Old Favorites: Moog and Dave Smith Instruments

While looking for more esoteric instruments, we do stop at all favorites. It’s always very comforting to visit Moog Music, as the sound of Moog instruments and effects is really liquidy and instantly pliable, it feels really easy to play.

Dave Smith Instruments is in some ways the opposite, but I have long used the DSI Evolver in my music for its really intense sound. Today I tried out the Mopho.

It’s a small monophonic synthesizer, and caught me a bit by surprise when I pressed the “press me” button.

UPDATE: Prophet 08 (with Poly Evolver in the background):

I managed to get some great inharmonic (and somewhat unstable) patches in only a few minutes of floor time.

Nord Wave and Stage EX

As soon as I arrived in the hall at NAMM I immediately faced the bright red instruments from Nord. The Wave synthesizer (featured below with Zip) was interesting in terms of programming features though the use of external waves was a but limited. I did like the new filter models including the multi.

My friends had recommended the Nord Stage. I tried out the electric piano models and now I want one for my live shows! its too bad the stage and programming products arent in a single package.

NAMM iPhone App

I am expecting to see several iPhone applications at NAMM, but this one is particularly handy as I start my tour:

It can be used to map the convention halls, search vendors by name, category and location, and “bookmark” them so you can see on the map where you might actually want to go (and thus avoid getting lost in the endless sea of guitars in the middle of the convention center). I was able to quickly put in some of my own priorities as well as those I have followed on matrixsynth and elsewhere.

CatSynth at NAMM

We at CatSynth are delighted to be attending the NAMM 2010 Show!

It is the first time I have been to the big music gear show since 2006. While Orange County, California may not be quite as exciting as some of the other locales I have written from, there is certainly going to be a lot of fun gear to look at, to play with, and to photograph with gratuitously posed stuffed cats.

Look to this site and our @catsynth twitter feed for our rather eccentric and eclectic coverage.

First Thursday, January 2010

We at CatSynth present a few notes from our gallery visits here in San Francisco on the first Thursday of the year.

Peter Focault, courtesy of Micaela Gallery

First up, we visit Micaela Gallery for an exhibition of work by Peter Focault and “friends”. Focault’s large ink-on-paper works build up complex structures from simple lines and strokes. The textures can be come very intricate and dense, such as in this detail from Four Square Squared Series #2. Several pieces also have a very architectural quality, while others such as the Evolution Series #1 have a more organic feel.

In addition to the wall presentation, there was a live performance and creation of a new drawing. This was a collaboration of Focault, musician Jake Coolidge, and Jonathan Grover. Coolidge performed live processed bass guitar with loops and other samples. The audio was then interpreted by a robot that moved with a pen on a surface in response to changes in the sound. The long curving strokes with back-and-forth motions gradually produced an image that was similar in style to completed works. You can see a brief sample in the video below from Jake Coolidge’s blog, along with a more detailed description of the process:

Shannon Ebner’s Signal Hill at Altman Siegel depicted every day objects, some with text, some with symbols like stick figures, some bits of manufactured material, that all convey information or “signals” in contemporary society. I identified with the simple and geometric elements and incorporation of text in her large photographs as well as her sculpture, as well as the sparse presentation by the gallery.

Shannon Ebner, courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery

The photographs also had a very three dimensional texture, such as one photograph of an international graphic symbol (included in the photograph above) that one often sees on a very smooth surface.

Holly Andres, courtesy Robert Koch Gallery (click to enlarge)

At Robert Koch Gallery, I saw Holly Andres’ Sparrow Lane series. The photographs this series feature a group of adolescent women. The photographs seem to be narrative, as if the girls are exploring and investigating, but they are also disjoint without any real story line. As she explains in this interview, Andres spends a lot of time carefully crafting the images, including the clothing worn by the models and the walls and furnishings of the spaces. The clothing was very well done. Most seemed vintage mid-century and featured skirts and dresses with straight lines and solid colors that gave the characters a modernist “early 1960s” feel. On the other hand, the props and settings seemed more baroque and and did not really hold my interest. The one exception was the The Missing Bird (presented here), which places the characters in a grittier basement covered in media images with a cat in the background.  I did find myself contrasting this series with the Dystopia exhibition I saw at this same gallery a year ago – it would be intriguing to see them side by side. (The exhibition will remain on display at the gallery through the end of the month.)

While exploring the photographs at the Koch Gallery, the air from the doorway carried the heavy tones of electric blues. I followed the sounds next door to the Haines Gallery, where a blues band was playing. It turns out the band was led by Mike Henderson, whose paintings were featured in the current exhibition.

I tend to be drawn to minor keys and modes, so minor blues holds a special place in my musical vocabulary. His paintings have geometric shapes with complex textures, overlaid with various line drawings and lettering. Some have a very bright texture akin to a wood surface, while others are dark black with small light shapes and figures.  It is interesting to consider the connection between the music and the visual art.  Unlike the collaboration described above where the connection was direct, the connection here is more emotional or evocative.

Stephen Wirtz gallery presented Catherine Wagner presented large highly-detailed prints of specimens from the California Acadamy of Sciences. They were arranged by biological taxonomy, but also visually. From a distance, one can focus on the overall texture, while up close one notices the details of each specimen. Hits by Rick Arnitz featured large canvases, each of which seemed to take on a different geometric theme: brightly colored circles, a texture of red a black vertical lines, stars on a light blue field, etc. I often like discovering pieces from the permanent collection on display in the back room – I recall Ulrike Palmbach’s soft sculptures of cats from a previous visit – this time it was Marc Katono’s Half Light, a large light canvas with very delicate curves and lines. The piece was reminiscent of organic fibers and would have seemed at home among Wagner’s prints.

Randy Hussong, Courtesy of Gallery Paule Anglim

Across the street at Gallery Paule Anglim, I saw Randy Hussong’s Sculpture and Lithography exhibit. All the images were based a large steel box held up on one side by a stick with a chain, essentially a “trap” of sorts. The box itself was shown in the center of the room as a piece entitled Prey and Weight.  Along the walls were combination photographs/lithographs based on images of the box in outdoor setting, based on photographs at different times of day. The box is clearly artificial, but it’s coloring and worn texture allow it to merge with the natural environment. Additionally, there was one pure black-and-white lithograph entitled Trap.

At A440 Gallery, Dominic Alleluia’s large mixed media works had a very contemporary feel. They combined large abstract elements, color textures and shapes with energetic dark swirls and waves reminiscent of graffiti. A third dimension in some works included objects and materials such as wooden dowels and metal. I found this video of the “artist at work”, and I thought the music expressed the energy of his pieces the exceptionally small gallery space.

Finally, I would like to mention seeing the exhibition Diane Arbus‘ photographs at Fraenkel Gallery.  The exhibition, titled Christ in a lobby and Other Unknown or Almost Known Works by Diane Arbus, were selected by sculpture Robert Gober from a collection of little-known photographs.  The photographs, which were relatively small in size, did fit into the context of Arbus’ better known images in that they depicted a wide selection of people, some very everyday and some a bit more challenging.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Works of Art

I managed to get this photo of Luna sitting in front of a ledge overlooking the downstairs. I think she matches the works of art on the wall quite well.

Astute readers may recognize the large black painting from one of our reviews last October. See if you can pick out the artist.

Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted this weekend by The Meezers.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up on Sunday at iMeowza.

And of course the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Lambert W Function

We at CatSynth return to the topic of mathematics for the first time in a while. In particular, we visit an obscure topic of personal significance. One day in high school I wrote down a seemingly simple equation:

2x = 1 / x

And set about trying to solve it. It certainly has a solution, as one can graph the functions 2x and 1/x and note their intersection:

In the graph above, the green curve is 2x and the black curve is 1/x. They intersect at an x coordinate equal to about 0.64. I actually moved to a variation:

ex = 1 / x

(somehow thinking that using e would make it simpler), and quickly approximated the solution as:

0.56714329…

While computing this number was relatively simple pressing buttons on a handheld calculator, describing it in a closed form proved elusive. Every so often, I would return to the equation, try to manipulate it algebraically or using calculus, but I was never able to do so.

Years later, in college, I found out that it was in fact impossible to solve algebraically, but that did not prevent mathematicians from naming both the constant 0.56714329… and the function necessary to compute it. Consider a function w(x)) such that:

w(x)ew(x) = x

The function w(x) is known as the Lambert W function, or “omega function”, and is named after 18th century mathematician Johann Heinrich Lambert. It is a non-analytical function, in that it cannot be expressed in a closed algebraic form, hence the difficulty I had attempting to solve my equation). However, one can see that w(1) is a solution for it. And w(1) [=] 0.56714329… is often called Lambert’s constant.

Although Lambert’s function does not have a closed-form expression, one can approximate it with a small computer program, such as this python program:

from math import e

def lambertW(x, prec=1E-12, maxiters=100):
    w = 0    

    for i in range(maxiters):
        we = w * e**w
        w1e = (w + 1) * e**w

        if prec > abs((x - we) / w1e):
            return w

        w -= (we - x) / (w1e - (w + 2) * (we - x) / (2*w + 2))

    raise ValueError("W doesn't converge fast enough for abs(z) = %f"

It was somewhat disappointing in the end to find out both that there was no closed form for the solution, and that the constant associated with the solution already had a name. But it was still interesting to learn about it, and to then apply it to other problems.

On that note, we conclude by showing that w(x) can also be used to solve the original equation:

2x = 1/x

can be rewritten as:

(ln2)xe(ln2)x = ln2

We can now use w(x) to solve the equation:

x = w(ln2) / ln2

which is approximately .6411857…

One thing I never tried in my youthful experimentations with this function was evaluate it with non-real complex numbers. While there are examples plotting w(z) on the complex plane, I would rather take some time to explore this myself.

I also have yet to find any applications to music or the visual arts, outside of literal usage in conceptual art pieces.