Austin is whirling with South by Southwest excitement, so why not make some swirly radio noises?

Yes, Handmade Music Austin does have a big blowout party in the midst of South by, with a huge music lineup. Wish I could be there, gang, but I’ll be staying here in NYC.

On the docket:

FREE performances starting at noon by Florene, The Hearts & the Minds, WHITE, The Loud Objects, Bodytronix

$10 for a workshop

Registration and details:
Handmade Music Austin #6 Super Show + update

Eric Archer writes:

Record giant Universal Music Group is cutting prices on the CD, as analysts clamor for still-lower prices. But as for actual records – the kind made of vinyl – odder and odder innovations flourish. If the CD is dying, the vinyl record is an undead, sexually-alluring vampire.

Two recent releases not only treat the record as “delivery mechanism,” but also tools for playing the record.

The late hip hop great J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) gets a well-deserved tribute from his label Stones Throw, complete with some fantastic, unreleased instrumentals (“Safety Dance”, “Sycamore”, “Bars & Twists,” and remastered cuts for Mos Def, Q-Tip and Busta Rhymes). But, working in collaboration with Serato, this release also takes note of the people actually buying records these days: DJs. There are beautiful, donut-themed slipmats. (As far as I’m concerned, anything featuring donuts earns automatic bonus points. Mmmmm… donuts.) The records themselves, meanwhile, are dual-sided. When you want to hear the record, play it face up. When you want to use DJ software, flip it for Serato control tone. (Officially, that works with Serato Scratch Live DJ, but it’ll also work with the open-source Mixxx and Deckadance apps, too.)

It’s a fascinating idea: make the record itself friendly to vinyl and digital turntablists. Of course, if you’re a digital DJ, I imagine you already have the control records you need, but — you still get those tasty donut slipmats. And it is a reminder (as if you needed one) that DJs are keeping the record format alive. Massive CD sales may have been the domain of the mass market, but vinyl demonstrates how powerful niches and the long tail can be.

J DILLA DONUT SHOP (SERATO/STONES THROW) 2 DISCS, 2 SLIPMATS & DILLA BEATS

What’s that? No space for turntables? (Believe me, I feel you.) How about a record whose sleeve becomes a DIY turntable, spun with a pencil?

That’s the idea of a direct mail piece created by sound design studio Griffiths, Gibson, and Ramsay Productions (GGRP). Originally intended just as an attention-getter for creative directors, the concept has caught the imagination of bloggers, and those who got them wanted extras for their kids. (It takes me back to all the strange, cheap, disposable records we were handed as kids during what was supposed to be the last days of vinyl.)

The basic apparatus works just like a conventional record player: spin the record (using a pencil in this case instead of a rotating turntable), and a needle transduces the sound (here, amplified by the cardboard housing). I really like the cover on the record, too.

Links:
GREY SPINS VINYL HITS FOR GGRP [Marketing Mag Canada, via GGRP's own excellent Making Noise blog]

And from one of my favorite design blogs, the eco-centered Inhabit:
Album Sleeve Transforms Into a Cardboard Record Player!

For their part, Inhabit notes the value of cardboard as construction material and the green-minded reuse of packaging.

It’s an idea that would be great fun to build upon. The only thing that’s missing, that I can see, is an easy DIY way of producing the records. (Lasercutter trick, maybe?) Adding a piezo element to amplify the signal could be a thought, too.

Another how-to on a handmade paper+needle configuration (suggested only for playing records you really don’t want to save), in a video on WonderHowTo (also via Inhabit):

With Germany’s Messe trade show just a week away, buzz is pretty well focused on Swedish boutique machine maker Elektron, that beloved manufacturer of the Machinedrum. They’re about to launch something, and it’s a product with “octa” in the name, but that’s about all that’s known. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the Elektron fanbase from getting well worked up in an increasingly hilarious set of message threads. (Bless you, fora.)

First, the rampant speculation:
Are we expecting a new Elektron product at Musikmesse?

User Atiko, however, notes in a video of Elektron assembly a button labeled “Octatrack.” (That’s “button” as in “the kind you wear on your shirt at Messe.”)

http://vimeo.com/9879569

That in turn leads to another crazy thread:
Re:Mistery [sic] OCTATRACK: new from Elektron?

Elektron, for their part, hints at the upcoming launch with the text: “SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: THE OCTASHARK BITES” in the corner of their site. (Octashark?) They’ve also emblazoned their site with a Messe banner that reads, in text that suggests they’re about to release a prog rock album, “The New Dawn.”

Konkrete predicts this site will somehow enter the fray. What to do… do I fulfill the prophecy?

what I’m hoping for is a XXXCSHDRRT but we’re probably going to get a FFFRPPPI!!ING and then everyone who was right will be like ZZZWWWAARRW and all thoze who were wrong will be like OH ACTUALLY I’M REALLY DISAPPOINTED. Then there’ll be lots of BWWAWAWAWAWA maybe even on peter kirn’s ‘ELECTRONIC CABBAGE SPROGGIT PSEUD’S CORNER’ where the ‘a new butter based USB massage enables DIY multiple dorkgasms’ hook will lead into many a DEEP PENETRATIVE INSIGHT into the Oktospastik Cyclotron everyone’s all be waiting for and lathered up about. BUT I WANTED A FSFSSRRRGGRLL, and I’ve been saying that since 2004 when the first… they moan nonetheless. Then someone will complain that it’s too expensive and that anyway therez a plug wot can do all that anyway like. Cue nuclear flame festival and rotten tomato in the stocks hurling, bunion scraping, cheese rolling, caber tossing, frollicking Glastonbury mud orgy of a thread while we all save up the quids for DA TING with its 8 TRAXX of SEXX, which we can’t really justify to the better halves anyway cos it’s just a BOX THAT SEZ “MOOO!” (albeit repetitively), and it seems that there’s no way that that could possibly be worth more than a hair sandwich, EVEN if it’s set off in glorious brushed aluminium, COMEZ WITH STICKAZ and says moo REALLY LOUDLY when plugged into those expensive expansive high end tweeters in our sound proofed cave. But one thing is for certain. When we have TURBO MIDI, there ain’t gonna be no USB, especially not without no stinking Sepia Officinalis CONNEXION, dig?

Thanks, Konkrete. I’m … uh … flattered?

elektron.se

Connecting stuff is one of the things musicians naturally do with gear. So, there’s really no reason that musical gear shouldn’t network as easily as Web servers. And yet a basic protocol, built largely on existing standards, meets with responses like this:

“We’ll support OSC when there’s hardware out there.” “Name one piece of hardware that supports OSC other than the Lemur.”

OSC has some major advantages as a network protocol, as a way of connecting software with software, software with hardware, and yes, even hardware with hardware. It doesn’t have to “compete” with MIDI – you can even send MIDI message data over OSC, thus taking advantage of features OSC has that MIDI doesn’t (like time stamps, which your tools could use to calculate latency even if you don’t use them directly). Yet I’ve been listening to this argument for years now. “Any computer” counts as an OSC device, but even when tens of millions of iPhones and iPod touch devices hit the market (not to mention other mobiles), software developers were still pointing to a (completely absurd) “lack of hardware.” How tens of millions of gadgets can count as “nothing,” I don’t know, but maybe it’s because a lot of them were phones, not music devices.

Well, here’s a combination that ought to get someone’s attention. With the iPad about to launch next month – likely to be followed by more multitouch devices running Android, Linux, and Windows – we’re not just talking phones any more. And the folks at Symbolic Sound, makers of the insanely-powerful sound generation Kyma environment, are adding a proper OSC implementation. Even if you have no interest in the (wonderful) Kyma, now available in more-affordable Paca(rana) devices, this is one to watch.

What you can do:

Use OSC directly, via a direct connection and even onboard Ethernet on the Paca(rana). That opens up the use of devices like Lemur, and, yes, iPad.

Use MIDI over OSC from your existing MIDI devices and software. Explanation (again, worth reading even if you aren’t in the market for a Kyma):
http://www.symbolicsound.com/Learn/BidirectionalMIDIStreamsOverOSC

Before evolutionary adaptation comes mutation. Some of the weirdest stuff, in other words, could be the future – just ask biology. That was the conversation I had with folks like artist Rosa Menkman in Old Amsterdam (the one in Holland). So, as we gather back in New Amsterdam (NYC), we get a chance to celebrate the unusual.

Wherever you are in the world, here’s a look at some of those new mutations: a sewing machine converted into a musical instrument, an expressive audiovisual instrument borrowing ideas from the trumpet, and an electro-country band that covers classic honky-tonk American hits.

If you are in the sliver of our audience who live in the NYC area, of course, you can catch these folks live in a variety show-meets-science fair format. We don’t charge admission for the weird, and you can buy beer. Thanks to our new home at Galapagos Art Space, the NYC edition of Handmade Music can offer a proper stage and a lineup of live performances, along with the noisemaking and friendly atmosphere.

Live, Monday, March 8
Where: Galapagos Art Space, DUMBO Brooklyn [directions]
When: Doors open 7p
Cost: FREE
Highlights online for the rest of the planet here, later

Augmented Sewing Machine + Ensemble

Circuit Bending Orchestra: Lara Grant at Diana Eng’s Fairytale Fashion Show, Eyebeam NYC / SML from See-ming Lee ??? SML on Vimeo.