Bin�rpilot Cerebral Cortex

Nordland Contest: Guess the lyrics

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:03:00 +0000

The release is coming up and I want to hold a little mini-contest. Amazing prizes! Money and fame! Gratuitous nudity! The first person to make out exactly what I'm singing in the clip below will get to listen to Nordland in it's entirety before anybody else. All you have to do is write a comment with what you think the lyrics are. The winner (if anyone) will also receive a signed copy of the CD when it's pressed. Good luck, robots!

Update: In fear of making it too easy I might have made it too hard. Impossible contests are no fun, so I changed the clip to help you guys out. Update 2: You're still having a hard time? Here's the correct words so far and blanks for the ones nobody has guessed:

all the ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ track fucking ___
___ ___ the beat ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Remix: Human League - Don't You Want Me

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:59:00 +0000

Earlier today I stumbled across a forum post that challenged people to try and remake an old pop hit. I wanted to give it a shot and Rachael decided I should try to do Human League's "Don't You Want Me Baby". Now I'm tired, my head hurts, and in retrospect I should have gone with a song I've actually heard before. Singing without knowing the track was very, very hard. But all in all, good times! Human League - Don't You Want Me (Bin�rpilot Penguin Mix)

Battlestar II

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:59:00 +0000

To defend the remainder of humanity against the threat of Planet Taker-class spaceships, the G.E.C. decided to build a space station. Set to orbit the earth at a safe distance, it would be equipped with state of the art weaponry and nuclear capability. Based on earlier plans of an interstellar defense station, the project was dubbed Battlestar II.

Sample Offset and Timestretching

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:22:00 +0000

Agradula asked what technique I used to manipulate a vocal sample in a track I'm working on. Sample offset, as most trackers know, is great when you want to break a drumloop or create old school acid leads without resorting to multisamples. It's also handy if you want to timestretch a sample without using an external program like Sound Forge (a trick I learned in FT2). In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to do this. Pretty cheesy huh? Luckily cheese is the new cool.

Setup

First I believe we need a sample (no really). Download this one of a girl saying "All your base are belong to us". Now open Madtracker, click the sample dialogue (1) and load the sample (2+3).

Playback

Click on the first channel/track in the pattern editor (1), make sure Edit is toggled (2) (if not click it or press space once) and press Q on the keyboard to start a sample playback from the beginning of the pattern. Adjust the LPB to a higher value (3) (making the pattern play faster for precision, you'll see why soon enough), I'd choose 8 for now. Then press play (4) to check that everything is in it's right place.

Get Hexed

Before we continue I advise you change the Madtracker display to use hexadecimals instead of plain numbers. Why? Because, as an old Fasttracker, I do and changing will make it easier to follow this guide. Open the config (1+2), select the display pane (3) and check Hexadecimal (4).

Breakin'

Now for the fun part. Each channel/track is divided like this: Note (1), volume (2) (00-80), panning (3) (00-FF), effect number (4) (XX) and effect parameter (5) (XXXX).

The effect number for set offset is 9, so use your arrow keys to move the marker into the second column of the 4th section and press "9" (remember to make sure Edit is toggled). This is a short sample and from experience I'm guessing that "Base" is on 40 (ie. All 00, Your 20, Base 40). To check my theory let's move into the third column of the 5th section, press "4" and play the module to hear where the sample starts.

Now select that line by clicking it (it should highlight like in the picture above) and copy it by pressing ALT+F4. Paste it to row 08, 0C and 10 by moving the marker into those positions with the down-arrow and using ALT+F5. Then go back to the first line, press delete, move back up and then "Q" to insert a regular playback of the sample. It should look something like this (picture). Press play.

All done

And there you have it, the basics of breakin' a vocal sample using sample offset. As everything else, the end result depends on how much time you're willing to spend. Hopefully this tutorial will give you enough information to start experimenting on your own but to give you some ideas I made a little more just playing around with the numbers (picture).

Timestretching?

In closing I'm going to show you how to do timestretching, if you haven't figured it out already. It's the same principle as breakin' only now we have to to issue the offset command a whole lot more. Insert a new pattern below the current one (1), press SHIFT+F3 to empty the channel of commands, press and hold Q to fill the entire channel with sample start (2) and increase the LPB to 16 (3).

Now for the tedious task of programming the offset. Basically, you want to issue the offset one value higher for each sample start (picture). And don't worry if programming it now seems horribly slow, you'll probably discover a way of doing it faster (Hint: copying blocks is a nice thing). After you're done press play to check whether you have to add additional lines to the pattern or not (I'm betting that 40 lines isn't going to be enough).

Download the module

One Sample To Rule Them All

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:44:00 +0000

A part of U.S. copyright law dictates that no sample, no matter how unrecognizable, can be used without permission. Effectively destroying whatever chance aspiring musicians, without money to buy expensive hard-/software, have to produce original and legal music.

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to take this less than a second long sample and turn it into a little robot disco song. One that I like to call "Why does the man want to kill music?" Because even though it's not apparent to everyone, sampling doesn't necessarily mean stealing a large portion of another musician's recording (something frowned upon by every decent artist there is). A sample can be less than the tenth of a second, it's still a sample. And if they are going to punish musicians for using even a fraction of a second not recorded by themselves, then creativity is surely in a sleeper hold.

"Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way."
Let's spend the next fifteen minutes proving them wrong.

Setup

For some microstyle disco (always had a soft spot for that genre) we'll need a bass drum, snare, open and closed hat, bass and a lead. That makes 6 instruments, but since we're going to use the same one for open/closed hat and bass/lead make it 4. Download the sample and load four copies of it. Toggle the instrument dialogue (1) and rename them accordingly (2). Name the tracks we're going to use too by opening the mixer (3) and clicking the track labels (4).

Bass Drum

Doubleclick the Bass Drum instrument (1) and then the sample (2) to bring up Madtracker's sample editor. If you've ever seen a bass drum in wave before you know that it starts with a peak and then fades out with an increasing space between each curve. With that in mind zoom in (3), find the peak of the sample, make a small selection starting slightly ahead of it (4) and cut (5). You can use the numbers at the statusbar (bottom) as a reference point if you're having trouble locating it.

Now doubleclick the sample to select everything and press paste (1). Fade out the sample a couple of times from about half-way into it (2+3). Try pressing Q a couple of times. Doesn't really sound like a bass drum now does it? Press F1 to try playing it at a lower octave. Closer but still too, well, weird to classify as a bass drum.

Exit the sample editor, click the Synthesizer pane (1) and enable the filter (2). Insert 180 cutoff and 128 resonance (picture). Now try playing it a couple times. There we go. Still too much sound for me so I went ahead and faded it out some more. Play with the values pressing Q now and then to get it sounding like you want.

Snare Drum

Almost the same as creating the bass drum but now we should look for a peak followed by more frequent curves. Select the correct instrument, zoom in and look. I found one (although there are several candidates) just before our bass drum.

After the cut and paste you should normalize it and fade out. Try pressing Q a couple of times. It doesn't sound like a snare at all. Mess around with the filter settings. Make it an high-pass filter, cutoff 1900 and resonance at 80. A lower note might help too so press V a couple of times. It's getting there, but we need to add more noise. We need distortion. In Fasttracker you could increase the volume several times to distort the sample, but in Madtracker we won't have to since we have effects. Name a new track Snare Drum and make it play the sample every other bar (picture).

Fire up the effects dialogue (1) select track 5, enable effects (2) and choose distortion. Using my settings as a starting point (picture), play around with the effect values untill you're satisfied with how your snare sounds. Our beloved bass drum could use a little more kick to it as well so try adding some distortion to it when you're done. Keep in mind you won't be needing this low treshold/curvature for that unless you want to make gabber disco (oh, the horror).

Hats

On old analogue gear hats consisted mostly of white noise. With that in mind repeat the process and look for a place in the sample that has a high frequency of curves. Press F6 to use the second highest octave available, add tons of distortion to the Hats track and lay down some standard-issue disco hats using retrigger to differ between open and closed (picture). While you're at it, add a base drum on each bar.

Disco

We got ourselves a beat. However it's very static and sounds more like uninspired techno than disco. This is where that Disco track we added earlier comes in. We're going to add shuffle - old school style. An easy trick to make your track sound less "computed" and in this case that's exactly what we want. By telling the tracker to change the tempo on every note, using FT2's tempo command, the result is a basic shuffle (picture). Try experimenting with the values. Increase them proportionally for more shuffle and decrease them to, well, you get it. With a more unorthodox implementation you can use this trick to create glitch/IDM type rythms, but ssh, don't tell anyone.

Bass

For our bass (and lead) we're going to create a simple chip sound. Delete everything apart from a tiny portion of the sample and zoom in to maximum resolution. Now click Loop and select forward (1), drag the looping points so that they create as seamless a sound as possible (2+3). Try to avoid getting any clicking noises, look for places in the waveform that are inaudible (marked with white). You can press any key and hold it while you drag. Caution: Do not try this at high volume. My physical self has noticed a decrease in hearing efficiency after neglecting to check decibel levels before attempting this.

Let's make our bassline. Press F3 to go into a fairly slow playback for the sample, whether you have to go lower or higher depends on the length of your finished loop. The basslines in disco are primarly alternating octaves, there is of course room for experimenting beyond that, but for now let's just stick to the formula. Make a simple one (picture) and listen to how it sounds. Not bad, but I want an analogue filter on it and fair bit of distortion.

Routing Tracks

Two effects on one track? Well, we could use the Synthesizer pane for the filter but that would apply to our lead as well. Luckily for us, you can route/chain tracks in Madtracker. In short: we can send our already processed bassline into another track that applies the second effect. I agree, it is a very nice feature. Say you've made a nice drumloop and would like some reverb on it. Instead of adding reverb to all the different tracks (kicks, percussion, hats, etc.) you can just route them all into a single one and add the effect there. But I digress, let's start our little chain by adding the first one; an analogue filter with very low cutoff and full resonance (picture). Much better already.

The routing is simple. Open the mixer and label Track 6 Distortion (the track next to Snare Drum). Scroll back to Bass, right-click Master (1) and choose Distortion (2). That's it. All that's left now is to add the actual distortion, don't let me keep you. High level, low treshold and a little curvature to prevent from reducing the bass to noise.

Lead

As for the lead, showing you how I made mine would be pointless. You already know more than enough to start experimenting on your own. So put our little comp on repeat (1), press F6 and start creating Nintendo love.

Find a melody you like then either program the notes into the pattern or record them live. After you're happy with how the lead plays you probably should polish it a little. The instrument we made is very high in volume so reducing the Lead channel in the mixer would be my first step. Then I'd probably add some stereo delay to make it flow smoother.

Congratulations!

That's it! I hope you learned a trick or or two, but more importantly, that you had some fun. After all, that's what music is about; Having fun. And I believe congratulations are in order, because in accordance with U.S. law, you're now a criminal! By creating this little song based on a split-second sample to which you did not have the original copyright holder's consent, you broke the law. Could anyone, ever, tell that you did just by listening to the song? Not a snowball's chance in hell. But you still did. "Stupid" doesn't even begin to describe how ridiculously dumb this is. I think we all can agree that the ruling is probably the worst thing to happen to music since Trance was "invented". Oh, and please remember to come visit me in prison when I get sued for writing this tutorial (I'll be on the floppy disc in the warden's desk).

Download the module

Who is paying for all this?

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:52:00 +0000

After moving the site to a new server I wanted to know how much bandwidth the site used. Three months later I can say that on average the battlestar pumps out over 130 GB's a month. Which is surprising to me because I always assumed the torrents represented the majority of Bin�rpilot-traffic.

So how am I paying to keep this site up? Short answer, I'm not. Everything is donated by Optical (Eirik's company). He's been hosting Bin�rpilot for free since 1998. The server space, the bandwidth and the technical support hasn't cost me anything. So when you need a webhost, go with Optical. The prices are reasonable but most importantly the support is excellent. And to Eirik; Thank you for everything you've done to keep this site online.

Fundraiser reached $1500

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Today the Nordland fundraiser reached it's goal. I'm trying hard not to reiterate what I've already said, but this is a truly rewarding experience for me as an artist. Knowing that while you've never had to pay for any of my music, you've pooled together enough money to print an album. People won't pay for something that's free? Thank you for proving them all wrong.

There is a fair amount of work left, but I'm looking forward to putting it all together the next few months (still opting for a spring release). I have bought myself a pair of studio headphones (AKG) to make sure that my amateur mixing/mastering will not suffer additionally from the use of shit speakers.

One thing I'm incredibly psyched about is the amazing Ray Frenden doing the cover art for this release. He's a professional illustrator who has taken time out of his busy schedule to help give the album that important final touch. Check out his portfolio and you'll understand why I'm so excited. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, but more about that later. For now I need your help to create as much hype for the upcoming release as possible. Please see this thread if you'd like to help.

For those of you bummed out about missing the chance to get your name on the album, there's still time. Even though the goal is met you can still donate. Remaining cash after production will go towards promoting the album online.

The Pirate Bay Trial

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:07:00 +0000

Every day is Christmas! Reading up on the ongoing trial against TPB is a blessing in disguise. It's like every nerd's wet dream; Getting to lecture people of authority that they are completely clueless while the whole world is watching. Now I'm not a fan of using cyberspace-lingo in serious writing, but FOMG LAWL. I can't believe this trial ever saw the light of day. They have no evidence that holds up, no understanding of how BT works, not even any convincing arguments. But luckily for us, they have a penchant for comedy.

It seems appropriate at this juncture to point out that I'm supportive of TPB. Not that it should come as a surprise to you, but I seems pertinent to point out that this post is biased. Where I work we have a lot of clients in the music industry, and because of my outspoken support for piracy, I have had a few discussions with people who strongly disagree. I am all for interesting conversation and I love to gain perspective. But I find it extremely hard to sympathize with an industry who's been suckling the teet of infinite wealth for 50 years, waking up one day to find all their money gone, crying rape.

I wholeheartedly support the idea that people should get paid for their work. Of course I do. You do a job, you should get paid for it. But waging a war against TPB is ludicrous at best. The fact of the matter is, they're doing nothing illegal. And let's be clear here, absolutely no facet of TPB's operation can in any way shape or form be perceived as illegal. End of discussion. And if TPB gets shut down for quote "aiding copyright infringement", by another miracle of lobbying I'm sure, we are headed down a dangerous road.

In my opinion what this problem really boils down to is the criminalization of a whole generation. I'll argue that the threshold for becoming a criminal today is at an all-time low. After all the law gets bigger and more incomprehensible every day. And this is all about people. People are copying, uploading, distributing and downloading. Not The Pirate Bay. So the real question should be why are we so unaffected by breaking the law? What happened to our morals? To me this seems more a sociological problem than anything to do with technology.

The beauty (and horror) of the internet is that it's the true face of humanity. There is no internet overlord scrutinizing content. It's democracy in it's purest form. Suing three guys for $100 bazillion dollars isn't going to stop filesharing, it's not even going to make a dent. Because they're not the problem, we are.

Tjaere For Alltid

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 05:26:00 +0000

The Tjaere-series of tracks have a recurring theme I've been unable to put to rest. It started with a bassline that I fell hopelessly in love with (and have been musing over for years). While the bassline itself is very simple, it does have a certain quality that I'm unable to pinpoint. And now, almost ten years later, it's still one of my dearest melodies. So for Christmas this year I decided to give you a new installment in the series, loosely based on some left-overs from Nordland.

What's up with the title? The idea behind it was to play on the Norwegian words Kj�re and Tj�re, meaning Dear and Tar respectively. The original song was called Tjaere Min Venn (Dear Friend or Tar My Friend) and has been followed by Tjaere Igjen (Dear Again or Tar Again) and Tjaerlighet (Love). A literal translation of the new song would be Dear Forever or, you guessed it, Tar Forever.

Enough talk. Here's Tjaere For Alltid. Merry Christmas!

Nordland getting closer to release

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 06:30:00 +0000

Seeing as the Nordland fundraiser reached $1000 two days ago I wanted to share some thoughts about how it's coming along and what this release means to me.

First of all I can't help but recognize how amazing it is to be this close to releasing a CD through donations only. Simply being able to put something out there in the physical world means a lot, but the fact that you, the listeners, are the ones enabling me to is nothing short of amazing. When I first started uploading my songs online I was mostly motivated by convenience; Easier to give my friends a link to a site than sending everyone MP3-files. I never anticipated the site would gain enough of a following to support what I'm trying to do with Nordland now.

All my releases have a theme to them, something that's not always apparent, but I really enjoy making up little stories to go with each track (and album as a whole). I even name each segment of every track to something that gives me meaning, so when I refer to them it makes sense both musically and emotionally. Nordland is no different, bearing the name of the part of Norway where I grew up, it's mainly inspired by events in my past and predominantly musical experiences I had growing up. The album embodies a lot of feelings I'm left with from my youth.

At the time of writing this I'd say the album is about 75% complete. While there still remains a fair amount of work on mixing and mastering, I'm very happy with the tracks so far. So when is it coming out? Provided that the fundraiser completes in time I'm hoping for a spring release. I will not be sharing public previews of the tracks on this site before the album comes out, but rest assured that when it is done it will be available free for download. You will never have to pay for a single Bin�rpilot track, ever. That being said there are previews Backstage for the impatient.

In closing I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who've donated so far, you guys are the best. I know there hasn't been a whole lot of updates on the site the past few months, but watch this site the next couple of days, I will try and get a little something done in time for the holidays. Thank you for your continued support, long live the free music revolution.

Robot Wars video by Ministry Of Boys

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 03:07:00 +0000

From the creative minds at The Ministry Of Boys comes a music video for Robot Wars that completely blew me out of the water. This video has everything: Robots, lasers, hot women wearing tights, synchronized dancing and space travel through the use of exercise bikes. What more could you possibly ask for? This is two days worth of shooting and one week in post-production. Once again, New Zealand shows us how it's done. You can download it here. And check out their other videos while you're at it.

So you wanna make music?

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:50:00 +0000

A lot of people visiting this site are aspiring musicians. While I have written a couple of tutorials on tracking, there are questions that crop up regularly. Like what equipment to buy, what software to get, where to find samples and so on. In this post I'll tell you how I learned tracking, write a long-winded "There are no easy answers to those questions." and hopefully provide some insight beyond that.

For me it all began one cold winter's night, the moon was up and there was a strong sense of adventure lingering in the air. My eyes open wide as I turned the pages in my newly acquired copy of Techno Magazine, carefully examining each page as if written by forgotten creatures from the land beyond time. When behold, an extraordinary article entitled The Demoscene caught my attention. Eh, ok, so let's cut the pretense.

Faux literary aspirations aside, my introduction to tracking started with FastTracker II. At first glance it was incredibly intimidating (at least that much hasn't changed). After starting clean slate several times and failing miserably to complete the most basic of tasks, "Please... Make a sound... Any sound will do...", I decided to opt for a different approach. Namely stealing. I learned tracking by loading other peoples modules and examining them. Luckily (as I didn't have a internet connection at that point) the aforementioned magazine came with a CD full of modules. Modules are, like the name indicates, files that contain all the instructions and samples necessary for playback. More to the point, modules are songs.

There I was picking apart the work by scene legends like Lizardking and Mellow-D. Simply by altering the numbers, cutting stuff out, pasting stuff in and so on, I slowly began to understand which parameters did what. Much like a monkey learning which shapes go where on a board. Incidently, I also began smelling like a monkey as FT2 completely consumed my life. The rush of learning was overwhelming, trackers made it possible for me to be a composer with the most limited of means. Before a month had passed I felt ready to start making my own songs. And I can honestly say they were atrocious. They were crimes against music. But I kept at it and frequently looked to the work of others for ideas on how to do things differently.

Learning by doing always worked better for me than learning by reading. So my advice to anyone interested in learning tracking is this: Download a copy of Renoise and a bunch of modules. Now prepare massive amounts of your favorite Stay awake-liquid, stock up on food and have at it. Unless you're a robot android from the future with vastly superior intellect, don't expect making kick ass music the first few tries. But take a vacation from work (or ditch school), stay up all night, tear tons of modules apart and figure out how everything works. Learning by reading? Well, tutorials on tracking are in my experience scarce, and those that I have found were way too technical for beginners (especially those without any formal music training). You're better off learning on your own from day one. Ready? Go!

That should cover tracking but what about the alternatives? Tracking isn't for everyone, that much is a given. It's the nerd's approach to making music. But I have to say the freedom I feel in a tracker is unparalleled. (So naturally I ramble on about it like a teenager with a crush.) Still, there's a lot of numbers, an intimidating interface and in the beginning it will feel about as intuitive as as Windows Vista. But don't despair, depending on where you want to go with your music there are alternatives.

If all you want is to lay down some drum tracks to go with your guitar playing, a program like Garageband or Fruity Loops will feel a lot more comfortable (although the latter has grown a lot since the last time I tried it). If you're aspiring more towards live performances, or "in the moment" composing, Ableton Live will probably suit your needs better. This list could go on for eternity so I'll stop there. I will say this though, learning to use a computer like an instrument, and doing it well, is no easier than learning any other instrument. Anyone who disagrees have no idea what they are talking about. It takes time. A lot of time.

Back to the subject at hand; Every solution out there has it's pro's and con's, figuring out what you want to do with your music and deciding on a setup from there is superior to letting other artist's preferences dictate your choices. People are making music on Gameboys, Aphex Twin once recorded marching ants, most people have no idea what the hell Ariel Pink is using and there are far more obscure examples out there. When it comes to deciding what works best for you there are no easy answers. You'll simply have to try a few of them before you decide. (And that's what the warez scene is for.) As for questions on hardware: I have no idea whatsoever. The first few years my studio consisted of a $10 sound card and a computer.

Now should you decide that music making takes far too much of an effort to learn, there's always software out there like eJay where you simply put together prerecorded bits of music. You could make a finished song in five minutes. But then again, that's not composing, it's rearranging. I have yet to hear anything worthwhile from "eJays" and to be frank I hate pretty much everything about it. That's not to say it isn't good for a laugh or two. Excuse me, but I have to go wash my mouth out with soap. Good luck!

Lie! Tonight! Sold out!

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:31:00 +0000

How can I justify people coming out and paying money to watch me play songs on my laptop? This is the question I'm faced with every time I accept a booking request. Granted I've spent days, weeks, sometimes even months to finish these four minutes you're hearing and I think it's only fair that I should receive some sort of acclaim. (Preferably in the form of dancing people shouting my name.) But I often find myself pondering this question backstage. I could do like some electronic musicians; Put on a headset and pretend that a lot of the sounds you're hearing are in fact improvised on the spot. But that's a lie.

So how do I perform when all my material is pre-recorded? Playback is a dirty word for a reason, there's nothing more unsatisfying than seeing your favorite artist and noticing it's lip-sync. I don't want to let people down, but to some extent I have to. I've got no physical equipment bar a microKorg, which by the looks of it is never going to reach me, so I'm basically just triggering songs on my laptop. There is a certain amount of mixing, track sound levels go from old time radio to over-compressed house music, but that's pretty much it. I do have a couple songs that allow me to sing, and I try to play one on every show simply because it adds some actual performance.

But what do I do in between? Short answer; I dance. I dance like I'm having a seizure. Trying to instruct the movement of the audience. Knowing the tracks by heart I can follow each little turn with some degree of precision, and it sometimes feels like I'm conducting. Now if you're thinking I must be a good dancer, you're sorely mistaken. I'm a horrible dancer, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. It seems to inspire others to move. "Hell, if he can dance like a mad man on stage, maybe I should bust some moves as well." There's few things more gratifying than having someone come up to me after a show and tell me they didn't think dancing could be this much fun.

This feeling of conquering social awkwardness inspired parts of Smile. There's a line in the song that goes "Everybody just freeze when my people groove." Something that happens a lot when people who normally never hit the dance floor start going crazy. A group of nerds dancing is a rare sight, and I think it's beautiful on more levels than one. Personally I rarely dance in public, it makes me uncomfortable. But that sense of connection you can get while dancing with other people is sublime. Having just one of those moments where I feel like I'm dancing with the audience really makes a gig for me. And isn't feeling a connection to the artist the very definition of a good concert experience?

I might not play a real instrument, do a bunch of programming on the fly, or twist knobs on my delay pedal, but I do try my very best to make it a night you'll remember. Every time I go on stage there is a strong sense of being on a mission to entertain, and I do acknowledge my part in creating the best possible atmosphere for you to have fun. After all, you're the reason I'm on stage in the first place. Of course I hope to do more out of live performances in the future, but things being as they are, I'd rather dance with you than lie to you.

KEF's Day Out

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:41:00 +0000

One afternoon four years ago at my grandparents' house, I had the urge to make a video for a track me and Inge had been messing around with. Mostly because the song sounded very french so far and I had just seen the Daft Punk DVD. The only problem was that I didn't have a video camera. I did, however, have a regular camera and decided to take lots of pictures which I then would try to synchronize with the music. A bit ambitious for a first time movie-project? Definitely, but it was a lot of fun to make.

Unfortunately I never finished it. Why? Because I never finished the track, and by the time I decided to use it for another one I had lost the original pictures. But I recently found this clip in the same back-up that Planet Takers was recovered from and thought it was a shame to let it rot. Here's hoping you'll get a kick out of it. Special thanks to Eirik and Monica for coming to pick KEF up, my grandfather for the sneaky cameo and KEF for staying in the frame even after they supposedly drive off.

Planet Takers

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:28:00 +0000

24 years after The Robot Wars, remnants of the G.E.C. experimented with bending light to approach a state of non-time. The goal was to make interstellar travel feasible, and subsequently colonize a new home for the human race. During a test run something went awry and a drive materialized in the sphere. It has been dated to 2082 AD and contains several encrypted files detailing the invasion of our solar system. Rogue time travelers have leaked a deciphered version of one chapter to cyberspace in hopes of igniting research in the area of planetary defense. It describes spaceships of enormous mass, so called Planet Takers.

I listen to my own music

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:39:00 +0000

It shouldn't need to be said, but here I am writing a blog post on the topic. Why? Because I read an interview with an artist who said he never listens to his own music. And that made me sad and angry. I know it's not considered cool to admit to any degree of hubris, but why? It just seems childish, much like when your nephew proudly shows you a drawing he did while uttering the words "But it's not any good." Admittedly, children's drawings are frequently crap, but is that really how we all should feel about our own creations past maturity?

So enough people are listening to your music to justify an interview, surely nobody would begrudge you being proud? Is it really that important to be cool? And when did pride become a crime? I thought self-confidence was cool. This is all too confusing. Regardless I'm willing to bet $10 this guy listens to his own music. Personally I've always thought my shit smelled great. Albeit blessed with a certain amount of insight, I have kept a lot of it away from the general public. Something I feel grateful for. That's not to say some of the tracks that slipped through the self-censorship barrier didn't stink. A lot.

I have another bone to pick; He's claiming that he won't even listen to it himself, so why should I bother? It's like buying ice cream from people who hate making it. I'd much rather get it from the people so fanatical in their devotion that they have strawberry ice cream for dinner. The music I make is first and foremost for myself. I write songs I like. Writing songs I didn't like wouldn't make any sense at all. "Sup dudes, I'm a rock star. I'm spending half my life making something I don't even like, just because I'm so fucking rad." Christ, what a douche this guy is.

Is there any point to this post? Yes, be proud of your work. Because as long as you're having fun you'll keep at it, and the longer you do the more likely you'll create something truly astonishing one day. Trust me on this, the fun starts dying the second you start worrying too much about what others might think. And you should never stop doing something you love just because you're afraid you might be crap at it. Ask anyone, skill comes with practice. Of course talent doesn't hurt, but the amount required is minuscule compared to the work. And in the words of Gods of Old: Our work is never over.

Piracy kills no music

alexander@binaerpilot.no — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:47:00 +0000

Distributing my work for free on the internet, I've been asked to clarify my stance on music piracy on numerous occasions. Disregarding my fear of reiterating what so many people have said before, I decided to write down my feelings on the matter. I'll start it off with a simple question: What's the single most important contribution piracy has given society? It should come as no surprise that 'distribution' is the correct answer. Not free content, but distribution.

As an artist, your ultimate goal is more frequently than not reaching people with your work. Traditionally speaking, there's a limited number of major channels for artists to market themselves through, and these channels are controlled by hard currency. If you don't have the budget, you don't get to play. This is nothing new and, some might argue, a form of quality control. If these channels were open to everyone we'd have three hour long free form jazz adventures playing on POP FM, accompanied by sounds reminiscent of animals slowly dying. Which is true, because we get weirder stuff on the internet already.

But let's discuss this notion of quality. I for one can't help but notice that pop music the past few decades has suffered in the hands of people only thinking profit. Compare an array of 70's hit music to the 90's equivalent and you'll catch on fairly quick. Yes, it reeks of popollution. Now don't get me wrong, a business should make money, that much is given. But when the pursuit of higher (and higher) profit margins have resulted in these soulless, bland and branded acts spewing their sixth-grade level lyrics through every major media outlet, warning bells should toll. Sex and violence will always have mass appeal, but I'm of the opinion that music should have more substance than a chorus repeating "I wanna fuck you." So clearly the argument that big business' hold on mass media by that merit benefits us, the consumers, is bunk.

So how's the internet different? Surely it's being controlled in a similar manner? Yes (in some aspects), but more importantly, no. As it has proven again and again, the real power of the internet lies within its inhabitants and not the providers. This shift of power is apparent to anyone who's been online the past decade. People will have their say, and through the power of anonymity, they will voice their opinion on pretty much any subject. If something new is deemed fresh and tasty by enough people, it will spread like an STD in a house full of nymphomaniacs. I myself can't even count the number of great records in my collection I owe to social networking. Records I never would have heard of if it hadn't been for modems, let alone been able to get a hold of.

On to the workhorse of anti-piracy patrons: Piracy is killing music because the artists are not getting paid. Indeed, because the current system is fantastic in that regard (note the seething sarcasm). I'm not going to debate how the old way of doing things is flawed, because there are so many people out there doing a far better job at that than I ever could. But if you honestly believe that online piracy is hurting artists who make a living off their music you should probably read up on the topic. In the interest of getting a point across, I'll sum it up for you: It's not hurting the artists, it's hurting the industry behind the artists. And that is, in my opinion, the beauty of it; Contrary to what they want you to believe, piracy is (if anything) saving music, because it's bringing a corrupt and exploitative machine down to its knees.

The bottom line is this: We need a new system, a transparent one. And straight off the bat there should be a paradigm shift in attitude towards piracy. Fighting this war on piracy is as pointless as a war on terrorism, because (as someone much smarter than me once said) you're fighting the symptoms and not the disease. I firmly believe that if the record industry spent their anti-piracy budget on reducing the price on albums, people would buy more records. And instead of holding anti-piracy campaigns, tell people exactly how much of each record sold benefits the original artist (but they'd better make it a reasonable amount first). You'd be surprised by how willing people are to support the things they love, as long as they don't perceive it as unfair or unwarranted.

I've never charged a dime for any of my music, but thanks to the internet I'm making a fair amount of money through donations and ad revenue. Money I never would have seen if it wasn't for so-called pirates downloading and uploading my music. And most important of all, this is money I can spend with a clear conscience, knowing I never sacrificed my artistic integrity to fit some sort of corporate formula. Now I'm not making a living with my music, and with the status quo I don't think I ever will. But that's not because of pirates, and it never will be. In fact, I salute them; Thank you for spreading my music.