Some Rain Must Fall

There are a handful of unfinished compositions remaining in this project. Maybe I'll release one more. Other projects are calling for my attention. However, I am certain this will be the final piece in the sequence. If The Gulf Between Us opens with the sound of me seated at the piano, Some Rain Must Fall ends with me leaving. But, even before this serendipity, I had intended for this to be the final piece. At about the half way point, I transition to a progression with a strong, upbeat resolution and then ultimately fail to deliver.

One good example of ending an album with a question is 'Secrets of the Beehive' by David Sylvian. The album was clearly intended to end with 'Waterfront'. ('Forbidden Colours' (with its own AWESOME non-resolution) and 'Promise' tacked on the end of various versions of the album notwithstanding). David asks, "Is our love strong enough?" right before the final chords fail to achieve their implied destination.

Recorded the piano on Sunday when my daughter was napping. Recorded the modular synthesizer lines late last night via the French Connection. *yawn*

Some Rain Must Fall by stretta

Some Rain Must Fall by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stretta.com.

The Revenge of the Landscape

thelabsound rocks polygomé like edison rocks mlr.

Behind This Soft Eclipse

This piece is simply piano and voice. It just occurred to me that with both Brood XIV and ATAOIB, there is no MIDI involved at all. Even when I'm using 'electronic' sounds via the modular, I'm performing the lines with the French Connection and capturing the audio directly.

I recorded myself singing last night. I was too lazy to set up a mic stand, and just hand-held the U87 while I recorded. The horror. I haven't sang on a recording since some minor contributions to the Archetribe albums.

I've been phase vocoding elements here and there, but this piece has a lot of it. I'm using SoundHack. I'm also using DubStation by bussing submixes to an aux track, and recording intriguing loops. I wish DubStation had support for the concept of a 'measure' of audio. This composition is in 7/8 and there isn't any sync parameter that lines up with a full bar.

This piece takes a step or two outside the eno/budd vein into something that reminds me of one of the short interludes you might find on a Boards of Canada release. As such, I don't feel it is understood well by itself, but is better served in the context of an entire album, sandwiched between two longer pieces. I guess this is one of the downsides of releasing music bit by bit.

Behind This Soft Eclipse by stretta

Behind This Soft Eclipse by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stretta.com.

I got a nice mention on Higher Music yesterday:

With thirty minutes a day to record, Escape Philosophy created a perfect collection of ambient piano improvisations that remind me quite a bit of Brian Eno, Harold Budd et al. A Towering Achievement of Indescribable Beauty is my favorite album this year and I am known to loop it for days at a time. It is a rare recording that can engage me to such a point of obsessive nirvana; I wished that it happened more often.

Oh, one more thing. If you make videos or know someone who does, I'd love to hear from you - especially generative videos. I'd be happy to provide individual tracks that you can use to derive keyframe information from which offers a lot more possibilities versus working from a stereo mix.

You Do Not Get Far With Silence

Here is the sixth track destined for Brood XIV.

I used the DubStation effect I bought yesterday to create occasional aperiodic delays in both the solo and pointillistic backing tracks.

I wanted to create a synthetic cello section using the French Connection, so I wrote out the individual parts and recorded each individual line. The end result sounds more like some chords hammered out on an Oberheim Expander, which is sort of reminds me of Dreamtime Return, so, that works for me.

The main piano line is processed with a Doepfer A-188 delay, with time modulated with a slow LFO for a heavy chorus effect.

I'm guilty of editing this track. Mostly for length. I cut it from 8+ minutes down to 4:20.

I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words and support.

You Do Not Get Far With Silence by stretta

You Do Not Get Far With Silence by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stretta.com.

Polygomé Ableton Live Tutorial Video

Agargara created this tutorial video to illustrate how to set up Polygomé with Live. This video is in HD, so, better to view the video here, than use the embedded version.

Before It Exists in Fire

I have some new music that I'm waiting to release, but there is a particular effect I want to use. I simulated it here - a sort of repeating delay of a note with a gradually climbing high pass filter in the feedback path. I'm doing some DAW trickery to make this happen, but I think Audio Damage DubStation is what I'm looking for. I'm going to cough up the (very reasonable) $40 and use it when I mix what I recorded this morning.

Hey, you know what sucks about releasing music for free?
Gear still costs money.

Before It Exists in Fire by stretta

Before It Exists in Fire by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stretta.com.

monome 64 iPhone emulation app

Todd Treece has created the first monome emulation application for the iPhone. This application is still under evaluation by apple before it is released, but when it does arrive, the price is rumored to be $3.99 - hopefully the developer can recoup the $99 iPhone developer account cost.


haplome demo from toddtreece on Vimeo.

The Hand That Paused to Gather

Recorded the bulk of this yesterday morning before heading to work. Recorded layers of modular synth via French Connection overdubs last night. This morning, recorded additional solo improv before starting in on what would become 'What Never Was'

Obviously these are mp3s, but I've been bouncing 16 and 24-bit mixes of the results. I wonder if I should offer the uncompressed versions when the cycle is complete.

No new music for a few days after this. Might get some sleep, though. My cat seems to think 4am is a good time to wander around the house, meowing noisily with one of my socks stuffed in its mouth. This sounds exactly how you think it would sound. Weirdo.

The Hand That Paused to Gather by stretta

The Hand That Paused to Gather by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stretta.com.

What Never Was

Most of the time, I don't have any idea what I'm going to play when I sit down at the piano. My usual technique involves recording short loops and playing against that. Today I simply played four bar figures and tried to remember the chord structure as I overdubbed. As usual, no time for second takes.

Recorded this this morning. 8:41 - 8:51am

What Never Was by stretta

What Never Was by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stretta.com.

Must have monome NOW

There has been a slightly sticky, chewy, chocolaty issue brewing on the monome forums.

As a small company that relies on social networks and word of mouth, monome awareness is... clumpy. At the same time, production is also clumpy with runs for each model spaced months apart. Monome understands how many units they can produce annually and it doesn't make sense to change their method of operation. In a nutshell, supply and demand ride very different waves.



The current order system spells out well in advance when the next production run will occur. If you want one, you just have to wait. However, it is a regular occurrence that someone suddenly becomes aware of monome and MUST HAVE ONE RIGHT NOW. This creates the environment necessary for monome scalping. Some individuals have been buying monomes for the sole purpose of turning them for an enormous profit on ebay.

While there is nothing illegal about this activity, it is clearly against the spirit of the monome community, which is rooted in the principles of monome's business practices. There are so many instances where monome could have done x or y and they have consistently sided with the moral, sustainable, community-based choice - even if that choice was more difficult or more costly.

So, what to do? Today monome announced their weekly silent auction. No one has to wait more than a week, the market stabilizes, and, best of all, any additional profit over the normal price goes to the people who designed and built the thing - which is a good thing for the monome community.

For Her to Pass Through

I recorded the piano for this piece on Sunday, during a brief interval when my daughter was asleep and my son was out at his swim lesson. I had been toying around with the idea of overdubbing some French Connection on a piano piece because I was curious about the juxtaposition of something so electronic with something so acoustic. I did this late last night.

I also had been planning on embellishing this piece a bit more, but I wonder if it really needs anything. Perhaps an album of short atmospheric haikus like this could be appealing (like the Sony Eno instrumental box set) and I should leave this piece as is. What do you think?

For Her to Pass Through by stretta

For Her to Pass Through by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stretta.com.

Speed Racer

The trailers and stills for Speed Racer looked very interesting. It looked like a Saturday morning cartoon as viewed from inside the head of a five year old boy. Everything is amped-up, vibrant, more personal as if it is really happening to you. The Wachowski brothers have translated this immersion effect visually.

Have you ever reviewed a show you enjoyed as a child, only to be disappointed by how it held up? All you can see is the cheezy dialog, cardboard characters and cut-rate animation. The magic is gone. The missing ingredient? Time. You're older and cynical and jaded.



I didn't see Speed Racer at the theaters due to overwhelming negative reviews. Surely, people understood what they were getting into, yet, still, it seemed nearly everyone hated it. So, I stayed away.

I finally watched Speed Racer. If there were any doubt in my mind about what kind of movie this was, it was erased with the opening sequence. This is a $110 million movie unapologetically targeted at eight year old boys. If you have a problem with that, it isn't going to get any better.

The Wachowskis could have gone the other direction, treating Speed Racer like the recent X-Men movies, gearing it for an older audience, and softening the anime-feel, but that would be missing the point and it would ultimately gut the original as there are so many elements that would have to be altered or removed in order to survive this type of treatment. It took a lot of guts to do what they did.

I enjoyed it because I found the movie interactive. I became the 'character' of the target audience. In that respect, I didn't find the movie any different from something like, say, 'Sin City' or '300' - not because of the art direction, or the source material, but because the movies themselves are so much better if you imagine yourself to be the target audience. It is perfectly reasonable to refuse to participate in the movie in this matter, believing it to be an unfair expectation. If so, these movies aren't for you, and you'll end up hating them.

If, however, you want to exercise your imagination, and perhaps, your memory, this movie will help you remember the magic of Saturday morning.

Speed Racer [Blu-ray]

Speed Racer (Widescreen Edition)

The Gulf Between Us

I've wanted to do another piano loop album like ATAOIB, but I've been waiting for school to start again so I have an empty house to work in. The kids are settled in, and now I can steal some time in the morning.

I'm going to do this a bit differently. Instead of waiting for a collection and releasing them all at once, I'm going to release them as they happen. This was recorded this morning. The first thing you hear is the sound of my ass sliding onto the piano bench after I hit record. Then I bump the piano. This created an interesting rhythmic loop that I played against.

This is all a first take and only minor editing for artistic reasons (the backwards note lead in at 1:15 and some phrases removed where I overplayed a bit.

Recording occurred between 8:29 and 8:35am this morning.

The Gulf Between Us by stretta

The Gulf Between Us by Matthew G Davidson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at stretta.com.

Plan B ELF Headphone Amp Arrives

It's adorable!

I feel people need to start factoring footprint into their module cost because frames and cases are damn expensive. The standard Doepfer 6U eurorack frame (168 HP of space) costs $530. At that rate, modules pay rent of $3.15 per HP. Plan B ELF modules are all 4HP wide - providing best-of-class return per HP. Compare this with something like the A-127 filter which spreads out over 28HP. That's $88 worth of frame real-estate!

The headphone amp was the final component of my modular that consolidates it into a standalone instrument. With it, and the Tiptop Audio Z5000 digital signal processor, I can flick on my modular and use it without any other support gear.

David Foster Wallace, Dead at 46

According to an Associated Press report, he killed himself, by hanging.

There aren't many authors I've bothered to go see in person, but David Foster Wallace is one of them. I had him sign my first edition hardcover of Infinite Jest, which I subsequently loaned to a neighbor who had some significant chunks of time to pass in bed for medical reasons. They never returned the book (or read it), but I did manage to rescue it from their yard sale a few months later.

The first thing I read by David Foster Wallace was a profile of David Lynch which took place during the production of Lost Highway for Premiere Magazine.

WHAT DAVID LYNCH IS REALLY LIKE. I HAVE NO IDEA. I rarely got closer than five feet away from him and never talked to him. You should probably know this up front.The first time I lay actual eyes on the real David Lynch on the set of his movie, he's peeing on a tree. This is on 8 January in L.A.'s Griffith Park, where some of Lost Highway's exteriors and driving scenes are being shot. He is standing in the bristly underbrush off the dirt road between the base camp's trailers and the set, peeing on a stunted pine. Mr. David Lynch, a prodigious coffee drinker, apparently pees hard and often, and neither he nor the production can afford the time it'd take to run down the base camp's long line of trailers to the trailer where the bathrooms are every time he needs to pee.

So, I immediately liked David Foster Wallace.

David Foster Wallace majored in English and philosophy, with a focus on modal logic and mathematics at Amherst. He graduated with summa cum laude with honors in 1985. He earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona in 1987. He received the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 1997. This is a man who succeeded at everything he attempted - except his stint at Harvard to study philosophy. Interesting.

One of the ways I measure writers is how directly they speak to me. You might be describe this as 'readability' Once you get past the more global considerations, I think readability boils down to differences reader to reader. For myself, I seem to struggle the most with female writers. There is an inherent distance that I have trouble traversing. It almost feels as if the words were translated from another language. It takes more concentration, and my mind fatigues more quickly. This doesn't mean they're bad writers - the problem is entirely on my end. I found David Foster Wallace easy to read. His prose was direct, and easy to parse.

There was a time when I didn't understand the utility of teaching Ballet to young kids until I realized the grace informed everyday movement. Poetry is the same way, the beauty of the cadence, the economy of words. I know this seems ridiculous when one considers the weighty tome of Infinite Jest, but David Foster Wallace reads like poetry to me.

We know writers and artists from their works. Artists don't have to write about something personal for us to feel we know them. We know books. We know music. We extrapolate the differences of one particular source and gather the unique threads. This becomes a model in our brains for the creator. The connection is one way, which is weird, but real.

The thing that is startling to me is how unsurprised I was when I learned he took his own life. It got him. I understood. Part of me wonders if he left world's most awesome suicide note (with a ton of footnotes). But, maybe he already has and we just haven't decoded it. Not that it would have made a difference.

Gawker.com found the following quote from a commencement speech he delivered in 2005 at Kenyon College:

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

How Not To Blow Up Your Modular - episode 14

'Unblowupable' is a word thrown around a lot these days. By popular request, your host, Jacoby Biggleton demonstrates two methods of connecting Analogue Solutions modules to your Doepfer system. Finally, the complete cable path is shown from the bus board, to the adapter board to the module itself.

Enjoy!

Monsterbase has landed

As someone with decades of experience in the area of electronic music, I can say with some authority that smoke pouring out of a modular is usually a bad sign. More on that later.

Those of you who have been following my twitter account already know I have procured one of the first monsterbases to hit the United States. Apparently, they arrive not packaged for individual sale, and analogue haven has the unenviable task of packing these huge things up.



I've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the monster base since it was announced at the Winter NAMM show as I've outgrown my frame and desperately required some room to expand. Another monster case is out of the question - I don't have the space. The monster base is the perfect solution - zero footprint - it occupies the same space my monster case presently occupies.

Overall, I'm delighted. And relieved. More space. More modules. More modular. This is a good thing.

The design of the monsterbase required some creative placement of bus boards, which prospective customers should be aware of. The first, flat row of modules suffers from a lack of depth to keep the overall size down. I applaud this decision. However, this means some modules, even some of Doepfer's own, like the A-154 sequencer controller, may not fit in the front row. Cwejman modules would be right at home in the front row.



The bus board itself is moved up, completely away from the row of modules to maximize the depth available. This means two things. 1) you may need longer ribbon cables. and 2) you can't easily drop a module in the front row - you'll need to take some modules out of the second row in order to access the bus board to plug in the ribbon cable.

A poll was run on the Doepfer mail list regarding the horizontal width of the monsterbase. The original design would have provided equal, clean lines from the monster base to the monster case. However, an overwhelming majority of Doepfer users wanted the ability to stack to two Doepfer portable cases side by side on the monsterbase. This required making the monsterbase a little wider. Personally, I find this a little offensive aesthetically, and of dubious real-world utility, but I'm apparently in the minority.

I have a pair of used Analogue Systems modules I've been waiting for the breathing room to put in. Also, I was slightly unsure about the arrangement of the power adapter and wanted the bus board to contain no other modules just in case the thing blows up. There seemed to be conflicting information on the web about the orientation of the adapter, and I contacted Analogue Haven for advice. I turned on the power and... **FOOM**. My instinct was to simply trace -12v and line that up from the bus board to the adapter to the module, but I was unsure if the adapter board itself did some extreme pin juggling, so I settled on AH's advice.This resulted in a copious amount of noxious magic smoke.



The damage seemed to be minor and I was able to use the -12v tracing technique to properly power the other module. So, I have to find a replacement component for this piece of charcoal on the module PCB, and hope that is the extent of the damage. So, in summary, my advice for connecting the AS adapter board is to use a multimeter to test voltage before connecting the module, or, trace the orientation of -12v. And, as the adapter board PCB is in line on a floating ribbon cable, I'd advise taping the contacts on the adapter board with electrical case to prevent accidental shorting.