CATSYNTH

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Author: catsynth

  • Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

    From today's New York Times, news of the death of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.

    Ingmar Bergman, the ?poet with the camera? who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89.

    While he may be best remembered for films such as “The Seventh Seal” and “Wild Strawberries”, my favorite remains “Persona.” This is a more abstract, modernist “psychological” film, focusing on the relationship and interaction of just two characters (played by Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersen). And it contains this amazing opening sequence:

    Although “Persona” wasn't even mentioned in the New York Times tribute, it is considered by many, including myself, to be his best.





  • New Podcast: Performance at 7th Annual Skronkathon


    Click here to subscribe.

    Tonight we feature the much-discussed performance from the 7th Annual Skronkathon two weeks ago. I did a solo electronic set featuring myself playing laptop (running [http://osw.sourceforge.net]Open Sund World[/url]), the Indian ektar and gopichand string instruments, a toy piano, the DSI Evolver, and of course my quacking toy duck (everyone loves the duck).

    This recording was done my Matt Ingalls for the sfSound Radio broadcast. I edited it a bit, mostly cutting out the empty bits or embarrassing errors.

    You can see a photograph from the performance here and more info about the technical preparations here.

    For subscription and listening options, click the “CatSynth Channel” icon in the upper right or the subscription link at the top of this post. And as always, enjoy!

  • Weekend Cat Blogging #112 and Chaos #3: Unemployment Lifestyle

    We at CatSynth are still getting used to this whole unemployment thing. For me, this is a very novel experience, not having work. However, there is a lot that cats can teach us about not working:

    Our friends Kashim and Othello have a “mess” theme for the Bad Kitty Cat Festival of Chaos, and we have a recent pic that sums up both messiness and idleness:

    I leave laundry on the floor, and Luna takes a nap on it. A little guilty non-working pleasure for both of us.

    On more serious note our friends at the Bad Kitty Cats are dealing with more difficulties, as Braum has fallen ill and Zed Monster had an accident that severely injured his tail. We hope they both make a full recovery.

    Of course, there is more feline fun with a Simpsons theme, D'oh!, at The Weekend Cat Blogging #112 roundup with Kate and Puddy. (I'm always struck how similar Puddy and Luna look.) And also check out Friday Ark , where we are late as always, and Carnival of the Cats at This, That and the Other thing. I think that's it for now.

  • Sometimes life takes a major unexpected turn.

    Well, friends, this is one of those times. My official association with E-MU Systems is coming to an end. Basically, it appears that our parent company Creative Technology Ltd. has some serious plans for E-MU, and those plans do not include my continuing to work there. So 4 1/2 years of leading the group responsible for award-winning products such as Emulator X2 (winner of the coveted mipa Award) and bringing E-MU to the Mac OSX platform, and six years with the larger organization, comes to a quiet and somewhat undignified conclusion.

    Manager, E-MU Software Engineering, March 2003 – July 2007.

    It is sad to leave behind friends with the local group, and I do worry a bit for those who remain behind. I am actually looking forward to some of the opportunities ahead for myself. Rather than jump right back into the job market, I think this is a good time to reflect and consider some ideas more ambitious or rewarding than a simple paycheck. Though I do suspect I'll start missing that in a month or so.

    For now, things should pretty much go ahead as normal for those of us at CatSynth HQ. And of course this site continues as well. I have been planning to do more weekly features like Weekend Cat Blogging and the CatSynth Channel podcasts, including a weekly CD or film review. I may start a weekly feature on being unemployed as well…for as long it lasts.

  • Last night's performance at Works/San Jose

    Well, once I managed to get 451 S 1st Ave after navigating the the highways and streets of San Jose, things went pretty smoothly. With such a small rig, set up was quick and easy, taking only a few minutes:

    Just the laptop, keyboard, fish and audio interface.

    As usual, I don’t have any pics of the performance itself – though I expect to receive some from others. Here is a great shot of John Moreira warming up:

    The highlighted wire on the right is the connect from John’s guitar to my laptop for electronic processing.

    The performance itself went well, no major issues. Polly’s flute sections were particularly strong. Overall, our playing wasn’t quite as tight and aggressive sounding as it was during the rehearsal, and of course no kitty antics – that does really add a lot. But it was a good first public show for our little group, hopefully first of several to come.

    KIOKU was great, musically and visually:

    Interestingly, I already knew the laptop artist Christopher Ariza from the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) in Barcelona two years ago. Small world.

  • Fun with highways: San Jose

    Because I am too tired to write about tonight's performance, I'll simply leave you with the impressive interchange between highway 87 and I-280 near downtown San Jose:

    The Works/San Jose Gallery, this evening's venue, is on S 1st Street, in the upper right corner of the image. It's a funky neighborhood south of downtown, filled with galleries and performances spaces, many of which were still going at night – real city nightlife is one of those things you miss living someplace like Santa Cruz, which shuts down pretty early and tends to drive its live-music venues out of town.

    Although close to the interchange, S 1st Street is not easily accessible from either I-280 or highway 87. The easiest way to get there from the south is to take 87 and immediately get off downtown. San Jose's streets are generally slow-moving and confusing, and even more so because of the San Jose Grand Prix, which sounds more like a live-action video game than a civic event. Needless to see, I did eventually get there, with the 280 elevated tantalizingly visible.

    The performance went well and will be discussed in another article.

    Attempting to exit was just as difficult. I ended up on a series of detours taking me onto highway 87 south of the interchange with no way back to 280. Instead of attempting to backtrack, I just kept going on 87, but eventually made my way home and probably lost very little in time or distance. Plus, it was different. That can be good now and then.

  • Preparing for tonight's performance: Cats, Rehearsal and Software

    First, I have to remind myself to ABC: Always Bring a Camera. I missed several photo opportunities before and during our rehearsal in San Francisco on Wednesday. There were some great shots on the new Central Freeway terminal ramp. And then the “kitty moments” during the rehearsal with Polly Moller and John Moreira. I did snap this cell-phone pic of John Moreira's cat Crescenda rolling around among our cue sheets and amps. She and her fellow cat Pearl joined us several times during the rehearsal, but Crescenda's little act stole the show.

    Musically, I had a minimal setup – a subset of what brought to the Skonkathon two weeks ago – just the MacBook, the E-MU 0202 | USB and a MIDI keyboard. The Mac was running the new script-based Open Sound World to process live guitar input. The processing worked quite well, I think, with several wavetables, ring modulation, and a rather nasty little FM algorithm (it's a lot like those distortion-modulation “sound mangler” pedals). Both the guitar and processing needed to fit within pieces with voice, flute and existing electronic material.

    UPDATE: You can read Polly's account of the rehearsal and Crescenda here.

    The one concern was the frequent OSW crashes – it wasn't a huge problem during the rehearsal because the system can reset itself very quickly (far more quickly than the older UI-centric version), with only a few seconds of dead time. But still, that's not cool. I suspected something related to the MIDI input handling. Fortunately, last night I was able to track down the crashes last night. They were indeed in the MIDI handling, some issues exposed by the multi-processing with the Core2 Duo. Easily found and fixed by playing the patch with a lot of MIDI control, with the laptop and keyboard on the coffee table. Actually, I made some interesting lo-fi music with the built-in mic and speaker and feedback while testing and debugging. This will probably form the basis of my next piece.

  • Skronkathon photo…and upcoming show

    Well, there's me, attempting to appear ironic, at the 2007 Skronkathon two weeks ago. I'm playing the ektar, a single-string folk instrument from India, one of several instruments used during the performance.

    This is one of several photographs taken at the event by Polly Moller. And it is quite timely, given that we will be performing together this Friday in San Jose:

    It all starts at 7:00 p.m. at works/san jose,
    451 First Street, San Jose, CA 95112
    Cost: $5.00/$3.00 donation

    july 27th music night with KIOKU, polly moller & company and dajis

    based in new york city, the musical group kioku presents traditional
    asian folk music within a new context of collaborative experimentation
    and improvisation. the trio consists of wynn yamami (east and
    southeast asian percussion, including japanese taiko, korean gongs,
    and filipino kulintang), christopher ariza (live laptop electronics),
    and ali sakkal (saxophones, percussion). while committed to the
    preservation of musical traditions, kioku (japanese for “memory”)
    acknowledges the plasticity of tradition and freely adopts musical
    techniques found within improv-based and new music circles.

    converging from oakland, san francisco and santa cruz are polly
    moller, john moreira, and amar chaudhary, combining flute, bass flute,
    voice, guitar, and electronics to create otherworldly improvisatory
    atmospheres and backgrounds for polly's gripping text.

    who is dajis? a dj with a selection of ambient and experimental music.

  • Wordless Wednesday and Fun with Stats: site usage July 2007


    (Click to enlarge)

  • LolCatSynth: From Synthtopia

    The next contribution from our first lolcat-synth contest comes from Synthtopia. The headline is “Cat Announces Plan To Rule The World!”:

    Synthtopia included this in an article promoting our contest, and they produced one of the best examples in the process.