Music

Preparing for January art installation: Part 2

Looks like things are good to go for the upcoming art installation at the Pajaro Valley Arts Council. We took the sound track that I produced last saturday as is ( see part 1) and the entire piece is being installed the gallery today. It's nice when something comes together without a lot of stress or last-minute scrambling and compromise. It's also a welcome change to have something that “presents itself” via pre-recorded matieral – again, no stress, no preparing for live computer problems, etc.

The exhibition, entitled The Human Condition: The Artists' Response will be at the PVAC gallery in Watsonville, CA from January 10 through March 4.






New Podcast: Geeetar Improv 1

At a christmas party last monday, I participated in a free jam with some of my musician friends – I played a bit of guitar during the jam and that gave me the impetus (could I really use “kick in the tuchus” two posts in a row?) to get my own recently-acquired guitar in shape. In particular, it needed stringing – fortunately, there are plenty of online guides to guitar stringing and how to do it well.

Now that I have a working guitar, I have been noodling around a bit the last few days, mostly playing through effects and other signal processing on the computer. This release is a short improvisation I did with the guitar and various effects on the E-MU 1616m. Like most of my releases, it is fairly experimental/abstract, but it does contain a fair number of guitar cliches in the mix.





Preparing for January art installation: Part 1

I am collaborating on an art installation for an upcoming exhibition in January at the The Pajaro Valley Arts Council Gallery: the piece has both a visual (sculptural) component and a sound component, the latter being my contribution.

I've been doing bits of it over the holiday break, but finally gave myself the proverbial kick in the tuchus to complete at least a full draft today. I am making things simpler by using only sounds on the computer, not external synthesizers – and also focused on two sound libraries I purchased last year but have made only limited use of until now. The libaries focus on highly processed organic sounds (animals, environment, etc.) and modified analog synthesizers (including some circuit-bend instruments).

The “composition process” was simply auditioning various sounds from this library and assembling them into a continuous sequence – a collage – that works with the visuals. The material is primarily ambient noise, gitches, percussive effects and sounds that only “hint” at speaking voices.

Next step, after any additional changes and mastering, will be to put it together with the sculpture, presumably sometime next week…





Weekend Cat Blogging #82: Black Pride

This New Years edition of Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Champaign Taste. We wish all our WCB friends, feline and human, a happy and healthy new year!

Our contribution this week continues our tribute to James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, who is a hero of ours here at CatSynth; he passed away this past Monday. In addition to his music (which is playing in the background as I write this), he made contributions to civil rights and the “Black Power” movement, through his efforts to promote African American ownership of the distribution of music on records and radio, and of course his classic anthems such as “Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud.” It is in honor of this anthem that Luna strikes a proud, stately pose this week, reminiscent of the iconography of the Egyptian goddess Bast:

The connection between black cats and civil rights isn't entirely gratuitous. Consider the well-known symbol of the Black Panther Party. Although founded in Oakland in 1966, the story goes that the party took its symbol from the Lowndes County (Alabama) Freedom Organization:

We chose for the emblem a black panther, a beautiful black animal which symbolizes the strength and dignity of black people, an animal that never strikes back until he's back so far into the wall, he's got nothing to do but spring out. Yeah. And when he springs he does not stop.

Getting back to James Brown, I would be remiss if I did not also recognize one of my former cats Morty, the original “Supa-Bad Kitty”:

He got his nickname for his constant mischief, like sitting on the dining room table, but remainingly devilishly lovable. Plus, he could shake his money maker like no other kitty I've met. I miss him – he was taken by a former girlfriend and although I haven't seen him in many years, I hope he is doing well.











RIP James Brown (1933-2006)

I cannot let the passing this morning of the Godfather of Soul go unremarked. The music that James Brown launched remains among my favorite popular music – funk and soul from the 1960s and 1970s have a special place in my heart and my CD collection. In particular, I return the 1970s era with the original JB's, funker, grittier and with just the right amount of slop. Indeed, the track “Turn It Up or Let It A-Loose” from the 1970 collection Funk Power was included in the research for my dissertation. I probably have the only PhD dissertation in Computer Science that includes a reference to James Brown in the bibliography. I suppose that's my tribute.







Warped Cannon

Courtesy of fellow experimental musician Gino Robair, we have the “Warped Cannon” page, which features the Pachelbel's Canon in a wide variety of tunings. The MIDI files on the site present the canon performed not in variants of the traditional just and equal-tempered scales, but several rather odd tunings as well. Of particular interest to me was the the Bohlen-Pierce variation, using the Bohlen-Pierce tuning that I have discussed in previous posts. While some readers/listeners may find this variation a little difficult to listen to, and even disturbing when contrasted with the original, I actually find it quite inspiring. I am always interested to hear pieces done in this tuning ahead any future BP compositions of my own.






New Podcast

Today's podcast release looks to the past. My performance two years ago at the Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz received a lot of positive feedback from other musicians and audience members,, and it's one of my favorites. But it is largely overlooked by most visitors to my website. I encourage readers and listeners to check it out.

The performance was realized almost exclusively using Open Sound World, with a little backup from the Proteus 2000.



Gift ideas from CatSynth

Looking for a great holiday gift for that music lover, techno geek and/or pretentious hipster/snob in your life? Why not give them a copy of Aquatic?

If CD's are too old school, you and always gift tracks via iTunes or consider a subscription to emusic, truly the gift that keeps on giving.

Proportional Fish kinda sounds like holiday music, right?






New Podcast: Fun w/ Emulator X and freesound.org harmonica samples

I spent a little time yesterday experimenting with modulated loop selection in Emulator X on a variety of sounds. One sound set that I particularly enjoyed playing was a set of blues harmonica samples at freesound created by TexasMusicForge. For those who are not familiar with the freesound project, it is a great collection of user-submitted samples licensed via the Creative Commons. Anyhow, I created a new EX instrument based on these samples and added multiple loops to a couple of them (actually up to 60 loops in one of the samples!), modulated with random LFOs. The result was quite playable – you can hear an example on the podcast. I would ultimately like to create a full composition with this instrument by refining this improvisation and combining it with other elements. It's not a sound I have used very much in the past, so I'm interested to see what I can do with it.







Summary of New Orleans / ICMC articles

Here is a list of all the New Orleans and ICMC articles in chronological order. New readers are encouraged to use this list as a starting point. Enjoy!


Weekend in New Orleans Part 1: Zip visits the French Quarter
Weekend in New Orleans Part 2: City views and Scultpure Garden
ICMC late concert on election night
Preparing for tomorrow's radio performance and more ICMC
After radio performance
NOLA Night Life
Weekend Cat Blogging #75: Cats of New Orleans
The Other New Orleans