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Watch Artists Talk About Making Sound From Matter; Thursday Event and Stream in Transmediale Prelude

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

Alex Nowitz for BodyControlled #2 from CDM on Vimeo.

Electronic media artist Mario de Vega (Mexico City/Berlin) says his work plays with the creation of “unstable systems.” As part of the official Vorspiel, or lead-up, to Berlin’s massive Transmediale festival, here we get to visit two artists working with the materiality of live performance, drawing from the festival theme of “in/compatible.” The sonic environments they create seem poised on the brink of sonic chaos, a dance at the edge of entropy.

CDM will again be editorial co-presenter of BodyControlled; you can see the show for free (donation suggested) in Berlin at LEAP, or tune into the live video stream from anywhere in the world, and we’ll be bringing you details of the artwork. We’re a ticket to Alexanderplatz that’s even cheaper than easyJet, in other words. The performances start at 20h CET Thursday, 26 January. (That’s 2p East Coast time / 11a Pacific, so scare your office mates and turn it up loud.) Full details below.

At top, composer/singer Alex Nowitz demonstrates his gestural performance techniques. I got to see his work for the first time at the Patterns + Pleasure Festival in the fall at Amsterdam’s STEIM research center. While at STEIM, Nowitz built on previous work with the Wii remote, and augmented his gestures with a new instrument, entitled the “Strophonion.” You can see that creation here.

With each contortion of his body, Nowitz rips apart sounds, all while sputtering non-lingual utterances with his gymnastic voice. In the Amsterdam performance, one had the sense of following him into the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), an operatic odyssey echoing with forboding birdsong. But the system can also be dynamic and even, at moments, whimsical.

steim.org/projectblog/?p=3715
nowitz.de/

For his part, Mario de Vega’s “unstable systems” flirt even more with this notion of engineered incompatibility, with sounds that seem like they will explode in an earthquake-like tremor.

Mario de Vega for BodyControlled #2 from CDM on Vimeo.

mariodevega.info/

Films by João Pais, co-curator of the series; edited by CDM.

Also on this program, more works engage the idea of what the curatorial statement terms “hidden acoustics”:

Echo Ho (Canada/Cologne, DE)

Tuned to Site #26012012
This title is from a series of concerts, called “Tuned to Site #…”. As a whole, the series formulates the idea of “musification of urban landscapes”.
In the first performance of this series in 2012 Echo Ho will play a set of instruments: a self-fabricated hybrid semblance of the ancient Qin from China, which combines traditional acoustic and digital interfaces in one unique transparent plexiglas body. Like a sensor box, it will enable Echo Ho to make field recordings of inaudible hidden sounds within
the city environment, such as electro-magnetic fields, variation and wind movements. The performance thus marks the process of generating action by outlining situations in which sounds may occur.

http://www.echoho.net/

Ignaz Schick (DE)
Turntablist, sound artist, performer & composer Schick promises, through motors and objects, genuine accidents:

Site-specific performance with transducers, wireless controllers, feedback systems and back tape
Through accidents and their outcomes, actions, processes and objects that conceptually connect with acoustic
information, the work of Mario de Vega researches the value of vulnerability, exploring the causes and effects that
determine the construction of realities. In this site-specific performance with transducers, wireless controllers, feedback
systems and back tape, de Vega is investigating aesthetic and social realms through a multiplicity of mediums.

http://www.zangimusic.de

Curator João Pais tells CDM that this installment, in keeping with Transmediale’s theme, will “give the performers a room where they can show their ways of working with the dissociation of matter (through sound, in this case) and expression.”

This episode includes two self-made instruments that expand on existing practice, he says, in the case of Nowitz and Ho, and the hacked and modulated machines of Schick and Vega.

More information; where to see the show

26 January 2012, 20h (free/donation)

Show details

Anywhere in the world – all performances will be available from 20.00 CET via live stream:
http://bit.ly/uXRgyq

Facebook: on.fb.me/AmEtO9

LEAP
Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance
(Berlin Carré, 1. Stock)
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13
10178 Berlin

How to find LEAP

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Pushing the Live Performance Envelope in LA: Mike Slott, Artists on Video; Party Friday

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Music has always moved forward when people get together to play. Groups of artists in Los Angeles’ Interface LA collective – and other California groups, like LoveTech and controllerism.com – are challenging each other to keep expanding their technique in playing electronics live.

I’m pleased with CDM and some of our friends to support a party Friday night in downtown LA celebrating playing live. Interface LA is a group centered on live electronic music performance and interactions. We’ll be bringing you video coverage after the event here, thanks to talented videographer Charlie Visnic. But we can kick things off now with videos of the artists and work. And if you are in town, be sure to preorder tickets now, as we expect this to sell out really quickly and hope to see you there!

Videos, from top: Mike Slott (Brooklyn), who’s headlining Friday night, in an interview. Second from top, check out the crew in their last event at top, that one centering on the monome grid instrument.

I’m playing, as well (hey, I’ve got to put my money where my very large mouth is). But I’m really thrilled to get to share some time with a bunch of artists I love, many coming from San Francisco’s LoveTech and controllerism.com, and from LA’s own Interface LA regulars. The lineup:

Mike Slott
Moldover
Vass Glenison
Rich DDT
‘House Band’ (Smacktop Ensemble, featuring the awesome force that is the Smacktop laptop-that-you-hit)
Nonagon
Ro and the Interface LA crew
Presented with Novation and Ableton

Friday, January 21
Doors 9pm
18+
$ 10 cover

We also have an interactive work entitled (con)textile:

A digital installation using the Kinect, stop-motion and digital noise, and interactive audio” by Jeff Aaron Bryant. Jeff is a composer working in digital media and kinetics. He is pursuing his MFA in music technology at California Institute of the Arts.

Information:
http://interface-la.tumblr.com/events
http://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/82413

Facebook links:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Interface-L-A/316896995011687
https://www.facebook.com/events/351095438239262/

Images

Lucky Dragons plays Interface LA in the fall.

RO in LA.

November Interface LA, in photos

San Francisco’s LoveTech crew, including their Burning Man trip

SmackTop, in Video

We’ve seen this before, but it’s still good watching someone hit their laptop.

More Events in LA This Week

I have an early flight Saturday morning back to Berlin, but there are two other great events in Los Angeles this week if you happen to live in the area or are in town for a certain massive trade show down south in Anaheim.

TRASH_AUDIO NAMM BBQ 2012 has closed its RSVP, but if you do make it, let us know how it goes or (with, uh, permission) take photos of any cool stuff you find. Really wish the TRASH_AUDIO folks the best and all our modular and sound-making friends and Matrixsynth and company; I’ll be somewhere like 40,000 feet over Ireland while that’s going on.

Also, Droid Behavior is doing a party Friday night that should go late at an undisclosed location, the fifth anniversary of their Wham Bam series. I thoroughly enjoyed getting involved in that in 2010, and might duck in if I can on my way to LAX; the event here is not related, to clear up any potential confusion.

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A New Partnership, a New Series on Digital Sound and Art in Berlin; First Look at the Artists

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Exploring the connection of the mechanical to sound, UK-based artists Stephen Cornford and Paul Whitty make reclaimed tape machines into instruments. All images courtesy LEAP.

In performance and art, sound and music constantly pull against the formless abstraction of the computer, to find physical expression and realization. In physical control, in tangible production, and in exploration of space, artists explore techniques new and old to refine the still-youthful medium of electronic and digital sound. That adventure is at the heart of a new series at a gallery space in the heart of Berlin, LEAP – the Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance, at Alexanderplatz.

I’m pleased to announce that CDM will be partnering with this new performance/exhibition series, entitled BodyControlled, as a media partner. In the shadow of Berlin’s Fernsehturm (TV tower), we’ll get the chance to share the work of an international roster of artists with everyone else, both in live streams and other documentation, as we look at some of the more experimental threads in electronic music today. (I like the symbolism there, at least, now broadcast over the Internets instead of via the air.) Berlin, like my previous home New York, is a convenient international crossroads, a place where you can find face-to-face some of the work from other parts of Germany, Europe, and beyond.

And I think we’re going to have a real blast kicking the series off this Saturday night, 8pm Berlin time November 26. The premiere of the series begins with installations and performances that manipulate spaces, real, virtual, and imagined. New works make noises with reel-to-reel tape, code, mechanical percussion, and more. I’ll be playing a live set with Pd, producing granular architectures from the harmonious sounds of piano and synth. And a highlight promises to be Robert Henke (of Monolake and Ableton fame, among other things), performing an epic 12-hour performance from just before midnight to morning the next day. (That leaves ample time for visitors to slip off to Berlin’s legendary club scene – or a nap – then see how things have evolved after dawn, if you so choose.)

Here, we take a first look at some of the artists, whose work can be sculptural, challenging, and adventurous. In the first preview videos, we see artists working with the mechanical qualities of tape and robotically-driven percussion to make sounds in physical space. A diverse program is slated for the coming months, too, so I can promise some diversity in ideas and aesthetic. The lineup:

Performances on the 26th November:
Stephen Cornford & Paul Whitty (UK)
Peter Kirn (US)
Robert Henke (DE)

Installations until 2nd December:
Stephen Cornford (UK)
Julian Oliver (NZ)
João Martinho Moura (PT)
Robert Mathy (AT)

Additionally, a recording of Robert Henke’s performance will be played as part of the installation

Let’s have a closer look at some of the upcoming work:

Stephen Cornford, in Binatone Galaxy, spotlights the strangely-beautiful sounds of the mechanisms of tape players, moving them from playback devices into the realm of being themselves instruments. Listen to the video above to hear what a chorus of recycled tape players sounds like, courtesy amplification.

Playing with Paul Whitty, Cornford also makes tape players into noise-making live instruments. One such performance below, though expect each of these to take on their own identity in Berlin this week.

At top, Robert Mathy’s work effectively becomes a “score” for a space, as percussion sets the environment into a choreographed set of sounds. (See also work like David Byrne’s Playing the Building project, which transformed an old ferry building in Manhattan. Here, Mathy works on a smaller scale.)

Volume consists of 24 electronic motors mounted on surfaces with different materiality, which are part of the exhibition room. Each motor is equipped with a small metal spike. When a motor gets activated, the spike knocks on the surface of the object on which the motor is mounted and produce a specific sound. All Motors are connected to a main control, which consists of an Arduino board and some electronic parts.
The score is composed of a series of varying random algorithms. They are diversified in temporal and spatial coordination, as every sound has his individual origin in space. The score is adapted in a new way for every room where the installation is shown.

João Martinho Moura‘s “Supercollider Shape,” above, is a minimal virtual sculpture of sound and imagined ink.

Conford’s tape machines cluster on a wall, as if in a colony of mechanical soundmakers.

Turn Robert Henke loose with ten speakers and twelve hours, and what happens? Tune into that live stream some time Saturday night (qualifying as such anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, in fact), and find out.

“Volume” turns any environment into a score – and thus changes in each new location.

Robert Henke’s program notes:

The music of Robert Henke is preoccupied with the present: how something sounds in that moment and what color and substance convey a rhythmic phrase? Music as a state. Only later will this condition be formulated over time. The artist’s installations are always explicit and in turn relate to the phenomena of temporal change.

The work Microsphere, developed for LEAP, combines both fields and explores the boundaries between installation and live performance. Acoustic sounds from percussion instruments distributed throughout the room are recorded during the performance, slowed down repeatedly, atomized into tiny particles and distributed to many speakers. Over the course of twelve hours, more and more sounds are produced and the result is an ever-growing repertoire of spatial-tonal gestures. The composer withdraws from the machine and lets it develop and change itself constantly over long periods of time. The structure of the performance arises from many variable and instantaneous decisions during the performance. The possible outcomes may be small and delicate, almost inaudible and static, or loud, brutal and full of complex repetitions.

Watch the performances

From anywhere in the world:

Tune in 8p (20h) Saturday (CET) / UTC + 1. Performances at 9p, 10p, and then 11p – 11a. Livestream link:
http://www.livestream.com/leapberlin

In Berlin:

While we remain committed to covering this for the rest of the planet, for those handful of you in Berlin, of course, we’d love to see you in person.

Facebook event

Opening and Performances | 26th November 2011 – 20.00

Exhibition | 28th November 2011 – 2nd December 2011, 12h-18h

LEAP
Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance
(Berlin Carré 1. Stock)
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13
10178 Berlin

FREE entry

LEAP isn’t the easiest place to find. Here’s a video to guide you in the door (add the Benny Hill theme music if you feel it’s appropriate):

And, as I say so often … stay tuned.

Full program notes [English] [PDF]
http://www.leapknecht.de/

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How to Gather Artists Together to Make Stuff: Morning Music + Coffee Consumption

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Drink up — just not too much, or your playing could wind up a tad … jittery. Photo (CC-BY) Lali Masriera).

Let’s get together and play music.

The Morning Music & Coffee Consumption series, an informal gathering of artists, aims to do just that. The assumption about digital music production may be very different – the solo artist, holed up in a bedroom alone with a laptop is the default image. But instruments and laptops go together, and laptops can increasingly be played comfortably as instruments, so there’s really no excuse. And Jared Smyth’s mm-cc series, having already produced a volume of music and image, is both an inspiration and a potential model. Creator Jared says he’s hoping others will join in with similar events and share the sonic results – perhaps that’ll be you and your friends, wherever you are.

The series, shot in sumptuous macro video by Charlie Visinic, looked good enough in film that it made appearance on our sister site Create Digital Motion (where I erroneously described the series as being Charlie’s creation, an error I can happily now correct):

Meditative Short Films with Hypnotic Music, Made in the Realm of the Micro

With the aim of inspiring (welcome) copycat events, I asked Jared to tell us more about how this series is organized and how it works.

CDM: Tell us a bit about the idea behind mm-cc.
Jared: I started mm-cc as a ritual to reconnect with what made me want to play music in the first place: community. It’s getting together with friends with no pressure to create something marketable, and simply hanging out and creating noise together. mm-cc is my concept (though not that original … people have been getting together to make music and drink coffee long before I called it ‘mm-cc’). I host the website, create posts and also host occasional mm-cc sessions myself at my home in Florida. Charlie also hosts sessions in southern California. The idea is for more people to take part as Charlie does – hosting their own sessions, creating their own visuals and then letting me know about it so I can do a post on it. There’s even an upload form and a forum I built on the site for people to send in samples of audio, or clips of video to be used in other people’s sessions. I really want mm-cc to be as collaborative and eclectic as possible.

How did you organize people to do this?
Some of the time it’s by creating a Facebook event; other times it’s word-of-mouth. With Charlie Visnic and the California sessions, it just sort of happened that he wanted to host sessions at his home over the summer. We met through the monome forums and then became friends as each of us was working on a 365×1 blog goal. (On that note, I started mine over on January 1st, and am now on day 261 – see uprlip.com.

At what point does the coffee kick in?

7am(ish) – people show up around 10am and we play till noon…. I’m usually fairly wired before they show up. I try to buy really good, locally-grown coffee and make it in my French Press.

Are there any special moments or surprises that have happened through the various sessions?

No individual event springs to mind. But it’s always really special for me to look through my studio, where cables are strewn about and there are five or six people drinking really strong coffee and spacing out on their respective instruments, and then into my living room and see my daughter drawing, one friend hand-sewing something, and another knitting, all while listening to the music we’re creating. The chatter and movement of the non-musicians filtering into the room (and often the mic’s) where we’re recording serves as a very natural field recording to accompany us. I love listening back to a session and hearing my daughter giggling or friends talking faintly in the background. It’s a really ethereal experience when that sort of all comes together. That’s exactly what I want from mm-cc – togetherness.

Are you releasing the music separately? If so, where?

There are plans for that in the works. The session that John Keston, David Andree and I did in Minneapolis earlier this year (see video, top) has a much longer recorded form than what’s represented in the video, and we’re very much planning to make that the first (of many?) mm-cc releases. Josh Mason at Sunshine Ltd. has agreed to release it; we’re just not sure of a date yet.

How do you work across coasts?

Well, we’ve only done one session that was ‘trans-coast.’ (video above) For that one we defined a set of notes within a set key that both session’s players would play. I shot the video clips here in Florida and then sent them off to Charlie to edit as he wanted, and he sent me the audio from their session. I then mixed that with the audio from our session, and then sent the final mix back to him, and he cut the video to it. I would like to do more this way – it’s sort of a blind/deaf jam session. We had no clue what theirs would sound like and vice-versa. As for the other sessions that Charlie has hosted, they’re all him. I really have very little to do with them. He just lets me know when he’s going to have one and I then do a post for it when he’s done, and has a video uploaded.

Okay, if this has made you interested in becoming involved, here’s where to go to do it.

http://mm-cc.org/
Vimeo channel
Community / host your own session

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Snapshots of Artists, Ableton Live in Performance: Cosmo D on Cello, Erin Barra with Voice + Keys

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Cosmo D, in for a demonstration of cello with Ableton.

The computer as bandmate is nothing new. It’s just more stable, more powerful, and friendlier than it has been ever before — and that, coupled with growing familiarity, has been making it more commonplace with artists. So just how are artists working with computers onstage when they also play instruments and sing?

Recent guests at New York’s Ableton Live user group have been demonstrating their own techniques for playing Live, live. They work with loops, recording, sampling, live effects, synths – all the things you’d expect – but find ways of navigating all that functionality while still playing their instrument. I was just editing interviews in which electronic artists made the opposite argument, that they preferred producing only electronic sounds with technology. But whatever your desire, you can find a playing technique to accommodate it.

It’s just one set of snapshots from one city — consider it the tip of a very large, very global, very diverse wave of artists getting more comfy with live laptop performance. Here’s how Cosmo D, on cello as part of the band Archie Pelago, and Erin Barra, singing and playing keys, work with software live.

Cosmo D

New York-based artist Cosmo D is doing some wonderful cello and laptop music. Even that’s something that’s becoming more frequent – a good thing, I think, as it means a range of artists will explore ways of working with instrument and machine.

In a video for our friends at the bangbang blog, he demonstrates a simplified version of his set.

And here’s Cosmo D with his band Archie Pelago, jamming away…

If you’re in the New York City area, this ensemble is playing live at the Ableton User Group at Tekserve on Thursday.

Archie Pelago on Facebook

Erin Barra

On the singer side of the spectrum, Erin Barra was also a guest this year at the New York Ableton UG. She’s working on a Live setup that’s a hub of vocal performance and keys, using the computer to host chains of effects.

A Berklee graduate with the chops to match, Erin is a recent convert to Ableton use; her publicist tells us she just dove into the manual last summer and is working on a training certification. The musical idiom is a bit different than the kind of artists’ work regularly featured on this site, but that’s further evidence that the tools aren’t genre-specific.

She walks through her live rig for the performance above in a separate video:

Also, in July she did the first of a writeup for a local New York production and recording outlet, Sonic Scoop, in which she talks more about production. The video is geared at novice and intermediate artists, so it walks through things gradually, step-by-step, and also reveals a bit of her approach to working with Live for vocal processing:

“Insert Scene” by Erin Barra: Creating a Vocal Chain in Ableton Live

It’s great to see artists being brave and patient enough to do this kind of walkthrough. (I say that because I personally find doing screencasts to be a huge pain, though I do promise more in the future on CDM anyway!)

One small nit-pick: I think the Shure SM57 is very, very popular as a vocal mic!

Erin calls herself a “one-woman army,” and deservedly so — playing keys, singing, and operating a computer requires some serious multitasking chops, and she handles her APC with aplomb.

Erin has an album out called Illusions, and a tour of the US on. (Warning: autoplays music.)
http://www.erinbarra.com/

Your Neck of the Woods?

That’s just one city’s recent Ableton user group appearances, and a fraction of the kinds of artists who have appeared in New York alone. Got artists working with laptops — using any software, not just Live — talking in your community about what they’re doing? Want to share your rig? Get in touch.

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Led by Deru, a Wonderful Band of Artists to Head to Iceland to Make a Soundtrack, Film

Friday, July 29th, 2011

A merry band of complementary filmmakers, photographers, and musicians, a curated ensemble perfectly fitted to the landscape, are heading to remote Iceland to make images and a musical soundtrack inspired by the landscape and its people.

Photographers Tim Navis + Kim Høltermand and film collective Scenic are heading up the visual component, while composer and electronic producer Deru has assembled the musicians. Improvisation is intended to be a guiding force, say the creators. With the assistance of a community organized on Kickstarter, it’ll also be crowd-funded. In addition to the obligatory, pretty photo book and prints and boxed set of music, they also propose to share behind-the-scenes glimpses of the process, which crosses from the LA area to Danish architect-descended photographer Høltermand.

For fans of richly-sonic, thoughtfully-composed and designed electronic music, the music lineup looks fantastic. Aside from Deru, you get:

Shigeto (Ghostly International)
Loscil (Kranky)
Goldmund (Unseen)
Asura (NonProjects / Leaving Records)
Tycho (ISO50 / Ghostly International)
Joby Talbot
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Take (Alpha Pup)
Thomas Knak/Opiate (Co-Producer of Björk’s Vespertine)

Other artists are TBD.

But don’t listen to me; go grab Deru’s fantastic first single. [direct download link]

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Not a Turntable, Not a Knob: A New Inertial Sensor Music Controller, as Artists Explore

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

The appeal of new controllers is melding gesture and sound, metaphor – in tangible form – and musical idea. So before talking about this controller, have a listen to the sounds it produces in the hands of one user, even if another user might do something very different. In a demonstration by Richard Devine, sparse percussive sounds reminiscent of early sonic experiments by the likes of Varese echo in clusters of water-like drops and echoing rumbles. (Richard is perhaps better known for dense, sometimes raucously relentless walls of sound; this formally more contemplative, which I really enjoy, even if it’s just a demo.)

Whether this immediate sonic application is your cup of tea, you can then have a look at the controller. Most of it is conventional, if nicely executed: encoders ringed by LEDs, pots, and buttons. But its central controller, looking like the exposed innards of a hard drive, is something else: the Spin is not a potentiometer, not a knob, not a faux turntable. It’s something different. Instead of just responding to rotation, it responds to inertia, built around the rotational movement but allowing new degrees of subtlety and control. As the creator describes it (well worth reading his entire description, but I like the ideas in this bit):

The spin allow the user to change a parameter with another feeling than a simple potentiometer:
large amplitude movement for a small variation.
control of the increment of the variation.
the spin can be launched and stopped, the variation stay under control using the increment parameter.
the spin can be automated, with 2 parameters for time control: increment and speed.
the spin can play a note and change its velocity, while a rotary controls the note pitch.
the spin can be assigned on any rotary and use its MIDI mapping to change his value, while automated or not.
the spin can fight against embedded sequencer.

(Because of a couple of grammatical errors translating to English, we also know that the spin is masculine. Odd – it seems actually kind of feminine to me. I’ll let you reflect on that.)

The notion of using inertia in a rotary controller isn’t entirely foreign to larger commercial projects; Native Instruments touted something like that in their Traktor Kontrol S4 controller. Here, though, freed from having to operate a DJ software and its turntable-derived sound ideas, inertial control can come to the fore as the principal interaction idea, applied to new musical parameters.

Richard Devine, who’s so on top of things I think he already owns musical inventions that I just happened to think about, is of course all over this. From his description:

The timeFrog II is a powerful and flexible MIDI device dedicated to music computer and MIDI applications.

The spin/inertial sensor provides a totally new kind of control surface, which opens new way for playing with parameters.

The 8 endless encoders, 4 potentiometers and 6 buttons form a functional and compact.

There is also a embedded 4 steps sequencer: 4×4 steps x 6 voices

This patch was setup in Ableton Max For Live using only two instances of SonicCharge’s Synplant software synthesizer. These two patches where customized and designed to work with the timeFrogII. Creating for some very unique musical gestures. All sequencing and note generation is from the timeFrog controller.

Richard tells us:

I recently received this really interesting MIDI controller from my friend Oliver over at Undead Instruments. I met Oliver in Belgium last month when I was on tour through Brussels. I was really intrigued by this midi controller he was working on called the timeFrog II. I only recently had the chance to sit down and play with it. Quite interesting and different approach from the other midi controllers I have seen and played with. I hadn’t seen any proper demonstration videos yet of this strange device so I thought I would do one.

More video demos, from other artists, show the gamut of what this instrument can do:

More info:
http://www.undeadinst.com/products/timefrog

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Reed Ghazala and Circuit Sound Artists in Videos, as NYC’s Bent Festival Gets Underway

Friday, June 24th, 2011

Circuit bending has a reputation as involving far-out, unstructured experimental noise, of real violence and distortion done to instruments. And there’s probably a place for that. But Reed Ghazala, circuit bending’s spiritual father and electronic practitioner, takes a more organic, evolutionary approach.

Reed recently told me about his favorite application of his iPad, apart from exploring new experimental soundscapes with tools like the brilliant granular app Curtis. He brings it with him into the forest, using GPS for location, and tracking plants and animals, identifying the sounds of bird and beasts.

In our electronic ecosystem, fowl and beast are finding their own electro-diversity. Circuit bending, then, is giving electronic devices a gentle push toward becoming something else, into taking on a unique and individual personality. It’s evolution. So, it’s fitting that New York’s Bent Festival has become an eclectic gathering of musical makers, espousing no singular philosophy or aesthetic.

For a sense of how broad that notion spans — both in Reed’s own head and at Brooklyn’s festival — our friend Kaley at VICE points us to their Motherboard.tv series on Reed, and his 1967 breakthrough of circuit bending, as well as their coverage of last year’s Bent. The Bent Festival, for their part, provide the remaining schedule if you happen to be in the area. At bottom, the classic “what is circuit bending” video by DrRek, featuring monome artist Daedelus.

If you happen to be the area, on behalf of CDM and in recognition of my lack of a) an inexhaustible budget or b) the ability to be a pan-dimensional creature in all places at once, please take photos and videos and notes and let us know what you see! (That goes for artists, too! Find a friend!)

We’ll be at Bent today before hauling off some makers yet deeper into the woods and wilds for the Solid Sound Festival. (Well, okay, metaphor stretched, broken, and beaten — at least further afield than the middle of Brooklyn. It’s Friday. I’m letting my metaphors take the rest of the day off.)

Sound Builders: In 1967, This Guy Invented Circuit Bending [Motherboard]

Bent Festival 2011

Also, notably organizing venue The Tank is again homeless and in need of support:

“Viable spaces for artistic research and development pop up as unpredictably as wild mushrooms, and sometimes vanish just as quickly. The Tank, a hardy nonprofit arts presenter formed by recent college graduates in 2003, has adeptly navigated a terrain in constant flux, taking root in a series of locations around Manhattan.” – Steve Smith, New York Times.

Their campaign to work in conjunction with other organizations to keep programming moving forward: http://do.nr/2sX

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Flash Reaction: Apple’s Cloud Looks Useful, But Likely to Mean Little to Artists Initially

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

The Cloud is more than a hard drive in the sky. Photo (CC-BY) wheresmysocks.

Indies, don’t fear the Apple. The world with Apple’s iCloud doesn’t appear to be that radically different than the one we had before. And that’s a good thing: the Web, not any one cloud sync service, is still the most revolutionary technology for connecting music to listeners.

Updated: commenters online read this as complaining, so let me clarify: cloud sync has already had unfair expectations placed on it. It remains a no-brainer for Apple to implement. The question is, from an artist’s standpoint, what expectations should you have about the impact of the technology on what you’re doing. In the short term, some of those prove to be more limited, and now that there are some details, it’s worth analyzing those details.

I expect developers granted an early test version of iCloud and music will be breaking their NDAs shortly so we hear more details, but here’s what we know.

The Service: Useful, Maybe, Just Not Earth-Shaking

I think Apple’s value proposition is stronger than Google’s or Amazon’s. It looks far more complete, far better-designed, and genuinely usable.

On the other hand, like those other services, what it actually does remains relatively conservative:

Automatic sync – if you buy from iTunes. iTunes’ cloud service will work with files manually synced to iCloud, or with purchases from iTunes.

Benefit from being in iTunes’ store catalog, even if your listeners don’t buy there. For US$ 24.99 a year, Apple will “match” your music from other sources to entries in their iTunes Library – and “upgrade” them to 256 kbps AAC (though for people buying in FLAC format and the like, that’s not really an upgrade).

Download and streams. Reportedly, Apple will offer streams and downloads alike. That means at least downloads are an option for people wanting higher-quality files. Just how this works is a bit unclear while we wait to test it.

Sync anywhere you want, as long as it’s made by Apple. iTunes for Mac, iTunes for Windows, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Actually, in fairness, that’s relevant even to players other than iTunes – even the recently-released, open source Miro can talk to your iTunes library.

Don’t get me wrong: it looks like Apple is unveiling the first really viable cloud music service. That shows some serious ongoing leadership from the company that popularized the desktop player that’s still #1 today (iTunes), popularized online music buying with an online store that’s still #1 today (iTunes Music Store), popularized the mobile player that’s still #1 today (iPod), and maintains a nice, healthy chunk of the mobile market (especially if you look at all iOS devices together).

As of today, Apple’s still setting the bar for everyone else. It’s just that, in contrast to the revolution unleashed by iTunes and iPod, the results may not be as seismic this time.

Outlook Cloudy

Let’s review: we’ve waited a long time for online sync. And here’s what we’ve got:

Different services for different devices and different stores. Buy your music from Amazon, Google, and Apple? Own an Android smartphone, an iPad, and a Windows PC with Winamp? You can look forward to beautifully-integrated solutions for … each of those. Separately. Great.

No clear benefit for music makers. Digital Music News points to the folks at Beyond Oblivion. They note this service will simply sync people’s pirated music:
But Wait: Isn’t the iCloud Just Reinforcing Bad Habits?

Because even if rights owners are properly licensed, this is merely making billions of stolen music files more accessible. And that’s supposed to be a solution? “We can’t enrich the music industry, we can’t enrich artists, we can’t enrich life, society and culture by continually going to the same 5% who already pay for the music,” Beyond Oblivion CEO Adam Kidron said this morning. “We have to go to a new market.”

I’m not the sort of person who is kept awake at night by thoughts of piracy, but look at this the other way – in contrast to Apple’s initial unveiling of the iTunes Music Store, I don’t see any clear evidence that this will encourage people to buy more music. Not yet, anyway. Your best hope is that somehow this fairly modest sync ability will encourage people to buy more music, likely from iTunes (or Google Music for their Android, or Amazon for their likely-upcoming Amazon tablet). But that’s a stretch, and likely to be a drop in the bucket compared to the ongoing slump of the CD.

Hello? Anyone? I’m the Web? Did you forget me? Although it’s not as mind-bogglingly inexplicable as it was with Google, Apple seems to have forgotten the Web. Apple themselves pointed to the growing popularity of the camera on the iPhone, but ignored in the keynote the reason for that popularity – the ability to spread your photos with Twitter, Facebook, Web apps, Instragram, and the like.

For a service that takes music online, there’s really no ability to use that online information to share what you’re listening to, or get recommendations from other people. Nor is there any kind of API that would allow artists, labels, and creative developers to help build an ecosystem – even though such an ecosystem would potentially benefit music.

In fact, looking to rival Google, YouTube is far more relevant to getting your music out and actually generating new listeners and fans there than this cloud service is.

From a purely business perspective, the cloud so far looks surprisingly barren. It’s a huge gamble that some modest sync features – themselves designed to remove obvious, counter-intuitive annoyances – will make online music listening any more popular, or help musicians earn more from their work.

Winners, Losers, and Vinyl

I’m awaiting a response from Merlin, the folks who represent a huge share of independent labels, and who have protested their treatment in the licensing process.

I’m also hoping to hear more from services like TuneCore, who, for an annual fee, allow unsigned artists to get their work on iTunes. (I’m testing this as an artist and as a journalist myself.)

My bet: the one winner here is TuneCore. Artists may now have to pay the $ 50-a-year “tax” (erm, make that “service fee”) to TuneCore just to ensure their music will work with iTunes Match – and that people eager to buy cloud-ready music can. Don’t get me wrong: TuneCore provides some valuable services, but irrespective of what they offer, we’ll see whether this winds up being something that brightens independent artists’ day — or is just a pain in the … uh … cloud.

And all of this…

I…

I’m, sorry, I feel a blasphamous, snarky comment coming on. Oh, screw it. Turn to your blogger side. Filters off.

Vinyl records right now are more relevant to independent musicians than cloud sync.

There, I said it. I’m not even sure if I agree with it, but I might, and at least it sounds damned good.

The Good News

Maybe it’s time to stop looking to big companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google to chart the future course of music. Maybe the biggest platform doesn’t come from any one company, or any one, shiny device.

Maybe it’s just the Web. After all, it was the Cloud before anyone thought of calling things the Cloud.

I’ll believe in it, until I go to — borrowing Jobs’ words — that great, big hard drive in the sky.

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Good Watching: Synth Interviews, British Synth Artists, Musical Pioneers from Detroit to Berlin

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Pour some port, find a comfy spot on the couch, and fire up the YouTubes. A surprisingly-rich raft of terrific documentary video for synth and electronic music enthusiasts has been making the rounds.

In our queue: Analog Suicide interviews a legendary vintage synth spot in Berlin, an hourlong documentary features not only Richie Hawtin but a range of techno pioneers, as well as other shorts from T-Mobile (yes, the phone company), and the BBC scores more history of the British side of the synth revolution in music. Sit down and get ready, because here we go.

From Detroit to Berlin and Back: In-depth Interviews with Pioneering Artists

At top: an hour-plus documentary produced for T-Mobile’s Electronic Beats series follows the rise of techno legend Richie Hawtin, including some terrific Detroit footage with artists like Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, and of course Magda. Love him or hate him, Richie’s impact on electronic music is formidable, and it’s great to see coverage finally return to a tale of his roots. It seems the perfect way to get ready for Detroit’s Movement Festival, starting May 28. Via the astute music coverage on the XLR8R blog, here by Ken Taylor.

There’s quite a lot more Electronic Beats TV on the YouTube page:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ElectronicBeatsVideo

Here are a few of my favorites. Kangding Ray of Raster-Noton is framed by signature, hypnotic minimal visuals. He has some wonderful things to say about the beauty of materials in sampling. Then there’s some beautiful footage of TESSEL, a morphing architectural form which really deserves some separate coverage here. Have a look:

Thomas Heckmann looks at machines, vintage and circuit bent, and talks about working with their idiosyncrasies in musical production.

From the role of machines to the role of humans, Moderat talk about collaboration as therapy, and what it does for them … and then go parachute jumping. I think people falling from a plane makes the perfect soundtrack.

Conversations for Synth Lovers, via AnalogSuicide

AnalogSuicide’s Tara Busch is one of our favorite journalists covering synthesis, and a great artist to boot. This week, she visits the legendary vintage synth destination Schneiders Beuro in Berlin. Via Synthtopia, who, like MatrixSynth, I think has an alarm that goes off when videos hit YouTube with certain keywords – incredible.

On the producer side, massively-accomplished producer Gareth Jones (Depeche Mode, Wire, Erasure) makes an appearance, too:

Lots more where that came from:
http://www.youtube.com/user/tarabusch

Synth Brittania

Via our friend and Chicago producer/nerd fashionista/writer Liz McLean Knight comes a BBC Four documentary that covers British synth artists in the late 70s and early 80s, including Joy Division, Human League, Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, and Gary Numan.

There’s just too much goodness here. I want to sit down with the past and present staff of Keyboard and watch this one. Watch it while the Beeb lets you.

I’m personally gratified in that I believe technically and artistically, we’re entering another of these sorts of ages. Who knows what the cultural impact may be, but at least for those passionate artists and technologists who are involved, something’s happening. And these videos are a great place to begin for inspiration.

So, now that you have those to watch, I guess I really need not write until Monday! See you then! (joke … sort of.)

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