Create Digital Music » live pa

ParamDrum: Reaktor-Powered Drum Sequencer an Rx for Drum Variety

Peter Kirn — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:07:31 +0000

ParamDrum TR Edition from Peter Dines on Vimeo.

Imagine a machine that lets you walk a thin line between control and chaos. You’ll be tweaking it, for sure – you’ll want to invest a sufficient amount of time shaping its sounds and adjusting its instruments to alter its flightpath. But once set in motion, it will give you variety and delicious insanity.

That’s the idea behind Peter Dines’ ParamDrum, a Reaktor drum machine with granular goodies inside providing sample manipulation and a set of clear sequenced controls for adjusting parameters. The “Param” bit refers to the parameters you’ll control – pitch + sample select + speed + size (of the sample) + smooth (granular) + swing. These parameters are unleashed against a sequence that you’ll likely never fully control – but that will never feel like it’s simply on autopilot, either. You can then load your samples into three players, which can be conceived as bass + clap/tom/snare + hat or something else entirely.

It may sound out of control, but “control” in the MIDI sense is essential. You can control step probability with MIDI velocity, tap in sequences with MIDI notes, and record playable automation with MIDI CCs from your hardware encoders. Pete has worked out a lovely template for Native Instruments’ Maschine controller, for instance.

ParamDrum, then, becomes a factory for variations. It allows you to iterate through plenty of results you don’t like to the one that’s perfect, for production or performance.

ParamDrum is a cheap US$12.50, though you do need a copy of Reaktor 5 (also included in Komplete) to use it. The upside is, it’s editable, and you get Pete’s immaculately well-organized patch macros, so it’s something you can modify easily or use as a model for your own patches.

Full details on Pete’s noisepages page, Modulations, which is also a new repository for his thoughts on sound design, Reaktor patching, SuperCollider learning, and other music technological geekery.

ParamDrum
modulations@noisepages

Planet ParamDrum

The other cool thing about ParamDrum in our throwaway technological world is that it’s already started to attract a little community of users.

Loopy C, master of strange sounds, has turned ParamDrum into his personal “hyperdrummer” for a track called Jah Frazzin Zooks, which he describes in a kind of experimental abstract poetry:

‘Frippish’, vari-tempo spectralisms meet Ornette Coleman-influenced electronica, hyperperformance machines jamming in the cafe at the end of the Universe (which for some reason look like fractal vaginas? (above)). Duo form.

The full track can be heard at his blog:
Jah Frazzin Zooks

Brettwiththedobro has a screencast (above) showing his own rig, with custom samples and the combination of Kore and Reaktor for control. (If you’re interested in the Kore and Reaktor combination, Pete’s previeous video tutorial is a great place to start.

This is a screen capture of Peter Dines Reaktor ensemble ParamDrum. I replaced the samples with my own kitchen/dobro sample map and hooked it into Kore to control various parameters. Fun, weird loops are a cinch.

Pete is also working with me on OpenSoundControl implementation in ParamDrum, which could enable cross-country ParamDrum collaboration, and via a project I’m building, visualization of parameters in Processing. Stay tuned.

The Zen of monome Performance: Edison’s Live Push-Button Music

Peter Kirn — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:10:15 +0000

edison…. new set up….! from edison on Vimeo.

The open source monome, ingeniously minimal as it is, is just an object. It’s the community that has formed around this hardware controller, a simple array of light-up buttons, that has made monome a cultural phenomenon, by pushing performance practice. Using grids of simple music events, they represent an ongoing transformation of DJing from the act of manipulating two records to composing with chunks of material.

On the Web, this has become something of a virtual slam between artists – more generous than competitive. One of my favorites to watch this year has been a gentleman by the name of Edison. He composes a strange poetry about his work in the Vimeo comments, so from here on out, I’ll let him speak for himself:

yo hoss!
so this is my new set up….
the monome is controlling ableton….
each button is a sound…..
the bottom right button is stop all noises….
introducing: the love…
a box of 16 arcade buttons…
made from an USB joystick….
it controls a looper and all effects…
on the far end is a native instruments audio kontrol 1…
(finally gotta audio interface!!!)
the big ass knob just sends the whole mix to an echo…
basically…
i have the melodic content run through a looper…
its is always recording…. so anything i play will repeat on a 2 bar loop
this is bypassable and erasable…..
all the drums are run through 4 effects….
all the melodic stuff is run though 8 effects… post looper…
and if all that aint nerdy enough for you….
then i aint trying hard enough….!
so to you and yours…… STING

From earlier this year, bottom.

64 buttons…..
63 sounds….
1 stop button……
no quantize……
no loops…….

More:
myspace.com/bearless
edisoninvention.tumblr.com

damn hoss from edison on Vimeo.

Take it to the Stage: Reflections on Live Laptop Music from Artists

primusluta — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:39:58 +0000

Live rig – Daedelus. Photo: Dania Gennai.

Defining and re-imagining performance with computers and technology is an ongoing theme of this site. In a special guest column, artist Primus Luta goes deeper into that question with some of our favorite artists to look at practical and philosophical dimensions of playing electronics.

Today, the fruits of electronic musical labor can be heard in every corner of culture, from academic to niche to popular. Still, there remains a perceptual disconnect between traditional and electronic music, especially in the context of performance. With traditional instruments, performance proficiency can be measured as a physical accomplishment. Electronic performance, on the other hand, is generally understood as music made by computers. That poses a question: if the music is being made by the machines, what exactly does the musician do? To find out, I talked with some of the best electronic performers on the road, and got a glimpse of what exactly is going on behind the screen.

Live Rig: Mark de Clive-Lowe

Live Rig: Mark de Clive Lowe.

From the Studio to the Stage

Historically, performance long preceded recorded music. Early recordings weren’t what we think of today as studio productions, but rather recordings of performances. Electronic music is a bit of an anomaly. While some early electronic compositions were created for live performance, most electronic music today begins with a recording.

Translating the high production values heard on a record into a live performance isn’t an easy task. It isn’t always possible to recreate the same aesthetic on stage, but it is important to make the connection.

“We can multi-track sounds in the studio,” explains 8 Bit Weapon, “but live, you are stuck with all the limitations the vintage computers, consoles and sound chips have to offer. So we have to trim down parts or add parts that are recorded by recreating them live.”

Live Rig: 8 Bit Weapon. Image by Rachel McCauley.

For Richard Devine, assembling the live performance begins in the studio with “trying to translate all the programmed MIDI data and song transitions into Ableton [Live]. Ableton is running the pieces of my tracks. I have hundreds of audio clips running in session view.” Onstage, this allows Devine to “mix and match breaks, intros, or builds for different tracks, and even manipulate how those are played if I select them. I can really do anything with the arrangement of the original track. It is now total remixing and producing on the fly.”

What this means for electronic performance is the ability to condense what could be days of production work into a performance piece of a few minutes. “It’s really similar to my studio process, on fast-forward!” says Mark de Clive-Lowe.

“We create tracks in the studio in the normal fashion,” says J Tonal of The Flying Skulls. “They get broken up in to drum and bass parts, which get played live on the MPC, melody and lead parts which get played on the MS2000, and samples and other melody parts which get broken down into [Ableton] Live clips and played from [an M-Audio] Trigger Finger.” These pieces are then used live to create what they call deconstruxions.

As Mark de Clive-Lowe explains, “the idea of reinterpreting and translating the same pieces to different audiences with different bands and setups is nothing new.” In other words, rearranging electronic music for performance contexts does have its roots in a larger musical tradition.

For some, this has resulted in working to restore the historical role of performance as the heart of a recording. “The experience of participating in a musical happening is ephemeral and never translates to a record,” says Tim Exile. “I have developed a number of paths of improvisation which you could consider scores… these are adaptive positive feedback responses to features of the musical environments I’ve been in. These features can be very local, such as the slight manufacturing error in one of the buttons on the control surfaces causing it to be slightly harder to hit to be sure of pressing it, to the very wide, such as the proliferation of a new genre changing the way audiences categorize and respond to certain musical structures.”

This interplay of the studio and performance feeds the creative loop to take a new shape each time the artist goes on stage. “Most of my studio output is mellow,” says Daedelus. “Most performances are riotous or at least dance-able. So finding relationships and movement in my own output is quite fun, and leads to disaster in the best nights.”

Mark de Clive-Lowe playing live.

Is It Live Or Memorex?

When it comes to electronic music performance, is the music is being performed or played? As technology like Ableton Live evolves, the line between the two may blur to the point of irrelevance. As Tim Exile explains, “the discussion lies more in the boundaries between performance of compositions and improvisation. Most of what I see being played live these days seems of the live arrangement variation, focusing mostly on compression or expansion of set arrangements in response to the environment. This is live and adaptive and of the same genus as the style of performance exercised in DJing.”

Whatever the prepared sources, this adaptive style is undeniably a performance. “I can’t always reproduce the same exact show twice now,” says Richard Devine. “There are now so many different variables that can change or be manipulated.”

“I employ a lot of pre-made loops,” says Daedlus. “In some regards the legos are in a large box and I try to make spaceships or castles accordingly.”

Richard Devine’s live setup, looking like the bridge of the Enterprise.

“There are a lot of our songs that have a prerecorded studio version,” says J Tonal. “That gets played for about two minutes, and then we switch it up into a deconstruction and play a live remixed version of the same song.” Over top of backing tracks from their songs, Seth and Michelle of 8 Bit Weapon “play the Commodore 64 and 128 live like pianos, and use the Apple IIc as a mono synth in the same fashion. The Game Boy can do very basic live sounds and sequences.”

Tim Exile’s live rig (top) and Reaktor brain (bottom).

The Nucleus

At the center of any musical performance is the instrument. For electronic music, that instrument is the live rig. That rig can be a single laptop or an intricate hybrid of hardware and software; the possible configurations are limitless. Combining controllers, sound sources, mixing, and effects determines the breadth of available sound. The shape the rig takes becomes the defining point for the artist.

No matter how large, most rigs contain a center – a nucleus from which the soundscape is derived. For Daedelus that nucleus is the monome. “My preoccupation is with the Monome,” he explains, “especially MLR and added goodies tailored for use. I find it the most freeing from linear shackles, figuartive handcuffs, and my own preconceptions. It is improvisatory in the same way jamming in a jazz ensamble is, but with samples.”

Even if your rig is multi-faceted, the improvisational aspect is essential. As Richard Devine explains, his hybrid rig provides “maximum flexibility to change anything at any point in my show.” At the center is a MacBook Pro running Ableton Live 8 which syncs his three primary controllers. “The Monome is dedicated to doing random FM synth triggering with Max, and the MonoMachine is doing lots of synth and baselines, while the Machine Drum handles the huge analogue kick drums, and skeletal backbone percussion.”

Equally complex is the hybrid rig of 8 Bit Weapon. There’s still a laptop, but along with it they have “a Commodore 64 computer, a Commodore 128 computer, a Game Boy, a Apple IIc computer, Elektron Sid Station [containing a C64 sound chip], Nintendo Entertainment System, KORG microKORG vocoder, and a 12-channel mixer.”

While a laptop does all of the number crunching for Tim Exile, the true center of his rig is his two Behringer BCR2000’s and one BCF2000. “The 2-way control is perfectly implemented, and there are hacks around that allow you to use every single button on the surface. I’ve made my own context-sensitive control for layer switching in Reaktor. Pretty much all the state info I need is right there on the controllers.”

Mark de Clive-Lowe’s rig may look like that of a keyboardist with a Rhodes, Clavinet, and other synths. But what he calls “the heart of the show” is the MPC3000 he uses to program beats live. “The tactile interface means i can really get into playing the drum machine like an instrument.”

For The Flying Skulls, each performer takes different instrumental roles. Bringing those instruments together is the Rane Empath. “It operates like a master mixing console for several elements of the show: Snareface on the MPC, Jerome on the MS2000, and a channel from Live running on J Tonal’s laptop.” Using the Empath’s Flex-FX, they “get real-time access to over 100 effects that can be applied to any or all of the channels with touch-sensitive parameter control.”

The Flying Skulls Live. Image by Eric Weisz.

Audience: Engaged

There is always the need to engage the audience. “This is crucial,” says Richard Devine. “You have to somehow connect with them. I usually try to play some songs that people know, and of course try to play out lots of new material that hasn’t been heard. I like to program large builds and breaks to take the audience on a roller coaster ride, if you will.”

Leading the audience through the performance is no easy task with all the variables in a complex rig, but getting the audience to link the performance to what they are hearing aurally is its own reward.

“Movement is as important as sound in this respect,” says Tim Exile. “I’ve noticed that audiences respond well when they make connections between movements and sounds which they’ve never made before. So if they can see you directly controlling a sound structure which they’d only heard devoid from its kinetic correlate before (a lot of electronic sounds) then they will have a transformative experience.”

“They are seeing a full studio production created at break-neck speed live on stage in front of them,” says Mark de Cliv-Lowe. “They go on a journey via the music – the rhythm, the harmony and the melody.”

Artists can adapt the journey by feeding off the audience. “They are the ocean currents,” says Daedelus muses. “Fighting directly against [them] is useless. I mean, you can tack the ship against the prevailing winds, but you don’t get very far. I like having a direction, but watching and listening and being willing to go elsewhere.”

This doesn’t eliminate the value of more traditional ways of audience engagement. “Definitely always have a mic to talk to yer crowd,” advises J Tonal. “We like to make sure the audience is on the same page as us,” 8 Bit Weapon shares. “We check in from time to time between songs using fun banter.” There is always room in any musical performance for fun banter, but Daedelus warns, “never let audience members try to speak to you in drug-addled states during performance. It is a careless whisper, no Wham reference.”

Live Rig: The Flying Skulls. Image by Eric Weisz.

There Will Be FAIL

With all of the amazing things we’ve been able to do with technology, we’ve yet to perfect the anti-fail science. If only repairing a crashed hard drive were as simple as changing a guitar string.

“I’ve had MPC’s blow up and melt down right before and during gigs,” recalls Mark de Clive-Lowe. “I have played many shows,” says Richard Devine, “where my computer had crashed right before I was to play or I had some hardware sync problems.”

“We have sent the Sidstation back to Sweden for repairs 2 or 3 times,” 8 Bit Weapon recalls. “A drunk club patron tore it right off the stage and it slammed on the floor.”

Managing these inevitable situations is as much a part of the performance as anything else. “The biggest skill for a live performer,” Mark de Clive-Lowe says, “is to be able to take a mistake and flip it so it was never a mistake.” “When you have only a short amount of time to play — when something goes wrong, you have to have a back up plan, which may be having another computer ready to go on standby or another piece of hardware that you can use to play,” says Richard Devine. “There is nothing worse then flying around the world to play a show and running into technical problems.”

But perhaps the absolute worst scenario is, as Tim Exile says, “not being in the right mood. There’s very little you can do about that. There are no other mistakes.”

Primus Luta is a musician, technologist and a writer. When not working to finish his Heads Project, he’s trying to convince himself he’s got it in him to write that book he always wanted to write.

Primus Luta’s blog on noisepages, featuring computer music performance techniques, Plogue Bidule tips, and a lot more:

http://plpheads.noisepages.com/

See the companion video gallery for this story, featuring live performances from the artists interviewed. [about to be posted]

Video Gallery: Live Acts – Live Electronic Performance, Done Right

Peter Kirn — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:35:40 +0000

As a companion to Primus Luta’s story on artists and live electronic music performance, we’ve compiled a gallery of videos of the artists featured in action live.

Daedelus

Richard Devine

Tim Exile

8 Bit Weapon

With the fabulous ComputeHer on visuals, using her Apple II.

Mark de Clive-Lowe

The Flying Skulls

Not actually a video that does this crew justice, but you get the idea…

Ableton Live Lounge Saturday Night in NYC; Live Controller History in Progress

Peter Kirn — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:07:14 +0000

Handheld eggs, ironing boards, machinedrums, phones … live setups can involve all sorts of oddities, especially among the rabid (in a good way) Ableton Live fanbase, and we’ll be showing them in NYC. Saturday night, we’ll chill out after Dubspot’s day-long workshop with a free, open party in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District at 675 Bar to explore some new musical interfaces, have a few drinks, meet each other, and hear some new sounds. [Facebook RSVP]

For more on the whole week’s events with Dubspot, see our previous post.

Confirmed lineup:

Isomer Transition (aka RJ Valeo) doing some superb-quality techno with lots of knobs and a machinedrum + Ableton Live
Ted Hayes’ EggBeater wireless shaker for rhythms, built in free software Pure Data and used (in this case) with Ableton Live
Sound artist Ranjit Bhatnagar with a musical MIDI ironing board (pictured below) controlling Live, as seen at Handmade Music (at which it was covered by Wired.com)
Track Team Audio’s Michael Hatsis showing some tweaked-out Live control in action – hopefully including his APC40 hacks and monome patches.
Me, playing a set with control TBD – possibly Lemur and/or my Android phone

The “beater” application is really quite nice, and follows with a lot of handheld-style, gestural controllers we’re seeing lately. That could mean that soon we could have some sort of software layer that works with any of these controllers — substituting, say, a Wii or mobile phone. Here’s a great video from the ITP show (the bi-annual exposition of the work of interactive technology students at New York University):

The ironing board I’m also, as always, excited about; I’ll be working with Ranjit (and his dogs) tomorrow to try to map it intelligently, and we’ll be sure to share our results for everyone.

And here’s some nice work by Isomer Transition – I love that RJ can cover the gamut from dance-y to experimental.

If you’re in NYC, be sure to join us and bring friends – the event is free and open from 6:30-9:30pm, and 675 Bar has a range of tasty treats and drinks and looks like the basement you wish you had. (Hey, it’s NYC, so we just share a basement.) See the New York Mag review.

And, as a last-minute reminder, tonight (Thursday) 675 is also host to a free workshop on Live 8 with the insanely-talented KJ Sawka. We should have some video from this event (and a lot of the rest of the weekend) for the World Beyond New York. See Ableton’s announcement of tonight’s user group.

View Larger Map

And you can also follow my Twitter or the CDM Twitter on Saturday and through the weekend.

A History of Ableton Controllers

While I don’t think it’ll be done in time for the workshop I’m teaching Sunday, I’m compiling a history of Live controllers. There are too many alternative controllers in the world to cover, but over the years at CDM we’ve seen Live is a popular choice – even if only for prototyping, prior to building your own system. Nominees?

Free and Discounted Ableton Live Learning in NYC, KJ Sawka’s Chops, Richie’s Controller

Peter Kirn — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:39:41 +0000

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.

Schedule, Free Events, and Discounts

Thursday

7-9p, FREE KJ Sawka Live 8 clinic, 675 Bar
9p Funk Aid for Africa benefit release party, 675 Bar

Friday: Richie Hawtin @ Love

Saturday

11-6: Ableton Live and Production Sessions: The first day focuses on moving a project through the production process, with KJ Sawka talking live recording of drums, DJ Kiva and Jon Margulies on developing and finishing materials, and veteran engineer Daniel Wyatt on mixing and mastering. The day finishes up with a chat with Richie Hawtin and Ambivalent.

6:30-9p FREE CDM Live Lounge party Saturday evening, we meet up at former sex club / former horse stables (really) turned chilled-out Meatpacking District lounge 675 Bar. We’ll have some surprise unusual Live controller rigs and music.

Sunday

11-6: Performing with Live, Live Onstage: The second day of workshops focuses on live performance, with Jon Margulies, DJ Rupture, and myself talking about working with performance-ready live sets, controllers, and Akai’s APC40. (With Jon covering the APC, I’ll focus instead on alternative and unusual controllers.) Barry Cole of Blue Mountain Publishing will go a different direction entirely – how to understand licensing and distribution and actually make money on your tracks.

7-9p: Scientist will talk about miking and live setup with Dub is a Weapon – and will mix them live.

9p: DubSpot Sessions party, Le Poisson Rouge, with live and DJ performances from Scientist, Dub is a Weapon, Badawi, Kiva, Rupture, etc.

CDM DISCOUNT: Enter promo code ‘CDM’ for $25 off the tour, or follow this link:
http://www.dubspot.com/pages/abletontour.jsp?aff_ref=CDM

The weekend is US$225 for both days ($200 after our discount); $125 for one day.

Here’s a wrap of what happened in San Francisco:

And if you’re there, do come say hi! It’s always nice to meet readers.

We Love Montreal: Pre-MUTEK Warper Party and Open Lab, Tuesday 5/26

Peter Kirn — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:33:10 +0000

MUTEK this year looks to be a tremendous few days of audiovisual performance and art. To get in the mood one day early, we’re working with our friends at New York’s eclectic monthly live electronic party to host a special Montreal edition of Warper. It’s a convergence of New York and Montreal artists (full lineup below), running a full twelve hours. It’ll be totally free (donations welcome), with a cash bar available all day and night.

RSVP on Facebook

http://warperparty.com/

A big thanks to Jazz Mutant, makers of the OSC-driven, multi-touch controllers Lemur and Dexter, for their support.

I’ll be covering both the pre-party and MUTEK and its artists all week long, along with Greg Smith for Rhizome, so stay tuned to CDM for stories, video, and sound.

Meet up in the open lab: At 2pm, we’ll have an open music and visual technological laboratory, a la our Handmade Music series. Artists will bring their rigs, and original hardware and software creations to share what they’ve made and how they play. Confirmed for the lab:

Multitouch and Open Music Tools: Nathanaël Lécaudé and Eric Andrade will show their open source multitouch table PyMT (built in Python), which works with Max/MSP for sound generation, plus the TamTam musical software suite, an educational music suite powered by Csound that runs on the OLPC (and other platforms), created at the University of Montreal by Jean Piché and his team.
A Chipsound Premiere: David Viens of Plogue will be on-hand to talk about Plogue’s “chipsound” software instruments, as scooped on CDM – and I hope David brings along some Bidule creations, as well.
Guitar video instruments: Matt Dickey is bringing his guitar-video rig, powered by Jitter, which allows audience members to conduct his playing and control visuals and … you’ll just have to come see it to fully understand. (See also his guitar-controlled generative visual experiments.)

Bring your cool rigs + projects: If you’d like to join in on the lab and you’ll be in the Montreal area, just fill out this form to let us know what to expect. (We have 1-2 projectors, a PA, and tables; bring extra amps and cables if you can.)

Lemur multi-touch demo: At 5pm, Brooklyn musician Nick Shelestak (White Badger) will demonstrate how he integrates the Lemur multi-touch hardware controller in the studio and on stage using Ableton Live, along with a few other special features unique to the Lemur.

Audiovisual lineup: At 6pm, we get into fully live audio and visuals from our friends in Montreal and in town from New York. It’s a packed lineup – see the full details below. (The Cougarettes and I will each be doing simultaneous audio and visuals…)

6:00 PM – 2:00 AM – LIVE AUDIOVISUALS

Musicals:
06:00 Kodomo
06:40 Peter Kirn
07:10 Lokey
07:40 !INCLUDE
08:10 [XC3N]
08:50 FreeBassBK
09:30 Friend’s Mens
10:10 The Cougarettes
10:50 ATTN:
11:30 Rhinostrich
12:10 The Materializer
12:50 Atom
01:20 In The Loop

Visuals:
06:00 Holly Danger
06:40 Peter Kirn
07:10 VJ Pocaille
09:30 The Sperm Whale
10:10 The Cougarettes
10:50 VJ DY3KT
11:50 !INCLUDE
12:30 Okus Focus

View Larger Map

It all happens this Tuesday, 2pm to 2am. Hope to see you there.

For live updates, stay tuned to our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/cdmblogs

Man Behind the Mouse Mask: Deadmau5 on Monome, Not Being a DJ, with DTD

Peter Kirn — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:08:28 +0000

Deadmau5 interview with Dancetracks from Dancetracks on Vimeo.

Our friends over at Dancetracks Digital send along their video of Deadmau5, the top mouse-headed act on the planet right now. Deadmau5 may surprise you, with some good things to say about playing the open-source, sustainable, OSC-savvy monome controller – the controller that had big grids of buttons before big grids of buttons were cool. He also talks about not being a DJ, which means, I suppose, he’s one of us.

Say it with me – M-O-U-S-E! Or, um …five.

Okay, enjoy your weekend.

Glitch Mobber, Laptopist edIT Walks Through His Live Setup, Talks Ableton, Lemur

Peter Kirn — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:00:59 +0000

edIT, live in Chicago. Photo: Eric Rejman, via MySpace.

Download MP3

Liz McLean Knight aka Quantazelle catches up with one of our laptopist idols: edIT, the talented solo artist and Glitch Mob member. I won’t insult what he does by giving it a dumb name (”Glitch Hop?”). Suffice to say, edIT is adept at bringing insane musical chops to live laptop performance.

Liz got to geek out with edIT about the details of his live setup, which now drops the M-Audio Trigger Finger for the visual feedback and fluid multi-touch flexibility of a JazzMutant Lemur. (All due love to the Trigger Finger. But I think that would have been like, when I was a child, trading my Knight Rider Big Wheel for the full-sized KITT.)

edIT tells Liz just what this is all about, how he puts together his live set, and what the technical setup means for him musically. He also talks strategy. Sometimes, that means keeping the integrity of the tunes by loading changes into Ableton Live’s pre-composed Arrange View rather than triggering relatively mundane changes of loops manually. At the same time, that frees him up to work with more radical changes with effects and the like – stuff that may actually be interesting. So, no, just glimpsing the Arrange View will not land edIT on deadAct.com — in fact, edIT and Glitch Mob are just the kind of antidote we need.

Interview audio quality is low, but it’s well worth the listen for all the details.

While we’re at it, here’s more insight into edIT’s unique IDM and Hip Hop-inspired world, including the greatest anti-electronic music quotes of all time.

photo: Barbara Talia 2007, courtesy edIT.

XLR8R TV in one of their nicest episodes ever got to play a street gig in San Francisco on Haight with the Glitch Mob. Now, playing outdoor gigs in San Francisco isn’t exactly that big a deal – hey, it’s not New York City, where you’ll last about 2 bars before meeting the NYPD. But it’s fantastic to see what the Mob are all about, and the performance is terrific.

Most importantly, this video includes this poetic diatribe by An Angry Man, which I will transcribe here in the hope that someone puts it on a t-shirt for us:

Nobody is playing an instrument.
You have technicians here, making noise – are you taping this?
No one is a musician.
They’re not artists because nobody can play the guitar.

For more insight into edIT’s thoughts on music in general, here’s an extensive video interview. This comes from an apparently defunct show called The Craft. The show title has certain unfortunate associations with bad girl-witch movies, and pops up odd bits of trivia that make it seem as though it was targeted at old people or kittens. (Turntables, associated with hip hop? Who knew!) But the production itself is lovely, and edIT has some great things to say. And the show producers got one thing very right: edIT is part of the future of music.

More on edIT’s music and edIT and Glitch Mob touring to a town near you (NY tomorrow, LA 4/30, Arizona, Detroit, Alberta…):

edIT

Gustavo Bravetti, Driving Crowds Wild with a Wave of His Wii-Enabled Hands

Peter Kirn — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:51:41 +0000

Gustavo Bravetti – Alternative Controllers @ Tribaltech 2009 (SC edition) from Gustavo Bravetti on Vimeo.

Friend of the Site Gustavo Bravetti is back, getting the young Brazilian boys and girls on their feet with his virtual reality glove and Wiimotes and gesturally-controlled electronica. Gustavo sends us this video from the 2009 Tribaltech SC Edition in Campinas. Having seen a lot of DJs take the easy way out at festivals in front of throngs of people, it’s great to see someone really play his laptop – and while some of us, ahem, look goofy waving Wiimotes around, Gustavo makes it look good.

Gustavo also gives us the scoop on a new track release, orange. It’s inspired by … wait, Henry Purcell? (Indeed; see also: Wendy Carlos.)

I did produce this track specially for the Tribaltech 2009 SC edition, it was inspired on the classic piece by the baroque composer Henry Purcell (century XVIII), “The Funeral Of Queen Mary”. As usual all synthesizers and fx was made using only Ableton stuff, this time Operator, Analog, and Tension was used to create all synths and effects.

Gustavo also gets a rather eloquent review by our friend David Cross.

The incredibly simple melody of the short ‘Bocuma’ becomes a lump-in-the-throat meditation on man’s place in the universe through subtle pitch shifts and just the right mist of reverb. The slow fade-in on ‘An Eagle in Your Mind’ is the lonesome sound of a gentle wind brushing the surface of Mars moments after the last rocket back to Earth has lifted off.” Why not listen to, Only the Proletariat Floss’s by Screaming at the Mirror. With a truncated syncopation and approach that rivals only Tosh Guarrez pre “FartFlap”, “S.A.T.M” has taken steps to dismantle what was previously only dared mantled by the great Gilda Thrush when she fronted “Cycle Clause”. It’s as if Genghis Kahn got together for breakfast with Oliver Wendell Holmes and Virginia Wolfe and ordered just a bowl of homemade granola and then skipped out on the check. RATING: 11.-111 -David Cross

Previous Gustavo action on CDM:
Live + FM8 = Drum Kit Love: Free FM8 Drum Kit Download
Weekend Inspiration: Ableton Live Follow Actions, Dummy Clips, Making Snares
Gustavo Bravetti Show Us How To Glitch out Ableton Live
Interview: Gustavo Bravetti, Playing Music with Light and Interactive Gloves