jumping beans & .tape. from la bisogno on Vimeo.

What might a jar full of Mexican jumping beans sound like if composing their own ambient music? Scott Worley points us to a musical experiment by his labelmate Daniel Romero aka .tape, on netlabel yo.yo.pang!.
.tape programmed a sound environment in the free multimedia patching environment Pd (Pure Data). Contact microphones listen for the beans to jump, then use Pd’s onset detection (an analysis for transients) to trigger the sounds. Daniel reports the technique is “easy, but wholly effective.”

I’ll say – the music winds up being quite lovely, and rather than having a boring software-based random event generator, there’s something mesmerizing about watching the beans. You can download a free MP3/OGG file of the track, as well (and it sounds as though more projects may be coming):

pet-o-matic [asociación cultural la bisogno]

Descripción original en Español:

empezamos esta serie con la picante unión entre el músico Daniel Romero (aka .tape. ) y Pancho, Emiliano y Marcos, tres frijoles saltarines mexicanos

Sonidos y programación por .tape. secuenciación en directo por los 3 frijoles saltarines mexicanos micrófono de contacto + un “onset detection” en pd para disparar los sonidos. fácil pero rotundamente efectivo.

In other Pd news, the creators of the RjDj interactive/generative iPhone music app, which employs Pd patches, will be holding another sprint. This one will be located in London October 2-4.

The art of music is as expressive an art as you can find, so why shouldn’t the objects we use to make music be equally personal and creative? That’s the question we ask regularly on CDM, so we’re pleased to be sponsoring a contest with our friends at Instructables, along with the good people of Bleep Labs and custom speaker maker Zalytron.

Instructables, of course, are a site that let you share step-by-step instructions for making stuff. Far from keeping you art secret, they let you claim bragging rights for brilliant creations by letting you share how you’ve made them — and how other folks can do the same. It says that making things doesn’t have to be about something you’ve got that no one else does, but on the contrary, that value can actually come from other people doing the same thing. I got to meet the co-founders on the panel we gave at the OFFF Festival in Lisbon – really terrific folks.

For the Art of Sound Contest, anything’s game – homemade and modded instruments, electronics, circuit bending, speakers, controllers, the lot – even visuals. At the risk of influencing the voting, there’s already a musical light show, on the visual end, a sequencer (seen at top), an Arduino trumpet, and, yes, Spock lovers, even a Vulcan Lyre.

By the way, if you document stuff on Instructables, you can now embed the steps, as seen below. So that means you can make your own page on our in-alpha-testing noisepages community site and add additional details in blog form.

Check out the latest and most popular entries on the contest page:
http://www.instructables.com/contest/artofsound

And, of course, even if you don’t enter, you’ll have lots of things to try making. If you do want to enter, you have until July 26. Stay tuned to CDM as we keep track of the contest and the projects – even if you can’t enter, I promise we’ll have some goodies to share. And, of course, there’s an instructables for how to enter:

How To Enter the Art of Sound Contest – More DIY How To Projects

I’m especially fond of these speaker creatures. Mustache? Monocle? Check. And, hey, even if you lose, there’s an Instructables to teach you to make your own.

Too cute…

Updated: It seems Instructables has gone to a new pricing model. I’m still getting all the details as this is a recent announcement. I realize this may be cause for concern for some of our readers. Suffice to say, I understand that bandwidth-consuming sites aren’t free to run as a publisher myself, but I also understand creators being concerned about specific restrictions – particularly in regards to content they’ve created. It does appear that the “free” accounts are functional; I’m just unclear, for instance, on the “secondary images” – what sizes you have access to, etc. Stay tuned.

There’s a simply insane amount of electrified music happening here in the US this week:

• Bent Festival NY: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are concerts at the Bent Festival in NY, not only of circuit bending but other DIY sound, as well. Stop by Saturday during the day for a day full of workshops. (also on Facebook)
• Thursday, Bent NY sponsor The Tank will be hosting Warper Vs. Splice, a 2-floor audiovisual collision in downtown NYC; I’ll be on music + eyethings in the middle of the evening. (See Facebook)
• Saturday, The Tank hosts the 8-bit crowd, also concurrent with Bent, at the regular Pulsewave, in case at that point you’ve had your fill of bending and higher bit depths
• Bent Festival Minneapolis does it all again next weekend (Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights) for the middle of America, with workshops during the day. Don’t miss our friends Beatrix*Jar (above) and CDM’s Mike Una giving a free workshop — get there early for one of 12 MIDI-to-relay kits to use.
• Ethermusic Festival in North Carolina won’t just have a lineup of all the world’s great Theremin players, with people like Dorit Chrysler (below), Lydia Kavina, Sheuh-Li Ong, and other important people, plus CDM readers Scott Burland and Frank Shultz doing a Theremin + lap steel duet. (Thanks to Frank for the heads-up!) It’ll also have something else…

It sounds as though Moog Music is going to officially announce the thing they’re making that involves subliminal guitar images during Ethermusic. So, if you’re there, bring a camera for any one of those reasons.

As I write this, both Moog’s and Ethermusic’s sites are hiccupping; hopefully the Evil Carolina Server Hag hasn’t gotten to them. I’m sure all is well as you read this.

Now, I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t actually play Theremin any better than this cat. Not worse, necessarily. I’m very much on the cat’s level. Fortunately, I won’t be playing Theremin tomorrow at The Tank.

A few moments of your playing, and nothing could possibly convince me that you didn’t grow up on the streets of Jamaica, banging oil drums you salvaged and hammered into shape.

Whoops, sorry — had to snap out of that for a second.

So, okay — it seems the beamz laser harp we saw last week comes with special algorithmic software that makes music play basically regardless of what you do. The problem with laser harps in general is they tend to the button-pressing variety: that is, you’re waving your arms around like crazy, but really the laser sensor is either off or on. (There are ways around that, but … well, not here.)

Watch closely as someone leaves their hand in front of the harp and does nothing. And this, of course, is what real instruments have going for them — that you have to work hard to play them, and that’s actually kind of the fun of it. It’s like basketball: if you just held down a button the entire game and a robot played for you, it would be easier, but that wouldn’t necessarily be better. Even as a computer game, we expect multiple buttons, and actual difficulty. If you waved your hands around and wore sunglasses and had a $600 gadget from Sharper Image and pretended to play basketball, that wouldn’t be much of an improvement, either. I’m not sure why music is excepted from this rule, but then, many things about this world provide amazement and confusion.

Yes, technically Guitar Hero / Rock Band does the same thing. Except that it has actual difficulty. And has real songs. And is fun. Whereas this is painful. And it’s about as expensive than Rock Band plus a PS3.

That leaves two questions.

First, there’s the academic question of how generative musical algorithms could be controlled via more expressive input devices — so that generative music felt creative, and not just holding down a button and letting the computer figure out what to play. I’m not sure you’ll find the answer in the Euro-Pop-imagical beamz, but I’m just saying.

Second, how come this girl is getting totally dumped on?

Oh, sure. I see how this works. The “everyone sounds great!” caption just happens to go with this poor young woman.

The entire video is nothing but dorky white dudes (yeah, I know — takes one to know one). We’re supposed to believe that by wearing aviator glasses and cheap headphones and pretending to be totally into their own playing, these guys are really rock stars enjoying the new frontiers opened by Sharper Image laser gimmickry.

But the young girl in the penguin-emblazoned vest? It’s sheer technological wonder that she can produce the same crap as the rest of them.

I think the video captions have it backwards. I mean, she has a robot dog and stuff. She’s going to tire of the beamz and go back to programming the Game Boy tracker she coded herself.

Give Penguin Girl a break.

Good grief; the cats have already started making tutorials:

Assembling electronic beats, starring Convoy — a slide show

So, my question is, where are the synth and computer music dogs? Dachshunds on Moogs? Labrodoodles on Ableton Live?

And, yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m stalling today so I can get other work done. But if I had a dog, I’d contribute.

Rowlf the Dog, from the Muppets, has to at least start this out. Occasionally, he traded his acoustic grand or upright for a keyboard like the Arp Odyssey, as seen on Flickr. That’s my kind of dog:

Got some canine friend who helps you get through your productions? Let us know.

Conceptual albums. The folks at BornRich.org have a beautiful music tablet PC design up. (Thanks, Gizmodo.) Only problem: it’s basically a Windows tablet PC with a prettier body; the real magic in portable music tablets would come from smarter software. See also their computer in a drum case, which might allow drummers to sneak Ableton Live onstage.

The Long Tail and the Toilet. Lastly, if you’re looking for a new way to distribute your music and gain audiences, and you’re a totally obscure indie band with a name like “Nine Inch Nails” (who?) why not distribute your music taped to USB keys in urinals? In Portugal? (Damn you, Reznor, you stole ANOTHER of my ideas?) Just make sure you tell the RIAA first. Oh, and make sure not to leave your Logic Pro dongle by mistake. I do love the fake site NIN points to. “ZERO TOLERANCE. ZERO FEAR.” happens to be the new slogan of the new CDM forum moderators.

Cult-hit-before-it-was-even-released movie Snakes on a Plane has none other than Trevor Rabin composing the musical score, as if I needed an excuse to bring up Snakes on CDM. Rabin has had an incredible history as a musician. Born to noted classically-trained parents, he went on to co-found the wildly successful Rabbitt, recorded a significant anti-Apartheid anthem, played with Yes, and wrote their #1 hit Owner Of A Lonely Heart. He even worked with Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, and Rick Wakeman. Now, like some other former rockers (Stewart Copeland comes to mind), Rabin has become a successful film composer, with a distinct action-movie tilt. (Armageddon, Bad Boys II, Con Air, Gone in 60 Seconds — no chick flicks in there, really.) Pictured: both “Rocker Trevor” and (from SoundtrackNet’s great story on Snakes) “Composer Trevor.”

And Rabin is a Mac guy. His studio Jacaranda Studios is powered by Power Mac G5s and, evidently, too much cool gear to list. Various reports suggest he uses both MOTU Digital Performer (like Copeland) and Pro Tools (probably because the studio guys require it). It’s funny, even though audio often gets bounced to Pro Tools for compatibility, film composers really largely prefer Digital Performer to anything else out there, and it certainly includes the most film scoring functionality. If you want to get inside his studio:

Home Recording visits Trevor Rabin

Trevor Rabin Scores Snakes on a Plane [SoundtrackNet]

Don’t try to get in touch with me at 10 pm tonight, incidentally, because I will be at the first show. (Check out the official site for a fun Flash feature that lets you record custom Samuel L. Jackson messages for your friends.) And will I be disappointed when the movie is awful? Absolutely not. I’m betting on it.

I present, as mind candy for the weekend: adorable animals with synthesizers.

Cute kitty + Moog Theremin: Who doesn’t love that? From a local meeting of cartoonists comes this bundle of lovability, plus two music samples, ostensibly from 1936:

Dance of the Saucer Maidens
Dance of the Saucer Maidens

Penguin Lust
Penguin Lust

Sakie and Synthesizer: I think Synthesizer is the dog? There’s a pup we can take into our hearts. I’d say Synthesizer could be co-mascot for CDM with Hatebeak, but that might cause fur and feathers alike to fly. This shot comes from Suki Dhanda’s Year of the Dog series for the London underground; dog lovers won’t want to miss the full series at Platform for art.

Pound the Dog with Custom Gabriel Synthesizer: Gabriel Sound‘s history of custom sound equipment and synths goes back to the 70s. This time, Pound is the dog, and Gabriel is the synthesizer. If you whistle for Gabriel, I don’t think this modular synth will move. Just a guess.

Kitten, the Synthesizer: How better to round out this synth/animal confusion than a synth that actually is a Kitten? The Octave Kitten was Octave’s low-end competitor to pricey classics from Moog and ARP. Steve Baker has a comprehensive site filled with the obsessive collection of sounds and images you normally associate with better-known synth hardware. So, give the Kitten its due.

Here’s where things start to get surreal. I told my Create Digital Motion co-editor and Web wonderworker Jaymis about this idea yesterday, and started assembling links. I was going to round this synth love out by saying a very happy one year birthday to the Matrixsynth blog. Oddly enough, Matrix has gotten the adorable animal fever too: witness Arak and Legion, complete with racks of synths and cat videos, and cats, synths, and music tracks. (Cat from the latter pictured below.)

We all know the World Wide Web is here just to talk about our pets, so I invite you to help CDM follow up its cute kids series with shots of your cat clawing into your Korg and iBook. Don’t be a stranger.

One controversy I’m sure we won’t avert: cats vs. dogs. I’m a dog person, so keep that in mind. This is an equal-opportunity animals-with-synths feature, but I may have to maintain puppy quotas.

Have a great weekend, folks.

At first, I thought this might be faked, but it does appear to be the real thing, and having known a few parrots, these birds will do far stranger things vocally. Via Signal to Noise, via GoogTube.

If human beatboxers are more your speed, the supremely talented Kid Beyond will be in Austin, Texas, this time doing a full-on gig rather than the shorter tech demo for Ableton he did at NAMM in January. Beatboxing parrots are a novelty; Kid Beyond makes beatboxing a serious instrument; he’s a real vocalist, and an utterly awesome musician. I got a chance to interview Kid Beyond this summer and should have that interview for you soon. In the meantime, a video from VH1 plus gig details:

Here’s Kid Beyond proving that he’s far cooler than Sebastian Bach, as if you didn’t already know that. (These kids and their reality TV …) Via the CDM forums from some time ago.

And via the Ableton email list, here’s the gig in Austin. Wish I could be there, but I’ll be in Chicago and not at NAMM. July 15 should be a big date, as Ableton says they’ll be announcing something at NAMM. I’ll leave you to figure out what that is. Gig details:

Pop-electronica singer/beatboxer Kid Beyond will bring his stunning
vocal skills to Austin on July 15. The show falls right in the middle
of 2006 Summer NAMM; attendees are encouraged to join the fun and see
the show.

A beatboxer for more than twenty years, Kid Beyond is a legend in the beatbox world 14and his recent “live-looping” work is gaining him impressive national attention. Looping and multitracking his voice on stage to create his own live backing tracks, Kid Beyond layers his transcendent singing voice over his own beatboxing and vocal instrumentation. The result is a riveting brew of pop-electronica that has drawn comparisons to Gorillaz, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Thievery Corporation and M.I.A. Ed: I don’t think he sounds anything like these largely unrelated artists, but he does sound great, so let’s leave it at that! -PK

Kid Beyond, with DJ Chicken George, Cherubic & Whatamelon
Saturday, July 15, 2006
La Zona Rosa: 612 W. 4th Street, Austin, TX
Showtime: Doors 8 PM, Show 9 PM; tickets USD 10 cash
http://www.lazonarosa.com/

You may have heard a lot about the InterWeb, a new network that magically connects people around the world through their Compute-trons. You might have heard about its powers to promote music, perhaps by an ill-researched story yesterday where I stupidly pointed to a UK artist who will go unmentioned here. (As it turns out, which I would have known had I bothered to, um, read, all of the following did indeed happen: “girl produces webcast from basement,” “girl gets fan following,” “girl makes it big,” “girl signs record deal,” “girl hires publicist.” Just in the reverse order. It doesn’t explain why anyone listened to a publicist in the first place, or which “punk rockers”, exactly, wear “flowers in their hair”, or why Sandi losing her cellphone made her want to go back, inexplicably, to both 1977 and 1969. Plot of Back to the Future IV? Moving on.)

Surprisingly, though, the mainstream music press, fawning over faux-indie Scottish pop singers and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, have missed the Web’s one major success story. Here it is. I’ve tried to translate to the language of vacuous promoters, because I know as a journalist we can really never get enough of that. Ahem. (Let me get in character for a second.)

It was in the early years of the 21st Century when a bird of a different feather got to realize a dream. His name is Waldo. He’s a Congo African Grey parrot, with a rich, silky voice that has been compared by fans to “a jackhammer being ground in a compactor.” But, unlike some parrots, Waldo wanted to share that voice with the world.

He was lucky to have some friends. Bandmates Blake and Mark not only provided drums and guitar, but as seasoned studio engineers had the chops to sculpt the sound of Waldo into the signature sonic world of Hatebeak. Thanks to the power of modern digital recording technology, Waldo’s spontaneously-timed squawks and poetic lyrics could be captured and fine-tuned. Breaking open the traditional box of “melody”, Waldo created a new vocal language with roots in spoken word art. And the rest is history.

In the Amazonian warmth of 2004, the world first got to hear the magical sound of Hatebeak tunes like “God of Empty Nest”, pressed lovingly to vinyl. The album, Beak of Putrifaction, was an instant classic. A follow-up coupling Hatebeak with Caninus (with dog vocals) ensured Hatebeak a hallowed place in musical memory, thanks to favorites like “Bird Bites, Dog Cries” and “Bird Seeds of Vengeance.” You’ll hear influences from bands like Morbid Angel and Carcass, but blended effortlessly with catchy, popular appeal.

But getting the word out about the power of avian vocals was a challenge. Record stores generally don’t have a section for the animal kingdom, and many record company execs thought Hatebeak might be seen as having only niche appeal, or, worse yet, that a death metal band with a parrot front man was “gimmicky.” Some suggested Waldo could remake himself as a boy band, taking a cue from legendary acts like Menudo.

Enter the power of the Internet. As loyal listeners connected with the primordial animal power conveyed in Hatebeak’s raw but hummable tunes, buzz spread fast. Sites like Internet magazine Boing Boing and an upstart newsletter for musicians called Create Digital Music pointed to something called an “M-P-3 file”, a special way of formatting LPs that allows them to be transferred using computer modems, without the use of a phonograph. But most point to the turning point when the influential and powerful bird owners’ press caught on, and beloved publications like Parrot Chronicles posted lavish features showing the more personal side of Hatebeak.

Flash forward to 2006. As young audiences increasingly turn away from human vocalists, inspired by avian acts through the power of the Internet, and long for more of the ear-bleeding demonic powers of death metal, Hatebeak is ripe to make it big. Really big. Hatebeak has a new album due this year, and word from the studio is that this one could be the breakthrough crossover hit the band has been waiting for. Add to that a powerful new distribution medium for the band — laser-etched Compact Discs — and you’ll want to make sure you stay logged into the InterWeb with your eyes glued to Reptillian Records. Otherwise, Waldo might just peck your eyes out. Or, probably, just bite your finger.

The bird is the word, indeed.

Hatebeak at Reptilian Records (Think Jurassic Park, folks)

Hatebeak’s MySpace Page (fairly certain he beat Clap Your Hands Say Yeah et al to the punch)

Hatebeak’s MySpace friends page, proof positive that MySpace is the best way for parrot dudes to make lots of photogenic human female friends

Disclaimer: I’m not really Hatebeak’s publicist. Though, Blake and Mark, if you want to hire me, I can proudly say I’ve never handled Beyonce. If that gives me more of your kids’ “indie cred.” -PK