C-25 // I'm still here!!

Hi everyone! Yep – I'm still here. Thanks for the various concerned queries... Nothing terribly exciting to report, it's just been a busy time and I've been distracted by lots of things...

Anyway, there's lots to catch up on, so here goes...

1) Currently listening to...

I am geeking out at the moment listening to SOMA fm - my favourite online radio station. I usually listen to their 'dronezone' channel, but they are currently broadcasting 'MissionControl' - a blend of ambient music with a live audio stream from NASA who currently have a shuttle in orbit docked to the International Space Station. It's fascinating listening in to the radio communications between the astronauts and the ground crew. The other day I listened as they approached the station and then went through the whole docking procedure - quite thrilling! There's not much happening currently as the astronauts are all sleeping, but they are scheduled to wake up shortly and begin preparing for the first space walk of the mission. I'm also watching the live video feed from Nasa TV - it's currently just a live view of the shuttle from a camera on the station, lookin past the shuttle to the earth below. You can see the earth turning as they race around it at 17,000 mph. So intense and yet so serene...

Ha! They just woke up to 'Beautiful Day' by U2. :-)

Speaking of intense and serene, I've also recently been enjoying this podcast from sound recordist Chris Watson, who I met late last year while he was in Wellington. He is currently in Antarctica, making a new nature documentary with David Attenborough. There are some amazing images on the podcast page too, as well as some astounding soundscapes.

2) Study

This year is panning out to be an interesting one. I spent some time January doing some planning, but already some of those plans are being turned on their head as new opportunities and challenges present themselves. For instance, I had decided in January that I would do a couple of art and design papers at Massey this year, but after making some enquires I discovered that I was approximately 4 months late in enrolling! Yep - the deadline for 2010 was Oct 09, so that was a bit disappointing. I've looked around at various other options – there are quite a few – but I think I'm going to do some self-directed study instead, at least for the first semester. There are so many things I want to learn, it's hard to know where to begin.

One option is 'Processing':

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.

 

Processing can be used to do things like this...

Solar rework from flight404 on Vimeo.

Co-incidentally, the audio used for this test film is taken from another podcast I really enjoy - RadioLab.

3) Upcoming Gigs - JediNites, The Waitings

I thought the first part of this year would be fairly quiet for gigs, mostly because That 80's Band is out of action for the time being, but I've actually ended up being quite busy with JediNites which is a 3-piece covers band comprising myself, Matt Parlane on bass and Chris Jones on keys/vocals. It's good fun - interesting and diverse repertoire and good players all round. I'm learning this song for tonight's gig at The Occidental. Hilarious! (although the spoken intro on this video is lame compared to the original recording...)

I've also got a rehearsal tomorrow for a gig with The Waitings (Karel Van Helden and friends...). This band comprises some of my most favourite musicians to play with, including Phil Hornblow and Nick Tipping. The gig is on Friday 26th Feb in Nelson.

4) Recording projects

Not much happening on this front at the moment, although I do have some drum sessions coming up soon with Andrew London of the Cattlestops and Hot Club Sandwich, plus a couple of other possible projects on the horizon. Towards the end of last year I played a bunch of drum tracks on Janina Nicoll's upcoming album. It was great fun and I was more satisfied with my drumming contribution than I've ever been on any project before. Not sure of release date yet.

5) Tessellations

Here are a couple of patterns I came up with over summer... The first inspired by a coffee table I was sitting at in Mt Maunganui one day, and the second by some fabric I saw in a second hand clothing shop... 

6) Design work

Just finished a new series of 5 titles for UCA, plus there were 2 last year that I never posted - 'Rainforest Baby' and 'Water Baby'.

I've also been doing some more casual work at Wellington City Council - Publication & Design, with more on the horizon. Also, I have a freelance job on at the moment designing the graphics and packaging for a 12 disc cd set for a client which is proving to be an interesting and challenging task.

7) Reaktor

Over the last couple of years I have been delving fairly deeply into Native Instrument's Reaktor. In particular I developed some customised sampler instruments for Stevie Starr's live show. I have had some requests recently to post a some tutorials on basic Reaktor building, so that's something else I'll be working on over the next while. Stay tuned! 

In the meantime, the Reaktor User's Forum is a good place to start.

C-5 // Reaktor building - autoplayer modification

This evening I spent a bit of time modifying a Reaktor ensemble I built earlier this year. It's kind of like electronic wind chimes - you hit play and it happily generates an endless stream of notes. I have designed it so that you pick the key and the kind of scale it chooses notes from (major, minor, pentatonic etc.) Tonight's modification was adding the ability to choose randomly between different note durations.

Future modifications will be adding the ability to set the probability that any particular note in the scale will sound, so that I can weight the scales towards certain notes. I'll also do the same with note durations. I'd also like to be able to interact with it via a Kaoss Pad or similar so I can 'play' it more intuitively. I might use Moldover's smart knob idea, but mapped to the x and y parameters of the Kaoss Pad so I can manipulate more than 2 parameters at once.

Also - it only uses a pretty boring sounding triangle oscillator at the moment, so some tonal interest is also on the cards for the near future. For now, I've just put a bit of delay and reverb on. Here's what it sounds like.

autoplayer output 1-9-09

Here's the duration circuit I built tonight.

Best cd packaging I've seen for ages

Check this out. The cd artwork is made from a custom designed circuit board with a built in theramin, so the packaging is actually a playable instrument. The guy's name is Moldover and he describes himself as a 'controllerist' – like a turntablist but using whacked-out, modified, circuit-bent midi controllers instead of a turntable. He's a bit too cocky for his own good, IMO, but his cleverness can't be denied.

Here are a couple of clips describing his approach to 'controllerism' and his working processes. Well worth a look if you're interested in that sort of thing (like me!) He uses a bunch of very clever Reaktor macros combined with Ableton Live and his custom-built ex-Novation midi controller...

Ecstatic Looper

Here's a screenshot of one of the Reaktor instruments I have built from scratch for the Stevie Starr gig. It's a phrase looper that allows you to set the sampling length in beats, once you have specified a tempo and a subdivision. At a sample-rate of 44.1kHz the maximum phrase/sample length is about 46 seconds, which is plenty long for most things. This looper can also sync the play and/or record functions to the Reaktor clock, thereby allowing the synchronisation of the looper with any other loops or sequences that are running off the same clock.

This one was built for the song 'We Shall Get In' and is the tool I use to capture and loop the opening glockenspiel phrase. I then use another, almost identical looper to capture a second glock phrase which I reverse and play against the first loop as the piece develops.

I'm currently also working on a more powerful version of this tool which has the option to manipulate playback speed in realtime as well as an overdub record function and some more intuitive ways to set the loop length for improvised live looping.

Stevie Starr album release gig

I should have mentioned this ages ago, but I have an album release gig coming up next week (Thursday 18 June) at Mighty Mighty with Stevie Starr. I have been involved in the making of this album, off and on, over several years and it is great to finally release it. There's a media release with some very encouraging reviews here.

I'm pretty excited about this gig. The music is wonderful, and gives me the opportunity to step a bit outside of the 'drummer' role and get to be 'electronic gadgets guy'. (I will be playing drums, glockenspiel, Kaoss Pad and laptop.) I've built a number of samplers and other instruments from the ground up in Reaktor (something I've become quite passionate about lately) and I can't wait to give them their first public outing!

It will also be the first time I've ever performed with a string quartet. :-)

If this has piqued your curiosity, here's Stevie Starr's official website where you can listen to or download the first single 'The Rising Tide of Conformity'. And here's the MySpace page where you can hear some of the more adventurous pieces.

There will also be some really interesting visuals, courtesy of a long-time friend and collaborator of mine - Chris Darnell.

Cover charge is only $5 so you'd be crazy to miss it. :-)

Update on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 2:38AM by rimshot

Just got in from our final band rehearsal before the gig. I'm tired but happy. Really looking forward to putting this music in front of people. The band is sounding great - well rehearsed but with an edge of uncertainty that keeps everyone on their toes, and allows for a certain kind of positive nervous tension on the night.

I have a few tweaks yet to make on my Reaktor ensembles - mostly just setting up starting snapshots to make transitions between songs a bit smoother.

Sorry - I was wrong about the cover charge being $5. It's actually $10. Still a bargain considering the kind of show we have in store... :-)