Hey, you're always asking me where I find stuff...
Friday, March 31, 2006
Buddha Machine Pt.2
Yesterday I wandered down to White Noise Records, and after failing to find anything I was particularly interested in (and being slightly intimidated by the obscurity of their stock), I was happy to find that they sell Buddha Machines. Unfortunately I'd missed the chance to hear the designers of the machine (FM3) play live in the store on Saturday, but at least I can now listen to the machine.
So I bought one. It's great. It's sitting on my desk next to the computer, playing the same loop over and over and over and when I want to change loops I push the switch on the side and it moves to the next loop. The only way to choose a particular loop is by cycling through all nine in order until you land on the one you want.
The machine is thoughtfully packaged with two AA batteries so you can start listening to it straight away. The music itself is sort of like gentle tones throbbing or pulsing away - very ambient. I'm finding it's a great antidote to the noise pollution outside. Some of the loops are very short (a few seconds), others are a bit longer. It's hard to tell where they begin and end. Slippery.
tags: music | fm3 | buddhamachine
So I bought one. It's great. It's sitting on my desk next to the computer, playing the same loop over and over and over and when I want to change loops I push the switch on the side and it moves to the next loop. The only way to choose a particular loop is by cycling through all nine in order until you land on the one you want.
The machine is thoughtfully packaged with two AA batteries so you can start listening to it straight away. The music itself is sort of like gentle tones throbbing or pulsing away - very ambient. I'm finding it's a great antidote to the noise pollution outside. Some of the loops are very short (a few seconds), others are a bit longer. It's hard to tell where they begin and end. Slippery.
tags: music | fm3 | buddhamachine
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Little Link List 12
Wonderful article about the process of localising CounterStrike (a multiplayer PC game) for the Japanese market;
Smart goods - networked-connected devices could have beneficial uses somehow - like this rabbit;
The Commonwealth Games ruined Melbourne's street-art culture - although to be honest I'm sure it will just start up again. This is an example of what the article is talking about:
Smart goods - networked-connected devices could have beneficial uses somehow - like this rabbit;
The Commonwealth Games ruined Melbourne's street-art culture - although to be honest I'm sure it will just start up again. This is an example of what the article is talking about:
Friday, March 24, 2006
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
The Future of Recombinant Music
So using a palette constructed entirely of sampled sound (even all the songs in the world!) performers can simply sing their compositions into existence. Now you can do that anyway of course - if you sing you are creating. But you're limited to only expressing one voice - monophonic. This technique can create a full polyphonic sound.
I think the more interesting aspect of this though is the possibility for automated music creation. In Neuromancer (? - maybe it was Count Zero) William Gibson described a kind of dub soundtrack that continuously recombined without human intervention. It would be really interesting to kick off the sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ system with a short phrase and then feed the output back into the system again. I suspect one of two things would happen. The first could be that the feedback would build up very quickly and blow the speakers. The second could be that the music would change incrementally over time, so that after a while the music would be substantially different from what was originally performed.
Oh, there's a third possibility as well - that the music would never change at all. I guess the way around that would be to add a small amount of signal processing at the point where the output gets fed back into the system so as to introduce a certain level of randomness into the input.
I'd love to try it though - make sure you watch the video.
tags: music | sampling | sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ
Gramophone records, magnetic tapes, vinyl records, digital samplers and computers have already liberated the samples long ago. But still - to infringe copyrights - one has to decide which sample one actually wants to steal. One has to arduously load audio files into sample editors or sequencers. One has to cut, copy, paste and arrange. All that takes precious creative energy and a lot of time.This guy has created a system called sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ that takes input from a performer (e.g. a singer), analyzes the input, breaks it into segments, matches the segments against a database of previously sampled segments of music, and then plays back the matching segments, all in real time.
Enough of that!
So using a palette constructed entirely of sampled sound (even all the songs in the world!) performers can simply sing their compositions into existence. Now you can do that anyway of course - if you sing you are creating. But you're limited to only expressing one voice - monophonic. This technique can create a full polyphonic sound.
I think the more interesting aspect of this though is the possibility for automated music creation. In Neuromancer (? - maybe it was Count Zero) William Gibson described a kind of dub soundtrack that continuously recombined without human intervention. It would be really interesting to kick off the sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ system with a short phrase and then feed the output back into the system again. I suspect one of two things would happen. The first could be that the feedback would build up very quickly and blow the speakers. The second could be that the music would change incrementally over time, so that after a while the music would be substantially different from what was originally performed.
Oh, there's a third possibility as well - that the music would never change at all. I guess the way around that would be to add a small amount of signal processing at the point where the output gets fed back into the system so as to introduce a certain level of randomness into the input.
I'd love to try it though - make sure you watch the video.
tags: music | sampling | sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ
Monday, March 20, 2006
Little Link List 11
A lecture by Bruce Sterling discussing some of the issues in nomenclature you encounter when writing about Spimes - aka everything connected and communicating, all the time;
Genius idea - the Slanket;
Alan Pollack has worked out how all the Beatles' songs were put together.
Genius idea - the Slanket;
Alan Pollack has worked out how all the Beatles' songs were put together.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Well that was fun
Our first gig went very well. It was fun to play for an audience and later in the night we ended up playing songs with the guys from the other band that played as well. The place was a tiny bar - fairly dingy, but to it's credit there were TEN amps available to whoever wanted to use them. That's pretty cool.
ROCK!
tags: music | rockmusic
ROCK!
tags: music | rockmusic
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
First Gig!
Tonight the band will be playing out first gig - at some place called The Wanch, in Wanchai. I don't know what time we're playing but maybe around 9pm. Whahey!
Monday, March 13, 2006
Press 'Record'
Sometime earlier I mentioned a guy named George who was busy updating the New Zealand Lonely Planet Guidebook. Now you can get the other side of that story - unexpurgated transcripts of What Really Took Place when Simon joined George's tour of the Land of the Long White Cloud!
tags: lonelyplanet | newzealand
tags: lonelyplanet | newzealand
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Buddha Machine
Bloody hell - this looks interesting. A little box that plays nine loops for hours on end. I want to try it!
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Bonetable (or maybe Man Meets Wolf) - the Dragon Sessions
While I've been here I've joined a band - James on drums, Robert on guitar and I'm also playing guitar. We've been practising a bit and are getting closer to playing live. It's been a lot of fun, and today we recorded some of our songs so we could see about putting together a little demo disc.
I've decided to put one of the songs up here for anyone who wants to hear it. The caveats are: it was recorded in one take on a Sony MD Walkman on only one microphone, so everything sounds a bit tinny and the drums are a bit loud, and Robert had to sing through a guitar amp (which is not ideal).
However I quite like it. It's very dirty. I thought I might as well call these the Dragon Sessions because in-between rehearsing with us James is frantically trying to finish building a model dragon that he will hopefully turn into a sculpture.
The song's called "John The Revelator".
Oh - and Bonetable is one option for the band name (Man Meets Wolf is another).
I've decided to put one of the songs up here for anyone who wants to hear it. The caveats are: it was recorded in one take on a Sony MD Walkman on only one microphone, so everything sounds a bit tinny and the drums are a bit loud, and Robert had to sing through a guitar amp (which is not ideal).
However I quite like it. It's very dirty. I thought I might as well call these the Dragon Sessions because in-between rehearsing with us James is frantically trying to finish building a model dragon that he will hopefully turn into a sculpture.
The song's called "John The Revelator".
Oh - and Bonetable is one option for the band name (Man Meets Wolf is another).
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Little Link List 10
An interesting post about why chocolate is bad;
Eight not-very-good pictures of the back of my head;
The future of gaming? - Spore.
Spore looks great - it incorporates a lot of different styles of play and also utilises player-generated content! Start at the level of a cell and end up roaming the galaxy terraforming worlds.
Eight not-very-good pictures of the back of my head;
The future of gaming? - Spore.
Spore looks great - it incorporates a lot of different styles of play and also utilises player-generated content! Start at the level of a cell and end up roaming the galaxy terraforming worlds.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Settling In
We've been here nearly two months now. We're still discovering things which is always fun, but we're also building our routines. One thing I've found much different about living overseas this time around is how close home is. Really close. I see the homepage of The Age every time I go on the web, it's much easier to stay in touch with friends and family, and the idea of listening to radio from home without having to stretch metres and metres of aerial from a shortwave radio all over the house is great.
The Mid-Levels has any amount of bars and restaurants due to the large number of expats living here. We've tried a few of them. Some, like the Peak Cafe are basically crap - overpriced food, bad coffee and full of Toorak-types. On the other hand there are places like Joyce Is Not Here and Club 71 that are much more relaxed and nice places to be. Club 71 in particular has the wonderful combination of a beergarden (well, tables on a footpath next to a garden) and a large collection of stray cats wandering through it.
Today is Sunday, so every available public space (park, walkway, staircase) is full of Filipino and Indonesian maids enjoying their one day of the week off. They sit in groups and play cards, eat food, head off to buy discount clothing and make calls home. It must be quite difficult for a lot of them being here and working full-time for about AU$600 a month. The Sunday get-togethers seem to be a way of coping and enjoying life for a little while.
The Mid-Levels has any amount of bars and restaurants due to the large number of expats living here. We've tried a few of them. Some, like the Peak Cafe are basically crap - overpriced food, bad coffee and full of Toorak-types. On the other hand there are places like Joyce Is Not Here and Club 71 that are much more relaxed and nice places to be. Club 71 in particular has the wonderful combination of a beergarden (well, tables on a footpath next to a garden) and a large collection of stray cats wandering through it.
Today is Sunday, so every available public space (park, walkway, staircase) is full of Filipino and Indonesian maids enjoying their one day of the week off. They sit in groups and play cards, eat food, head off to buy discount clothing and make calls home. It must be quite difficult for a lot of them being here and working full-time for about AU$600 a month. The Sunday get-togethers seem to be a way of coping and enjoying life for a little while.
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