, start new projects like the stribe. It may even spawn new genres of music and at some point, virtuosos will arise.



But this sort of thing works best in an environment of openness, where others are encouraged to build upon and extend your creation. Creative Commons makes possible global media collaboration where artwork is a living, breathing thing, with documented history, and layers of authors.

The desire to share, and the quality of your work will be the currency of the next generation.

Coalescence and Luxation Video

This is an abstract music video for Coalescence and Luxation, I've been working on this video for a while. It was time-consuming because it took a long time to render. Any changes required a lot of waiting - even at low resolutions. It was created by exporting the individual audio tracks from my project and generating key frames from the amplitude for each part. This information was then used to animate a variety of particle generators in 3D space. Each part could generate up to 30,000 particles in a frame.

If you go to the video directly, there are hi-res options unavailable in the embedded version.






This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

vimeo vs. youtube

I'll admit my first exposure to vimeo was a direct result of my interest in monome. They started using the service to present product demos, and the quality definitely looked better than youtube. In my mind, I've married the friendly community atmosphere of monome with the better, friendlier interface of vimeo.

Vimeo certainly beats youtube in the following areas:

• support for high resolution (HD) content
• stereo audio without fuss
• option to download the source (non-transcoded) original video file
• option for content owners to replace an existing video file, while preserving likes, comments, etc...
• real-time status updates as video is uploading and converting
• advanced privacy options, like password protected videos
• post-conversion alerts (they'll email you when your video is ready)
• video information (title, description) can be added while the video is uploading, not before
• more advanced and customizable embedding options

But youtube has a few advantages as well:

• 1G upload limit per video - vimeo is 500MB per week 
• 'Insight' stats
• popularity and community
• API is more widely-supported (iPhone, iPod touch)

I upload videos at both youtube and vimeo. I still support youtube because it is obviously the most popular place for video on the web, but I prefer to direct people to vimeo because, currently, the quality is a lot better. 

More blathering about the value of music

I came across this quote today, " Recorded music is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of an artist." Ouch. Some people seem to have a narrow definition of 'musician'. Musicians are rock bands that play live shows in clubs. Sometimes they record their songs, but recorded music is merely a promotional tool to get people to come to their gigs, therefore they should be free.

Even in the context stated above, I reject the notion that recorded music has no value. However, the main problem is that the narrow definition of what constitutes a musician gets applied to all forms of recorded music - most problematically, types of recorded music that can't be performed live. If all recorded music is free, and all income should be derived from live performance, then where does that leave music that has no live analog? Where does Sgt. Pepper's or Switched-On Bach fit into this model?

The fact of the matter is Recorded Music and Live Music are separate art forms. They're lumped together in our minds for many reasons, but for people who push the idea that recorded music should be free, it is convenient to exclude all other types of musical expression that don't fit into their new world order business model, (which, incidentally, benefits them the most) Will we soon justify torrenting movies for free because they're simply promotional material to drive awareness of actors, who should derive all their income from performing in stage plays?

Within the set of music that can be performed live, there is a much smaller subset of music with venues available that cater to the genre. There aren't exactly a ton of opportunities for live experimental music concerts, and when they happen, the musicians are not coming home with a wad of cash.



What about musicians who don't live near an urban center where there are venues for original, live music? What about consumers under the age of 18 who can't go to clubs? What about composers who write and don't perform?

In other words, some people want to define all music as something that can be performed at a club, in front of an audience of 18-30 year olds. Preferably with guitars and drums. And all musicians should make a living selling t-shirts.

I believe recorded music has value. It simply isn't practical to hire a band to follow you around in your car, walking down the street or while you work out. How would you feel if you lost all the music on your iPod and couldn't get it back? Isn't it worth something?



I'm going to shift gears and touch on Ghosts I-IV. Some people have pointed out that with the Creative Commons licensing, it is technically legal to torrent the whole shebang, not just the first few tracks that were downloadable. This is missing the point. Creative Commons isn't about making something free as in, 'not pay for it free', it is free in that you can reuse and repurpose it.

I feel the gulf between consumers and content creators is disappearing more rapidly than the Antarctica ice shelf. Creative Commons provides an easy way to announce to the world it is ok to use your stuff. Now is the time to get in at the base of the pyramid. Because, the most influential artists of the next century won't be the ones that sell the most units, they'll be the ones who are the most sampled.

Director 11 Now Available To Download

I laughed out loud when I saw this. Does anyone else find it ironic that Adobe would use the world's most creatively bankrupt phrase to sell creativity?



Honestly. Ask anyone you know in marketing what the most cliche phrase you could ever employ, and "take your _blank_ to the next level" should be a top contender. It is a huge joke.

Negativity aside, I'm thrilled Director 11 is released.Download the 30-day demo here.

I wonder how long it will take for an Intel-Mac native version of Shockwave to be widely deployed. They don't honestly believe launching a browser in Rosetta Emulation Mode to be an acceptable solution, do they?

Update: as of March 27th, 2008, an Intel native version of the Shockwave plug-in is now available.

How to speed up your After Effects renderings up to 8x

Check this box:



I'm sure someone at Adobe had a good reason why this should be defaulted off, but right now, I want to punch them in the stomach.

8.5GB Creative Commons sample library now online

This is the sample library that I referred to earlier in this post. The entire thing is now available for anyone to access.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Sound_samples

From the press release: “One Laptop per Child has inspired musicians to donate their sound collections to the children of the world,” said Dr. Richard Boulanger, professor of music synthesis at the Berklee College of Music and the organizer of the Berklee collection being donated to OLPC. “By providing extraordinary access to the resources to play, mix, transform, imitate and create sounds, sound effects, music and audio art works, this donation will enable children with XO laptops to learn about music and sound, and to learn about themselves and their world. This collection will inspire and promote incredible music-making on the XO laptop and will invigorate the creative audio work of all computer musicians.” You can read the full press release here.



Dr. Boulanger then goes on to provide a whole bunch of useful resources worth noting:

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Csound
+ Links to the Csound Activities, the new RPM!, the developer tools (by Victor), and the toots.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Csndsugui
+ Victor Lazzarini's AMAZING new GUI TOOLKIT for Csound Activity Development on the XO
+ Victor has developed a wonderful small collection of tutorial activities with sliders and buttons controlling CsoundXO
- waves - a simple additive synth
- synth - a subtractive synth with USB keyboard control
- playfiles - an 8 track remixer with record capability
- GMplayer - an iterface and instrument for loading and playing any GM file with Csound - using the Avid/M-Audio donated Sample Set

http://www.thumbuki.com/20080317/step-and-funny-talk-for-the-olpc.html
+ Jacob Joaquin's new Activities developed with Victor's Toolkit and his blog and tutorials about the process.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:CSound - some thoughts on Csound for press and others

Here are the links to the XO Bundled Sound Activities 
(including especially the Csound Masterpiece by Jean Piché and Company - TamTam Mini, TamTam Jam, TamTam Edit, and the SynthLab)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tamtam - all Csound - AMAZING - INTUITIVE - POWERFUL - and for Children!

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pippy (Some Csound)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Memorize (Some Csound)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Measure (Making the Csound connection now)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Record  (capturing audio for Csound and Photos for Image2Csound conversion - thanks to Cesare Marilungo's new Opcodes!)

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Draw (paint program which with Image2Csound and Cesare's opcodes - can now be transformed to audio.)

Dear Criminal Masterminds

If you're going to steal a prototype synthesizer from a trade show floor that has yet to be released to the public, you might not want to put it on ebay the following day. kthxbi



UPDATE: I'm shocked to report the brilliant thief has been caught.

Livewire AFG now available for pre-order

Mike Brown has been teasing the modular community with the hotly-anticipated Audio Frequency Generator for... a while now. The initial photos of the module dampened my enthusiasm as eurorack real estate is expensive, so functional density becomes a real economic concern. The AFG, while packed with inputs and outputs, uses the standard Livewire (large) bakelite-looking knobs which gobble front panel area. At 28hp (1/3 of a G3 frame), this module really lets its belt out. I understand the appeal of big knobs, I just feel they belong on big modular formats, not space-conscious ones.

So, my interest was tepid. Until I heard it. It is so animated, it sounds like three oscillators. Built-in sub octave. A very nice pure sine wave. Two of them would be military-grade audio destructo insane-o cheerio. Sound and functionality trump all other concerns. I lined up behind all the others with my credit card in hand. Front panel space be damned, I NEED THIS OSCILLATOR. Pre-orders are now being taken for what promises to be the most heavyweight oscillator available.

I find your lack of faith disturbing

I must have watched the last minute of this exchange six or seven times, but it is best if you watch the entire thing.

Lego Bogen Manfrotto Camera Mount

All my mic stands, shock mounts and mic clips are fitted with quick release connectors so I don't have to thread anything. So, when I got into photography, I quickly ascertained the value of the same kind of system. All my large telephotos, camera bodies as well as my monopod and tripod are fitted with manfrotto RC2 connectors - even my little point and shoot.

The RC2 is a little overkill for a tiny camera like the Canon G7, but I don't mind because fitting all my camera gear with the same kind of mount makes everything interchangeable. Sometimes I actually use the G7 as a camera, but most of the time I use it to grab video. The solid-state recording medium eliminates any acoustically-coupled mechanical noise associated with dragging magnetic tape over a rotary head. The mic is still acoustically coupled to the body, but at least there are no moving parts and motors rattling around inside the body when I'm recording.

There have been times when I thought it would be helpful to have a small hand dolly for the camera, or be able to place the mechanical movement of the camera under computer control. The movement could be recorded slowly, then sped up in Adobe After Effects. So, I'm going to reach for a solution that is close at hand and, as a Lego-nerd, I have a tendency to see a solution to some problems though acrylonitrile butadiene styrene-tinted glasses.





It turns out that the Bogen 3157N plate fits very well on top of a Lego 32532 6x8 Technic Brick. For the uninitiated, there are resources available that allow you to buy parts ala carte. The peeron part link will automatically list sellers that have this part in stock.

All that I had to do was use a Dremmel to grind off the studs and then epoxy the two parts together. Now I can use standard Lego parts to attach to the camera to anything I can dream up, including Mindstorms parts for computer controlled movements.

NEEEERRRRRRRRDDDDS!

Cwejman, Plan B and Cyndustries Sound Examples

Some examples related to my recent post on Cwejman modules. Also, I demonstrate the Cyndustries Saw Animator.




Side view of the VCA-2P

Monome with variable intensity LEDs

Julian's been busy hacking the monome firmware to provide variable intensity LEDs via pulse width modulation. I've been anxiously following his progress as I'd like to see variable intensity make it to production monomes - the application potential is enormous.




Since the video is in the dark, you can't admire the craftsmanship of his kit-built 64, which includes a few more mods like a couple knobs and IR sensors. Nice work, Julian!

My Thoughts on Cwejman Modules

There are many modular formats available today. Some people prefer working with banana jacks and, I really understand the value of this. Having to use a multiple interrupts your patching flow. Almost always you realize you need a multiple after you've already patched from that source. So, you have to unpatch that, insert the multiple, re-patch to the destination then proceed with the additional patch. You have to 'back up' before you can go forward. With bananas, you just drop another plug onto the source and go.

This is annoying, but not enough for me to get over the high cost of entry barrier of Serge, or deal with the fact that there isn't the same variety of modules available or large number of manufacturers supporting the eurorack format. I'm not interested in any of the 1/4" formats for the same reason, but when I started that wasn't as clear as it is today. At that time, it was more of a size issue. I just don't have the space to dedicate to a modular with 1/4" jacks. There were, and possibly still are, a number of people who view eurorack modules as 'toys' simply by virtue of their size.

Unless you see some value in the purity of staying faithful to one manufacturer, best results are obtained when you can draw from a larger pool of options. If you subscribe to this philosophy, by far the best choice of format today is eurorack.

This is a somewhat lengthy preamble to my deep love of Cwejman modules. To be clear, I own a nice mix of modules from a variety manufacturers. I always enjoyed using my modular, but there was a quality of unpredictability that was endearing in some situations, but somewhat annoying in others. So, sometime in the last six months I picked up a used Cwejman VCO-2RM. It was a revelation. Here was a precision that I have not experienced before in this format. This module does exactly what you ask it to do without giving a few suggestions of its own.

Intrigued, I resolved to construct a complete audio path of Cwejman, so I added the MMF-1 Filter and VCA-2P. These were equally astonishing. The MMF-1 filter has the expected high pass, band pass and low pass filters required by any filter calling itself a multimode. In addition, it has a couple very nice double peak modes with variable, CV spacing even though it is technically a single filter. The thing that sets it apart in my mind is how well it responds to audio-rate modulation. A lot of filters turn to mush when you do this, but the MMF-1 provides precision and clarity. The VCA-2P's response to CV is also lightning fast. It is dead quiet, too, with superior signal to noise performance over any of my other VCAs.

The oddball here is the ADSR-VC2. I really didn't need another two envelopes, and it seemed like an extravagance, but they don't come up used very often so I somewhat reluctantly made the purchase thinking I wouldn't lose much if I didn't like it and decided to sell it. Boy, am I glad I did. The ADSR-VC2 is the snappiest, quickest envelope I've ever used - like, in the microsecond range. I guess I'm not alone here. Many people seem to agree with this assessment. Of course, the MMF-1 and VCA-2P respond very well to the output of the ADSR-VC2, but other modules benefit from it as well. For example, the vactrols in my Plan B low pass gate respond VERY favorably when excited by the ADSR-VC2, instantly producing Buchlaesque 'tockiness'



There are some nice touches to the ADSR-VC2. It responds to the Doepfer signal bus for example. The gate 1 input is normalized to the gate 2 input so you can have two envelopes with differing contours firing from the same gate signal without using a multiple - until you break the normal, of course. I love the ADSR scaling input which works great for velocity controlled dynamics. Really wonderful are the log/exp response switches which, in combination with the lin/exp switches on the VCA-2P, produce four different kinds of contours (or 'flavors' of snappiness) from the same ADSR settings.

You may have heard about the build-quality of Cwejman modules. It is uncompromising. They're very shallow, using boards parallel to the faceplate, and all surface mount. The module itself is completely shielded with tiny holes to access calibration trims. The pots feel outstanding and even the knobs themselves are more pleasant to touch than any other module I use.

The functional density is nothing short of astonishing. There is so much crammed into these modules, but crammed is a bad word because it implies an uncomfortable closeness, which I don't feel at all. They're just... dense... like a really intense chocolate.

Every single module has exceeded my already high expectations. I have no reason to believe any of the other Cwejman offerings are of lesser quality. However, I feel variety in a modular is important so, an all Cwejman modular would be as unsatisfying as any system comprised of modules all of one flavor. Eurorack has so many filter options, you could possibly fill an entire monster rack with just different flavors of filter - and why not? They all sound and respond differently.

I only have two quibbles with Cwejman. One is the lack of documentation. This is true for a lot of module manufacturers, so I'm not singling Cwejman out. This is an area where Doepfer should be the example. They provide detailed PDF documentation of all their modules (as opposed to the single page spec sheet at the Cwejman site). The other quibble is a lack of attenuators on VC inputs. The modules are already so dense, I'm not sure where they'd put them, but I'd count on augmenting your Cwejman modules with a few multiples and something like a Plan B Model 9 mixer/attenuator. I don't have one of these, but I'm eyeing it to tame the CV inputs on the ADSR-VC2.

My kitten plays keyboards better than me

David Lovelace posted this out-take from a video he was recording for Sonic State. The best part about this video, IMO, is the fact that when the cat jumps on the keyboard, he doesn't actually bother looking over his shoulder to see what is going on, but simply segues into an impromptu diatribe on the value of cats.



Himalayans came into possession of Dave and myself at nearly the same time, and it is more than a little amusing to find them both aggressively inserting themselves into our videos. At any rate, I felt my cat could do a better job.

Coalescence and Luxation

This is what I've been working on for the past week after I put my kids to bed. The music is realized entirely using my modular - every total element, one monophonic line at a time. The only non-modular element is Battery which I used for the drums. All of this audio was recorded into my DAW and severely processed and edited, but no other synths were used. This is the final version:

AAC (160k 7.2MB)
MP3 (128k 9MB)








This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

If you're not a synth nerd, stop reading now. I'm going to go into mind-numbing detail about each step of the process and provide audio examples of how the piece developed.

Of the modular patches, the four Cwejman modules I own (VCO-RM2, ADSR-VC2, MMF-1 and VCA-2P) served as the core of each patch, and account for about 75% of what you hear in the final product. I really love these modules. I don't believe they're to everyone's taste, but I think they're fabulous.

I was hoping to get to Where Are You? (part I), but the module I was counting on to realize that piece didn't... ah... function properly. So, I have a Flame Clockwork which arrived yesterday as an temporary solution. Hopefully I'll be able to share some of my impressions of this product at that time. Aching to work on music, Coalescence and Luxation started developing.

This piece started inside my head Saturday night as I was putting my daughter to sleep. It begins with a basic patch consisting of two triggers: one every two measures which fires off a long ADSR controlling the cutoff of a high pass filter, and another series of triggers going to a shorter envelope controlling the VCA. This is all Cwejman.

Then I added another patch where the output of a triangle LFO is sampled by a sample and hold, and this is controlling the plan b model 11 filter. The vactrols naturally smooth out the output of the S&H. I really liked how this pattern interacted with the original chord progression.



I left the patch intact. There were several things I wanted to change. 1) put the VCA after the filter to obtain a better signal to noise ratio. 2) record at 24-bit and 3) change the key and clean up the chord progression.

Sunday was interesting. Once the patch was altered and changes made, I could arm the next track then tend to family matters while the system dutifully recorded that pass and stop automatically. So, by the end of Sunday, I had something that sounded like this.



The fidelity had improved, but some of the character was lost, but it would make working on the rest f the piece a lot easier.

Monday evening I started processing the snot out of what I recorded with the Lexicon PCM80, doing all sorts of OCD things like stop recording after every chord change, wait for the delay lines to empty, and record again at the chord onset. Then, I started editing like crazy, creating the glitchy first half of the piece.

Tuesday, I used Battery as a sound source and recorded a drum track. Recorded the track in one take. Quantized, but one take. Rendered each element onto its own track while reading The Amber Spyglass. The drum tracks are the only non-modular-generated element. Vocoded the drum tracks with the existing tracks. Again, did the OCD-delay recording thing. I wish I had a software delay with an automatable delay kill. Spektral Delay did this, I'm not sure if it was automatable, but that wasn't a 'normal' delay, either.



Wednesday night I wanted to add some lines that took notes from the chord progression and trigger accelerating or decelerating patterns. For each line, I selected a different flavor of filter, cwejman MMF-1, plan B LPG, plan B model 11, Livewire Frequensteiner. I used the Cjweman VCO-2RM as an LFO that triggers the short envelope on the ADSR-VC2 since I could voltage control both the frequency and the pulse width - using the long envelope to create longer gates times as the sound progresses.

The composition is taking form, but by the time the original motifs come in around the halfway point, it is sounding too produced. In general, it sounds too rich, with too many layers. I want to cut down the complexity, focus attention on a sound at a time and play a little bit with the perception of meter and rhythm via some extreme editing.



On Thursday evening, listening to the track, the match=true flag goes off in my brain and I'm compelled to drop in The Carpenders "We've Only Just Begun" at a specific spot. It worked and sounded really creepy. I spend the rest of the evening refining this idea for no particular reason. Interesting and weird as this was, I wanted to release this piece as creative commons and didn't want to have any legal issues, so I trashed all this. Ah, well.

Friday night I came to the conclusion that subtractive wasn't the way to go on the first section and decided to re-render the idea using FM. That was ok, but the Doepfer A-137 Wave Multiplier was exactly what I was looking for. I ended up using it on all six tracks. Got everything ready to record and went to bed. Saturday I rendered the results. I spent the rest of the weekend editing audio and playing various processed versions of mix back through the Cwejman VCAs, using a MIDI keyboard as the trigger.

Monday night I created a proper bass patch and passed a mix of the first section into my favorite plate program on the PCM80 and recorded the result. Then I added another pass of drums and processed it though the Malgorithm. After that, some final editing, clean up and mix. At this point I have 7GB of audio data related to this single project.

No more yellow pages, please

Remember Sheryl Crow's joke about cutting down on toilet paper use? Well, here is something that can really make a difference. Like the recording industry, the printed yellow pages seem to be thrashing around, desperately attempting to maintain its place in the world. This is an artifact of the pre-internet age, propped up by steadily dwindling advertising dollars as more and more businesses realize the irrelevancy of the medium.

Yet, they keep coming. By the truckloads. There isn't just one company producing printed business directories. There are several and they're scrambling around attempting to get people to toss the competition's book in favor of their 'newer' book.

Obviously all of this is unnecessary and, in many cases, unwanted. People just accept it because they're used to it. When was the last time you cracked a yellow pages, really? Think about the resources required to produce, deliver and recycle these materials.

Well, it doesn't have to be that way. First, there is paperlesspetition.org - an organization dedicated to providing an opt-out list for yellow pages, but ultimately seeking an opt-in solution.



Since the burden of trash and recycling is on the city, I suggest you contact your city council members and ask them to force producers of business directories to respect opt-out lists and back it up with fines.