Synthesizers

New Podcast: Performance at 7th Annual Skronkathon


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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!

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.

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.

CatSynth 1st Anniversary

Today we celebrate CatSynth's first anniversary.

It's been one year since we posted this photo on July 19, 2006:

The idea came from a friend who said something like “dude, you should do a website about cats and synths.” So I did. Really didn't have too much idea what I would write about. I quickly learned that there was quite an abundance of pictures of cats and synths, and sites like matrixsynth had been collecting such images for a while. Indeed, one of the first external “CatSynth pics” to be posted here was of matrix's own cat JD:

Sadly, we recently learned that JD passed away this month. We offer matrix our sympathies. It's always sad to hear about cat friends passing away (or human friends, for that matter), and we at CatSynth have seen our share this past year.

I expect to post more this evening reviewing the year with photos, not-so-useful stats and the other things we at CatSynth like to think we do well…