It’s the little things that keep you happy sometimes. The Sunday Soundtrack blog has an interesting idea for tracking work on the MPC — write it down. (I have to say, I miss having paper notes as I did when I was making hard-copy patch diagrams of my Moog and Buchla modular creations in college.) This fellow has a printable template you can use yourself if so inclined – and, of course, it’d work with any 4×4 grid, not just the MPC.
Keep anything on paper in the studio yourself – music notation? Lyrics? To-do lists? MIDI maps? Doodles of made-up creatures to keep you company? I’d love to hear how you work.
Elijah B Torn was introduced to me at the Warper Party. Apologies to Elijah, but the gimmick was a microcontroller-manipulated light bulb. “Hey, come downstairs, you’ve got to see this guy — he’s got a lightbulb that flashes in time to the music!” Actually, maybe that’s perfectly appropriate: crowded on our feet in front of Elijah on his laptop, everyone stared into his bright, blinking lightbulb, like a uniquely retro rave. Elijah’s music can lend itself to that.
If there are any doubts about this connection we like to talk about between handmade music and handmade other things, here’s Elijah’s work used as the soundtrack to British artist Julia Pott for one of Etsy’s Handmade Portraits. (Warning: Julia has an animation of animals talking about their crushes; my guess is that you, man, woman, straight, or gay, may be crushing on Ms. Pott by the time you’re done with the video.) It’s funny to hear Julia talk about introducing the human hand into her art as Elijah’s electronic sounds echo in the background, but by coincidence, I think some of what Elijah’s doing is about keeping an organic element in sounds.
Elijah has just assembled a video showing off the techniques he’s put together for his new album, “You Are Lucky I am Not a Vigilante.” As seen at top, Elijah narrates it as though he’s a malfunctioning android. There are plenty of weird and wonderful sounds in there, partly through some abuse of Live clips. I asked him to share some more details of what he was doing, and got this semi-cheeky response. Some techniques will be very familiar to long-time Live users, but may have a twist on them that fits Elijah’s personal style; others may be new (click images for larger versions):
A lot of people now split their recording time between on-location and studios, which for many people means buying two separate audio interfaces. Also, despite the fact that their needs are simple, they often wind up with interfaces that either don’t do quite what they need or, at the opposite extreme, are complete overkill. That’s why Mackie’s new Satellite Firewire Recording System looks appealing. It was introduced at NAMM in January, but it’s now available with a really low price: US$519.99 retail.
Here’s the idea: the interface is split into a docking station and mobile FireWire interface, so you can eliminate cable replugging and carry only what you need.
This week's Gizmodo installment from me highlights the Smart AV console,
the intelligent control surface shown at AES and appearing again next
month at NAMM. If you haven't seen this yet, it's a futuristic computer DAW control surface that uses touch-sensitive and
light-sensitive surfaces to allow a limited number of physical channel
strips to virtually access many more. The inventor is a former
magician. Sure, it costs up to $150,000. But it's also a marvel of
interface design, worth observing for anyone working with interactivity
and control surfaces or just interested in a glimpse of the future. See
the Gizmodo story for more details.
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