Miguel Isaza has created a must-read new blog for anyone interested in sound design, and much to our delight has put it on noisepages. He’s being incredibly prolific with posts, covering creative projects to get your ideas flowing, terrific overviews of leading people in the field with links to interviews and resources for learning about their work, and tons of links for learning your craft technologically and artistically.
Naturally, Pixar figures prominently, with some of the best sound design on the silver screen in recent years. I’m looking forward to finally seeing UP; Michael Coleman offers the video above. See Miguel’s site for more links and interviews and an overview of the all-star team that did sound for Pixar’s latest.
Thanks for this great resource, Miguel; I’ll certainly be reading daily.
Pronunciation of some common music tech terms has been a source of debate. Generally, though, there’s only one right answer. I had hoped to kick off a pronunciation guide yesterday or today, but now I really can’t resist – not with none other than Tegan & Sara getting together to debate the right way to say Moog.
Don’t get me wrong. I love cows, and the sound “moo.” I suggest if you have something you want to name Moo, you should, like your own MooVerb max patch or something. However, here goes, a few of my favorites:
Moog: Rhymes with “brogue” or “rogue,” not the sound a cow makes. Don’t say “Moooooog” unless you want to get funny looks from synth nerds, or if you’re teaching synthesis to livestock in a dairy.
Monome: The community-based, (partly, at least) open-source controller rhymes with “MA gnome,” not the Spanish-sounding “Ma gnome ME.” You should not be able to use it in a couplet with paper mache. Get it? Two syllables. Sure, this pronunciation varies, but the two-syllable version is what the device’s co-creators call it.
OSC: Pronounce the letters of the open communications protocol, as in “O.S.C. / oh ess see”, not “osk” – though that would have been kind of cool. Think, “Rah, rah, rah, Give me an O! Give me an S! Give me a C! What’s that spell? Better than MIDI! Time-based messages, higher resolution, transport-independent high-speed networked communication with auto-discovery, gooooooooooOOOOO O.S.C.!” (People sometimes say this site is geeky. I have no idea what gives them that impression.)
And for now, O.S.C. stands for Open Sound Control, even though in one spot on the JazzMutant website it’s called “Open-Source Control.” Just get ready for this to change – because OSC really isn’t specific to sound, it may need a new name, like Open System Control. (A recent paper suggests dropping the “sound” in the name.)
MIDI: Rhymes with G. Gordon Liddy, or P. Diddy, or Tweetiebird saying “Piddy.” And, actually, it occurs to me I’ve never heard anyone mispronounce this. Fascinating – an acronym that’s actually intuitive. Oh, but “C.C.” stands for “Control Change,” NOT “continuous controllers” — look at the CC specs; most aren’t continuous. There. I got to be anal about something anyway. Updated: consensus is actually that “mee-dee” is a mispronunciation for native-English speakers, but likely makes more since than “mi-dee” in other languages — particularly if you speak French. So, in other words, it’s an acronym, and makes the most sense to pronounce in the natural way you would in your native tongue. (For English speakers, who knows what vowel sound is appropriate given how screwy our language is, but the creators of MIDI all say middy.)
Maschine: Native Instruments’ drum machine software and controller is German-engineered, so say “muh SHEEN uh,” three syllables, as if you grew up in Berlin. Now, granted, Maschine’s own promotional videos — outsourced to the US — anglicize this to “machine” / “muh SHEEN”, but the engineers and product folks who built the thing use the German pronunciation and think you should, too. And, anyway, it sounds cooler, just as I have to admit a currywurst is tastier than a Nathan’s dog.
I’m sure this is only a small selection of potential mispronunciations. Other candidates? We’ll have to release a full pronunciation guide soon.
Richie Hawtin’s custom-built Ableton Live controller makes up part of his unique live music and visual rig as Plastikman. And, yes, I’ll bring the grassroots “do more as Plastikman” campaign to Mr. Hawtin when I see him. Side note: there’s more than a passing resemblance to certain features of the Akai APC40 here, huh?
We talk about tools a lot, but it’s really learning how to make tools expressive in your productions and performances that matters. DubSpot, the music tech production and DJ educational center here in New York, brings its multi-city Ableton Live Sessions tour to its hometown for several days of parties and workshops. If you’re in NYC and on a budget, we have a discount on the paid events and also some free events you can check out. If you’re not in NYC, we’re working on bringing free video coverage to the global CDM community shortly after the event.
This really isn’t a pitch for Live, either – part of why I’m excited to be able to hang out for the weekend is that I expect to learn quite a lot from some of the world’s most skilled Live users and producers.
Headlining the event is none other than global techno star Richie Hawtin – the Minus impresario some of our readers love to love and others love to hate. I hope we get to hear more about his unique Plastikman live rig – see the controller at top, with more details from our friends at visualist corps Derivative, whose TouchDesigner live visual tool powers 3D imagery in those sets. Hawtin will join in a conversation with Ambivalent about what the Minus musical process is about. Hawtin and friends will also play a real gem of New York’s club scene, Love on MacDougal Street – it’s a fantastic space that lives up to its name.
Ableton doesn’t have to be just people like me hunched over laptops. (My back is starting to bother me, by the way.) Witness Dub as a Weapon, as photographed by Jean Piere Candelier. (CC) They’re part of a dub lineup – yep, that “Dub” in “DubSpot” is serious.
On the dub side, Scientist aka Overton Brown, one of the world’s real stars of dub, a King Tubby protégé out of Jamaica, will return us to the roots of electronic dance music and show off his own take on the use of this technology. Scientist and Dub is a Weapon play Le Poisson Rouge and Scientist will close out the Live Sessions with a dub battle versus Badawi.
KJ Sawka – Hell, Yes, Chops
Before we get into the lineup, here’s just an example of how cool the faculty of this event is – KJ Sawka. Sawka is, of course, what we dream of in live laptop music. His musicianship is fantastic unplugged (see a rooftop set video, apparently sponsored by PBR), so the laptop becomes simply an extension of that.
KJ Sawka will have a full Drums workshop on Saturday as part of the paid program. If you’re new to Live, though, he’s doing a free intro on Thursday evening.
Here’s what to see and how to get the exclusive CDM discount.
By the way, if you’re in Los Angeles, that’s the next stop on this tour; stay tuned for details.
A quick note – this weekend, Propellerhead is running part of its ongoing series of Producers Conferences, educational events focusing on music making with their flagship tool. It’s really about production, not just about Reason per se; looks like the previous installments have been quite nice. There are some really terrific artists in the lineup, and significantly, our sources say some big news will be announced live at the event. If anyone plans to attend and wants to cover that, do let me know.
Guitarist/composer/musician Christopher Willits is on faculty for the dubSpot series. Photo (CC) Buzz Andersen.
dubSpot, the West Coast + East Coast music technology training center is doing an eight-city tour of the US to talk about Ableton Live 8 and the Akai APC40 controller. They’re enlisting some of my favorite people to do the workshops. I like the curriculum: it’s not just “here’s how to use Live,” but a real focus on music production, finishing actual music, and pushing the envelope with live visuals, onstage performance and controllers. We also have a $25 discount exclusively for CDM readers if you want to attend.
I want to thank dubSpot for helping sponsor CDM this month – their support makes possible our own free tutorial content and artist coverage slated for later in May.
The tour kicks off this week in San Francisco, but will travel to other US cities soon (dates to be announced; stay tuned).
The artists doing the instruction are some folks whose work I particularly enjoy:
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