Currently I am busy preparing for the Ostracon show at the In / Out Festival of Digital Performance that is coming up on September 17 and 18 in New York (we are playing on the Saturday the 18th at 9:30pm). Part of my preparation involves minimizing my setup for ease of transport. For one thing, I am not bringing my Korg MS2000 as a controller for the GMS, as I have done for other performances. However, because I’m projecting the live video source, I cannot use the on-screen controls in the GMS.

My first idea to solve this problem was to share a single Korg nanoKONTROL between Ableton Live and the GMS. Unfortunately this approach was not practical because it would require some major reconfigurations as well as recompiling the GMS with a set of new external MIDI controls. My next idea was to route the MIDI control and program changes to the GMS via MIDI clips in Ableton’s session view. This worked immediately and I knew I was on the right track. The only problem was that there seemed to be a MIDI signal feedback loop when using the same bus for output and external control in the GMS. I solved this problem by creating a second IAC bus for the external control and using the first bus for the MIDI output. Finally I configured a combination of keyboard controls and Korg Nano buttons to trigger the clips in Ableton that, in turn, trigger the specific functions in the GMS. Voilà!

The flexibility of Ableton never ceases to amaze me. I had never used session clips to send MIDI program and control change messages to an external device, let alone, independent software running simultaneously. Nor had I ever needed to do this in the past. Yet the thought occurred to me, I wonder if Ableton can do this? It turns out that it can. Thanks to Ableton this solution has saved me many hours of redundant and tedious programming, and well as making my setup more streamlined and efficient for upcoming performances.

Cappuccino Synth from Gijs on Vimeo.

I first saw this on Create Digital Music a few days ago, and although I think most ACB readers keep well abreast of what’s up on CDM, I’ve watched this several times now and think it deserves a re-post here. For more about this video visit the original post.

Experimental guitarists have been doing similar things like holding power tools or more recently, mobile phones, up to their pickups to generate interesting sounds. Here’s a video I shot of Siamese Bug a duet of Tim Glenn on drums with contact mics, and Jeremy Ylvisaker on prepared guitar.

Siamese Bug Video

The Experimental Music Mondays series at the Kitty Cat Klub concludes this Monday, August 30 with a familiar lineup and newcomer Ten72 (Nils Westdal). Regulars Ostracon (John Keston and Graham O’Brien) and Terr the Om (Nathan Brende) are playing as well as my new unnamed trio Davis-Glenn-Keston. It is shaping up to be a fun and delightful evening of experimental music. Music will start by 9:30pm and go until 1:00am. Entry is free. Stop by and let us know what you think of this event.

This is the last chance to experience this series. For now there are no plans to continue the night at another venue, but depending on Monday’s turnout it may be taken under consideration. Thanks to all the people who have helped support this event, including Tom Rimarcik, Ryan Olcott, Graham O’Brien, and Nathan Brende, not to mention all the patrons who appreciated the work presented by the artists involved.

Within my realm of experience, the phattest sound to size ratio ever has been achieved by the much-hyped Korg Monotron. I received the Monotron in the mail yesterday and was shocked by it’s puny dimensions. Barely larger than a typical smart phone, the Monotron looks like a prop for a Barbie I Can Be a Rock Star set. Putting my judgmental feelings aside, I plugged in into my mixer and was even more shocked by the huge, rich, thick, and chunky tones produced. On the box it says “True analog synthesis satisfaction” and I cannot argue with that statement. Here’s a quick demonstration of the sound quality and depth of the oscillators (one VCO and one LFO). Please listen with proper monitors or headphones. Laptop speakers will not do this justice. Does anything else come close to this as far as the size to sound ratio is concerned? Please add your thoughts below.

Monotron Demo

Once I got back to Minnesota, I plugged it into the input on a Korg Electribe and saved the results of some crazy effect work. From there I ran the file (then a 2 minute file) through the open source paulstretch software. I slowed it down by about ten times and the end result was a 28 minute ambient drone that fluctuated and sounded something like a desolate ice cave. I used Ableton to EQ out the ear-bleeding high end and to add a bit of reverb. The end result is a haunting drone sound-bed that I’m pretty fond of. Feel free to use it for any sampling or remixing or whatever you kids are doing these days.

Droning Buddha

Ostracon and Unearthed Music have decided to release the Ostracon debut on cassette tape for promos and a short run for sale at shows and online. The as-yet-untitled release includes around 47 minutes of instrumental duets between myself on electronics (mostly layers of melodies produced by the GMS) and Graham O’Brien on drums. We recorded in the historically preserved Studio A of the former Flyte Tyme studios of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis fame. I’ll have more details soon, but expect the cassette to be available by the middle of September just before our performance at the In / Out Festival of Digital Performance in New York City.

The immediate response I get from most of the people I have told is, why cassette? I have to admit to being heavily laden with nostalgia for this format. As a kid (and into adulthood), I taped jam sessions, records and CDs constantly, especially my own LP collection. I was acutely aware of how quickly the quality of vinyl records could degrade. Cassettes are small enough to fit in your pocket, or bring a dozen of them on a road trip. You can throw one out a window, pop it in the deck and provided it didn’t get run over by a truck it will sound the same. I melted records in hot car interiors, had them scratched and broken by myself, friends, or siblings, and wore them out from over playing. Now I realize that tape in the long term is even more ephemeral than vinyl. So, again, why release a modern recording on cassette tape?

Since making the decision I have noticed that it’s not as rare of an idea as I thought. There is definitely a movement back toward this barely antiquated format. I don’t have any meaningful reasons for choosing tape, but I know that I’m not the only one to have nostalgia for it. This might be a good excuse for others to get out their cassette player of choice and listen to some old favorites they haven’t digitized yet. Remember packing your tape before recording, or tightening the reel with a pencil? I’ll probably throw in a card with a download code for those without a cassette deck, but what are your thoughts? Would you love to get you hands on a cassette of new music, or would you seek out a downloadable alternative?

While on holiday I routinely bring recording equipment with me. In Italy, where they have decided to make normal passenger cruise ships look like ferarris, they also have interesting engine sounds to boot. I’ve been searching for a sound like this for years and have finally nailed it with this sound.

I recorded this standing a few feet away from the harbour at the exhaust side of the ship. It was maneuvering into position away from the harbour, and you can hear the engines in some detail – the turbos are kicking in, and the engine goes through a few start up procedures. This sounds epic!

Ocean Liner Cruise Ship Engines Engaging Turbos Whine Bass Epic Rumble Rev Servos Awesome Cool Technological Sound FX

I made this ambient piece using Audiotool a couple of months ago thinking that I might add some more layers, but I’m pretty fond of it as is and thought I would share it here. My original goal was to try automating some parameters and processing in Audiotool, and learn about Pulverisateur in the process. Pulverisateur, which I unfortunately spelled wrong in my track title, is a modular style virtual synthesizer that I connected to a Tonematrix for Monome-like programming. It has an amazing sound and, to my ears, sounds as least as good if not better than Reason‘s Subtractor. The image above will give you an idea of the signal flow for the piece. Checkout the audio, or make a remix on Audiotool if you like what you hear.

So far I’m very impressed with the detail and bass response. They have much more bass and overall volume than the AKG K240s that I use in the studio, but I imagine that the open back K240s are probably more flat. The DT770s are a snug fit and surround even my abnormally large pinnae. The thick velour padding blocks a fair amount of sound and keeps your ears toasty warm, or nice and sweaty in this ninety six degree heat.

It took me a while to decide about these phones, but based on what I’ll be using them for I think I made the right decision. They are louder than I expected, given that many people prefer to use a headphone amplifier with them. I didn’t find amplification necessary with my MacBook Pro, but haven’t tried them with an iPod, or anything else yet. Feel free to chime in with your own experience or opinions on headphones.

I have recently scored a soundtrack for a short movie that inspired me very much for its genuine content and powerful simplicity. I found the story so compelling and beautiful that at first I thought of writing something that could be defined minimal and very polite, with the intention of leaving enough space to the characters without overshadowing them and let the story evolve without too much distraction.

After a few days of work I realized what I was doing was ok, but was not exploiting the full potential of the beautiful message that the director was trying to convey. In other words, everything was fine to my eyes and ears, but my work wasn’t adding much to the movie. It felt detached. Why was that? How could that happen, since I felt so attached in the first place to the story and the characters?

The answer came to me the day after, when I asked myself (I often talk to myself): what is this movie really about? What is the sparkle that triggers all the events in this movie? What’s the primal dynamic? My answer was: intention. That was the only thread to follow in the story, the one element that I needed to translate into music. I kept ‘intention’ as my only reference and as soon as I started writing new music everything fell into place, magically.

This wasn’t anymore an issue of priority, space or importance of the music vs the story; this time everything was simply about intention. This newly-acquired notion made my music grow with and within the story. It was all unfolding under my eyes and I was happy to realize that I had very little to do with it. It feels good when that happens. It feels like natural magic because while we make music this way we become what we often forget we are: sophisticated human emotions translators.

I laid down a piano part and focused on the intention of my playing rather than worrying about quantizing or fixing dynamics, I gave priority to spontaneity rather than perfectionism. Then I wrote an orchestration for double bass, 2 cellos, 2 violas and 4 violins supporting the piano part and used the same method, when arranging.  Then I decided to trade themes from the piano to the oboe and hired an oboist to come in and record.

The player showed up the day of the session and we started recording. It was not what I expected. Sometimes it happens, guys. The musician was very young and things weren’t exactly going smoothly. Although he was a very good reader, he wasn’t emotionally aligned with the intention of the music and the result was a big sense of detachment in the delivery. Perfect performance, but no intention! Not enough real love. After about 30 long minutes, I suggested we took a break.

I explained what I meant and asked if this time he could please play while following the movie on the screen and forget about the music chart. He started playing again and this time it glued flawlessly with the other instruments: not a perfectly read performance, but a perfectly emotionally one!

This time he played his part with everything that was really needed: a lot of honest intention. When the kid was playing I felt his hesitation, his hope, his fear, his decisiveness, his bravery. I thought at some point he felt he was the main character of the movie. After two takes we were done, no punch, no edits. I kept everything in. The director loved the soundtrack and I did too because this time I felt extremely connected to the story.

The purpose of the music synced to moving images should be of serving the story, not to create another one. There’s always a different balance to be found between music and the images and it changes according to each story. Every story is different: different characters, different synergies, different settings. But at the core, there will be only one thread and it’s up to the composer to find it and translate it into music.

In my mind, the image of a good soundtrack is that one of two solid rails and I picture the storytelling as a train. The train must get to its destination, the rails must support it and guide it so that the message will be delivered.

Balance is everything.