Nowadays that feels kind of wrong. I am a person with a variety of interests. And this is also reflected on my musical output.

So instead of marking a place somewhere in the musical landscape, i will go on being the explorer. But this time knowing, that this is the right way.

I love the sound of electronic music and the aura of acoustic music. I like rhythms as much as harmonies.
And the binding element will always be a general appreciation of sound.

You will find different styles here. Different projects, or maybe just experiments.

But this is right.
I now know.

Darage Bang presents Cloudy and Pleasant

With my piano piece Ursulurn, I happen to be one of them. Thanks a lot, Frank!
The music over there is somewhere between ambient, downtempo, drone and experimental. If you’re interested give it a listen through my Cloud-Playlist for an uninterrupted playback. (you’ll need a Google-Account, though)

I like and support the idea not just because the underlying thoughts are quite similar to mine, when I started ‘Found in the Cloud’. It is good to see Soundcloud evolving, being a platform driven by people. And with applications like The Cloud Player build ontop of the infrastructure, it has the potential to be Spotify for independent artists.

If anybody still has the desire to listen to the tracks, shoot me a message, I’ll pass you the files.

In my last post I wrote about how today‘s over-availability of music leads to a switch in music-listening. One of the commenters suggested to try listening to ambient music. Actually i don‘t like the term ,Ambient‘. I don‘t know where these associations come from, but I then have people in my head, who normally don‘t listen to this kind of music and label everything as ,ambient‘, that is slow, has no beat, is melancholic and/or laid back. Often these people equal Ambient with background music. I more like to call it ,silent music‘, since – yes – it can serve as a background atmoshphere to tasks you do, like working, writing. But good silent music also invites you to come closer and listen carefully. The elements don‘t scream at you, they want to be discovered. Maybe more like paintings. You can look at them from greater distance, just to grasp the atmosphere, but also come closer and discover details, that weren‘t imminent at first.

One of the musicians who do really great in painting these pictures is Pascal Savy, aka Static. Don‘t know anymore how our paths crossed, but I found his pieces to be really ,well-painted‘. They create a really dense atmosphere – dark, drony and sometimes even a bit creepy. He has a blog over at blogspot, where he describes his concepts and thoughts driving the creative process. Reading through them, you can say, that he already dug deep into the matter. Learning about sonic concepts, he tries to incorporate them into his music. In his blog, I first read about the phenomenons Microsound and Granular Synthesis. Touching these now would go beyond the scope of this post, but still interesting concepts, worth exploring. You can hear, that elements in his pieces are deliberately placed, and not just got there per accident.

Vortex (above), one of his last pieces utilizing Granular Synthesis, brought up a memory of my childhood. We often did summer-vacation in countries you had to cross water to get there. As a child, spending a night in a ferry, there is not too much to do, so you just walk around the ship and discover things. We sometimes did a dare: what would be the deepest floor we dare to be for more than just a second? In these ferries, the deeper you go, the creepier it gets. Corridors get uglier, the sound of the engines gets louder and louder and – since you are below the water suface – the doors start to be heavier. They then have these big opening wheels on them. For a kid, this was really creepy. And I remember I couldn‘t stand this for long.

And this static piece reminds me of exactly these moments: Like in the bottom floor of a big ferry. Water leaking in somewhere near. Astonishing if you keep in mind, that most of the sounds are synthetically created.

Disclaimer:
the idea of this series is to have a conversation. On single pieces of music and through them on musical aspects in general. Imagine the time you were putting up vinyl, drinking red wine, discussing with your friend about things you hear at this very moment. When was the last time you listened to music and did nothing else? Really concentrated?
So if the tracks above trigger anything, just share it. A picture, a small thought, a general impression you have, please share it in the comments. If not, maybe next time. It’s an experiment, I know. Thanks again!

Like with your parents who get really nice, after you moved out; like with your ex-girlfriend you start to miss when you realize she’s not there, like maybe you first start loving your hometown, when you moved away – I decided to do an experiment: cut out the music. What will everyday-life feel like, if you cut out the music? Don’t listen to it at home, don’t go anywhere, where you expect music to play (cafés, bars, clubs, concerts). How long can you stand that? And what feels important to me: Will there be more music in my head? Who will be the artist I first turn to, when I finished the experiment? Which track? I want to miss music again, not devaluate it by flooding my brain with input.

I can’t do the experiment right away, but It will happen and I’ll tell you about results…

How do you deal with more and more music being available? Do you notice a difference to – let’s say – the music-listening 3 years ago?

Music is about people. Music is between people. Real people. Music is about moments. Creating moments, sharing moments. Recordings are the attempt to capture the moment. Fail.

All the “the-internet-is-so-great-for-musicians”-evangelists have all one big, big misconception. The same way as good music comes from the countryside and is performed in the cities, good music comes from no-internet-land. (yes, well… and distributed over the web)

The internet, with all its “hello”s, “have you seen”s and “*ping!* you’ve got a new ***”s, eats up your mind. Or lets say your creativity. Or maybe just your intrinsic motivation expressing yourself through music. It’s not good to see, that there are tons of guys all making the same stuff. It’s not good to see your idea being around everywhere else. It is just not good being referenced all the time.

After a Broderick/Frahm concert I accuse myself. You are being a person, that spins his activity around the net. You were a person spinning your activity around music. What have you become?

“Now wait!”, you might ask. “What is Dåbermann? Who is ‘we’? And why proud?”

Okay, I’ll do some clarification:

We, that are Chris, Hamer and me.  We met earlier this year to mess with 3 laptops using Ableton. The only thing we knew was, that we have a great overlap in musical interest. Didn’t know what will happen when we start out a jam, also didn’t expect anything. Dåbermann was born.

After the first session we were really surprised. In a positive way. Right from the first minute – it seemed – we had found our sound and roles for each one. Also interesting to see how 3 approaches to Ableton melt down in one atmosphere. Chris, with his trackpad-rocking chaos-style, does all the groove and beat. Hamer is most likely the guy who does strings and ambiences. I focussed so far on live-sampling: playing guitar, sometimes trumpet, a bit voice and making general noises.

Improvising with Ableton is really another paradigm than improvising in a band. While in a band, there is just the moment, you always act “now”. With Ableton, it’s like you create a big and heavy ball and give it a push, so it starts rolling on its own. Once in a move you can start change its colour or shape, give it a little more movement or make it pause. But it is still that big monster being hard to handle, since it’s the child of three computers.

After the first sessions we had plenty of material. Several hours. And we didn’t really know what to do now. Make tracks from it? No we couldn’t. No way to reproduce the sounds. They got lost on the way. So we decided to chop up the sessions and glue them together in a digestable way. So out of 3 hours of improvised Dåbermann-sessions emerged 32 minutes of Dåbermix.

And this is one of the reasons I’m really proud of this: the source material is improvised and still it sounds great (in my ears). This is the inversion of the usual process of producing tracks. Normally you have an idea, and shape it until you like it. The actual work you do is pushing boxes on a grid in a program. Not very musical. This time we just jammed out. And it worked.
I once again felt what’s so great about making music with other people: the outcome is always more than the sum of its elements.

It is most likely, that you will hear more of us in the future. We plan more sessions, but also performing live someday. So stay tuned…

PS. Actually, all three of us don’t like dogs. There are exceptions, but you know in this ever-going “dogs vs. cats”-fight, cats will always win. Find us on Soundcloud and MySpace.

Now I want everybody to take out their mobile phones and take a picture of me.
Now I want everybody to take the person next to you and send him a text message.
Now I want everybody to take the person next to you and kiss.
1… 2… 3… kiss!
Now make a bass sound!

Yesterday I attended Frankfurt’s Club “Robert Johnson” to be part of Matthew Herbert’s next record. Working title “One Club”. It will be made entirely of sounds collected yesterday evening. Everyone attended will be in the booklet  and receive a copy of the album. I’m really excited and looking forward to the result.

Oh, did I mention that Herbert has always been a big inspiration for me? This guy somehow opened my ears to the music and rhythms surrounding us everyday. He has always been innovating and keeps on doing so.
Another next album of his will be made entirely from sounds of a pig. It was born a month ago and he will record-follow it through its life. Crazy person! In a good way !

It happens that you randomly browse the web and find nothing but crap. And it happens that you make a discovery: In an interview, I read about Peter Broderick contributing a track to a Belgium label called Slaapwel (“Sleep well”). This label releases only music to fall asleep by. Interesting, I read further. I discovered that the label owner releases music under the moniker Wixel, which lies somewhere between calm Post-Rock and Electronica. Currently he has a project going, what he calls an “Awesome Stupid Project“: he is about to release 12 records in 12 months. One record per month in 2009. Hehe, funny concept. Awesome, because this is a really challenging thought: Can you release that much music in that short time? And stupid: can you keep up with quality? Won’t you lose your artistic integrity?

As far as I can see, Wixel didn’t. (Only heard two albums yet). Give his Slaapliedjes a try. When you need a rest, or while studying or working. He has a very, very nice warm guitar sound.

Now, what I also find interesting is the way he releases music. All of this can be downloaded via Bandcamp, which means people can either give their email-adresses away and get a free download, or they pay as much as they like. Pretty straight forward approach. Additionally, each album is available as a limited edition self-made CDr. This was the first time I saw this combination and I’m clearly excited. I like it so much, I guess I will use it for my next EP.

The internet-evangelists always refer to free-downloads as an economic force. Digital music is no scarce good, it can be copied and distributed without cost, thus price has to approach zero. I mostly agree with them. For me it makes no sense to put price barriers between me and my potential listeners. At least as long as I have no existing reputation. Then, selling hand-crafted self-designed CDrs works as a balance. By doing so, you create a scarce good, that people are willing to pay for. (At least when you manage to make a good package design). Look at Wixels 2009-CDs above. I think they are adorable. Will wait for the September-issue and place an order.

The same day I also stumbled upon Machinefabriek, an outstanding artist. I found this guy releasing one 3″-CDr after another, check out his website for proof and sounds. Some releases end up as official released albums, others stay in their small collectable format. I like that. Here a collabarotion of Aaron Martin and Machinefabriek: Cello Recycling.

Speaking of 3″-CDr: Hauschka recently did the same. He released a small 3″-EP called “Small Pieces” through Secret Furry Hole. Received it today and must say: as long as people keep putting love in hand-made designs, people will buy physical releases. Those 3″-CDs are absolut internet-anti-statement. Maximum 20 minutes of music and most laptops can’t read them, cause they are too small for slot-loading CD-drives. You are now forced to listen again through your stereo, just as with Vinyl. No iTunes this time. And this affects the way you perceive music. Good approach.

Regarding music on Hauschka’s Small Pieces: It feels like an approach to make more classical piano pieces again. More like Erik Satie than on previous albums. One exception: the 4th track “unknown”, my favourite so far. With a fragile female voice in the background it sounds like Hauschka does Radiohead. Stunning. Sadly, that song is not available online, so go get your copy or listen to the opening track “Sehnsucht”:

Ps: I named my piano piece “small piece” before I knew of this EP’s existence. No rip-off intended

Once I received a Souncloud message saying:

Seems like every user I check out is making minimal techno. [Your music] was a breath of fresh air. Danke schön!

Of course this is the stuff I like to hear. But this is also what came to my mind stumbling across Pedros music. Just some freshness in that ocean of tracks that all follow the same scheme. When you listen to some of Pedros work, you can hear, that this guy is classicly trained, but practices electronic. For me, it feels good not being the only one between the lines of genres. He has also similar feelings towards his music.

[It's] hard to find a place I “belong” these days…

Could sign this statement. All the established genres have their own rule-sets. How you produce, how you perform. What is most likely to make your track big. They have big word-leaders who are the scenes darlings. What they recommend will be heard.
None of that holds true if you try to go new ways. Of course every position has pros and cons, but this feeling of being a bit lost, although doing great craft, is one of the cons – i guess. Though never met, Pedro from Brazil has won my sympathy. Totally.

This is what says about “Kyrie Eleison“:

Song made in 2004, when I started experimenting with counterpoint composition and electronic music. Very intriguing yet evolving atmosphere that ponders antique music in today’s times.
My own voice recorded many times for each layer. I used counterpoint, that’s a composition technique from the 16th Century. So what I did is I wrote a piece for 5 voices and recorded all of them myself… pretty tiring ater a while…

My friend and former band-mate AK (design student) said something, that holds true with this work also:

Always try to bring ideas from outside into your production. Don’t reference the status-quo of the scene. When you do digital bring in inspiration from analog.

This translates to: Bring in your acoustic understanding, sound and ability into electronic composition. This is what Pedro does. Or: bring your aesthetics from electronic music into acoustic music. This is what Hauschka does. Either way you choose, it is a good way of staying original.

Funny, Pedro manages to undust that image of old men singing church songs in a choir. He has a original way of creating tension within the track and surprises the listener several times. The way I like it.

Don’t miss to check out some of his other works over at Soundcloud. I recommend  Harmo and 7 Onions. He also has a blog, which is in Portugese, unfortunately (for the most us). Google translate could help

Disclaimer:
the idea of this series is to have a conversation. On single pieces of music and through them on musical aspects in general. Imagine the time you were putting up vinyl, drinking red wine, discussing with your friend about things you hear at this very moment. When was the last time you listened to music and did nothing else? Really concentrated?
So if the track above triggers anything, just share it. A picture, a small thought, a general impression you have, please share it in the comments. If not, maybe next time.  It’s an experiment, I know. Thanks again!

Okay. I’ll start off with no stranger. Actually I already made music with this guy. I don’t know exactly, if Sundur is to be his Artist-name… for now it is. (He is also spinning minimal records. Check his MySpace)

The deal: Considering his level of skill, it’s absolutely inappropriate, that this track is his only audible fragment available anywhere. The first time we met to mess around with Ableton, I was totally surprised both by his sound and his way of working in Ableton. In a very positive way. His approach to Ableton looked like an ever ongoing flow. He constantly builds up his loops, drags sounds around, sends them through effects, adds new ones. All of that in a speed, you won’t recognize this beat was never around before / done on the fly.

“The Detroit Sun” completely represents his sound, as I experienced it. The whole beat feels like a big wheel, that just rolls really slowly on uneven ground. The sometimes odd clicks really add to an overall warm feeling.
He put the phrase Trip-Hop in the genre-tag. In my head, the term TripHop usually triggers really different sounds. But still, this track feels like the succesful translation of Massive Attack-influenced Triphop  into todays’ sound. More Flying Lotus than Kruder&Dorfmeister.

I can’t wait for him to put out more stuff. He should. And (as I remember it correctly), he will.

Disclaimer:
the idea of this series is to have a conversation. On single pieces of music and through them on musical aspects in general. Imagine the time you were putting up vinyl, drinking red wine, discussing with your friend about things you hear at this very moment. When was the last time you listened to music and did nothing else? Really concentrated?
So if the track above triggers anything, just share it. A picture, a small thought, a general impression you have, please share it in the comments. If not, maybe next time.  It’s an experiment, I know. Thanks!

I also always wanted to somehow spread the good music I come across now and then. Often stuff by some guys, just like me, doing music for the sake of it. Living in other corners of the world, with no big fanbase or following. Still, they are doing great stuff. One idea was to start doing a podcast. Just collecting the nice tracks and putting them together into mixes. Again, maybe that will follow some time in future.

But until now (as I recollect my energy for Bachelor-thesis finals) – there will be a new series of posts, called “Found in the Cloud”. I will take one track I found on Soundcloud, embed and discuss it. Or maybe just stress one element or idea in it, which I think is remarkable.

Maybe – no promise here – I can contribute to a small moment of focused music-listening, which got somehow lost in today’s music-landscape. But that, again, is another topic to be discussed…

So watch out, there’ll be one post per week. Starting today…

But why? Why didn’t I manage to put my musical ideas (which I guess are still there and vital) into actual pieces you can listen to?

Last weekend it became clear, that it was form. In the days of playing in bands everything was quite fixed. The band setup consisted of drums, bass, two guitars and vocals. I was one guitarist with some songwriting-responsibilities. Time I spent for the band was either practicing guitar, writing songs or riffs and attending rehearsals. Note: 100% of that time is directly connected to music. 100% of my ideas were direct musical ideas.

Now switching to music done with the computer. Just adding this device into your music makes everything a lot more complicated. You have to question everything that was kind of pre-set in your band. What kind of music do you want to do? What is your sound? How do you perform this music? Adding to that, computer is technology. And technology needs to be adapted to your needs. So you have to learn about programs, underlying principles and interaction-patterns.  These topics are all barriers in your way of developing musical ideas.
And this is the reason I look back on not too much output. I did not find answers that satisfied me. So I looked further. More energy and time was consumed dealing with stuff surrounding music than focussing on actual music.

Hopefully this will change now. I finally found a setup that fits my needs. A first version of a setup, that is Ableton-centered but not screen-centric. Actually I can turn off the screen and put the laptop aside.
It makes use of  all of the MIDI-equipment I have now (M-Audio Keyboard, NanoKontrol, PadKontrol, Nocturn and FCB1010) and is all about looping both external input and sounds I collected. It uses multiple instances of Ableton Looper, a self-hacked Step-Sequencer for the PadKontrol and some instrument racks. One for key-sounds, the other for collected sounds.
I guess I will do some sort of video tutorial round-trip of the setup when time is right.

The most important thing, though: I finally found answers to all conceptual question and solutions to all technical problems. I now know, that I can spend my time again thinking about music, not about technology. And when I have enough pieces done, I can now easily perform them.

So stay tuned…

If anybody out there puts together a playlist, where my track sits in neatly (besides the original compilation), I’d love to hear it.

After purchasing the lovely Tascam DR100 I found myself enjoying the very fundamentals of sound. I guess you could also tell that by listening to my recent work. Just running around, recording everything I can find, as long as it has some remarkable character.

All that collecting of sound-fragments has proven meaningful, as I now got myself working on a first sound design project: Making small animated Typo-Idents audible. They are meant to promote the fonts of a new typo-webshop called Hype For Type. Animated by bauwrk, this clip introduces their best-selling Neo Deco:

NEO DECO IDENT from HypeForType on Vimeo.

The best possibility to grasp the nature of this work is to watch it without sound. This is where i started. Then gradually made my way to that “spacey” feel. Find the match! Tell me what you think!

There are many people out there using the Novation Nocturn (me included), since it was one of the first controllers that did a lot for little money. The tight integration between hardware and software does the trick. Having read about the Automap-feature made me really looking forward to get this device into my hands, since it’s always such a hassle to manually assign each and every control you have.

However, the Automap-feature turned out to be useless for me. It works only with AU/VST-Plugins. Not right in Ableton itself. You can control Live with it, though: Turn on a Midichannel in the Automap server software and manually map Midi-controls within Live (see Novation FAQ for this). But this technique clearly has not the same ease-of-use and awesomeness as the Automapping feature.

I want to easily control Rack-Macros on the fly. Without assigning the knobs individually! And guess what? There is a way! There is a small hidden feature inside Live called Midi Remote Scripting. I recently read about it on CDM, did a custom script for my Nocturn, and – tadaa – Automapping inside of Live. Peter shared his Config-files for both Korg’s nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL. So I will share mine for the Nocturn, so you will not have to read the whole article on how to do it yourself. Just follow the steps!

1. Turn on MIDI

Make sure, that you have your Input- and Output-Ports activated. Decide which Channel you want the Map to send on.

You should see something like this now:

2. Download the Config-File

Find it here or here.

3. Move it to the correct directory

Unzip the file and move the complete folder (including the UserConfiguration.txt) to the following directory:

Mac: [Your home folder]/Library/Preferences/Ableton/[your version]/User Remote Scripts/

Windows: [Windows boot drive]/Users/ [your Username]/AppData/Roaming/Ableton/[your version]/Preferences/User Remote Scripts/

The foldername (in our case “Nocturn“) is the name that will appear in Ableton’s list of Control Surfaces. Rename it if you like.

4. Check if MIDI-Channels match

The Config-file I gave you is set up for MIDI-Channel 1. If you also activated Ch1 one, go on.
If not, change the GlobalChannel in line 11 of  UserConfiguration.txt.
Caution: if your desired Channel is 9, type 8 (as the 16 Channels are counted from 0 to 15).

5. Activate Control Surface inside of Live

In Live’s preferences go to the MIDI-Settings.

Make your selection like in the picture above.”Nocturn” (or the name you chose for your folder) will now appear in the list of available Control surfaces. Select it along with Input and Output on “Automap MIDI”.  It’s important to choose the Nocturn as Input and Output, so the Nocturn always reflects changes you do with your mouse.

6. Enjoy!

Now, if everything went right, you can control every device, that is in focus. The blue hand in the title-bar is the indicator for which device you’re controlling. Nice!

I know, for rack-macros it feels a bit strange to have Nocturn-Knobs 1-4 control the upper row and 5-8 the bottom row, instead of seperating the controls as it’s layed out on the Nocturn (feels a bit counter-intuitive). But this setting is the most flexible. Think of controlling EQ Eight with 4 bands, for example. Each 2 knobs control frequency and gain.

7. Niceness-Addon for the advanced ones…

If you have AutomapServer 3.0 as a PRO-Version, it is possible to assign Keystrokes to Nocturn-buttons. This comes very handy. Look at my example:

Shift+Tab brings you to your device-chain if you are in clip-view. If the focus is somewhere in the clip-grid, hit Alt+Down to bring focus to your device chain. If you have the focus once down there, you can navigate with the Left and Right buttons to switch between the different devices and effects you have.
With all of these Keystrokes layed down on the Nocturn you can tweak all of your effects without ever touching the mouse. Really nice…

If you have questions or problems, just let me know. There is always a way…

[UPDATE] I made this for Ableton Live 8.0.4. Can’t test it on other versions, sorry…

I don’t want to go into detail, because the article is pretty much everything you should read to get started. However, if you’re like me you read some introducing paragraphs, then thinking: “Oh, I don’t need to read all of this, guess i can get started right by fiddling myself”. And then it does not work. Argh! I lost 2 hours of my life trying to get to the mistake. After finding the solution I thought I share it, for you to not get into the same trouble…

My mistake: I overlooked, that in the Config-file Midi-channels are counted from 0-15 (as in Arrays). My desired Channel was 9, so I typed 9. Program translated this to Channel 10, so in Live there was no signal on Channel 10. Rule: always type in your channel minus one.

Another possible mistake Peter hinted: Putting the files into the wrong directory.
On the mac the config-file goes into ~/Library/Preferences/Ableton/[your version]/User Remote Scripts/[your Presetname]/UserConfiguration.txt
Windows: [Windows boot drive]/Users/ [your Username]/AppData/Roaming/Ableton/[your version]/Preferences/User Remote Scripts/[your Presetname]/UserConfiguration.txt

Now, that you have everything working, enjoy your newly gained control. For example control all your Instrument- and Drum-racks with only 8 Midi-mappings. Just select the rack’s title bar and the knobs are automatically assigned, as long as you see the blue hand. Nice.

To get an idea of what is was like, watch this video here:

Hauschka – Morgenrot from Jeff Desom on Vimeo.

Sitting there, I thought about using computers for music. How absurd. The only thing you can accomplish using a computer for music is painting pictures. Trying to recreate something. But there is no way.

I once met a math-student, who said, that what mosts excites him with music is the fact, that it’s actually just math. Everything from matching the right frequencies to the grid of the beat. Hm…
Maybe there are some aspects, that you can represent using numbers and formulas, but math will never create music that moves. Ever heard a piece of generated music that touched you? (For a start, try generating some music on this site)

I truely believe that when there is a guy like Hauschka he just has the ability to transfer feelings right into the people’s hearts. It is this uninterrupted direct connection of his soul, his fingers and the audience receiving it through the tones he plays.  This can never ever be recreated with a piece of sequencing technology in between.

What does it mean for me? Basically (at the moment) I am a computer-musician. Hm… I will think about it…