Here’s a look at the Pre-MMiX benefit performances from last Monday, August 24th: a montage of Patrick Grant playing a live-looping installment from his Tertian Circles series on analog synth and electric guitar, Kathleen Supove plays Lay Bare the Heart by Charles Coleman and The Body of Your Dreams by Jacob TV (the latter using a backing track created from an infomercial for the AB Sonic® Electronic Massage Belt), and LB (aka Pound), DJ Scientific (Elan Vytal) and String Theory (Matt Szemela) propelling us through a real time mash up of hip-hop, house and 80s synth pop.
Last Monday, we visited Dan Giove and Adam Sellers at DubSpot, the DJ and electronic music production school here in Manhattan.
Sitting on the couch, sandwiched between a class going over the finer points of filtering a buzzy bass, and a giant mixing console with lots of controllers, we were investigated by one large curious dog and one small energetic dog. I wondered if these pups could rock the decks too, but who knows. Maybe they’re DubSpot admissions officers.
Dan Giove founded DubSpot as a place where musical novices, experts and everyone in between could get a solid grounding in music production, as well as training in the latest software and hardware tools for creating music. At their studios in the Meatpacking district, they offer DJ tutorials, lessons on mixing and mastering, sound synthesis and workshops with Ableton, Reason, Logic and others. Students can attend intense weekend training sessions and there’s even a youth program. Start ’em young, I say, start ’em young.
Why there’s even DubSpot Cafe downstairs, where Ableton instructor and upcoming MMiX Festival performer, Jon Margulies did a set during this year’s Make Music Fest back in June:
Perhaps the most important part of DubSpot’s mission seems to be community, a community of beginners and experienced artists, producers and DJ’s that’s much much larger than the studio space DubSpot is quickly outgrowing. The vibe we got is that everyone is cool at DubSpot, everyone’s musical point of view is valid and supported, and everyone can work together to push music technology in ever more creative directions.
Members of Dubspot have spent the summer on the DubSpot LIVE 8 U.S. Sessions Tour, and these guys are so money, they’ve put together video recapping some of what went down. This is one of those clips:
We’re so pleased the folks at DubSpot will be doing LIVE 8 workshops at the MMiX Festival this October. In the meantime, dust off that old Rakim 12-inch & get thee to DJ school!
When Steven Litt opens up his suitcases, you won’t see socks, shirts and a hairdryer tumble out. (Well, maybe a hairdryer – could come in handy, sonically speaking.)
Instead, you’ll find a small mixer, a mess of wires, hacked doorbells and effects pedals hammering out a somewhat industrial heartbeat. Steven is the inventor of CrudBox, basically a super analog robot drum machine.
photo from Steven Litt
Steven describes his project this way:
“CrudBox is a 16 step, 8 channel step sequencer which replaces digitally created or analog synthesized sounds typically associated with sequencers and electronic music with the amplified sounds of whatever electronic or electromechanical devices are plugged into it.
There are many new possibilities for sonic experimentation with the diverse combination of sounds and musical structures which can be created with CrudBox. Solenoids and motors can be plugged in and sequenced while striking or otherwise moving or vibrating any physical material and their sounds amplified in real time using Piezo contact mics. These mics, or any other sound source, can be plugged into hacked guitar pedals and effects boxes which can then also be sequenced by CrudBox. Cassette decks, reel to reels, turntables, power tools, and any other sound generating devices can also be hacked and sequenced.”
This week at my office in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, I asked Steven about creating this new musical instrument and what’s next for his suitcase sequencer:
There’s something beautifully retro and organic about CrudBox, and its percussive possibilities seem limitless due to the variety of scrap materials and devices that can be used with it. There’s no software or computers involved at all, and though it probably has just as much musical flexibility as something you might manipulate digitally, CrudBox can also receive MIDI information from a program like Ableton.
I can’t wait until Steven sells a kids’ version of CrudBox to Fisher-Price, a gift to the exasperated parents of budding musicians everywhere. 🙂
It’s another hot, steamy Monday evening in the city. You’ve been plug-in away all day and your circuits are fried. Well, we know one place where you can cool your compressors and chill out to some great new music…
It’s “The Pre-MMiX” at Theaterlab, a benefit party for The MMiX Festival of Interactive Music Technology, happening on August 24th, 2009 at 6:30pm. The Pre-MMiX Party will offer a sampling of the kind of vibrant works we’ll feature this October 8-11 at MMiX, and will also serve as a fundraiser for the festival.
Kathy Supove is well-known for displaying her virtuosic and theatrical keyboard skills in her Exploding Piano series, and she’s curator of the Music With a View concerts at The Flea Theater.
Kathleen Supove
We talked to her earlier this summer about her work with interactive electronics in this bit of audio:
Elan Vytal, the boundary-breaking DJ who cut his teeth in the clubs and went on to scratch it up in opera houses and museums, has also appeared on this blog with 6 string violinist, Matt Szemela. He sent along this video which features a cut off Elan and Matt’s forthcoming album as the group, LB (Pound).
Patrick Grant, a composer of multiple disciplines, from string quartets and club music, to hip-hop marching bands and not-so-subliminal advertising, creates scores and soundscapes for film, theater and media, is curator of the MMiX Festival in October, and will talk a little bit about the mission, the artists and the technology behind MMiX, and will school ya on some of his “sTRANGE mUSIC” at the Pre-MMiX party.
Patrick Grant
So next Monday evening, August 24th, come on up and escape the summer distortion at the Pre-MMix Benefit Party. The event starts at 6:30pm at Theaterlab’s studios and a wine reception follows the performances. Theaterlab is located at 137 West 14th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenue, and near the F and L train, as well as Union Square. The suggested minimum donation at the door will be $10.
A little while back, we posted about this new body paint called Bare Conductive, a type of skin-safe ink that conducts electricity. When the ink on the body comes in contact with a sensor, it closes a circuit. It can be programmed to trigger a sound or some sort of lighting effect.
Well, it was only a matter of time until somebody figured out a saucy little way to apply this interactive technology, and that guy is Scottish electronic musician Calvin Harris. In this video, he premieres a version of his latest single, “Ready for the Weekend,” on what he calls “a unique human synthesizer.”
The video’s description reads: “The instrument consists of 34 pads on the floor which have been painted with the conductive ink and connected to a computer via some clever custom electronics. The performers stand on the pads, and touch hands to complete a circuit and trigger a sound. Different combinations of pads trigger the different sounds needed to play the track.”
Matt Johnson created the custom pads and electronics for the project, using two Arduinos and Max/MSP. The pads, the performers, the body ink, electronic boards, and software create this moving, breathing MIDI controller that makes the music, which is sequenced by Ableton LIVE.
The sun beats down on a Brooklyn street and the neighbors are outside chatting or watering the plants. But inside DJ Scientific‘s secret lair, the beats are flowing, the strings are popping and the DJ’s cat is just confused by it all. I’ve just walked a few blocks from the G train to spend some time with composer/turntablist, Elan Vytal.
DJ Scientific isElan Vytal, who mixes his unique beat juggling and scratching with classical and world musicians. His is a lush, but gritty, hybrid urban sound. Rocking nightclubs from Oakland, CA to New York City, performing live in opera houses and concert halls around the world, Elan’s numerous collaborations have taken him far beyond the standard notions of a DJ. One could say he’s a virtuoso on the decks, always striving to develop his “instrument.”
You may have heard of Elan through his work with composer/violinist DBR, Daniel Bernard Roumain. Elan is a member of DBR’s nine-piece ensemble, DBR & THE MISSION. From Elan’s bio: “The duo began collaborating extensively, creating and premiering a series of new works, including Call Them All, a laptop concerto written by DBR with sound design by Elan Vytal, commissioned by American Composers Orchestra, which premiered at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in 2006, and Sonata for Violin and Turntables, an hour-long touring program co-produced by Elan Vytal and DBR…”
Hanging with Elan Vytal at his Brooklyn apartment, he told me about how he made the switch from rapper/MC to DJ, how he’s developed his career, and about his interactive relationship with live musicians using turntables, Serato Scratch Live and Ableton. You can listen to his comments and bits of his music here:
As a special treat, Elan invited six string violinist Matt Szemela (also known as String Theory) to jam on a couple of songs they’re writing as the group LB (Pound). So here, they did a demo of their set-up and performed two pieces for our home video cameras:
While I’ve always told my students that in the end, it doesn’t really matter what audio software you use, just make sure it works for YOU…a lot of the music folks we’ve been talking to are fans of Ableton LIVE. Though yes, Ableton is involved with our MMiX Festival later this fall, this ain’t no commercial. There’s a reason we mention LIVE. We’ve come across fellow musicians and producers who will use nothing else but Ableton to create their songs, DJ sets, or live arrangements. It’s like a religion or something. Since their first appearance at AES several years ago, when I think their demo booth was basically the size of a Ms. Pac Man arcade game, they’ve amassed a large number of users numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Having just released LIVE 8, they’re like the little-German-loop-based-audio-software-company-that-could.
The company’s been nimble about organizing and responding to their online community of users, quite similar to the hive mind of Linux folks who help keep programs on that platform constantly evolving in the spirit of tech geek fellowship. Although some of us aren’t quite so nimble on LIVE yet…(meaning me, because I’m still not done listening to all the Combinator patches in Reason 4.0) we always like seeing how artists use different tools in their particular music genres. Luckily, there’s a YouTube playlist where bands, producers and composers share their tips for harnessing the LIVE 8 mojo. We pick out some favorites after the tag…
I first came across media artist, Chiaki Watanabe (also known as CHIAKI) in her work with the Natasa Trifan Performance Group and her live visual performance with thereminist, Dorit Chrysler, at the World Financial Center. Watanabe creates live video, motion graphics, and installation. I was enchanted by the way her simple, abstract visuals pulsate and breathe, how warm and organic they felt to my eyes. She explores how visual media affects us psychologically, and investigates its relationships with the fields of performance, architecture, and neuroscience. Much of her work can be seen on her website: http://www.vusik.net/.
Watch her piece, 1/3 (sound by Tristan Perich & Sylvia Mincewicz) HERE.
Photo courtesy of Chiaki Watanabe
Chiaki Watanabe recently re-located to Copenhagen, Denmark, so I wrote to her to find out more about her work and what projects she has planned next.
Mari Kimura stands elegantly dressed in black, playing violin in a duet with a sort of stripped down, steampunk version of a slide guitar. Next to her, the contraption made of metal and strings, moving frets and rotating picks, seems to bounce up and down to Mari’s violin.
This is just the kind of challenging composition that Mari Kimura is known for. Her GuitarBotana is an interactive duet between violin and the GuitarBot, a self-playing mechanical guitar created by Eric Singer and the good folks at LEMUR (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots). The GuitarBot “listens” and responds to Mari via computer software, creating the pitch-bending accompaniment to the violin.
The offspring of a solar energy pioneer and a law professor, Mari Kimura embodies the two worlds of hardcore classical music training and high tech interactive geekery. Mari invents weird and wonderful violin sounds, extending the voice of her instrument through the imaginative use of Max/MSP, sensors and wireless ethernet. Her bowing technique includes the development of “Subharmonics” – playing notes below the open-G string without lowering the tuning of the instrument. The New York Times calls her “Chilling… gripping… charming…a virtuoso playing at the edge.”
On a recent summer morning, Mari Kimura is herself warm and sunny in person, a busy Mom with a few moments of peace and quiet in her Manhattan apartment. She invited me up for a visit to talk about her work. You can listen to her comments and excerpts of her music right here:
Mari studied violin with Joseph Fuchs, Roman Totenberg, Toshiya Eto, and Armand Weisbord; composition with Mario Davidovsky at Columbia University; AND computer music at Stanford University. In her native Japan, she received the prestigious Kenzo Nakajima Music Prize, and she performs at festivals in over 20 countries. She’s improvised with the likes of Henry Kaiser, Robert Dick, Jim O’Rourke, and Elliott Sharp. In the hallowed musical halls of Juilliard, where she holds a doctorate in performance, she teaches a graduate class in Computer Music Performance.
The MMiXdown 