Return to Boston

I've posted some photos from my tour around the UK including iDesign09, interface amnesty and leeds expo where my good friends Dr. Nick Rothwell, and Lewis Sykes debuted Peal, a virtual bell tower controlled by fricken laser beams.



I had fun exposing lots and lots of people to the monome.



I even played a gig in Liverpool with my monome 256 and 64.


Photo credit: Gareth Goodison

And I made some new good friends like Jens Heinen of Lichtfaktor.



It was all pretty awesome.

edison... live at love tech

Watching edison perform is always a treat. enjoy!

monoming about the UK

Because tehn, daedlus, edison, makinthenoise, %, ro, and altitude sickness are all occupied with the monomeet in princeton, it was suggested that the EIGTH best representative of monome tour the UK next week. Unfortunately, Nick Rothwell is occupied with his own installation work, so they settled for me instead.

So, starting Wednesday, September 23rd, I'll be running around the UK doing monomey things and may even play a set or two which is very rare indeed.

Wednesday, Sept 23th
At Musion Academy.

Thursday, Sept 24th
At i-Design09. Sometime in the afternoon I'll give a short presentation.

Friday, Sept 25th
At Expo Leeds Unconference. Presentation on the monome.

Saturday, Sept 26th
At Abandon Normal Devices, Liverpool. Hob nob. Early evening performance.

Tuesday, Sept 29th
At Old Spitalfields Market, where we'll take over a small section and wave monomes at the unsuspecting public and possibly subject them to a performance in the early evening.



I can't decide out if this photo of the Dell Mini 9 and monome 256 makes the dell look big or the monome look small.

UPDATE: I should note that all this is preliminary and subject to change. Check my twitter feed for updates.

Madrona Soundplane A

A friend of mine recently pointed this out to me; the Madrona Soundplane According to their website, the Soundplane A transmits x, y and pressure data at about 1000 samples per second. THAT IS ALL I NEED TO KNOW.

It isn't available for purchase and they say it is done when it is done, so don't bother asking. In the mean time, you can dream up interesting ways to abuse this thing.

feignroom

I haven't released anything a capella in over a decade. Solo multitrack a capella is one of those things you can't perform live, which is one reason why I believe recorded music and live music are separate art forms. However, the idea of performing a polyphonic a capella piece live is still an interesting challenge. Of course, one can use delays or looper hardware, but I've often found the results lacking interesting compositional structure.

The recent Imogen Heap on David Letterman video got me thinking about performing an a capella piece in conjunction with a monome. The goal was to use just the monome and a microphone. No other gear or touching a computer is allowed. Also, no sequencers running backing tracks. This is somewhat of a challenge. I'm using a combination of diatonic harmonizing, phrase building, live vocals, sampled phrase triggering (vocals I recorded for this performance) and sort of layer this whole thing in real time through the monome.

I recorded this as a two camera shoot - a Canon 5DmkII with a lens baby pointed at my head... well... the mic, and another video camera pointed at the monome so you can see what my hands are doing.

Black and White

Star Wars was a great movie for a kid. You knew, you really knew who the bad guy was without a doubt because he was dressed in black from head to toe and wore a frickin' cape. Likewise, you knew who the good guy was because he's an uppity farm kid from the middle of nowhere and dressed in white. These are concepts a seven year old can understand. Why is it, as adults, we can't transcend absolute dichotomies?

The issues we face today are way more complex than that. I'm convinced that in politics, the winning strategy is to be able to define your position in seven words (or less). It doesn't have to be true, it just has to be easily-understandable. Because, that is all we have time for as a country. If your position requires any nuance or additional explanation whatsoever, you've lost.

The RIAA's recent update to Music-Rules! Copyright curriculum encourages an absolutist viewpoint. The program teaches that one should never copy a creative work without permission from the copyright holder, but makes no mention of fair use. Obviously this omission is in the RIAA's interest, but on a more simple level, an absolute message is easier to understand. The little details confuse an already confusing issue. If your goal is propaganda, you need to be simple and direct. (Just say no!)

Copyright law in the US has changed a lot over the years, usually following the modernization of corporate interests. Copyright is out of sync with artists today who are armed with new tools and distribution methods. Legalese is dense and difficult to understand because it is trying to formally codify an inherently chaotic and unpredictable system. It is like grading a fugue. If you follow the rules properly, you'll get an A. If you don't, your music has a 'mistake' and points are subtracted. Copyright law has to be black and white and specific because it isn't possible to define the grey areas. Personally, I feel sampling a four-bar loop of a popular song, thus cashing in on the nostalgia of the original, merits some royalties. Something like John Oswald's plunderphonics, which uses hundreds of small snippets of audio from disparate sources, does not. Try codifying that in legalese.

There must an evolutionary advantage to explain our hard-wired love of dichotomies. These berries will kill you. These will not. Simple rules are a form of data compression and simple memes propagate with fewer errors. As a species, we like our absolutes, it makes life easier to understand.

Unfortunately, this also makes us vulnerable to exploitation.

What happened to the Ultralite mkII?

The original MOTU 828 used hardware patchthru to get around input monitoring latency. This (Cuemix) was a low-tech, but effective method of avoiding round trip input monitoring latency by patching the analog signal directly into the monitor path. The downside of this method is routing flexibility. You couldn't, for example, patch the inputs 5-6 into outputs 3-4 and outputs 7-8 for that, you need a mixer.

The 828mkII added a digital mixer (known as Cuemix DSP) inside the interface itself which enabled you to arbitrarily route any input to any pair of outputs. Multiple mixes consisting of levels, panning, output assignments were all programmable, from the software or the front-panel interface, (or a Mackie Control surface). Since all the processing was taking place inside the interface itself, no host CPU power was expended on input monitoring. This allowed DAWs to record at higher buffer settings, but without input monitoring latency while retaining routing flexibility. It also enabled the 828mkII to function as a standalone mixer.

MOTU's FireWire audio interface line was expanded to include the lightweight Traveler interface and the original Ultralite. All of these models included the Cuemix DSP mixer. The original 896 and 896HD (double rack format, with eight mic pres) came out before Cuemix DSP.

Cuemix DSP was extended with internal effects (reverb, compression, EQ), completely redesigned, and christened Cuemix FX - the third generation. The 828mk3 was the first interface to get the Cuemix FX treatment. The Traveler-mk3 and Ultralite-mk3 followed. So, those interfaces never saw 'mkII' hardware revisions.

Cheap mic shock mount replacement elastic

I'm still attempting to move forward on the complicated monome 256 performance piece. I've discovered the elastic on the shock mount for my Neumann U87 is shot so I had to improvise a solution. I'm sure a little searching online would yield affordable replacement bands, but I don't have time to wait around for a delivery, so a trip to the drug store yielded some suitable elastic hair bands. (Scünci 58724-A, in this case).

The Scünci was slightly bigger than I needed (easily solved), but it was available immediately, yielded four sets of replacement bands and is three times cheaper than a single 'real' set.

Change and Die

Like a lot of people, I've thought about what is happening to the music industry, and read a lot of opinions on-line. There is the usual record company rhetoric and the usual music piracy rhetoric, all of which we've seen a thousand times. Yesterday, David Kusek compared the record industry to the encyclopedia industry.

When I was a kid, my father had a summer job going door to door selling Comptons Encyclopedias. He would carry a couple of these huge books under his arms and try and get the husband or wife to buy the complete Comptons collection for the kids. This was big business and my dad made a healthy living during the summer.

I'll be you can figure it how it goes from here, but it is best to read the entire post. Note that this insight is equally applicable to TV, movies, newspapers and other print media, etc, etc...

These prices have really gotten out of hand

I'm really happy you paid $150 for that Arp Odyssey back in 1992. Good for you. That was (checks calender) 17 years ago. I remember 1992. The Korg M1 was the hot keyboard to have and anything without MIDI was useless. Analog was seriously out of fashion. It might have been the very bottom of the market.

A lot has happened since 1992. A revival in the interest of analog. DAWs that allow for affordable multitracking. And ebay. Suddenly, the value of a niche instrument is no longer limited to potential customers in the immediate neighborhood.

But more importantly, your idea of how much something is worth isn't the same as my idea. Or some guy in Japan's idea. I'm sorry if the idea of someone selling an Odyssey for $1000 offends you, but maybe that is how much it is worth to him to hold on to it. If someone else out there feels it is worth $1000 or more for them to own the instrument, that is entirely up to them. Supply of vintage instruments is fixed, there aren't going to be any more. Demand is fluid.



I don't personally feel an Odyssey represents $1000 of utility, so I'm not going to buy it. If you feel the price is too high, you are also welcome to not buy it. Personal utility, or the value the tool brings to your process, is only one factor. Some people have other reasons for buying which you may or may not feel are valid. Nostalgia, for instance. An irrational belief in the inherent 'magic' of an instrument, and so on. Fortunately, it isn't up to you do judge which reasons are valid and which are not.

Some people feel aggravated by collectors 'hoarding' instruments. This is an issue I've touched on in the past, and it is a sentiment I still have difficulty understanding when there are such great instruments currently in production that are affordable and sound amazing. I encourage everyone interested in vintage instruments, to support the great number of individuals who are making the future classics, today.

What Synth Should I Buy?

This question gets asked a lot. I'm sure it is the same for any industry. (What camera should I buy?) The more astute will follow up their question with a description of what they'd like to accomplish. Without this information, the question is too open-ended to contemplate. I find it perplexing that many people don't have an idea what they want to do, they just know they WANT it.

Open-ended product lust drives the economy to a large degree. iPods only became really big after they transcended their gadget utility to become a fashion accessory, but, back to synths. If someone is asking, it is safe to assume they're interested in a hardware synth. For the most part, recommending a synthesizer is about as useful as suggesting a girl/boy-friend. My advice? Don't.

There are a few scenarios where a hardware synth is warranted. None of them begin with the question, "What synth should I buy?" If you're asking this question, then I recommend you start with software.

If you buy a computer, chances are there is something pre-loaded that will get you started. Mac users get Garage Band, an amazingly capable product. Of course, you'll need a keyboard to control these instruments. Maybe you can find an old MIDI keyboard and add a MIDI interface, but when there are options like the M-Audio Prokeys Sono 61 I'm not sure you'll end up saving much money.



If you've graduated out of Garage Band into something like the affordable Logic Express or premium Logic Studio, you'll find yourself with a complete production suite AND a whole slew of innovative instruments that will keep you busy for ages. Logic is Mac only, but Windows users can choose from a bunch of cross-platform applications such as Cubase and Live Suite as well as the windows-only Sonar.

The Native Instruments Komplete bundle is instruments-only, and packs a huge punch for a reasonable price. Komplete includes Reaktor if you're into the idea of building custom instruments out of smaller components.

These suggestions provide a huge amount of exploration and learning potential for a price much lower than a single hardware synth and there are many many more options out there, including free or inexpensive offerings from smaller developers.

Development halted

I'm developing a fairly elaborate performance-piece using nothing but samples of my own voice, augmented by a microphone and some real-time vocal processing and looping. The goal is to execute this piece exclusively via the monome and video-record the result.

I'm doing this by creating a purpose-built Max patch, largely by cobbling together existing applications with some custom performance-oriented glue. All this is getting routed into DP so I can record the individual streams and perform mix adjustments on the recorded tracks.

Everything was going well enough until I maxxed-out my CPU. When working with complicated recording projects, usually I can juggle things around to finish, but since this is a real-time piece, I'm pretty much boned.

The easy, simple, fix is to buy a new computer. My existing computer is, admittedly, old. However, I can't afford a new computer. The reason I'm saying this is as soon as I hit the CPU-ceiling, I was reminded of the gentleman on the Analog Heaven mail list, who explained he just bought a new computer, and was wondering if someone could hook him up with a pirated copy of FL Studio.



Readers of this blog know I make things. One of the things I make is software. Music software, in fact. Not FL Studio, but music software is what feeds my family and enables me to do things like buy a computer for my personal use - which is what I use to make some of the software (and other things) I freely give away to the monome community and elsewhere.

So, to summarize, the music software pirate can afford a new computer, and the music software creator can not.

Obama's Indoctrination Speech Summary

As you know, a number of people are enraged about Obama's speech tomorrow, claiming he is 'indoctrinating our children'. Some have suggested keeping kids at home on September 8th. If you can't take the time to read the speech itself, I suggest this visual summary generated by wordle to get an idea of what kinds of concepts these people are afraid of.

Malaysia: Sand Bubbler Crabs

One morning, on the beaches of Langkawi, I noticed these fractal-like patterns in the sand. At first I thought it was caused by an impression of seaweed, but upon closer inspection, the patterns were convex, not concave - in fact - the patterns were hundreds of tiny little spheres of sand. There was always at least one clear path to a hole in the sand. If I stayed still long enough, eventually these tiny little crabs - about the size of a fingernail - climbed out of the holes and began their work.

The crabs are so small, that it is actually fairly difficult to observe what they're doing with the naked eye. This seemed like a good opportunity to try capturing video with my macro lens. I didn't have a tripod, so I found a piece of driftwood and rested the camera on it, laying down prone behind it.

I'd never personally seen anything like it before. These are Sand Bubbler Crabs and they're sifting through huge amounts of sand in search of detritus. The waste sand builds on their head and they kick off the ball before they can't see over it.

The footage was interesting, but the camera audio was not. Sometimes I'd hear some interesting Malaysian insect noises and pull out my iPod to record it. I brought these recordings home and re-created the sounds on my modular. The other option I seriously considered was overdubbing "OM NOM NOM NOM OM NOM NOM NOM NOM" at various pitches and editing that in.

Korg Resurrects the Wavedrum

This is unexpected great news. The original Wavedrum was a fabulous instrument, and quite rare. As such, they go for silly amounts on ebay. The Wavedrum is not a MIDI drum pad, but a drum head and array of internal sensors that translate the physical movement of the drum surface to sound via elaborate DSP shaping. You can hit it, slap it, scratch it, or yell at it and the drum responds in a realistic manner. Nearly 15 years have passed, and DSP technology has improved, so the new Wavedrum should be even more inspiring.

Imogen Heap Uses Polygome on Letterman

I have returned from Malaysia and am currently attempting to unbury myself. While I knew internet access would be spotty, my primary means of contact, a Dell Mini 9, died about halfway through (the SSD is borked). From that point, the blogging stopped abruptly, and I was limited to my iPhone. Even so, I was able to keep track of some RSS feeds, including the monome forum, where I found a thread about Imogen Heap playing a 256 on Letterman. From there, I was able to pull up a video on youtube, and see what I believed to be the characteristic blinking of polygome 64 on a quadrant of the 256. This really made my day. The following morning in the hotel lobby, the first music I heard was "Let Go"

This video has been posted in a number of places since, including Synthtopia, where a commenter confirmed the role of polygome in the performance.