Simon James writes with still more free sound — and free, indeed, as Montreal Expo in 1967 (the World’s Fair) brought together some of electronic sound’s most radical musicians, the type of gang who could freak out a crowd today as much as forty years ago.

Thanks again for the mention of Tone Generation. I just thought I’d draw your attention to another related piece I produced with Ian Helliwell last year. It was called ‘Expo 67 - A Radiophonic collage’ and was a snapshot in sound of the Montreal worlds fair in 1967. Tristram Cary composed music for the Great Britain pavilion and much of this is used in the programme. If you listen closely you’ll also hear Tristam’s voice popping up.

Also featured are compositions by Hugh le Caine, Donald Erb, Eldon Rathburn, Erkki Salmenhaara & Erkki Kurrniemi, Giles Tremblay and Iannis Xenakis.

As always keep up the inspiring work with CDM. It is in my top 3 sites that I visit daily alongside Music Thing and Matrix Synth.

Give the music a listen:

Expo 67 Radiophonic Collage

And to help give yourself some visual inspiration, check out this retro-fantastic archive of Montreal Expo pictures, found (bizarrely) in a scrapbook found on the street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Montreal Expo 1967

Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any images of Xenakis’ polytope. But, perhaps on a more realistic budget (ahem), this is how I want festivals of technology and culture to be. Oh, and it’s never a bad idea to invite Poland.

Advertising, having devoted decades to building elaborate fantasies, now has a new problem: making things seem real and believable. But that’s nothing new to people doing sound design: tiny details of sync, spatialization, and content can trick the mind into different perceptions of what they’re seeing and hearing. The release of a TV ad showing a music ensemble made from Ford parts triggered waves of skepticism online, partly because the ad’s producers and director wanted the composer and instrument builders to make a car part ensemble that sounded quasi-Classical — rather than pushing its “car-partiness.” Singapore-based blog fanatic fandom has some great musings on the irony of the whole situation, with various coverage around the Web (including CDM’s). Note that composer Craig Richey was even concerned about subtle issues of sync impacting the perceived reality of the ad. It’s a great lesson in editing and design.

Of course, the ensemble is real, and we’ve talked a bit to sound designer Bill Milbrodt about the details. Now, it seems Ford and the ad makers have finally released a video interview with Bill. There’s something about talking to people on camera that helps — and Bill has great stuff to say.

Personally, I think the confusion about what people were watching may be more interesting than the car itself. It shows just how much editing and design choices can impact perception — something to keep in mind whether your aspirations tend toward Madison Avenue or the underground.

Previously:

Interview: Building a Musical Ensemble Out of Ford Focus Car Parts

Yes, Virginia, There Really is a Ford Car Part Musical Ensemble

Some of you might be surprised to learn that people don’t just read this blog, they also make music. Digital music.

In fact, the Create Digital Noise forums have a whole active community of musicmakers, encompassing a broad range of styles, sensibilities, and production techniques. Let’s sift through some recent works by the CDM community, shall we?

Leading the pack in can-do professionalism is UK’s Creature and his new album Distant Horizon:

Creature Audio

Creature is the project of Stephen Haunts, who some of you may recognize from last year’s Circuit-Bending Challenge. Stephen is the proprietor of Haunted House records, and his album is available directly from Haunted House, or via download from iTunes, CDBaby, and a whole slew of others.

A name you may recognize in pairing with the phrase “Buchla Modular Synthesizer” or “Haaken Continuum controller” is that of Richard Lainhart.

lainheart

This track, “The Orchestra Of The Damned” is a track from Richard’s new MusicZeit release “The Beautiful Blue Sky“, a collection of electronic landscapes for the Buchla 200e and Haken Continuum. It was performed and recorded live without post-processing or editing.

It’s always fascinating to me how people hear, what they thing of as “real” or “authentic,” and what meaning they find in the things they listen to.

Yesterday, we got a glimpse of a new car advertisement for Ford in the UK featuring instruments constructed from automobile components:

Interview: Building a Musical Ensemble Out of Ford Focus Car Parts

What you see on the screen, of course, is not literally what you hear — the TV ad and soundtrack are edited together, and this is a car ad, not a documentary. But quite a few readers (and even blogs elsewhere) wondered if they were actually hearing instruments constructed from the Ford Focus — or if there was some audio fakery going on, as well.

Following up on our interview (which was evidently an exclusive for CDM, whatever that’s worth), sound designer Bill Milbrodt actually called me last night and we got to have a long chat about the whole process.

Here’s the short answer:

Yes, the instruments are really made from a Ford Focus. (The strings are conventional strings, which has a huge impact on timbre, but until Ford starts putting something that can substitute for strings into their cars, you’ll have to live with that.) Yes, musicians really did play them. Yes, you really do hear that recording (edited) in the ad. Bill points out that they could have saved a lot of money by just creating props. This is, indeed, the real thing.

And yes, the musical effect is awfully close to classical music played on conventional instruments. That was apparently the requirement of the agency and director. The sound of the Car Music Project is very different — and I suspect a little closer to the tastes of the readers here. Here’s what the ensemble sounds like live, at least until we get live footage of the Ford Focus ensemble (got my fingers crossed for that):

I just find it really interesting that people reacted the way they did — and to the whole issue of authenticity and recordings. We’re both immediately suspicious of anything recorded, yet cling to the idea of a recording as a “factual record” — despite the fact that sound depends entirely on your point of view. Even with live sound, you might experience a different concert in a different part of the hall. With recordings, mic choice, mic placement, and other factors impact the sound even before someone’s had a shot at digital “manipulation.” You know that, I know that — but still, we have some sort of deeply-ingrained expectations about what a recording is, or what we want it to be, that go beyond even the technical knowledge of a group of practictioners.

Of course, it’s curiosity about how things are actually done that drives some of this site, so I say, keep asking questions and questioning your ears.

But, for the record, this ensemble is, for all practicality, real. And there’s really not a cello on that recording, I swear.

Here are the full technical details from Bill, with links to still more information — and this answer actually winds up going into more of the nuts and bolts (sorry) of how these instruments were used musically:

We’ve seen basses and turntables made from motorcycles, and bicycle parts turned into DJ setups, ensembles, and The Nutcracker. But The Car Music Project has gone further, building two entire ensembles out a single car, first a sound designer’s old Honda Accord and, more recently, deconstructing a brand-new Ford Focus into a full instrumental ensemble in just five weeks.

In other words, before — a five-door 2008 Ford Focus hatchback as built for the UK market looks like this:

… and after the Car Music Project gets to it, 21 parts from that car become 31 individual instruments:

The ad campaign premiered yesterday in England. Above: the extended, three-minute version.

More: More cowbell! Ford turns Focus into musical instruments [Autoblog]

I got to talk to New York-based sound designer Bill Milbrodt, who led a 22-person team to build the instruments, with Ray Faunce III managing fabrication. Composer Craig Richey, who scored The King of Kong, Friends With Money, and Lovely & Amazing (among others), wrote the music for the ensemble.

Bill describes to CDM the daunting task of going from Ford hatchback to chamber ensemble. It’s an incredible insight into instrument design and construction, whether your DIY instrument tastes tend in the acoustic or digital realms.

PS, to the Crave blog and other doubters: the music is real. They actually made some fantastic-sounding instruments out of that Ford Focus. I certainly know when I buy an automobile, I like the peace of mind that comes from buying one I could later deconstruct with 22 skilled metalworkers and play original scores on.

Any CDM readers who live in Chicago should check this out- it’s a weeklong festival exploring/celebrating sound design, motion graphics, and the overlapping regions occupied by both.

In addition to the week’s worth of discussions and skillsharing classes, there will be two “showcase” nights, Saturday Jan. 19th and Sunday Jan. 20th. For those interested, I will be exhibiting two audiosculptural pieces, Octophonopod and Snowy Day during the event on Saturday. There’s a riduculous amount of talent on both nights, amounting to some of the most fresh and innovative people working in sound and motion graphics today.

[- Michael Una]

Soundscape #1 from Umcorps on Vimeo.

Tired of waiting for Spore, the upcoming Will Wright game that will feature organic, generative music by musical legend Brian Eno instead of … looping … the same 8 bars of audio … over and over again? Want to explore your own oblique strategies in music making and create evolving generative compositions? noatikl could be for you.

Co-creator Pete Cole, who evidently found us by googling Eno, wrote us last week with the details:

intermorphic (http://www.intermorphic.com) yesterday launched the noatikl generative music engine.

You can think of noatikl as a "spiritual successor" to the (no-longer available) Koan generative music engine, which of course was used extensively by none other than Brian Eno; who you mentioned a while back in the context of Spore. Brian created his seminal "Generative Music 1" with the Koan system back in 1996.

As you’ll see from the site, noatikl has been created from scratch, is Windows and Mac compatible, and is available in a variety of plug-in variants. There are also quite a few demo and tutorial videos available on both myspace and vimeo.

noatikl Overview

umcorps Videos on Vimeo (tutorials + musical examples)

Pete Cole Videos on Vimeo (still more tutorials + musical examples)

The price tag is set at US$179 (standalone) to $249 (suite) US$99 (standalone non-commercial) to $199 (suite commercial) under a new pricing scheme, with academic pricing available. I have to say, even if you’re not interested in buying a new tool, anyone with a passing interest in the possibilities of generative music will want to spend a little time with the videos — some fascinating ideas in there.

Windows and Mac tutorials (in HD, no less) after the jump. Thanks for the couple of tips I got on this; back from Australia and catching up now!

Previously:

Brian Eno, with Wright on Spore and Generative Systems, Sound, and Paintings

Brian Eno to Create Generative Soundtrack for Spore; Algorithmic Productivity Busting Follows

(I think CDM should issue a "Seeds, Not Forests" t-shirt.)

Tommy responds to our call for screen grabs of software with this fascinating Jitter patch:

He writes:

used lloopp and jitter runtime to make this instrument that uses a firewire camera as a source for effecting sound generators. i like this shot because of the video feedback.

What’s lloopp? Glad you asked. It’s a live improvisation / looping / performance tool built in Max/MSP and totally open source. That makes it ideally-suited to use if you’ve found other live performance tools to be overly restrictive on their own.
lloopp

Speaking of free, unusual interfaces, Tommy also sends along this elegant image from ixi software’s spindrum. They have a whole range of free, Mac/Windows tools for music making, all with organic interfaces and strange, floating objects, a bit reminiscent of the design of instruments like ElectroPlankton.

ixi software

It’s all proof that not all music software has to look the same, and the future is bright for innovation in on-screen interfaces. Software has a major interface on traditional instruments, too, which is that the interface for playing, the sense of a musical score, and visualization/imagery for the sounds themselves can all be united in the virtual domain. There have always been echoes of that in instrument design: buxom, carved women on viola da gambas, the way a piano keyboard reflects a system of tuning and pitch relations, and fantastical landscapes painted on virginals and other instruments. But I suspect we’ve only begun to see how this area could be blown up with digital instruments.

The only danger: we’ll have to keep from getting overly distracted by eye candy!