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:

Unusual interfaces, including graphical, touch, gestural, and multi-touch interfaces
Monome, Arduinome, MidiDuino and the Minicommand
Max/Max for Live, Reaktor, Pd, Processing, and other tools
Collaboration, synchronization, and open control
New Year’s Resolutions for making technology and performance practice better
…topics to be continued online
Followed by live performances kicking off a night-long party

Presented by Electronic Creatives, Dubspot and Create Digital Music

When: Friday, January 15, 2010, 8pm – 4am

Where: The Downtown Independent, downtownindependent.com

251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012 [Map]

What: Wham Bam Thank You NAMM [official site/artist bios]

Cost: $20; $10 discounted (21+)

RSVP: droidbehavior@gmail.com Information: 213-915-6120 Facebook: Event page

Note on NAMM badges: the NAMM badge gets you into the “industry room” and a discount on admission, but you do NOT need a NAMM badge to get into this party! It is 21+, though – sorry about that.

View Larger Map

Major kudos to the wizards of Electronic Creatives who’ve been a huge part of making the whole evening happen (whereas I largely get to just show up). That includes in particular the talented violinist, composer, technologist, educator, and creative mind Laura Escudé, who has worked with everyone from Cirque du Soleil to Carmen Rizzo; I hope we get to introduce more of her work.

Electronic Creatives “produces events centered around Ableton Live and new music technology coupled with envelope-pushing performances.” (I’m going to try to make sure not to interpret that last phrase as “making my laptop crash onstage,” okay?)

It’s a strange and wonderful sampling instrument and live rig, capable of mangling and remixing live, synced to tempo. It’s proof that live computer performance doesn’t have to be in only one tool, or use one technique. It’s a ready-to-play, affordable instrument you can pick up and use. It’s a Reaktor patch gurus can pick apart and learn from, along with other resources from one of Reaktor’s masters. It’s a new blog and an opportunity to talk about live performance. It’s an EP release.

It’s actually all of these things – a tool, but more than a tool. The Finger, a US$79 / EUR 69 instrument, is a product, first and foremost, created by master live electronic performer and hacker Tim Exile. Tim is such a dedicated Reaktor user that he once managed to give himself a repetitive stress injury from connecting patch cords. (Not recommended.) You can run this thing out of the box using the free Kore Player, or get in deeper with a full version of Kore, or get into the patch itself with a copy of Reaktor 5 (also included in Komplete 5 and 6). It’s quite a product, too. I could try to explain it, but I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as Tim does in the video.

I’m not sure I agree with the marketing material’s claim that this is “a new type of live performance and remix effect.” In fact, Reaktor, Max/MSP, and other tools have led to all sorts of similar, original performance tools. Unlike going into a gig with just an Ableton Live set (something I’m doing in, literally, fifteen minutes), having a custom tool means focusing on performance techniques. And “new” hardly matters – Tim is a ninja at working with Reaktor’s deep sound DSP layer, Core (not to be confused with Kore). Whether it’s new or not, this is the ultimate patch from one of Reaktor’s masters. Along with Reaktor creator Stephan Schmitt’s Spark, it’s proof that sound packs from NI – or anyone else for that matter – don’t have to be limited to stock presets.

More than that, though, The Finger is connected to a music release by Tim, and is already triggering discussion of live performance and sound design – issues that go beyond any one tool. Tim has started a new blog to talk about his own take on live performance, starting with more info on his EP and some tracks you can hear:

http://thenowwave.blogspot.com/

Other folks I know have picked up The Finger and started to play with it, including the underlying Reaktor patch. Most notably, see Richard Devine transform The Finger from a Sound-Like-Tim-Exile machine into a Richard-Devine-Sonic-Insanity-Generator. (See, just because you use someone else’s tool doesn’t have to mean you need to sound like them.) With Max for Live coming, hackers getting smarter and slicker with open source tools like Processing, ChucK, SoundCollider, and Pd, and techno-literacy again on the rise – more connected than ever by these Interwebs – I think we could be in store for a really wonderful age of creativity, in which people make part of the craft of music making the craft of tool making, as well. Designing a tool, after all, is designing a system, in the same way that composition (in any medium) is about designing a system. Finally, instead of keeping that to ourselves, we can actually share the whole process.

In the meantime, let’s watch those videos, on Reaktor, The Finger, and more.

Richard Devine takes on The Finger:

Native Instruments The Finger vs Richard Devine from Richard Devine on Vimeo.

Tim Exile performing in Reaktor:

Tim shows his Reaktor-based setup – not just The Finger, but beyond:

Related tools:

Updated based on feedback in comments See also…

Sugar Bytes Artillery2, which focuses more on effects – and offers a whopping amount of effects variety, from step-sequenced buffer scratchers to vocoding. As with The Finger, the idea is to map effects to keys.

Rekkerd notes that Sugar Bytes has just discounted Artillery2 to 50% through October. Devoted loop manglers will buy both. I’m going to wait for a Richard Devine video in which he routes Artillery2, Lucifer, and The Finger together in one chain, then randomizes all the settings – your move, Richard.

The Lucifer plug-in is now discontinued, but Devine Machine offer a range of related looper/performance tools – from the practical tools to the manglers.

The basic ideas here I think are worth copying: making use of the keyboard to control things live rather than having modulation all running automatically, routing different effects together for mangled results, and loop recording and effects that are synced it time are all useful concepts to combine. I’d love to see people push those concepts in various directions, and the exact combination of ingredients you want is likely to be personal, so it’s well-suited to DIY concoctions, too.

It’s hard out there for a hardware synth. There are all these new-fangled soft synths, capable of producing radical sounds via easy-to-navigate on-screen interfaces. I have a very very short mental list of hardware synths that still matter to me for one reason or another – and the Roland V-Synth GT is one that keeps coming back. I had access to one temporarily for a review. It was like temporarily adopting a puppy. You try not to get too close to the thing, as you know you can’t keep it. The V-Synth is likely out of the budget of a lot of readers of this site, but it’s worth just knowing it’s there, and why it has become so beloved by sound design aficionados.

The V-Synth GT, itself a big upgrade from the original V-Synth, had a major software upgrade this summer that flew under a lot of people’s radar. But now as the days are getting shorter again and people are starting to think sound design, I hope we can give the V-Synth GT some attention as an instrument. It has inspired me even in my software work, just to see the perspective of the engineers at Roland and how the device is programmed.

First, a few notes about what the V-Synth GT is about – something I’m sure you’d like explained, given its US$3000 street price.

The experience of using the V-Synth is really different from a lot of the synths out there. You don’t get this sense of the excess of some of the workstations, the stuff you don’t need. You just get a whole bunch of toys for sound design, which combine in unusual ways that feel really playable but can also be warped to produce far-out results:

• Its AP “Articulative Phrase” synthesis method is really unusual, mimicing the organic qualities of how instruments respond in attack, note transition, and tuning. That’s fascinating enough, but the ability to get at some of these AP principles and create hybrid instruments is what makes the GT worth using.
• The COSM models of favorite vintage Roland gear are decent enough on their own, but the ability to combine them in semi-modular routings helps the GT shine.
• You can manipulate audio on the device in some unique ways, with real-time pitch and tempo stretching of loops and phrases, which can then be resampled. Okay, sure, your copy of Ableton Live can do this, but the experience of doing it on hardware – alongside the other V-Synth synthesis features – is unique.
• It samples external sources, which you can edit on the touchscreen, and routes external audio through onboard effects, including the Vocal Designer vocoder / voice modeler.
• It has lots of control, from the easy-to-navigate color screen to D-Beam controller and the signature X/Y pad.

In other words, it’s really a Roland synth studio in a box. My 2007 review for Keyboard Magazine explains what all of this is like in practice.

From the software perspective, the V-Synth embodies a lot of what I admire about Roland. “Articulative Phrase” synthesis really isn’t a synthesis method in the conventional sense – it’s fair to say it’s a collection of tricks they’ve developed for making their instruments sound good. But coming from the hardware background, working in extreme memory constraints we no longer consider on computers, they’ve had to use tremendous economy with their sound designs. And rather than focusing on a “press a button” approach to sound, they’ve really built responsiveness and change into all of the onboard controllers, something that software sound programmers could, frankly, use.

So, that’s the V-Synth GT as released. But the V-Synth has gotten some significant updates, including 64-bit drivers for Windows and, most importantly, a massive 2.0 OS update.

2.0: More Sounds, More Sampling, More Sound Design

• Import WAV and AIFF directly from USB key, making this more useful as a sample manipulator
• More sounds: Two new sound sets, new patches combining the V-Synth’s various sound shaping abilities, and a third sound set that’s a collection of vintage analog synths from various makers – including the entire Roland back catalog
• More sound design options: new arpeggiation styles, new step modulator templates, and effects ported from the Fantom G

Demo video from Roland, via Synthtopia:

Who’s Using It

I recently spoke to Roland’s Dan Krisher about the V-Synth. His thoughts:

There are many uses for the V-Synth GT, but the V-Synth GT has been exceptionally embraced by the sound design community.  For example, Richard Devine creates sample libraries, from drum loops to intricate soundscapes, and the V-Synth GT is one of his main tools.  The way the menus are built, it is very easy to get started making unique sounds right away.  Players aren’t limited to the sounds inside the V-Synth GT either—any instrument can be plugged directly into the V-Synth GT.  The instrument’s signal can be run through the GT’s synth AND effects engines.

Another popular use for the V-Synth GT is for people who are just looking for a huge-sounding synth to play live.  There are a wealth of real-time controllers such as the D-Beam and front-panel knobs, that allow you to tweak sound in real time.  The Vocal designer allows players to add to a vocal performance with harmonies on a whole different level than was possible before.

Now, of course, this is the usual spiel you get from hardware makers, but this is one of the cases in which my anecdotal experience with users backs up what he’s saying.

Dan also said that the 2.0 update really grew out of user feedback, which makes sense. The V-Synth GT doesn’t get as much attention as a lot of other synths out there – even Roland themselves tend to focus more on their Fantom and JUNO – but the V-Synth’s user base, both users of the original and the GT, is really fiercely loyal.

V-Synth GT Videos

There are some really quite amusing videos of the V-Synth GT out there. Now, don’t necessarily judge the sound of the synth from all of these videos – I was able to push it in ways that didn’t sound like conventional Roland synth sounds, too. (And no, I don’t know why some marketing videos – not the ones I’m listing here, but you know who you are – have to be so cheezy.)

Updated: To really get a sense of the extraordinary sounds that can come out of the V-Synth series, you need to watch the 2003 debut video of the original V-Synth at NAMM. Six years later, nothing in hardware has touched this. And keep in mind, the GT has added a lot of sonic tools that the original didn’t have, so imagine this going even further. (Thanks to James Y for finding this, and Roland, please let’s see more videos like this!)

Is there a word for ear-dropping? (And this is YouTube audio quality…)

Tatsuya Nishiwaki, hilariously, confesses he can’t resist turning the V-Synth into an electric guitar as he does other synths, and then parties like it’s 1989. That name will be familiar to fans of Japanese music – he’s a major keyboard player in Japan, along with working with some big names here Stateside, after starting as a founding member of the band PAZZ. (More videos, direct from Roland.)

The best place to get a sense of the V-Synth GT in action is to watch Jordan Rudess playing it:

Jordan Rudess V-Synth GT Demos, Roland Video Library

Rudess is a tremendously skilled player, but there is a certain conventional sound to Roland keyboards here and, perhaps even more so, in the other demos. You’ll just have to take my word for it that if you abuse some combinations of sounds, you can take the V-Synth in another direction. Here’s what the interface looks like, again via Synthtopia. Now just imagine turning knobs past the places you’re supposed to, and routing things wrong!

And, because we can laugh at what we love, one comic strip, drawn for the awesome blog Wire to the Ear by the site’s creator, Oliver Chesler:

Funny and true – but only if you’re just trying to sound like a Jupiter-8. The nice thing about the V-Synth is that it really can sound unlike anything else, once properly pushed out of its comfortable preset zone to its extremes.

V-Synth GT Users?

One V-Synth user talks about the synth’s ability to produce “wild sounds” and demonstrates some of his own creations on YouTube. He concludes – news to me – that “I do not understan why owners are selling them for $800.”

Umm… Actually, yeah. The V-Synth is really, really awful. You don’t want it. You want to sell it to me for $800, or even less. (Maybe these are users of the original upgrading to the GT, so desperate to get the new model they’re unloading the original dirt cheap?)

I really can imagine the V-Synth GT as a desert island hardware synth. I’m curious to hear from users of either the V-Synth or V-Synth GT. Got sound design techniques you’ve discovered? Raves – or rants – you’d like to pass along to Roland?

Let us know.

And yeah, I know – now that I’ve done this, we need someone to write a love ode to Kyma.

V-Synth GT [warning – Roland annoyingly makes their websites make lots of noise without asking]

2.0 Update Download

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

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.”

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.”

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.”

“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.”

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.”

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.”

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]

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…

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/07/21/video-gallery-live-acts-live-electronic-performance-done-right/feed/ 70 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/07/04/journal-the-mind-meld-audiovisual-retreat-in-new-england/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/07/04/journal-the-mind-meld-audiovisual-retreat-in-new-england/#comments Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:57:40 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/07/04/journal-the-mind-meld-audiovisual-retreat-in-new-england/

Last month, I was lucky enough to head to a gathering of music and visual artists at the studio of artist Duncan Laurie in Jamestown, Rhode Island, accompanied by performances in Providence and Boston. Among the cast: Richard Devine, Josh Kay (Phoenicia/Schematic), Steve Nalepa, Todd Thille (Synesthete), Vidvox’s David Lublin, Josh Randall (Robotkid/Harmonix), Aerostatic, Brian Kane (former Emergency Broadcast Network), and Ooah (Glitch Mob).

And then there were the rocks and coconuts. Duncan Laurie and electrical engineer Gordon Salisbury have been sonifying natural signal sources, hooking up vintage radionics equipment and connecting rocks and bananas and such to signals. Richard and Josh brought along part of their formidable collection of modular equipment, and a great crackling, screaming analog racket resulted.

Fans of vintage gear, big knobs, and audiovisual mayhem will surely be jealous. (Photos above courtesy Todd Thille, Arrow.)

mind-meld.org

Flickr set 

Here’s co-organizer Todd Thille (aka Synesthete) describing the full event.

Mind Meld 2008 – Event Wrap by Todd Thille

The full crew, illuminated by the glass block floor. Photo: Arrow.

Todd writes: The weekend of Friday the 13th marked the 3rd annual Mind Meld gathering at Duncan Laurie’s Jamestown, Rhode Island studio. An incredible assortment of audio and video artists were assembled, ostensibly to relax, but with so much talent in one place, a show or two is inevitable.

Close-up of Gordon Salisbury’s brilliant vintage oscilloscope — it’s a wonderful, big beast. Photo by Todd Thille.

Duncan’s three-storey studio sits atop Bull Point, surrounded by water on three sides. The studio was built entirely out of salvaged materials. Floors made of glass block allow light to penetrate up from the lower workshop, through the main room and into the laboratory on the top floor. It is on the top floor that Duncan and his electrical engineer Gordon Salisbury have been experimenting with sonifying signals from Nature. There is an impressive array of old Radionic equipment as well as a number of devices that Gordon has developed. The visual centerpiece of the lab is the "Music Machine", an 8′ tall cuboctahedron that was part of a GENESIS Bio-Entrainment Module, a bio-feedback device developed in the 1980’s. The machine is now host to Gordon’s Purr Generator. The purr generator is a device which generates a signal at approximately 25 Hz. This coincides with the frequency of vibrations given off by a “happy cat” and has long been thought to be therapeutic. External audio sources can be played through the machine.

Vidvox’s David Lublin experiences the Purr Generator. Photo by Arrow.

Much of the activity at the studio in the last few years has been given over to exploring signals in Nature. Based on precedents set by Cleve Backster and T. Townsend Brown, plants and rocks are fitted with electrodes or have copper leads affixed to them. Small voltages present are picked up with a variety of test equipment, including Wheatstone bridges, rate of change convertors, EKGs, and the IBVA brainwave monitor. The resulting data streams are converted to MIDI and used to drive Ableton Live.

Artist Duncan Laurie, wired into a coconut. No, really. Photo: Todd Thille.

For the artists that have assembled each year, the draw of a fantastic location, strange nature research and wealth of information about Radionics that Duncan posses are too much to resist. This years gathering included mainstays; Steve Nalepa, a West Coast electronic musician, gaining attention with his forthcoming Flatlands CD/DVD and Bass Science, a dubstep project with MattB; Todd Thille ( aka Synesthete ), an Istanbul based VJ and multimedia artist currently engaged in designing new software and hardware for the explorations underway at Duncan’s studio; David Lublin, of Vidvox, makers of the popular VJ software VDMX; Josh Randall ( aka Robotkid ), a Creative Director at Harmonix by day, working titles like Rock Band and Phase; Aerostatic, the Brooklyn based couple Michelle Darling and Terry Golob, who’s style ranges from ambient to breakcore with some Seseame Street (both have worked at Sesame Workshop) in for good measure.

Newer faces included Brian Kane, a former member of EBN and the self described "Karl Rove of the art world, who was busy pushing his latest meme, Meat Water; Ooah, one of the members of rising stars, the Glitch Mob; Richard Devine, still recovering from a near death experience after a small wound on his foot, infected with staph, nearly destroyed his heart, came to reek sonic mayhem with a massive stack of modular synths; Josh Kay ( aka Jeswa ), who joined Richard in exploring the sonic possibilities of the studio, and a formidable force in his right as a member of Soul Oddity and Phoenecia and founder of Schematic Records; CDM’s own Peter Kirn rounded out the list of performing artists.

Audiovisual lineup in Providence: Peter Kirn, Synesthete (Todd Thille), Richard Devine, Ooah. Photo: Arrow. Bellow: Robotkid (Josh Randall).

Through the work of Elizabeth Keithline and Nick Bauta of The Steel Yard and Firehouse 13, the audio visual extravaganza, "we’ll do it live" found a home at the Pell-Chafee center in downtown Providence. Two massive 40′ wide screens were hung from the three-story vaulted ceiling. Duncan and Aerostatic opened with an exploration of signals coming from a piece of granite (seen in their Rockstar short) and a banana. Peter Kirn deftly handled Kore for his 30 minute set with reactive visuals by Synestete. Brian Kane performed selections from his triple-head av masterpiece, HDADD. Robotkid and rndm threw down a bumpin’ av mashup. Nalepa and David Lublin got the party moving with Flatlands remixes, dubstep tracks and ethereal hand-held footage with Quartz Composer overlays. Ooah brought out the glitch hop with his Panty Raid and tracks from other Mob members. Richard Devine and Josh Kay double-teamed Traktor, bring the soundsystem down with meters in the red and finishing out the night with TapStereo.

The event picked up and relocated to Duncan’s studio where Richard and Josh Kay set up a wall of modular synths to plug into the different sound sources. Peter got busy writing an FFT patch in Processing and tried it out with signals coming from an onion and a lime. He also experimented with Gordon’s Bat Box. The rest of the crew amused themselves with Rock Band and chatting in small groups around the bar-b-gue that sprang up on the driveway.

 

Richard Devine (top), Josh Kay (bottom) fiddle with their Wall of Modular Sound. Photos: Todd Thille.

The group started to disperse on Sunday and everyone but Richard and Josh Kay had left by the time that Steve, photographer Arrow One, Peter and I headed up to Boston on Monday night. We met up with Robotkid and Brian Kane for a show in Cambridge at Beat Research. There was a good crowd despite it being a rainy school night. Peter had much better control over his Kore set. Robotkid and I mixed visuals until Brian fired up his DVJ and played some of his AV pieces. Nalepa came in a pinstripe suit and tore up the room with Bass Science dubstep.

Steve Nalepa becomes an audiovisual blur at Beat Research. Photo: Todd Thille.

Peter and I started Tuesday morning at the new offices of Harmonix. We decided not to get sucked into any meetings and beat a retreat to the MIT Museum. There were good exhibits on deep sea craft, high-speed photography and sculptor Arthur Ganson.

The afternoon brought a visit to the studio of visionary painter Paul Laffoley. He had requested a chicken stuffed in a watermelon, potential racial slur aside, we obliged and hand delivered him a "chelon." Paul was in the midst of prepping for a 60s and 70s retrospective that is to be on display in New York in February. He was also hard at work on a Tarot deck. We parted with Peter afterwards and the 3rd annual Mind Meld came to a close.

Thanks to Todd Thille for writing up this report for CDM. Captions by Peter Kirn.

The delicious taste of Meat Water.  See dinnerinabottle.com. Photo: Todd Thille.

Peter, recording via one of the ultrasonic recorders designed by Gordon. Josh Kay shares headphones. Photo: Todd Thille.

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/07/04/journal-the-mind-meld-audiovisual-retreat-in-new-england/feed/ 15 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/18/cdm-unofficial-afterparty-in-la-with-richard-devine-hot-or-not/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/18/cdm-unofficial-afterparty-in-la-with-richard-devine-hot-or-not/#comments Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:22:45 +0000 Liz McLean Knight http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/18/cdm-unofficial-afterparty-in-la-with-richard-devine-hot-or-not/

Will Richard Devine unleash his blazing fury once again at NAMM this year as he did with the Neko keyboard, or will he physically keep his cool but unveil his own brand of auditory destruction instead?

Come to the CDM Unofficial Afterparty in Los Angeles and find out! Show up at 8pm to Bassworks and witness a DIY, technological show and tell and then stick around to check out live musicians and visualists along with our pal Rich. Fire may or may not make an appearance, but we in CDM HQ personally hope for the metaphorical sort.

And you are all on the guestlist (meaning it’s a free party). You’d be ragingly insane to miss it if you’re local on Friday.

]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/18/cdm-unofficial-afterparty-in-la-with-richard-devine-hot-or-not/feed/ 14 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/15/namm-unofficial-cdm-afterparty-live-in-la-friday-night/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/15/namm-unofficial-cdm-afterparty-live-in-la-friday-night/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:37:50 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/15/namm-unofficial-cdm-afterparty-live-in-la-friday-night/

Friday we’re pleased to co-host a party with trash_audio and vjkungfu.tv in Mid-City Los Angeles. If you’re in LA or visiting NAMM in Anaheim, you won’t want to miss this – Richard Devine headlining, terrific music and live visuals, and workshops.

If you don’t know the other two sites, by the way, trash_audio (featuring Richard, Justin, and Deep Element) is a fantastic blog that regularly profiles creative workspaces for music. vjkungfu.tv, helmed by VJ momo the monster, has in-depth video tutorials for live visualists; we hope to feature it more on createdigitalmotion.com in the near future.

Here’s the lineup:

1. MAKE + MINGLE. 8:00pm.

• Bring your own DIY music or motion creations and other hardware toys and geek out with an international crowd of hipster-nerdsters! All projects welcome (space first come, first served — think small, bring portable speakers if you can
• Put together free kits to make your own ribbon controllers without soldering
• Learn how Bryant Davis Place (future-tense-cpu) built his own DIY VJ sequencer for M8 using the Lemur multi-touch controller.
• Learn about the wonders of wireless MIDI sync in AV Performance with Acid&Bass&Momo producing a live remix of Karate Kid.

2. MIX + MASH. 9:30pm.

RICHARD DEVINE
The Deep Element
Justin McGrath
Liz Revision (Quantazelle)
Moldover
dj halon (Fake Science, False Profit)

Visuals:
Image8nineteen (Mat Hale)
Momo the Monster
Peter Kirn

DETAILS

View Larger Map

Cost: FREE (cash bar)

When: Friday, January 18

Where: Basswerks, 5411 W Adams Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90016 (323) 939-2535

RSVP:

Facebook event page

or….

A/V Mixer: Unofficial CDM NAMM Afterparty

Friday, January 18 at Bassworks

1 person interested:

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