Category Archives: 6 – MACHINES

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The LIVEs of Others

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…

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Getting His Freq On… AU from the NZ

OS X MACHINA – Always on the search for new audio plug-ins & FX, I took special notice when composer/friend Eve Beglarian sent out a tip about some excellent ones that she has been using. These are SoundMagic Spectral, a freeware suite of 23 Audio Unit (AU) plug-ins created by New Zealand composer Michael Norris. I decided to check them out and I can see why Eve was so excited to let other people know about Norris’ work.

Michael Norris

Michael Norris

SoundMagic Spectral implements real-time spectral processing of sound, whether from static audio files or live audio streams. Every parameter is controllable and/or recordable while your audio is playing. This means huge, organic washes of sound that seem to live and breathe right before your very ears. I was amazed how, through some tweaking and experimentation, I was able to get such variety from the same audio file. Simple acoustic riffs became vast landscapes of slowly shifting harmonics that alternately hung in the air or spun into self-similar whirlpools like the visuals seen when smoke is blown in the path of a video projector. OK, so much for my attempt at descriptive writing.

Check it out yourself. The SoundMagic Spectral page has plenty of examples where you can hear how this suite of plug-ins can transform an audio file. SoundMagic Spectral is highly recommend for musicians and sound designers of all genres.

REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.4 and a G4, G5 processor or Intel Mac.

Works with: Ableton Live (4.0 or higher), Amadeus, Apple GarageBand, Apple Logic Pro (or Emagic Logic 5.5.1 or higher), Apple Logic Express, Apple Soundtrack (version 1.10 or later), Apple Soundtrack Pro, Arizona AudioXplorer, Audiofile Engineering Wave Editor, BIAS Peak, Peak LE, and Peak DV 4.0 or higher, and Peak Pro, Celemony Melodyne 2.0 or higher, DSP-quattro 1.2 or higher, Freeverse Sound Studio 3.0 or higher, IllposedOuroboros (free beta), Intuem (2.0.1 or higher), Max/MSP (using au~ external available from my website), Metro (6.0 or higher), MOTU Digital Performer (version 4.1 or higher; best with 4.52 or higher), Numerology (version 1.2 or higher), Plogue Bidule, Rax (free beta), Rogue Amoeba Audio Hijack Pro, Freeverse SoundStudio3, SynthTest, TC|Works Spark XL and Spark LE (2.8 or higher), or WaveBurner.

-Patrick Grant

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Air on a G5 – Violinist on the Edge

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.

You can read another interview with Mari Kimura in 20th Century Music, and her album, Polytopia: Music for Violin & Electronics, is available from Bridge Records.

– Jocelyn

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Audiophile Rapture…

OK. When I import music to my iTunes library I have it set to AIFF, not MP3. I spent a lot more money on my audio monitors than I did on my computer monitor. I want to hear all there is to hear. I believe that I can definitely tell the difference. Even in live performances I try to position myself most advantageously. But I do draw the line somewhere. That is, my limited finances draw the line somewhere… Maybe that’s for the best. But these guys are serious about their ears as pathways to their souls. Why should you throw your iPod in the river and spend at least $100,000 for your next audio delivery system? The Audiophile Club Of Athens explains it all.  Listen to these guys justify their obsession, (and check the pimped out gear!).

-Carlo Altomare

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Meet the Old Boss, Same as the New Boss

All musicians have a few pieces in their lives that, when they heard it it for the very first time, it was an epiphany, it was something that said to them, “This is what you were meant to do,” almost like a memory that had been implanted since birth had been awakened. One of these moments for me was when a friend popped in a cassette tape (look it up kids) of “Who’s Next” by The Who and I heard the opening synthesizer part to “Baba O’Riley” only to end when more of the same on the albums closer “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” How surprising it would be, years later, to learn that Pete Townsend’s sequencer-driven, phase-shifting rhythm track was in turn inspired in part by Terry Riley’s minimalist manifesto “In C,” itself a study in loop-based composition though played on an indeterminate ensemble of acoustic instruments.

Previous to this I had been learning the classics through the side-door of Wendy Carlos’ and Isao Tomita’s transcriptions via the Moog. The other shoe had dropped. I could be cool now amongst my peers, always a primary concern to a teenager. The Who keep me going until, without the help of MTV or today’s internet, new bands started catching my attention on the late night Detroit airwaves (shows like Radios in Motion and The Electrifyin’ Mojo) and I moved sharply away from classic rock into a New Wave.

The personal note above has been added to show that things change quickly, one cannot get stuck in a rut. This is especially true if one wishes to stay on top of innovation. To illustrate this, here are two videos of Pete Townsend. This first one shows how the electronic rhythm track to that “Who’s Next “ album came into being:

Now compare this to the very same, if not heightened, enthusiasm he shows in a recent video, almost a tutorial really, that, camera in hand, he made himself in the studio (still his fascination of loop-based composition is thriving):

I can only hope that I’ll retain the same open mindedness 30 years down the road when I’m confronted by whatever means of music making we’ll have then.

-Patrick Grant

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Tapping into the Tech

We know that tap dancers create their own percussive soundtrack when they perform. Back in the eighties, pioneering choreographer, teacher and composer, Alfred Desio, took this a step further.

Desio was a veteran Broadway performer, having appeared in original productions of West Side Story, Fiddler On the Roof, Man of La Mancha, Zorba the Greek, and many others, before settling in Los Angeles at USC to teach. He trained with Jerome Robbins and worked with Joseph Pilates, inventor of the now ubiquitous Pilates Technique offered at many a fitness studio across the country. Desio and his wife, Louise Reichlin founded Los Angeles Choreographers & Dancers, a non-profit dance organization composed of two professional companies, Louise Reichlin & Dancers (modern) and Zapped Taps™/Alfred Desio (tap).

Desio made a splash with the 1982 debut of Tap-Tronics™, a system where tap dancers would be able to compose music and control audio effects with their feet. We’ve got all kinds of permutations of this idea today, with these tiny motion sensors, Wi-fi and digital synthesis. But when Desio invented this method of hooking choreography up to electronics, the technology was still really bulky, involving radio transmitters and tangled wires everywhere. So one might think this was a clunky notion, tethering a dancer to this kind of equipment.

Desio managed to overcome those limitations and devise a way for the tap dancer to create a fully realized score live and in the moment. Microphones were embedded in the dancers shoes, and wired to a portable transmitter. Receivers picked up the tap sounds and fed them through synthesizers, effects pedals, drum machines and vocoders. The music would modulate or change tempo with the muscles, pressure & rhythm of the body. If you watch this video about Alfred Desio, you’ll see that there was nothing heavy or dragging about his invention. For Desio, Tap-Tronics was all about heightening the pleasure of his art.

Sadly, Alfred Desio, the Electronic Tap Dancer, passed away on Valentine’s Day in 2007, at the age of 74. Tributes and more information about his career and legacy are maintained by L.A. C & D at http://www.lachoreographersanddancers.org/p3a_obit.html.

– Jocelyn

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A Chat with Downtown Piano Queen, Kathy Supove

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This week I visited with pianist, Kathy Supove, who commands the 88 keys like nobody’s business. For years, Kathy’s virtuosic keyboard skills have been put to work by contemporary composers working in an interactive performance environment.

In her bio, Kathy’s Exploding Piano Series is described as a “multimedia experience using electronics, theatrical elements, vocal rants, performance art, staging, and collaboration with artists from other disciplines…her Exploding Piano concerts almost always have original monologues and theatrical sketches surrounding the pieces.”

With her dramatic and energetic playing as a centerpiece (and her trademark flaming red bob), Kathy crushes the old definition of a piano recital under her shiny boots. So I asked her point of view on working with electronics and various media in her shows.

Listen to Kathy’s comments and excerpts of her music here:

If you’re curious, the controller called the monome that Kathy mentions is demonstrated in this clip:

You can visit Kathy Supove on her MySpace page.

– Jocelyn

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Dial “M” for…

MMiX. That’s “2009” in Roman numerals and the year in which I am pulling together my current interests in how music and media manifest in real time performance through a collaboration with Theaterlab NYC.

Early this year, Theaterlab co-director, Carlo Altomare (with Orietta Crispino) asked me to think up some kind of a concert series for their upcoming season. Our previous effort was an installment of my One-Two-Three-GO! new music series in 2006 and that went quite well.

Ever since, I’d used “MMiX” as a graphic as part of the annual New Year greeting that I send out to my mailing list every year, and I knew that I wanted to use it again somehow. This opportunity gave me the perfect place for it. Perfect in so many ways.

At that time, I had just come off creating three scores for theater, one in NYC, and two in Brazil (Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) and giving workshops on the software to the public. My whole emphasis has been to create musical scores that would be interactive with the performers on a number of levels that were not possible when I began working in the theater. Those possibilities are the direct result of a number of software programs that have made new these new levels possible, performable, and highly portable since all the hardware that had been used in the past has now been distilled down into the confines of a laptop computer.

With that having been achieved, any number of controllers (keyboards, wands, motion sensors etc.) could now be interfaced with the computer so that all of the performing arts had access.

I have come to see this extra “m” in MMiX as representing the different branches of the performing arts that are now able to be blended and blurred: music, mise-en-scene (theater, film), movement (dance), monographs (words; spoken or sung), montage (visual arts), etc. etc. etc. I found so many “m” words I’ll only put the essential ones here, but it should be said that, the most important one may be, is “meatware,” the human element in a technological system.

The purpose of this new blog is to consolidate the content of our research through original content and the many findings that we come across the internet of like-minded artists working along similar lines. Guided by partner and co-producer Jocelyn Gonzales, “The MMiXdown” will also document our progress in pulling together all of the above elements into a cohesive series of presentations to the public in October to see where we’re at, to see how far we can go, when software, hardware, and meatware meet in the common goal of artistic expression.

–Patrick Grant