Artist Zack Wright, for a handful of followers of what we used to call IDM, will be a blast from the past. Recording as Deceptikon on labels like Merck and Daly City Records, Zack is back. His name is now Dkon, and the story is more than just him: in the absence of a Merck to release adventurous music, Dkon is helping launch a new label entitled Tokyo Ghost Island, with an EP to be followed soon by new records from Jemapur, Secret Palindromes, and an EP from Stockton & Malone, among other things.

Swimming upstream against gear fetishism, the 800 EP is proud to be cheap. The Korg Poly 800 on which the release is focused is a dirt-cheap eBay score, but as Dkon puts it, it’s also “one of the most underrated analog polysynths out there.” I’d be nervous about CDM driving up its value before I can get one – it’s been on my wish list – except that there are a lot of them. It was the first synth for many players.

With that spirit, Dkon sends along a manifesto of sorts about music making. He’s been coupling the Poly 800 with a production workflow entirely centered on Renoise, the modern tracker, for recording and sequencing. But tools aside, there’s a minimal philosophy here I think a lot will like.

Oh, and about the album: it’s raw, unaffected, with the sweet spare sounds of the Korg set to good-natured beats, as clean as your local Poly 800 in a garage sale probably isn’t. It’s not retro; it’s just … well, good. The synthesis is unabashedly front and center, everything perfectly machined in pure economy. Less is more, indeed. Have a listen: the full tracks are on SoundCloud:

Dkon – 800 EP by Dkon / Deceptikon

Grab the EP on iTunes

Facebook fan page

(I love this sound — but for a radically different side of the artist, be sure to hear some of his past work and remixes below; he’s got quite a range.)

For his part, Dkon is based in San Francisco, by way of Tokyo, Seattle, Washington, Eugene, Oregon, and Portland, Oregon, except I ran into him in Brooklyn at Percussion Lab.

Bonus points if you remember Deceptikon. And if you don’t, you know we’re not music snobs here; I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover him through the new Dkon music. (See bottom for some Deceptikon music, too.)

But let’s see if you agree with Dkon’s philosophy, behind this record and DIY, economy-be-damned, do-it-on-the-cheap, make-it-great spirit. He shares those thoughts with CDM:

DKON’S TIPS FOR CREATIVE SUCCESS

1. Less is more.
If you read nothing else in this article, read this. Having more options is not good for your creativity. Learn what you have, use what you have. Having a limited set of options forces you to focus.

2. You don’t need expensive stuff.
There are a lot of people who think you need to keep improving your studio, and getting the latest, most expensive gear in order to have the ability to be able to make something good. This is nonsense. From an economic point of view, the 800 EP cost me about $125 to make. (Renoise license of about ~$75, and I bought the 800 on Craigslist for $40). I made my first several albums (*Lost Subject*, *Greater Cascadia*, and *Mythology of the Metropolis*) with very limited means and equipment. Make do with what you have. Buy gear secondhand, but only what you will actually use. Use free or cheap software. Use free or cheap plugins.

3. It doesn’t matter what software you use.
There are so many DAW options now, but they all do basically the same thing. The only real difference is workflow. Pick one that appeals to you, learn it as you go along, and you will succeed. I have been using mostly Renoise for the past few years because I like the workflow and relatively simple interface. It may look confusing if you’ve never used a tracker before, but once you get the hang of it, it’s incredibly fast to get your ideas down, which is a major advantage. When inspiration hits you, the faster you can start working, the better.

4. Work around the limitations of what you have.
If something is limited in some way, use it to your advantage. Why do you think things like the 303 and 808 are still universally adored? They are both incredibly limited instruments, but what they do, they do very well. Using a more concrete example in my case, the Poly 800. It’s horribly tedious to program, but has a great sound and a lot of character. If it was covered in knobs and sliders, I don’t think it would be as appealing in a bizarre kind of way. The limited nature of the instrument encourages creativity.

5. Treat everything as a sample.
Especially in regards to software like Renoise. Find a sound on an instrument you like. Record yourself playing a few chords or a sequence of notes. Chop it up, sequence it, and rearrange it. Usually, if I do this, the sequence that ends up being used is different than the one that I originally played. Move things around, play with the pitch, change the envelopes. Being imprecise with your editing gives it a more humanized feel, without resorting to adding “humanization” after the fact.

6. Fidelity is highly overrated.
Do you think anyone is going to care if your snares are amazingly compressed and EQ’ed if your song is terrible? No. Making your music sound “nice” should be an afterthought. Focus on content, not gloss.

7. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.
Making music, or art of any kind, should be fun. Treat it as play, not as work. Don’t think of what you want to make before you start – let the finished product reveal itself through your work. Dive in and explore without conscious thought.

http://www.deceptikon.net/
http://soundcloud.com/dkon
http://www.renoise.com/

Inside the Studio: Gear and Renoise Session Screenshots

Click the images for a closer look; all images courtesy the artist and used by permission.

More Music

Remixes by Dkon / Deceptikon

Mythology of the Metropolis 12″ by Dkon / Deceptikon

Artwork for the Mythology of the Metropolis album is, I think, really beautiful:

The painting is the work of Philadelphia-based Richard Bailey, aka artist proem, who also did my album cover as well as the CSS work on CDM. This isn’t some sort of cabal we’ve put together; I keep running into these lads and the connections between them by pure accident. There’s a sort of diffuse, scattered community of people who are expatriated from a forgotten IDM nation. If IDM dies, CDM lives, at least.

And for good measure, the music video for “Broken Synthesizers,” via reader mikrosopht in comments, who worked on it.

Brilliant idea – hacking YouTube timelines to make an interactive 909 – though I can’t get it to work for me at the moment.

Thanks to Dkon for all these ideas.

Care to debate – or echo – his creative tips? Sound off in comments.

With laidback, exotic grooves and richly-coordinated interlaced cello, saxophone, turntable, and electronics, Archie Pelago’s music relies on some serious technological savvy. To be sure, all you really need to play instruments and computers and turntables together is to get into a room and start jamming. But to realize their specific musical vision, the trio of Hirshi, Cosmo D and Kroba have turned to an advanced Ableton Live rig, centered around The Bridge to couple Serato and Live. Here’s a look at their music – and all the gory details that combine to make their setup tick.

Grab the free EP for some music:

END004: Shrinin EP by Archie Pelago by end fence

To be honest, after a lot of launch hype, it hasn’t always been easy anecdotally speaking to find a lot of people using The Bridge. The software, combining Ableton’s clip-launching facilities with Serato’s digital DJ setup, perhaps demands a lot conceptually and musically of its users. But boy, are these three using it – and pushing its envelope to the breaking point. I caught up with virtuoso cellist and technologist Greg Heffernan (Cosmo D) at the lovely Percussion Lab party in New York. Greg sends a full description on how the setup works technically, as he originally wrote for the folks at Ableton (who I imagine were quite interested). There’s a lot to follow, so happily, there’s a gear diagram, as well:

To start, there are three of us. I play cello, Zach ‘Kroba’ Koeber plays saxophone and Dan ‘Hirshi’ Hirshorn is on two turntables + mixer. We play our instruments into and alongside Ableton, recording, manipulating and effecting our sounds on-the-fly. Dan provides the rhythmic foundation for our music and because of The Bridge, all of us are in sync with each other.

I’m running my cello into a MOTU Ultralite Mk3 Firewire interface, which is connected to my MacBook Pro running Ableton and Serato simultaneously. I use a Behringer FCB1010 foot pedal (connected via an M-Audio UNO [MIDI] interface into my computer) to record clips of my cello playing, cue effects and generally navigate around the Session View of Ableton. I record my cello live into the Session View as clips, then run these clips through an effects chain on an effects rack. I then use the two expression pedals on the FCB1010 to crossfade between my ‘dry’ cello sound into an effected sound. The effects are controlled with two Korg Nano Kontrols situated below my laptop. I also use a Korg nanoPAD to play sampled clips of various found audio.

Zach’s setup mirrors mine, to an extent. Using a mic to capture his live sax sound, he runs his signal into a Tascam US100 [audio] interface which goes his computer running Live. He uses his FCB1010 to capture and record clips of his own, alongside a Korg nanoKONTROL to control effects. The reason why we chose the FCB1010 and the Korg nanoKONTROL is because they’re relatively inexpensive, easy to carry around the city and on the subway, and have a lot of buttons, knobs and faders for their size. Zach’s computer is connected to mine via an Ethernet cable and his Live set is slaved to mine via Midi Sync, so we’re always locked in the groove together.

The linchpin of this whole setup, however, is Serato and The Bridge. In addition to my running Ableton, I have Serato running via a Rane SL1 [mixer] also connected to my laptop. Coming out of my laptop is a cable going into an external monitor. Dan uses this monitor to display Serato, enabling him to do what he does with his two turn tables, Serato control vinyls, and his Behringer DJ Mixer. Because of the Bridge, my Ableton rig is locked in with whatever he’s spinning, whether it be our original dubs or tunes that inspire us. With everything sync’d up, Zach and I, through our instruments and software, react musically and rhythmically to Dan’s DJing. Dan, via the effects on his mixer and control of his vinyl, reacts musically to us as well.

In terms of audio routing, my audio and Zach’s audio are running into Dan’s mixer, so he’s mixing our sounds as much as he’s controlling Serato.

The Gear

Cosmo D:
1 cello
1 MacBook Pro 13″
MOTU UltraLive Mk3 Firewire Interface
2 Korg nanoKONTROLs
1 Korg nanoPAD
1 Behringer FCB1010

Zach:

1 saxophone
1 MacBook Pro 15″
1 Tascam US100 interface
1 Korg nanoKONTROL
1 Behringer FCB1010

Dan:

1 Rane SL1 DJ Interface
1 Behringer DJX750 DJ Mixer
1 Dell 17″ Flatscreen Computer Monitor
2 Turntables (Technics SL 12000)
2 Custom needles.

Lots of cables.

In Videos

New York public radio station WNYU hosted the trio on their program Table Tennis. Three highlight excerpts below, followed by the full program for those of you who want it:

For those of you who aren’t quite ready to leap into The Bridge yet, but do want to loop your instrument, here’s a great place to start. Cosmo D talks about his live looping process in Ableton Live, at the site Bangbang.

And in an interesting way of visually interpreting their music, dancer Genna Baroni choreographs a dance to a track from the trio’s Chocolate Waveplates EP in a music video:

There – now no one has any excuse for not dancing at an Archie Pelago jam. The setting and videography is pretty informal, but it’s nice to see movement as a way of interpreting music.

Music:
Chocolate Waveplates EP Sampler [Slime Recordings] by Archie Pelago

And lastly, a live show from earlier this year at Glasslands in Brooklyn.

Official site:
http://archiepelago.com/

Touchscreens? Good, old-fashioned faders, knobs, and pads? Why not just use what suits the job – especially when you can choose both on the cheap?

Nay-Seven shares some of his latest work with Usine, the brilliant, modular and touch-centric tool for Windows. It’s a futuristic rig that’s also down-to-earth. Touchscreen monitors can be had for around US$300 street, and the Akai LPD8 and Korg nanoKONTROL controllers each figure under a hundred bucks. Usine, the software, is a bargain for its depth at EUR120, and free and educational versions are available.

Cost aside, though, this also puts sound making directly under your fingertips. Even aside from live performance, that means making sound kinetic — essential in the studio, too.

I asked Nay-Seven to comment on how he’d thought through this particular set of controllers – coming just as we cover the work done on grid-based sample control with mlrv2 and fader-based control in Max for Live:

Yeah, was funny to see your article at the same time I was working on this video..

My actual reflection is about the best place of a touchscreen in a set. And I join you in the idea that software has added a layer to the hardware.

Here, I use the LPD8 and the nanoKONTROL as an instrument, because we all prefer to use real pads and push-buttons to play, but it’s so fantastic to customize those tools to our own needs. And it’s more and more easy and quick. I’m using here the next version of Usine (it will be public soon), which adds polyphony in sub-patches. You create a sampler with the switch, add the buttons you need, change the polyphony of this patch to 5 and it’s done — you have a 5-voice polyphonic sampler !

I suppose the future will be a balance of all this, some customizable tools for users, more and more easy-to-use, real pads, keys, and faders so we can feel our musical expression, and a touchscreen to provide new tools like graphics and physical models.

Heaven, in fact.

More from the video description:

Here’s a work where I use the sequencer of Usine not to sequence audio or midi but patches: patches appear only when I need them, an easy way to have only the controls you need on the screen. I also associate here works with faders and pads via personal patches for [Akai's] LPD8 and [Korg's] nanoKONTROL and the use of a touchscreen . Made with Usine ( sensomusic.com ) thanks also to Michael Ourednik for his great vst Argotlunar

Note: Argotluner is free and open source (GPL) and has both a Windows and Linux (32-bit + 64-bit) build. Someone could build it for Mac, too.

nay-seven also uploads some patch images, so I’ve included those here. The granular patch, top, controls Argotluner. LPD8 and nanoKONTROL patches, bottom, connect to hardware (see callouts on the Korg image).

All images courtesy Nay-Seven – be sure to check out his excellent Flickr account.

Bonus: here’s a nice video demonstrating the touch side of things, posted in September.

How do you allow musical ideas to flower – technically, creatively, and when finding your musical voice? The floral images reflected in visuals and sound in Christopher Willits’ “Tiger Flower Circle Sun” are evocative imagery, but also an apt metaphor for Willits’ artistic process.

The composer and artist spins unique, organic ambient worlds with layers of sound and pattern, transforming the timbres of his guitar. He’s also known for making custom software to craft his results, a prolific patcher in Max/MSP with a regular series on Ableton Live, Max, Max for Live, guitar recording, touring, and other topics translated to friendly how-tos on XLR8R TV.

I got a chance to talk to Christopher about the technical and inspirational alike, reflecting on the new record.

PK: Let’s talk a bit about your approach to production as a guitarist. Part of what I love about your work, live and in the studio, is the way in which the instrument is interwoven with the music. In this album, what’s the relationship of the input to output? How much is live playing; how much is after-the-fact production work?

CW: When I’m developing new ideas, I’m always playing guitar and processing it, and recording it out … then I either let it be as-is, or develop it further. It’s like throwing out all of these seeds. Some grow into things and others decompose back into the soil and help the others along in a less direct way.

I have no expectation about where things will go when I’m in the experimenting / play phase of working. Sometimes I don’t even know that I’m in it. I’m just playing guitar and then something will stick and begin to resonate.

All of these pieces began through this method. None of the guitars that you hear have been processed after-the-fact; it’s all a live, in-the-moment process of recording the guitars through software. I want the life of those recordings shining through, [rather than it being] overworked.

As far as the guitar itself, any comments on tuning, timbre, and how you handle the instrument itself?

Pretty straight up, standard tuning, A 440. I used my strat mostly and baritone for some depth here and there.

Naturally, I’m interested in your software creations for this record, as you’ve been a vocal advocate of Max patching. What sorts of contraptions are involved here? New Max patches? Using Max standalone, Max for Live, or a combination?

Most of the processed guitars were created before I dug into Max for Live. So these processing patterns were developed through plug-ins I made with Max that I use with Ableton Live, as my mixer and sequencer / workstation.

Just to pull something out timbrally – “Heart Connects to Head” nicely represents some of the juxtoposition of organic and electronic sounds for me, in particular the synth arpeggio with percussion. Can you share some of your sound sources here, or in general how you view the ensemble?

That synth was Operator in Ableton Live, being played by my guitar with a MIDI pickup, an Arpeggiator MIDI effect on it, while the guitar output was running through some spectral smashing-ness.

So the bass synth, and chords are all recorded live in one flow, the guitar triggering the bass and the processed string vibrations together.

There’s a lot of microsampling going on, and percussive elements. Is this reflected in the software? How do you conceive the rhythmic activities of the record?

Some of it is from the Max plugs processing shards of guitar; others are recordings that I made — I EQ’d [them] and adjusted the envelopes into percussive ticks that occupied the right space for the music.

The percussive elements created spinning wheels, often in different directions from other melodic elements. These events for me create an opening into the patterns. Even the simplest triple click low in the mix can rotate and open up more surfaces to feel.

A couple of the tracks seem to burst into vocals; can you talk about what motivated these differently?

I was not attached to any sonic outcome with this record, and there was no plan to even use vocals, but at certain times i heard these big words, multiple people singing them. And it was really important to me that more than two people were singing these parts.

There’s a liquid sense of tonality to me, a sense of harmonic freedom. Can you talk about your harmonic influences, and how these evolve in these tracks compositionally?

The creative process is mysterious, but I know it does require devotion and love and time, and surrendering control. I feel like the music tells me what to do. I follow my intuition and the music either embraces it or challenges the adjustments / additions / subtractions. It’s an amazing process for me; nothing short of magic, really. With an intention and with some focus, love, and time. these things grow. The harmonic vibrations attract other vibrations and the flow keeps flowing.

Maybe my influences come out in this process, but that is never intentional. There is music I love — like Coltrane, Hendrix, Stereolab, Tortoise, Sun Ra, Steve Reich, Yoruba Andabo — that I can hear relationships to.

Obviously, you work a lot with visual imagery in your work and in your performance, and there are some evocative titles in the tracks and the album itself. Did specific visual images feed into your musical conceptions here?

Yes, definitely — images that were woven into imagining and intuiting what the music was opening up to. I’ve been shooting tons of video and composing video pieces for these sounds. Throughout the rest of the year, I’ll be releasing these videos.

The lastest is for “Flowers Into Stardust.”

nowness.com featured it recently and it’s on my YouTube channel.

What does your hardware rig look like in preparing for this album? What’s your software rig?

Adam at Guitar Geek did a pretty good job last year detailing my hardware setup. it has changed a little, but this is a good overview.

guitargeek | Christopher Willits

Software modules I’m designing, now in Max for Live, are mostly time domain-folding plugs. Sound is recorded in and I index to different locations using delays, jump-cutting buffers, and granular techniques. I also work on weird spectral morphs with convolution techniques, brittle odd and even-harmonic distortion, and different MIDI input from the guitar to alter filtration settings. These seem to be the processing machines that I’m always gravitating towards.

I used these plugs in about 12 audio tracks with input-only monitoring, with both dry guitar input and looped guitar, fed via return tracks. I then added extra tracks in Live for percussion recording and sequencing, vocal recording, baritone, synths, etc.

How will you adapt the hardware/software setup for this material for live performance?

The system i use live is very similar to the recording setup, but without the extra tracks for supporting instruments.
The hardware setup will be scaled down for easier traveling.

For live shows right now I’m using:

MacBook Pro
MOTU UltraLite [audio interface]
iPad (for video control)
monome for improvised pattern sequencing
[M-Audio] Trigger Finger (for processing details)
Doepfer Pocket Fader (for controlling processing tracks)
Guitar + Line 6 Pocket Pod, or Korg Pandora (Still in a shoot out for small pre to take; I keep changing my mind)
Diamond compressor
Customized Big Muff (analog distortion)
[Behringer] FCB 1010 when I’m sitting in a chair or standing up while playing.

I’m experimenting a lot with sitting down and standing up in the last few years. Both feel good for different situations.

Some of the material I can play solo; other tracks need the stacked vocals and other elements, so I’ll wait until a band tour is dialed in for that. I’m really interested in playing with percussion lately. I either meet up with different percussionists, bring friends along, recruit audience members, or all of the above. In the last performance I had at twin space in san francisco, [I brought in] eleven audience members.

How do you see this album fitting in with your previous work?

I feel this album is a natural progression from everything I’ve been doing. That growth is not a linear. I’m more interested in creating a bunch of supporting branches of art flowing in a similar direction, rather than one main limb with only a few flowers.

TFCS brings together all of the sounds that I love into one statement, perhaps the most concise that I have made yet. And the really fun thing for me to think about is that I feel like I am just now beginning. After ten years of making records as a solo artist and in collaboration with some of my best friends, I’ve really honed my voice and focus and I can only imagine what the next 10 years is going to bring.

For more information

http://ghostly.com/artists/christopher-willits
http://ghostly.com/releases/tiger-flower-circle-sun
http://christopherwillits.com/

Listen: Christopher has a fantastic, exclusive, free set available via our friends at Percussion Lab. It’s a good taste of what’s on the album:
Christopher Willits Live on Earth Exclusive Mix

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…

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]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/07/video-gallery-live-acts-live-electronic-performance-done-right/feed/ 70 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/10/idm-operating-system-proems-pc-fruity-loops-tablet-controller-setup/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/10/idm-operating-system-proems-pc-fruity-loops-tablet-controller-setup/#comments Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:13:32 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/10/01/idm-operating-system-proems-pc-fruity-loops-tablet-controller-setup/ Continue →]]>

Hardware is wonderful, but make no mistake about it: many musicians have put the same care and musical love into their software setup as once was limited to tangled guitar pedal rigs. We’ve been watching as intricate computer music studios appear in the CDM Flickr pool.

proem, the gifted electronic musician from Austin, Texas (see Wikipedia, proem’s own site) who regular shares haiku-like reflections in CDM comments, is the latest to post his setup:

• Dual Dell e207 LCD displays
• Windows PC
• FL Studio (aka Fruity Loops), with a custom dashboard for controlling all the hardware and a modded install
• Native Instruments Komplete
• Evolution MK249-c keyboard (Evolution was a UK-based keyboard maker later absorbed by M-Audio)
• M-Audio Trigger Finger
• Wacom Intuos3 6×8 (just picked up the same tablet myself and adore it — mouse, begone!)
• The now-discontinued (sadly) Fingerworks iGesture multi-touch controller. Apple iGuesture any time soon, perhaps? (I’ve heard rumors from a couple of sources that they bought the patents.)
• The not-discontinued Shuttle XPress
• Tablet2MIDI, which translates Wacom graphics tablets to MIDI data for use in performance

proem: midi control over load. this does not include the setups for the p5 glove or my mk-249c keyboard controller. i should probably aslo note that tablet2midi is still in beta and i have to set it up everytime i want to use it
check the 3200×1200 version for good detail.

Whereas hardware fetishists brag about heavy, costly gear collections, the software setup has more to do with clever configuration and control. (Hey, I’m not saying I don’t drool over, say, some of the live rigs we’ve diagrammed in Keyboard Magazine, but the fact that you can afford and lift a great PC setup is encouraging.)

proem writes: flstudio dashboard internal controllers which are all mapped directly to the controller hardware [mk249c, maudio trigger finger and tablet2midi]

Custom performance setups are definitely where it’s at. FL Studio has Dashboards, Reason has the Combinator, Logic Studio 8 has the new OnStage, Live has Racks, Reaktor has — well, completely custom interfaces, Max 5 promises new performance interfaces, and Native Instruments has Kore. (Just to name a few; SONAR, Cubase, and DP all have custom dashboards with branding I’m presently forgetting.) The basic idea: build a virtual front-panel so you can get right to music making. I personally think it’s interesting all these applications have moved in this direction, with different implementations / design principles. I hope they all continue to go further.

The Tablet2MIDI part is especially interesting. Tablets have unusually high resolution and sensitivity, making them very expressive controllers once you’ve practiced using them. Also on Windows: WMIDI. If you’re on the Mac instead of Windows, you have an excellent (and slightly more polished/stable) alternative, µ midi controller from Music Unfolding. And naturally, on any OS, you can custom-program or patch a solution with Max, Pd, and so on. But this, combined with all the X/Y control, makes for a beautiful set of tools for controlling sound. I’d love to see it in action, proem!

I’ve finally gotten a better tablet myself, a shiny, new, 6×8 Intuos from Wacom. That’s a good thing, because the cheap 4×5 Wacom I had previously first made me feel like I had somehow disconnected my hand from my brain (a combination of the smaller area, lower resolution, and challenge of using tablets in general), then promptly stopped working altogether. I’ll be trying out the Wacom on Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu Linux, and working on hooking it up to Java and Processing, so stay tuned.

Previously:

Flickr Screen Grabs: Infinite Video Theremin, Odd, Free Musical Interfaces

Soft Flickr Finds: Obscenely Complex Bass Effects on a Single Channel

Use Graphics Tablets for Music: New and Updated Software, Free Tablet Theremin

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]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/10/idm-operating-system-proems-pc-fruity-loops-tablet-controller-setup/feed/ 16 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/05/maker-faire-musical-performance-rigs-with-theremins-hacks-and-homemade-gear/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/05/maker-faire-musical-performance-rigs-with-theremins-hacks-and-homemade-gear/#comments Wed, 23 May 2007 17:08:13 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/05/23/maker-faire-musical-performance-rigs-with-theremins-hacks-and-homemade-gear/ Continue →]]>

Barney the Theremin Wizard’s home-built Theremin, as an electrical engineer, from a vintage training film, looks on.

DIY music can be as much about attitude as specific gear. We had performances Friday and Saturday night during the Maker Faire, and while the performances covered quite a gamut, a common theme was finding new ways of playing old instruments, or to make new instruments out of existing stuff. That’s something not unique to anyone genre — electronic music included — so perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising at all.

Friday night was a Maker Faire “edition” of the regular Robotspeak Sessions electronic music night. The venue is an incredibly cool little electronic music store on lower Haight. Imagine a dream store filled with both vintage gear and the newest stuff, and you’ve got Robotspeak; it’s unreal. Saturday night was the Maker Faire “Chips + Music + Fish after party”, which I planned with the help of Make Magazine’s Paul Spinrad. It turned out to be just as insane as I thought trying to run an event in the middle of Maker Faire, but we had some terrific artists. (And yes, the fish and chips turned out to be the greasiest thing I’ve ever eaten, but tasty!) The venue was a wonderfully quirky place called Edinburgh Castle, and the best part of the evening for me was that we ran into one of the members of a great band called Echodrone that happened to have a projector. He was playing vintage training films on electricity, which we got to watch run behind Barney’s massive home-built Theremin. (See above.)

I don’t believe music should be about gear (surprising as that may be given the site I run), but I do believe you can tell a lot just by looking at the tools musicians choose. Here’s an overview of the artists we encountered.

Barney’s stuff is truly a celebration of electricity itself.

Barney the Theremin Wizard was a fabulously far-out Theremin player, sculpting ear-splitting soundscapes from home-built Theremins and other gear. (His friend leaned over to me and noted that, even though the sometimes-violent sound worlds sound improvised, each is carefully composed in Barney’s musical mind.) Barney’s rig was probably the closest to the Make ethos, composed almost entirely of home-built gear — a giant Theremin case, plus enough mysterious effects, amps, and speakers to fill my rented Toyota Corolla. Think hard-metal/experimental Theremin rather than classical, but still gorgeous stuff. Check out his MySpace page, with great titles like “When Nerds Collide.”

Pineresin at Edinburgh Castle, armed with as much acoustic soundmaking gear as electronic.

Pineresin is a new trio performing experimental ambient textures, or, as they described it Friday night, music produced by recording analog sounds (drum kit, etc.) and “f***ing it up.” They’ve got a sharp ear for timbre, and though the group just formed, by Saturday they were already really nailing a unique sound. And anything that can bring in bowed percussion always makes me happy. Mmmm … bowed percussion. (I’ve been messing with modeling that in physical-modeling software, having composed for instrumentalists in the past, but that’s another story …)

Drew shares their rig:

drew – i run a 12 channel mackie onyx mixer with efx loops going out to a moog analog delay pedal, a dl-4 delay, and a total sonic annihilation pedal.

i mix jesse’s four live drum mics, carson’s stereo input, my computer input (G4 laptop running ableton live, and NI B4II), and the delay returns. stereo output goes to the house.

carson – takes his own mic feed from the drums, plays prepared dulcimer, russian folk harp, traveler guitar and uses lafayette echoverb, univox tape echo, electro harmonix big muff, G4 laptop running ableton live for resampling and throughput

jesse – marimba, bowed vibraphone, cup gongs, waterphone. kick and tom, snare, cymbal

Yep, their MySpace page says “ambient / experimental / other.” I’m not a big one for labels, but that actually gets you in the ballpark.

And who says “electronic music” can’t involve marimba?

Marimba + electronics, as Pineresin plays Robotspeak. Photo by Donald Bell (aka Chachi Jones), via Flickr.

Chachi Jones, running simultaneous live visuals in Quartz Composer with a sprawling electronic music rig, at Robotspeak.

Chachi Jones is a versatile musician with lots of smart beats at his command, and he’s always capable of delivering a real live, Live set. Ableton Live is a favorite tool for DIYers, with good reason, I think. It can sit in the center of a complex setup of DIY hardware and/or software and synths and keep the performance going. Chachi Jones is a real virtuoso with Live, and true to form did a fully Make-friendly set that brought in all sorts of wild sounds (hello, egg whisk on heat sink!) and simultaneous live visuals. He describes his rig:

TR 606, TB 303, portable turntable — all run directly into my mixer with a little reverb on the sends
Macbook running Ableton Live and Quartz composer (patch was a modified version of a patch called Audioskop, I didn’t make the original, but I forget who did)
Presonus Firebox
Old Mac G4 heatsink with contact mic running into a channel in Ableton Live with Resonator effect which was controlled by a series of dummy clips with follow actions
Circuit-bent Texas Instruments Touch & Tell running into a channel in Live with lots of effects and a series of Beat Repeats used as loopers and auto choppers.

Check out Chachi’s full-blown, serious site for more on his work. I’m really loving the latest CD; been playing it a bit.

Some of Chachi’s toys.

I unfortunately only caught the first few minutes of Dedalus’ set, because I had to run to get my car out of garage before it closed at midnight. (Yeah, I’m not so hot at this whole “car” thing, I’m afraid. Maybe I should start traveling with a bike.) His stuff was absolutely brilliant, though, full of colliding rhythms and fantastic sounds, so I’ll have to go catch more. And he’s got this great, Monome-like wooden button box, as photographed by Chachi, which is inscribed “designed by tehn.” Any enclosure with prominent masking tape is a good thing. I expect we’ll see more stuff like this once the Monome kit comes out; more on that soon.

(tehn, FYI, = Brian Crabtree, = designer of the Monome.)

Box o’ buttons; photo by Chachi Jones at Robotspeak.

Starpause is a terrific tracker/game musician, powered by a Game Park (Linux-OS) mobile game system running LittleGPTracker, also known as “Piggy Tracker.” He really got the crowd going — in contrast to the usually introverted electronic musician or gaming player, he dropped his normally-quiet facade and danced around with his player, finishing his set on the floor. He said he was disappointed no one danced, but after Maker Faire some of us could barely stand — it was still a hit. Check out his official site for details on his net radio label(s) and plenty of downloadable MP3s.

Me. I don’t always hunch like that. But I had a really great time playing. Photo by Chachi Jones.

Okay, I’ll talk my rig, too, since people have been asking. My core, don’t-leave-home-without-it setup has become a MacBook running Ableton Live, a Novation ReMOTE SL keyboard (which is both fun to play as a keyboard and controls Live via Automap), and a Focusrite Saffire audio interface. They’ve just been really solid, so from there I can add other toys. In this case, that involved simultaneously running Resolume for visuals on my Toshiba laptop. But then I can bring in other possibilities, and I’m particularly interested in integrating custom Flash programming with Resolume and Max/MSP stuff with Live. I dialed back on this set, though, just because I felt like having a more quiet evening.

The photo to me is very funny, because I had felt in a couple of recent gigs like I was getting emotionally disconnected from my keyboard, so I put it on my lap, which makes me look like a shy boy hiding in a corner in the photos! I’m still a pianist at heart, so whatever alternative interfaces I may espouse, if I don’t feel that connection as a musician, it doesn’t work for me. But yes, that is me playing the Novation using a MagLite as a drum stick, filming the light using a webcam. Didn’t set out to that, but enjoyed it.

I also got to do some stuff with live camera into Resolume, intentionally abstracting the visuals. Resolume has likewise been truly rock-solid, which means it’s definitely staying in my rig (even if I sometimes swap to Mac and VDMX5). More on that over on Motion soon.

I suppose there wasn’t a “Make” component to my set, per se, but it’s also important to me personally to limit some of the tools at my disposal so I can focus on the performance. It’ll be a completely different set tonight here in New York.

Another photo by Chachi. (Didn’t really have a hand free at this point!)

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. And I’m glad we did the after-hours element, as well; I hope we’ll get to do more Make-themed events in future like this! We won’t be limited to NYC and Bay Area, either; stay tuned.

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]]> http://createdigitalmusic.com/2007/05/maker-faire-musical-performance-rigs-with-theremins-hacks-and-homemade-gear/feed/ 7 http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/06/build-a-gigging-small-form-factor-pc-for-music-how-to-and-why/ http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/06/build-a-gigging-small-form-factor-pc-for-music-how-to-and-why/#comments Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:54:31 +0000 Peter Kirn http://createdigitalmusic.com/2006/06/29/build-a-gigging-small-form-factor-pc-for-music-how-to-and-why/ Continue →]]>

If I can do it, you can do it. Over on the just-launched Create Digital Motion, I describe assembling a custom PC from a barebones Shuttle case, with photos of each step. To keep that from getting boring, I dropped it all into the fantastic plasq app Comic Life to make it into a how-to comic:

Building a Portable SFF PC for Live Visuals, Music Gigs: Part 1, Assembly in Comic Book Form

As you’ll see, there’s not much to it. Shuttle already includes the motherboard and cables; it’s BYO processor, storage, and graphics. But those options alone can give you a lot of flexibility you don’t get from pre-built systems.

We’ve talked a lot about options for gigging with computers on this site. Laptops remain the most portable alternative by far, of course, and they’ve gotten very powerful. As I noted for Macworld, the MacBook Pro can keep pace with even my dual-2.5GHz G5. So why have I suddenly shifted gears and built a desktop form factor PC? One major reason is the ability to have an upgradeable video card for gigs, which is why the story is on CDMotion rather than here. Sure, Apple will ship a competent ATI Radeon Mobility X1600, but you have to splurge on the Pro rather than the MacBook, there’s only one card with one output, and it’s not upgradeable.

Video aside, there are plenty of reasons mainstream audio users might consider a desktop form factor machine for music production:

1. Price and upgradeability: Desktop machines still cost less at time of purchase, and (on the PC) even less over time thanks to upgradeable components.


2. PCI expansion: Just as I wanted PCI slots for my video work, you might want to be able to move PCI-based audio cards and DSP cards out of your studio. There are some options, like the TC Electronic PowerCore’s mobile FireWire DSP hardware, which totes nicely with your laptop. But if you’ve invested in PCI cards, you might like a lightweight desktop that goes where you go.


3. Storage: 7200 rpm drives are a must for multitrack recording, and RAID arrays give you the option to either have redundant storage (RAID 1 or “mirrored”, so that if one drive fails, the other retains your data), or faster performance (RAID 0 aka “striped”). It’s possible to custom-configure laptops with 7200 rpm drives or even fast 5400 rpm drives, and you can now buy external RAID arrays or cheap backup drives. But PCs make these options much cheaper. (Note that my Shuttle PC features a more-common “software” RAID, which uses a combination of a hardware controller and special software drivers to run the RAID; it’s not quite as reliable or fast as a true dedicated hardware RAID, but it also saves a lot of money and doesn’t require an extra PCI-x slot. And it works, with some caveats I’ll talk about later …)

I still expect laptops will be the best option for most users, but small desktops remain an option worth considering, especially if you’re not allergic to Linux and Windows or if you already have a decent laptop and want a second machine.

Now, what about small form factor (SFF) PCs versus rack-rig PCs and Macs, as covered previously? For me, it ultimately came down to a question of just how portable this rig was going to be. I need to be able to get on planes and trains with my setup, and a full rack is just way too much for a shrimpy guy with no car to lug. There’s also not much need for me to put stuff in a rack. Most of what I use runs in software, and keyboards are too long to fit. The Shuttles are really, really small — more on that, and how this setup fits in Shuttle’s custom carry-on luggage, coming soon.

In the meantime, enjoy the assembly comic, and if you’ve never considered building a custom PC before, do let me know your impressions.

Jan Namecek has a setup that looks quite similar to Fran’s. He writes:

Just answering your call and showing my (temporary) crib. I’ve been recently given keys to a flat so I’ve moved some of my basic stuff there so I can prepare my live set for this year’s Exit festival in Novi Sad (see www.exitfest.org).

This is pretty challenging ’cause I use some (big) hardware synthesizers so it’s pretty refreshing to let it all and go software (at least for a while). My regular gear includes Hartmann Neuron, Access Virus TI Polar, Nord Lead 3, Nord Electro, Dual 2.7 G5, etc… Full list at my website

As you can see, it’s only a MacBook Pro and some basic MIDI controlling (not shown is the Evolution two octave MIDI thing and a LaCie hard drive). Also, it’s much messier than the previous setup you posted (you can’t have all, right). Software-wise, there’s Ableton Live 5.2, Logic Pro 7.2 and a few software instruments (sadly, not much of my stuff is Universal).

I’ve been using a similar setup (well, plus the keyboards) to perform live recently. The whole concert should be released (along with 5.1 mix of it and my previous albums) on a multimedia DVD end of this year. Some pics from the concert are here:
http://www.jannemecek.net/photo/01-dob20060414/

Currently, stuff worth noting is my minimal techno remix of Marko Nastic’s track “U are the reason” out digitally and my space/dark ambient/whatever album “Through the planetary Void” also available digitally (also on iTunes).

More info, full kit list and some music available at www.jannemecek.net

Jan isn’t alone. Marco Raaphorst, aka Melodiefabriek, has a well-reasoned rant about focusing on music making rather than assuming two years in a studio will be a smart investment. Note the shot of his own minimal laptop studio setup. Marco is the creator of the awesome Maelstrom graintable instrument in Reason and plenty of Reason patches, so if anyone can give you good reasons to focus on sounds from your laptop, this is the guy. Now, it seems a little unfair to blame studios for the fact that pop music has all the life violently compressed out of it, but I’m all for arguing that music can be made anywhere. (There is something magical about big studios, too, which is why you shouldn’t compress your music so much that it sounds like crap.)

But back to pissing contests . . . here, I’ve been challenged to just such a contest, and I’m doing nothing but procrastinate. Tom from Music thing has posted his office, with a healthy set of gear set up. Actually, it isn’t quite maximalist; it looks like just the right amount of gear to get some work done, just what I’d expect from Tom. Meanwhile, Chris from Analog Industries just wants to show us expensive things on racks we can’t afford.

So, I assure you, I will post my studio soon. I’m cleaning and reconfiguring now, and unfortunately caught what’s starting to feel like bronchitis. (I’m hoping the two were coincidental.) Like everything I do, it’ll be late, but I’ll get it done.

Got any more studios, minimalist or maximalist, to show?