Song registration requires citing each sample? No problem — unless you’re an overzealous Pd user. Meet Johannes Kreidler and his work “Product Placement”

product placements (2008)

music piece / performance (”music theater”)

70,200 samples in 33 seconds: nightmare for GERMAN RIAA

If you want to register a song at GEMA (RIAA, ASCAP of Germany) you have to fill in a form for each sample you use, even the tiniest bit. On 12 Sept 08, German Avantgarde musician Johannes Kreidler will —as a live performance event—register a short musical work that contains 70,200 quotations with GEMA using 70,200 forms.

Here he is, causing hilarity with a phone operator for GEMA:

And here’s the actual piece, which sounds as awful (in a good, glitchy way) as you’d expect listening to 70,000 records at once might sound.

I’m not entirely sure what this proves, but now you can say you heard it.

And if this doesn’t mean sampling has jumped the shark, nothing does.

Product Placements Piece Page: English | German

At long last, the Yamaha Tenori-On, the unusual sampling/sequencing instrument bestrewn in light-up buttons, is getting its worldwide release.

And it’s going to be an amazing party.

Launch cities:

• Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany
• Paris, France
• Montreal, Quebec
• New York, NY
• San Francisco, CA
• (most appropriately) Tokyo, Japan

The tour kicks of in Frankfurt first on March 12, then hits the other towns April 8 – 25, finishing where the Tenori-On was born: Tokyo.

Launch artists:

• Toshio Iwai, the man from whose brain the Tenori-On sprang
• Jim O’Rourke, composer/improvisor/producer extraordinaire (perhaps best known for his association with Sonic Youth)
• Atom Heart, aka Senor Coconut aka Atom Heart aka various other things
• Pole, the DJ and electronic artist great
• To Rococo Rot, German post-rocker trio
• Robert Lippok, who counts “set designer” among his credits and co-founded To Rococo Rot
• Sutekh, who spans electronica to noise collage, and mate Safety Scissors, the San Fran contingent
• Andi Toma of Mouse on Mars fame
• The Books, representing New York and generally All Things Awesome — I need to put them on continuous loop on Winamp just so they wind up on the top of my Last.fm profile, where they belong
• I am Robot and Proud, Toronto electronic soloist, toured with Mum and Caribou, and an all-around great computer man
• Nathan Michel, experimental electronicist and DAT politics collaborator. Oh, and Nathan just got his PhD in music composition from Princeton last year, meaning he’s yet another person who finished his PhD before I did. Dr. Michel, congrats.

TENORI-ON Global Launch Event

I’ll be covering NYC, of course, with an awesome lineup (Toshio Iwai / Robert Lippok / Pole / Sutekh / I am Robot and Proud / Nathan Michel / Safety Scissors). But I’d love to pick up some of these other cities and do global team coverage. If you’re interested, drop a line.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Do I know when you’ll actually be able to buy it?

No.

Do I know where?

No.

Do I know how much it will cost?

No. I’m hoping less than the initial UK launch when it goes global, as that was the hope. In the UK, it costs GBP599, which, when you translate to the ridiculously weak dollar is, um, a lot.

Is this better or worse than the Monome?

They’re different. Stop trying to compare them. Get both.

The 5th Annual Linux Audio Conference, March 22-25 in Berlin, looks really cool, even if you’re not a Linux die-hard. Sessions include: an open, XML-based format for time and position in audio files, putting together a Linux studio with expert Dave Phillips, open hardware instruments with Pd, Processing, and Arduino, and plenty of synthesis and livecoding sessions.

Linux Audio Conference (Thanks, Malte — take good notes if you make it, please!)

Conference registration is EUR 1495 — kidding. Free as in beer, except a small charge for the concerts.

The most interesting to me of these is the session on open instruments. The idea of a completely open instrument design that can be customized both on the hardware and software ends is pretty compelling, and certainly not limited in its interest to just Linux users. The team offering this session is called “Recursive Dog”:

Recursive Dog Project Pages

They have some beautiful, sensor-packed instrument designs, many of which appear to center around infrared distance sensors. Since the software side is build in Pd and Processing, it’s free for anyone to use. The group also do some gorgeous Processing + Csound visualizations, with dancing 3D visuals and electronic sounds.

Anyone going to the Berlin conference, or working on open instruments of your own? Send us some links, and definitely if you’re in Berlin, be sure to snap some good photos and add them to our flickr pool.