Amoeba Crunch

Mantra

2009-01-27T09:09:00.003-05:00

local film weirdos
film local weirdos
weirdos' local film
local weirdos' film
film weirdos, local
weirdos film local

The Casual Distractions

2009-01-13T22:12:00.003-05:00

Amoeba Crunch has teamed up with Instruction Shuttle (aka Lasers Shoot From Our Fangs) to form THE CASUAL DISTRACTIONS. Check us out at http://www.thecasualdistractions.com/. We've posted over 20 hours of electronic improv and counting! Beats, loops, vocoders, filter sweeps, shortwave radios, unidentifiable effects, big squarewave leads: we have it all except the Daft Punk helmets and those are on order. Coming soon: an index to help you find the good bits, like TC quoting the Cure's "Love Song" and JR accidentally sampling radio ads for Budweiser and John McCain. Classic stuff!

The Aleph Null Limited Edition

2008-12-23T06:27:00.008-05:00

Aleph Null, catalog number L9 314, is now available in an extremely limited edition of tangible packages. For just ten U.S. dollars you receive an individually numbered, hand stamped CD containing all seven tracks in full quality audio; a unique, handmade, biodegradable CD case constructed from recycled materials; new, extensive liner notes; and an obi band to hold everything together.

You may purchase it from this page using PayPal, which allows you to pay with most credit cards. Available while supplies last.

We are pleased that this package so well reflects the music within. Both have a beautiful, low key, DIY aesthetic that relishes unpredictable human touches. Corners are left rounded off. Edges do not meet at a crisp ninety degrees. There is ample evidence of scissors, fingerprints, and glue. The package was clearly born of a large mess that someone had to clean up.

The Aleph Null special edition is exclusive to amoebacrunch.com.

It's A National Scandal

2008-11-24T17:13:00.004-05:00

Many Radio Shack stores no longer stock solderless breadboards. That's like McDonald's not stocking hamburgers, except it's bad.

There is a new Amoeba Crunch release in the works, though not really. That statement will probably be clear in time.

Our Thoughts On the Future of Neoconservatism

2008-11-05T08:20:00.002-05:00

Let's Get Metaphysical

2008-10-21T21:10:00.009-04:00

It is obvious a person's consciousness is irrevocably tied to his or her physical body. Consider how these things influence the sense of self. Perhaps you can attest to some by personal experience.

Too little sleep
Fasting, or skipping meals
Shock and confusion after sustaining a serious injury
Too much alcohol
Too much coffee
Legal, mood altering drugs administered by a doctor after surgery
Legal, mood altering drugs administered by a doctor to treat depression
Illegal, mood altering drugs administered by yourself
The adrenaline rush during a confrontation
Distress caused by physical pain or discomfort
Delerium due to (oh, let's pick something..) vitamin B12 deficiency
A stroke
Alzheimer's disease
Old age

Some have temporary effects, some permanent, but clearly they all are physical in nature and all affect your "I" (as DRH calls it), some profoundly so. Who am "I" but a particular walking, talking bag of meat? But that begs the question, which "I" would I be without this earthly body in heaven, hell, purgatory, sheol, hades, or jannah?

On the other hand, we are not simply crude masses of atoms. To be strictly reductionist about it, 99% of the human body is composed of just six elements. Yet, some blend of pure oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, hydrogen, and calcium doesn't make me or you. Nor are "you" a result of the specific cells that compose you. The average age of your body's cells is just 10 years. So unless you are rather young (and precocious, reading this -- hey, get your mom's credit card and buy my record), you are not even the "you" you were during the Clinton administration.

So, who are "you" and who am "I"? Science suggests that "we" are nothing more or less than uncommon, persistent patterns of common physical matter. If that isn't pure magic, I don't know what is.

Fun With Traffic Sources

2008-10-21T13:28:00.005-04:00

This site gets an inordinate number of hits from people...

reading our singular monograph on mirror images,
reading our singular monograph on the JamMan,
googling various forms of "alternate worlds" (perhaps hoping for a desperate, pseudoscientific escape from the current economic crisis?), and
googling "Instant Arsenic Death".

Now Introducing the Clear Crayon

2008-10-20T22:35:00.003-04:00

Happy Birthday

2008-10-10T19:31:00.002-04:00

to Us. Two years. And what would a birthday be without a present?

Separated at Birth

2008-10-02T22:14:00.002-04:00

Aleph Null

2008-09-05T06:20:00.002-04:00

I am pleased to announce a new album, Aleph Null. It is 70+ minutes of completely spontaneous electronica, each track recorded live in a single take with no overdubs. You can download it for free from the link above.

It's a departure, aesthetically and sonically, from earlier Amoeba Crunch recordings, and represents a new focus on live performance.

It's also the harbinger of a cool new project, a collaboration with Todd of Instruction Shuttle. Aleph Null shows where my half of that new sound is going. More on this later.

Upcoming Hurricanes

2008-08-30T20:22:00.002-04:00

From xkcd.com.

Blue Semiotics Series, Part 1

2008-08-26T10:26:00.004-04:00

Blue Food Series, Part 2

2008-08-22T10:59:00.003-04:00

Hacking the DigiTech JamMan

2008-08-20T23:05:00.014-04:00

The DigiTech JamMan would be the perfect looper pedal if not for the fact that it's near impossible to sync to a specific rhythm. Not only does it not have MIDI capability for syncing to an external clock, it doesn't even show you the BPM. The best you can do is tap the tempo, and that's likely to drift in short order. It's useless in a live situation where someone else is setting the tempo.

Or is it? Here's a nice hack I came up with. For it to work you need to know the exact BPM. Hopefully there are some electronics in play that display it. It's not going to work if you're trying to loop to your pal's guitar noodling or worse yet, his JamMan. You're also SOL if you have to loop to anything other than a 4/4 time signature.

The big idea is to preset the JamMan with empty loops set for each BPM at which you're likely to play. The other folks in the band have to agree not to stray out the range you pick, so choose carefully. Me, I'm covered from 81 to 140 BPM. That leaves 39 loop slots to play with. I can use the extra slots for preloaded samples, making backups of common tempos, or recording tap stuff if I happen to be leading the band. Why 81 and not 80? Simpler math. I just add 80 to the loop number to get the tempo. Loop 01 is 81 BPM (1 + 80 = 81). Loop 40 is 120 BPM (40 + 80 = 120). Got it? The rest of this article uses my range as an example.

To start, connect the JamMan to a computer. The computer should recognize it as an external hard drive. The root folder is JAMMAN and there is a subfolder for each loop: LOOP01, LOOP02, etc. Copy the entire JAMMAN folder to your computer. That way if you screw this up you can undo the damage.

Next, make a LOOP subfolder for each tempo in the range. Start with LOOP01 and go up to LOOP60. It's fine if a folder is already there. Just make sure to delete the WAV file inside it. All that should be left is the LOOP.XML file.

When you have 60 subfolders, go through them and make sure each has a LOOP.XML file. If one isn't there, create one. It must be called LOOP.XML, with capital letters! If you misspell it or use lower case it won't work. Paste this bit of code into each new file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8">
<jammanloopsetup>
<loopmode>Loop</loopmode>
<tempo>21168</tempo>
<timesignature>2</timesignature>
<rhythmtype>1</rhythmtype>
<stopmode>Stop</stopmode>
</jammanloopsetup>

By the way, the leading space on the 3rd through 7th lines ought to be a tab, not a space, but it's a space above due to Blogger's limitations. Technically, the JamMan shouldn't choke on a space (whitespace is whitespace in XML) but I didn't write it's parser and can't say for sure. Use a space at your own risk.

Now you should have 60 subfolders named LOOP01 through LOOP60, each with its own LOOP.XML file. The next step is to edit each XML file to set the proper tempo. (You didn't have anything fun planned for the evening, did you? I didn't think so. Then again, I did this work for you if you happen to run Windows. Download the zip file here.)

Some genius figured out that the number inside the Tempo element is in fact the number of samples per beat. This bit of info plus the knowledge that the JamMan samples at the rate of 44,100 samples per second (CD quality) means we can calculate the proper Tempo for any BPM:

Tempo = 44100 * 60 / BPM

For example, 110 BPM yields a tempo around 24054.54545 samples per beat. How can you have a fractional number of samples? You can't, so round it to 24055. Even if you play a song for ten minutes, and I hope you don't, the difference won't amount to more than half a millisecond. So to review, you'd plug 24055 into Tempo under the subfolder for 110 BPM. In our example, that's LOOP30, because 30 + 80 = 110. Still with me? I recommend plugging the tempo formula into a spreadsheet for easy calculation.

Once you update all the XML files, copy the whole JAMMAN folder to another place on your computer. Put it in another folder called EMPTYLOOPS_81_140 or something that will remind you that it's a set of empty, precalibrated loops. This is to back up the work you just did and also insure yourself against accidentally hitting tap tempo and screwing up the JamMan. More on that later.

Copy JAMMAN from the computer to the JamMan and you're good to go. Disconnect the JamMan. Plug in your instrument and, if necessary, a rhythm source into the AUX jack. Remember, the goal is to sync the JamMan to an external rhythm given nothing more than the BPM.

Let's say you have a drum machine plugged into AUX. Set it to play something at 120 BPM. Dial up loop 40 on the JamMan. It's tempo light should be blinking along with the beat. Notice the pattern: One red light and three green. Your goal is to get the red light to blink on the first beat of the measure. The easy way to do this is to start the drum machine on the red light. If you have that luxury then it's all good in the hood. Otherwise, you have to use Auto Record.

As you may recall, in Auto Record mode the JamMan starts recording as soon as it receives an audio signal. Now it may go without saying, but for this to work there must not be any signal on the JamMan input at all until the moment you choose to play. This is obvious, yes, but must be stated. You can't expect to play a little bit of something and then start recording. The first sound you make had better be on the first beat. Note that you only have to do this the first time you record a loop -- you won't have to use Auto Record for overdubs.

Push the Auto Rec button (or tap the MODE button on the FS3X footswitch). You'll see the Auto Record button light up. Then tap the REC/PLAY/OVERDUB pedal. The Record light will blink red, telling you that the JamMan is armed. Listen to the drum machine. As soon as it hits the one, play something. Continue for two bars or whatever and hit REC/PLAY/OVERDUB again. If you're timing is good it's now looping seamlessly with the drums.

At this point you can overdub until your heart's content. There are two things to consider. First, do not hit tap tempo. Doing that will completely bung you up! You can't restore the tempo to what it was without re-connecting the computer. That's why it's handy to have some spare preset loops for tempos you plan to use a lot. Be extremely careful around the STOP/TEMPO switch. Second, if you want to save a loop you should first move to an empty slot (loops 61-99 in our example). That way you can erase the main loop and reuse the tempo. To do this, press STORE once, dial to the free loop, and press STORE again. Now dial back to the main loop, erase it (hold down STOP/TEMPO for a few seconds) and start over.

There are a lot of ways to optimize this hack. You can know in advance what tempos you plan to use. That way you use far fewer loop slots. If your range is small enough you can give adjacent loops the same tempo. This way you can create alternate loops and switch between them for a more complex arrangement. One scheme would be to assign a tempo to adjacent even-odd pairs. For example, from loops 01 to 06 the tempos might go 110, 110, 111, 111, 112, 112. If you're in a song that's at 110 BPM, you have loops 01 and 02 to fill up and switch between.

Happy looping. If you try this, drop me a line and let me know how it went.

Meet Robbie

2008-08-17T23:04:00.023-04:00

Robbie the Rabbit is a character in the Silent Hill film and video game franchise. Then again, he's less a character and more a mascot. Or is he? (By the way, those sensitive to spoilers are advised to bail now.)

We at AC are not gamers, apart from infrequent re-acquaintances with Atari Adventure or Zork. We know almost nothing about the Silent Hill series, apart that it's in the "survival horror" genre (isn't all horror about survival?) and can't imagine wasting time playing it. However, we know about Robbie.

His backstory is that he's the mascot of the Lakeside Amusement Park in the obligatory cursed town of Silent Hill. Sure enough, in SH3 he appears propped on a bench in said park, unmoving, his big, goofy mouth awash with blood (or is it?). Your character, Heather, remarks, "Is that thing alive? It's alive, I know it."

Now sure, that's creepy. Fursuit characters are disquieting to begin with. We can all imagine a little kid being afraid of Mickey or Donald at Disney World, and on some level we might have the same unease about them as adults. They're mysterious -- they usually don't talk, and you usually can't see the person inside. Now here's Robbie, unmoving, with blood on his mouth. And we have questions. Was Robbie the perpetrator or victim? Is the person inside hurt, perhaps dead? It sure looks like he's is awake and watching her, doesn't it?

That's what he does. He watches.

That's his only appearance in the game. He's not an antagonist. He doesn't threaten you or even move. He's just a bloody rabbit on a bench, watching.

He shows up twice in the next game. First, as a plush toy in the neighbor's apartment, as viewed by you, the player, through a crack in the wall. (Yes, virtual voyeurism. Quick, someone alert Hillary Clinton.) Whenever you happen to take a peek he's sitting on the bed, facing away from you.

It's the same thing time and again until, finally, he's the only thing in view, and he's staring and pointing directly at you.

One reviewer writes, "This is the most terrifying moment in voyeurism since Raymond Burr looked directly into the camera of Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window."

More questions: Is there just one Robbie? The doll clearly isn't the same as the one on the bench. Are both inhabited by the same thing? Or maybe someone posed the inanimate doll that way? Is that blood on the doll's mouth?

Next, we spy him out the window:

Yes, he's a hot air balloon, slowly drifting over the town. Watching.

That's the end of his in-game appearances. They're hardly worth writing about, other than perhaps as a noted running gag. Then came this "official" Robbie video included as an extra on some bonus disc. A reviewer describes it as, "Robbie the Rabbit drags the corpses of his dopplegangers through the bloody abbatoirs of Silent Hill." Indeed.

More questions: Is Robbie busier than his few game appearances suggest? In this context, are we still to believe he's a person in a bunny suit? (Would a person maintain that cartoony stride, or wiggle its "ears?") What is his errand? Where is he taking them? What is that place? What about those other Robbies? Are they alive or dead? Where can we download that great Akira Yamaoka backing track?

Robbie as a character is compelling for a number of reasons. First, the obvious juxtaposition of cutesy character with blood and paranoia (though in a more subtle way than say, Chuckie). Second, the mystery. He's one of the game's more popular characters precisely because he has not been explained. The game's creators have released detailed backgrounds for nearly all the other characters but not Robbie. Third, his image is iconic. He fills his stated role as mascot not only for the Lakeside Amusement Park but for the game series as a whole. He's eminently marketable. There is considerable real-world demand for Robbie merchandise, particularly for plush animals as seen in the game, but Konami has only produced a single t-shirt design. Perhaps this is part of their anti-marketing campaign. Fans have begun to produce their own Robbie videos and images to meet the demand.

Robbie is a character that rises above his parent franchise. He's creepy, complex, and compelling. He's marketable, malicious, and memetic. He's fun to look at, even though you know he's looking back. We hope to see more of Robbie in the future.

Meanwhile, smile! Somewhere, somehow, Robbie the Rabbit is watching you.

Blue Food Series, Part 1

2008-08-15T10:53:00.003-04:00

Metainstrument

2008-08-12T11:18:00.007-04:00

Here's our live improv setup. It provides the ability to sample and loop anything, the ability to apply a wide range of effects, and gives us total control of the final stereo mix. Considerations have been made for portability and modularity, and it can change from a live rig to a recording studio just by moving a few cables.

Not pictured: Light show, smoke machine, video of bright, shiny things.

New Video

2008-07-31T00:35:00.003-04:00

Here is the new video for "Damn This Money."

WORB Radio, 24/7

2008-07-30T09:56:00.005-04:00

For some reason my brain has been looping "Majestic" by the Orb for the past two days.

There are worse things.

Proof We're One People

2008-07-02T12:29:00.005-04:00

The fact that every person on earth is related to every other has nothing to do with religion or a creation myth. It's a simple matter of mathematics, and it's good to remember in the we vs. they social dynamics we increasingly find ourselves in.

Everybody has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, etc. Every generation back we go, we have twice as many lineal ancestors. You can see that this is very much a Persian chessboard kind of problem. If there are, say, 25 years to a generation, then 64 generations ago is 64 X 25 = 1,600 years ago, or just before the fall of the Roman Empire. So..., every one of us alive today had in the year 400 some 18.5 quintillion ancestors - or so it seems. And this says nothing about collateral relatives. But this is far more than the population of the Earth, then or now; it is far more than the total number of human beings who have ever lived. Something is wrong with our calculation. What? Well, we have assumed all those lineal ancestors to be different people. But this, of course, is not the case. The same ancestor is related to us by many different routes. We are repeatedly, multiply connected with each of our relatives - a huge number of times for the more distant relations.

Something like this is true of the whole human population. If we go far enough back, any two people on Earth have a common ancestor. Whenever a new American President is elected, there's bound to be someone - generally in England - to discover that the new President is related to the Queen or King of England. This is thought to bind the English-speaking peoples together. When two people derive from the same nation or culture, or from the same small corner of the world, and their genealogies are well-recorded, it is likely that the last common ancestor can be discovered. But whether it can be discovered or not, the relationships are clear. We are all cousins - everyone on Earth.

—Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions, p. 23.

Not for the Easily Distracted

2008-06-27T09:25:00.005-04:00

Line Rider: Draw lines on your screen and watch a little guy ride a sled over them. Marvel at the realistic physics and spectacular crashes. Wonder what happened to your afternoon.

BLDGBLOG: Fascinating stuff about design, secret passages, and urban environments; but it makes you wonder how a respected architect finds time for such frequent and heavily researched posting.

The Conet Project: 92358 04635 19248 93855 21985 28134 91248 59812 23589 12985 91245 95854 59382 23598 07315 52378 48923 12948 59238 85274 12744 58372 82357 24871 18247 92386 69262 90902 03523 59351 44412 59251 71112 52355 62369 59358 34872 12384 14818 59325 36962 39635 95325 35820 59589 99910 21120 24440 57897 89355 82884 28412 27855 68903 23494 12469 30598 29591 29353 58235 56776 67384 94686 83669 78342 85235 11223 47950 69435 96969 68993 67456 63368 84322 34567 58394 68023 52355 69046 64636 22004 ende

Cloose to the Edge

2008-06-23T14:27:00.006-04:00

I had a hypnagogic math moment last night, as we all do from time to time. I drifted off and imagined a geometric sequence s in which each term was exponentially larger than the last. For example, suppose s = n³ for n = 1, 2, 3, .... The 4th term is 81 and the 5th is 243. The numbers x = 90 and y = 700 are "close" in a sense because they're just one term of s apart, yet you might argue they are not close in absolute terms because they differ by an order of magnitude. My foggy brain decided the numbers were not close but cloose (that is, "loosely close," or close only with respect to s). I had the wherewithal to recognize cloose as neologism worthy of Hofstadter, whatever it was I thought it meant, and filed it away for the morning. Now the s I gave above is a simple example, but you can see that with a more extreme definition (say if it relied on factorials or the Ackermann function) cloose will cover far more territory on the number line than close. I started to wonder whether it made sense to define clooseness differently for things other than sequences, like functions or series, but then fell asleep and dreamt about appearing on Iron Chef America (presumably for Battle Toast, Battle Hot Water, or Battle Beer).

Mystery Blob

2008-06-20T21:59:00.010-04:00

What is this strange, fuzzy little thing? Plankton? A white blood cell? A jellyfish? A virus? Inscrutable Peter Saville album art? Paramecium poop? It looks kind of mossy, doesn't it? And it's surrounded by a thin, blue sheath that suggests a cell wall or the thin skin of a tiny aquatic animal.

All totally wrong, of course. It's a great big thing floating in space: The Tycho Supernova remnant, to be precise. We were only off by a few dozen orders of magnitude. How slick is it that it looks so much like something we'd see in a biology textbook or under a microscope?

It's a false color X-ray image, which perhaps explains it's unusually textured, 3-D appearance, as if you could reach out and poke it.

Amazon

2008-06-20T09:20:00.004-04:00

Alternate Worlds is now available on Amazon as an MP3 album. They also have Sixteen Worlds used CDs.