Just a note if you’re in town this weekend: The fine folks of RjDj Labs are in town Dec. 11th and 12th at EyeBeam for their first Reactive Music Experience in New York.

RjDj uses the sensors, headphones & mic for the iPhone to create “reactive music” with the sounds of the world around you. The app captures audio from the environment with what they call “scenes” (made with Pure Data). Each scene is different, making various patterns or effects in response to where you are and what you’re doing. It’s sort of a psychedelic musical snapshot of what you hear in that moment, and you can record it and upload it for sharing.

Over year ago, RjDj recorded this video to show how they do what they do:

RjDj’s here in NYC to debut a new product, the RJC1000, which they say is their “take on the the legendary Akai MPC range. Think the MPC for reactive music and you know a lot.” They’ll also hold a holiday hack shop to teach everyone how to make reactive music. Make sure to bring all your toys if you want to register and attend: laptop, headphones, mic, iPhone/iPod.

All the info can be found on the RjDj pages. Have fun!

If you’re like me and came up through the trenches of analog sound recording, you may appreciate this:

In my audio classes, students like to do wild things with sound by clicking on plug-ins and software add-ons, unaware that many of the sonic effects that delight them so (pitch, delay, echo, flange) were originally created by physically manipulating magnetic tape recorded and edited on reel to reel machines. This is a generation who’s probably never held a cassette tape or back-cued a vinyl 12-inch, so they have no memory of rocking the reels or anchoring 6 foot tape loops with mic stands and grease pencils. Since those days of jump-cutting with a bloody razor-blade are long gone, I was tickled to find video of this interactive sound installation by Signal to Noise that incorporates strands of pre-recorded magnetic tape:

To quote the video’s accompanying information: “As the glove comes in contact with the tape, sound is generated and can be manipulated via touch and movement… the pre-recorded sound on the tape is a random collage of compiled material including a range of musical styles & found recordings. This piece is informed by works such as Nam June Paik’s Random Access Music and Stockhausen’s tape experimentations as well as the notion of using analogue tape as an instrument.”

I was not able to find out much about the artists who created the piece, other than finding their project blog, Signal to Noise, so you can see more on the development of the installation there.

But since the artists make mention of tape experimentation and musique concrete, let’s go back in time to 1979 with the BBC and see what creating aural montage with tape splicing was like (bonus points for the Doctor Who theme, of course):

As much as I love my software and computers, there are times when I do miss physically man-handling sound, chopping up and twisting the tape, dragging it past the play-heads, threading it backwards through the pinch rollers, all without benefit of a visual waveform as a guide. Best thing was wearing discarded pieces of blue editing tape as a fashion accessory. What a crap-shoot it was most of the time, but many happy accidents occurred as well. When I was done with a sound edit or mix, I knew those plastic reels contained real blood, sweat and tears, not just eye-strain and a vague headache. Really, the only thing I don’t miss is nicking my fingers with the razorblades, but I still have the old scars to remind me.

– Jocelyn

At last month’s MMiX Festival, on the Oct. 9th night of concerts, a flock of laptops descended upon the main space at Theaterlab and “sang” some of the most enchanting machine music I’ve ever heard.

That’s probably an odd image but it does stick in my mind as a way to describe what it’s like to see Dan Trueman and his Mini-Laptop Orchestra perform. I hadn’t really heard a bunch of computers chirp, warble and drone in harmony before.

This group of 8 MacBook musicians was assembled by Dan Trueman, founding member of The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk). They’re a subset of PLOrk who performed pieces specifically composed for the unique sound of the laptop orchestra. After all, they can’t really duplicate a real orchestra doing the William Tell Overture. They were joined by Eric Beach and Josh Quillen of So Percussion, and the sweet sounds of Dan’s Norwegian fiddle which resulted in a striking combination of futuristic computer sounds and vibrant acoustic instrumentation.

Below you can listen to the Mini-Laptop Orchestra’s whole set from the MMiX Festival, which featured the following compositions:

Blinky by Rebecca Fiebrink

Bells and Whistles by Michael Early

Beesch by Jascha Narveson and Boom Dinger by Sean Friar and Cameron Britt

Goodnight by Josh Quillen

Quick note on how the laptop orchestra makes music: the orchestra’s members manipulate audio using the computer’s own sensors that detect pressure, velocity and spatial position. Tilting the computer, striking the touch-pad or keys can bend or shape the tones or notes being produced. The musicians use multi-sided speakers which transmit audio in all directions to simulate the way a traditional instrument might emit sound. You can find out more about PLOrk and hear a lot more of their music on their web-page at http://plork.cs.princeton.edu/.

– Jocelyn