Handmade Music is spreading. Toronto’s InterAccess has been a hub of terrific DIY activity in sound and other fields, otherwise known as a General Gravity Well of Awesomeness, and they’re now doing their own Handmade Music, kicking off this month.
Full call below, but as with other events, there is an open call for work (and some nice thoughts on why now is a wonderful time for DIY).
Even if you’re not in Toronto, it’s nice to read their take on why this stuff matters. I’m gratified they’ve found this inspiring. I’ve certainly been inspired by … well, all of you!
Artists and creators around the world have been moved by the suffering of Haitians in the wake of last week’s earthquake. There are ways we can help, like giving to relief organizations to give them the capacity to respond wherever needed. The next crisis could be halfway across the world or in our own neighborhood.
The monome community is about more than just the button-grid, open-source controller with which they work. They’re an example of the kind of collective spirit that musicians, digital or otherwise, can share internationally (see the map of these artists below). And they’ve put together a really beautiful, Creative Commons-licensed compilation of music.
Artists (including one track from the co-creators of the monome, Kelli and Brian): einpuls, Visinin, The General, Pauk, Glimmertone, Watson, Math Rosen, Lokey, Island Dweller, Oldman Intel, Made By Robot, Auditory Canvas, I Am Genko, Raja The Resident Alien, Samuel and the Dragon, Damien Shingleton, Maersk, The Superorganism, Modulogeek+Shoemucker, Beatpoet, The B-Roll, Hypno|sapien, Kid_Sputnik, The Sweaty Caps, HenderSounds, Dat Niks Klank, Swimming, Kcain/Tehn.
100% of the proceeds go to Médecins Sans Frontières; the 27-track is pay-what-you-wish for $1 or more, downloadable in high-quality MP3, FLAC, and other formats.
And that’s just one way to help; there are others.
In Anaheim this week, the music manufacturer trade gather to show their wares. But 8pm – 4am Friday night, we party.
“Wham Bam Thank You NAMM” has become an annual tradition, an unofficial afterparty of sorts for the first two days of the trade show.
This year’s lineup: John Tejada, Richard Devine, Flashbulb, Deru, Laura Escude, Scott Pagano, CPU, DJ Kero, Acid Circus, Derek Michael, Baseck, Eezir, Trifonic, DJ G Ov, Moldover, Henry Strange, and myself, among others.
Escaping from the Anaheim Convention Center doldrums, the event is held in the lovely, artistically-blossoming Los Angeles downtown. The Downtown Independent is a gorgeous space with a movie theater and rooftop for full audiovisual-party immersion. This year, we have a couple of new features with which I’m assisting on behalf of CDM. There’s a VIP lounge / “industry room” which will be filled with music toys. You need a NAMM badge to get in, but inside you’ll find some unusual sonic toys you can’t find on the NAMM floor.
Also in the spirit of going beyond NAMM, I’m moderating a panel on how people are using computers in performance, and how we can all make the future of music tech shinier, sooner. When you’re living in a cool-sounding year like “2010,” there’s really no excuse not to take matters into your own hands (oh, yeah, and maybe I want to make sure I’m on the same side as the evil robots when the bad s*** starts going down):
2010: It’s gonna be the future soon A conversation on live electronic performance technique, and how to make music tech better
There’s no need to dream of futuristic, expressive live performance on computers. It’s here. And there’s no reason to wait for technology to improve: let’s talk about how to make it happen. Moderated by Create Digital Music’s PETER KIRN, this conversation with some of the artists at the edge of sound and live electronic music provides a glimpse into the ways people are working in 2010, and an open discussion about what we can do this year to extend our technique and make technology work better.
JUSTIN BORETA and edIT (Glitch Mob, etc.) RICHARD DEVINE (Schematic/Warp), DSP mad scientist and composer LAURA ESCUDE, violinist and music technologist FLIPMU, the duo of Owen Vallis and Jordan Hochenbaum MOLDOVER, Mojo controller creator, musical supervillian DERU, composer and musician (Ghostly, etc.), recent Paris Opera Ballet score BRIAN TRIFON (TRIFONIC), electronic musician and sound designer (Avatar)
and other guests
Hands-on "snap" demos of live rigs + topics of discussion:
Look! We even like vinyl, too. Lori Ann Napolean aka subk plays as Switchboard Operator tomorrow – and she means it literally. Bleeding edge tech meets arcane tech — not the gramophone, but the switchboard.
There’s not really a name for it, but there’s a growing scene around advanced musical performance. Once the domain primarily of academia, the notion of creating novel controls for music – from felt to monomes – is gaining traction across many scenes, and firing up a larger-than-ever, global population of makers.
That’s why I’m excited to be part of the in/out Festival tomorrow here in New York. Sure, chip music lovers have Blip next week, and circuit benders have Bent. But In/Out is all about 16-bit-plus, not 8-bit, and not a circuit will be bent. Here’s a look at the lineup – good reason that you’ll want to be there tomorrow if you’re in the NYC area, and some folks to check out from the east coast-US scene if you’re not:
Workshops: There’s still space in the workshop lineup; you can hit the whole lineup for $25.
Reaktor drum machine construction with Kid Sputnik
Felt and fabric as musical interfaces with Sarah and Lara Grant
Describing music in code, messages, with Processing and OSC, with me (and yes, working on an online curriculum for this very soon, in time for a course I’m teaching in the spring at Parsons!)
So, for the 98% of you not in NYC, let me know if there are specifics you’d like covered on CDM from these workshops and artists. In the meantime, here are some quick goodies to listen to and play with from the lineup:
At the risk of becoming Create Digital Monomes, here are two things that make me very happy.
For anyone who thinks it’s too hard to get hold of a genuine monome, or any of those of you who got the kit and haven’t built a proper case for it, this is for you. FYXDESIGN has posted a terrific tutorial enclosing the monome 40h kit (8×8 grid) inside a custom case made from LEGO bricks. The project comes out of a group at New York University’s ITP digital tech school who saved money, beat the monome’s scarcity, and made lots of friends by group ordering a bunch of kits and then assembling them together as a group. The magic here comes courtesy of some smart design sense and a boon to prototypers everywhere, the LEGO Digital Designer software, free for Windows and Macs.
Xiaoyang Feng’s design work is in general worth checking out; if someone with his experience and skill is using LEGOs, you’ll want to take note.
Even if you’ve got a project that’s not a monome, this is clearly a fantastic way to whip up an enclosure in a hurry – and that “prototype” might be all you need. Bless you, LEGO!
With the step-by-step tutorial, this is child’s play, even for someone as tragically un-handy as me.
In other news, here’s a lovely live video shot by duo elle p & iftah in, apparently, a bathroom (no reverb needed)! It’s a reminder that, even without velocity control, an array of buttons really can make a musical instrument. (In fact, making performance easier is part of the grand tradition of instrument design – see frets, the Autoharp, the piano, and so on.) In an age of overproduced music (sorry, Glee), it’s lovely to see the Internets striking back with live performance, warts and all, as a way of conveying authenticity and personality. Elle has in her lap another interesting DIY creation that’s not a monome. The duo describe it as a “pixiphone,” a “general purpose d.i.y grid controller based on an old siemens operator interfaced with arduino.” I’ll have to get more documentation on that.
Embedding is acting a wee bit screwy for me today, possibly on Vimeo’s end, but you can always go straight to the video.
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