synth

Neave.tv and friends

This video came via our friend synthmonger. It was part of something called neave.tv, basically a custom video-channel application the web that plays a selection of syndicated material from YouTube, Google Video, and elsewhere. Synthmonger was actually calling attention this particular video featuring pjtoro's musical suit appearing on a Russian or Eastern European TV show. The suit appears to be a series of synthesizers controlled by body sensors. Pretty cool. The feline-themed models are a nice touch, too (hey, this is “CatSynth”).

More detail can be found at pjtoro's site, including design information, more images/videos and even an interactive flash simulation.

Back on neave.tv, I found a few other interesting videos. Most intriguiging to me was the a work called Sixes Last by 1st Ave Machine, a design and animation house located (surprise) on 1st Avenue in New York. They did an amazing job of blending natural elements with surreal biology. You have to think about it for a few moments to decide whether it's real, completely animated or manipulated in some fashion.

It's really not hard to create ones own syndicated channel like this with Flash, dynamic HTML/Javascript and the APIs provided by YouTube and other video sites. What interests me more are a few of the videos themselves, such as the work by 1st Ave Machine and others, which remind me that I still want to do more experimental video and animation work to complement my music. I've been spending much time back exclusively with music and sound (and trying to sell the CD lately), but there are some upcoming video opportunities I might want to consider…








Recent synthesizer acquisitions: E-MU Orbit V2 and "hacked" Morpheus

This town is full of old E-MU gear (as well as old E-MU employees). In recent weeks I was able to pick up two old modules for my substantial E-MU synth collection. The first is a fully functional Orbit V2:

This module was quite popular in its day, it features techno sounds that I don't believe E-MU has re-released for Emulator X or Proteus X. It is also as far as I know the only one of the modules with the special “scratcher” function that models turntable scratching of samples.

I also aquired another pre-run Morpheus. I'm not sure it has quite the extensive collection of non-production filters as my main Morpheus, but it does have a rather interesting demo track,a small clip of which I provide here for your listening pleasure.

The full demo is a little over two minutes long, and practically begs to be imported into Emulator X2 and used as the source for a new composition. Stay tuned…






CatSynth pic: kittennettik fyrall

It's been a little while since I've posted an actual cat-and-synth photo. Here we have a kitty posing with a “kittennettik” instrument called the fyrall. From the website:

fyrall is a multo-jungo-world dialer, it is a freak. Within, it has three electronic wheels, one made out of wigglers, one made out of digital counting temples, and the third reconnects the others. at every move it may be in a state of internal paradox. it is always looking for a state of rest and it can never find it. Experimenting on the fyrall is fun because new rewirings will cause it to spasm in the weirdest ways.

The fyrall and the other kittennetiks use chaotic cicruits for sound synthesis and control. The creator of these instruments has some specs and papers, which are, well, quite interesting. See for yourself.

My interest is definitely piqued. However, I might try looking at one of the “paper circuits” they provide before considering any of the full-blown kits.







Thoughts on last night's performance

In this article I review my performance last night at the plug:dos headphone festival in San Francisco.

First, the venue itself. 5lowershop is in a warehouse near the junction of highways 280 and 101 in San Francisco. It’s at the edge of the Bernal Heights neighborhood.


The venue and its surroundings have that seedy edge-of-the-city feel that I probably wouldn’t want to live in but nonetheless often find intriguing and romantic. It’s just another part of the quintessentially “modern” world.

The interior matches the exterior, a jumble of areas within the warehouse, including the main performance area. The space is quite porous with the outside, and I noticed several cats wander though, including the grey fellow and a small black-and-white kitten. They were presumably feral cats attracted by the warmth, activity and possibility of food. Feral cats are an inevitable part of urban environments, but it’s still heartbreaking to see them this way. I was also concerned for them because of the dogs that were present, fortunately the dogs seemed to be pets and quite mellow.

The atmosphere of people crowded in a warehouse listening to headphones was quite unusual to say the least. Some of the performances were quite interesting, including a serinate for voice and hammer-dulcimer, and of course several acts mixing guitar, analog synthesizers and turntable. The analog synths didn’t strike me as a good fit for headphone performance, and thus avoided them myself (as described in my article on the preparation), but they did a good job of keeping the sound within a reasonable range.

Despite the best efforts of the organizers, whom I liked and thought did a good job overall, things tended to run rather late, and I ended up going on 9:40PM, two hours after my scheduled performance. But I think it went well musically, pretty much meeting my expectations for mixing ambient and rhythmic/punctuated material while keeping things mellow for the headphones. I did bounce around and repeat elements more than I expected, but such is the nature of improvisation, reacting as things unfold.

The equipment (Dell Laptop, Emulator X, E-MU 1616m, E-MU Xboard 25) performed flawlessly. I did make a direct recording on the laptop, and will be posting that shortly. I am also planning to make that the first release in my planned podcast series.

UPDATE: you can now listen to the audio from this performance. Enjoy!

Preparing for tomorrow's performance

My upcoming performance at the the plug.dos headphone festival provides some special challenges. Because the audience, both at the venue and online, will be using headphones, I need make sure my sounds and processes are headphone-safe, i.e., low volume with no clipping, glitching or large volume-spikes. More positively, I can take advantage of a uniform stereo listening environment with deliberate pan and positioning effects.

The need for steady volume and stability rules out the use of feedback and high-resonance filtering that I use in a lot of my recent music. Thus, the Evolver is out. Many of my Open Sound World patches are probably not approrpriate, though stable-volume patches are certainly doable.

I am focusing on Emulator X controlled with a MIDI keyboard (E-MU Xboard25). Thus, my preparations have focused on selecting existing sounds from the E-MU sound library that meet my technical and aesthetic requirements, and creating some new sounds. One preset that I spent a lot of time building is a modification of my additive synthesizer for Emulator X, consisting of eight independently controllable sinewaves. In addition to MIDI control of amplitude and frequency, I use a function generator to add amplitude modulations do the sinewave components of the timbre. Additionally, each “note” played has an independent pan position, spreading the sound across in the stereo field. I have also modified some existing sounds to include stable amplitude-modulation effects. The end result is a highly-controllable pallete of sounds from which I plan to make an ambient but punctuated sound scape, with a few rhythmic elements for good measure.

Logistically, this will be a very simple performance to travel and set up, just my laptop, the E-MU 1616m sound module, and the keyboard. I am looking forward to a relaxed, simple and enjoyable experience.

I'm not posting any advance examples, so you'll have to listen online to the show to hear what I'm describing. Hopefully I will be able to post a recording after the fact.








performance

catsynth pic: Reed Ghazala Tape Canvas Device

I was reviewing Get LoFi for yesterday's circuit-bending article, and came across a reference not only to Reed Ghazala, whom I also referenced, but a catsynth pic to boot!

Who knew the “father of circuit bending” was also a cat person? Then again, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised…

The tape canvas (illustrated above) itself is interesting as well, allowing expressive control of a device and process that is traditionally linear. It inspires me to revive my interest in musical reading of barcodes using a CueCat, which has the added advantage of continuing the feline theme.


The CueCat has proved a difficult device to work with, however. I have a modified version that gets beyond some of the proprietary issues and shows up as an HID device that can be read in OSW, but I have yet to make it work properly.

catsynth pic: Gingerbread

MIT Media Lab assistant professor Dr. Joseph A. Paradiso includes the above photo of his old Himalayan cat Gingerbread atop a synthesizer cabinet as part of his web page documenting his modular synthesizer. His collection of modules and writings about synthesizers are quite impresesive, and I've spent a bit of time looking through them. That is one of the fun things about looking for these pictures of cats and synths: it often leads to something more interesting.

Dr. Paradiso's synthesizer has received note in Keyboard magazine, and he had a synth rig featured at the 2004 PrixArs Electronic festival. He has some great photos of synth rigs from the 1970's as well.

Little Sound Dj and "lo-fi" synthesis

I came across some interesting resources while visiting Ouroboros Complex the other day, in particular references to lo-fi synthesizers for small devices, such as Nanoloop for the GameBoy. Unfortunately, there was no free demo that I could run on my VisualBoyAdvance emulator, but I did find another synthesizer/sequencer that did: Little Sound Dj. It is set up like an old-style tracker application:

One can assign notes within a phrase (or larger structures called songs and chains) to various instruments. The instruments can be pulse tones, noise, built-in drumkits (emulating several classic lo-fi drum machines like Roland TR and even a “drumulator”), and custom waves that you can hand edit:

Although it is cute and fun to play around and see what one can do with such a limited but nonetheless interesting pallette, I think it falls short for actual musical work because of the interface and lack of interoperability with my other software and hardware instruments. Much of the lo-fi synthesis can be easily accomplished with OSW (check out the lo-fi and swiss_cheese tutorials) or several freely-available VST isntruments – and Ableton Live! remains a much more usable system for quick real-time pattern editing. I will be looking into some other lo-fi synthesizer plug-ins or algorithms to use in OSW and post more in a future article…

Actual Cat Synth

jfm3 of Ouroboros Complex posts about as literal a “CatSynth” pic as you can get, featuring his cat Kona and accoutrements as part of his rig. Cat aside, the rig and website include a wealth of personal experiences with analog synthesizer hacking as well as circuit bending (note the mod'ed Speak&Spell). Please give jfm3 and Kona a “catsynth welcome” by visiting their site.