Mouse on Mars’ Parastrophics for Monkeytown has been an early highlight of the year, a record packed with musical ideas in densely-configured arrays of sound. The duo is now taking that music on the road, in ambitious, improvisatory live performances.

Perhaps all of this can be summed up in one word: energy. Their studio and its arrangements of objects has an energy, an energy that’s present in the craft in the record. And talking to the artists, you get a sense of energy, of enthusiasm, crackling away like an amped-up oscillator.

It was therefore a pleasure to get to hear some of the thought and philosophy that produces all that musical energy. Jan Werner talks to CDM about how he and Mouse on Mars think about sound, melody, and the act of listening – and why he hopes people will find a way to listen to this record actively. I was glad to convince Jan to put this into written words, because they take on a dynamic of their own. I overuse the word poetic, but I find what he says poetic and provocative, in how I think of my music as well as his. And unlike a live interview, here those answers had some time to simmer.

It’s fitting to place those words amidst images of the workspace, their studio deep in Berlin’s Funkhaus facility. Against that backdrop, here’s what Jan has to say about music:

CDM: What does your studio setup, and all of this tactile, traditional hardware, mean in your music making? Obviously, sound is important, but apart from sound, what does it mean for you to be in that place and surrounded with those particular objects?

Jan: Our studio is very important to us, because it acts as a workspace as much as a hideout, an archive, and a rehearsal space. Still, we would pretend that we could make music anywhere and even without any electronic tools, if necessary. Maybe this gesture of personal freedom provides us with the artistic freedom to change things at any given
time, in any given direction, and be at ease with our complicated digital protheses.

We collected quite a bit of hardware over the years, too, without becoming collectors, and we are very keen on software applications, plug-ins, Max patches, etc. We like to use as many different sound sources as possible, and then go for the challenge of bringing all these elements together as one consistent idea of music.

You speak articulately about the idea of listening. What did listening mean in the making of the record? How would you like people to listen to the album – or how do you listen to music, when you wish to focus on it?

Listening can happen in any situation that allows your brain to adjust to acoustic sensations in a non-judgmental way. By non-judgmental, I mean taking the sounds for what they are, and not using them as vehicles for pre-set intentions. Also, active listening does not mean to identify and understand a sound’s origin, but to let the idea of what a sound can be in itself evolve to a possible maximum. This maximum of what a sound can become surely depends on your experience, attention, interest, ambition, fantasy, physical condition, etc.

We’re all limited and skilled at the same time, and that’s what makes a difference in how sound appears to us. You could say that ideal listening would be listening without prejudices and even without expectations. But here, a paradox kicks in, because without any preparation or expectation, you might not even be aware of listening to something. Music is a great tool to avoid this paradox, because it attracts a listener’s attention, draws the focus away from the purely physical origin of a sound, but opens up to a vast field of references and emotional and rational responses.

Music, as such, has no purpose, and does not make sense other than offering more or less appealing arrangements of frequencies. The problem is that this definition, which lies within the nature of music, can easily be covered by propagandistic intentions, coming in the form of lyrics, performances, visual stimulations, etc. Blindfolding is not the answer, because all our senses take part in making sense of listening.

I got to see your live performance at Berghain, though admittedly, being in the back of the space I could only listen and couldn’t always see. What I felt was a sense of fresh energy, that this was indeed something new and spontaneous. How are you adapting the studio album to live performance? What elements do you maintain live, versus those that must be prepared in advance? What did you find as you tried that in that first performance?

Each concert is different, and we usually pretend that we don’t care about an upcoming performance as much as we consider all of them to be our first ever performances.

Berghain went well, because the setting up during the day was relaxed, the crew was great, the sound was superb and the atmosphere in the room was concentrated. We also premiered our new visual show, which our long-time friend Karl Kliem had put together, and we were glad that it worked out well.

During a show, we play parts that we’ve rehearsed in the studio. We throw in samples and pre-recorded elements, but also sample on the spot, and use each other as sound sources. Most of the sounds are synthetic and use software to produce and manipulate sound. We play and modulate synthetic sequences a lot, use plug-ins to manipulate and shred sounds or song elements, and add new and unexpected elements on the fly. We also use the drum kit to trigger sounds, use microphones and analog effects and hardware samplers. All in all, it’s more than we can handle at once, which sometimes stresses us out or makes the sound more dense than it needs to be.

How do you approach melodic gesture in your music? There’s much discussion of rhythm in your music, but to me there’s also almost a sense of polyphony across textures, a sense of depth that requires listening on more than one level. How did you assemble this in the composition and production of the music?

There are always various timelines across one song or album. Some sounds appear only once, others repeat and get manipulated throughout the course of a song with every reappearance indicating a rhythmic idea. We try to avoid a strict hierarchy between melody and rhythm, and consider one being as important as the other. That means that a melody can have a strong rhythmic character as much as rhythm can have a predominantly atmospheric or harmonic (balancing?) quality.

Sometimes a melody might stretch over the course of a whole song, so only if you time-stretch the track, you would get the full melodic phrase. Maybe it’s the continuously-changing distance towards a song, like you would quickly twist the zoom of a camera, which makes fun for us. Or, maybe, it’s rather a discontinuously-changing focus, because we allow ourselves to slow down and even suddenly stop the movement as much as we cut elements so fast that they seem to skip. Music for us is a play on time and spacial tension. You can add layers along time as much as you can stack them in depth. And coming back to melody vs. rhythm: there is a blurred border, where one becomes the other, and we have great interest in strolling around this wasteland.

And more from inside and around the Funkhaus on a wintry, Prussian afternoon.

http://www.mouseonmars.com/

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.

For some time, the move has seemed inevitable – even more so as the rumor mill started echoing with suggestions that a native release was coming. But now, it’s happened: Pro Tools HD will now run without HD DSP hardware. And that’s not all — you can also use the same hardware with your existing DAW of choice, for users of software like Cubase and Logic.

There’s a price tag attached, though. This remains what for many would be a high-end solution. At US$3495 retail and up, it’s not competition for buying a basic interface card and Cubase. Think, instead, a more affordable and flexible way to equip studio rigs, and some potentially serious competition for vendors like Apogee, especially since you can use any DAW you want.

Just to say that again: Avid is making a version of Pro Tools HD that runs on the CPU and supports any DAW on Windows 7 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard and higher.

The AIR (Avid) user blog has some terrific analysis on the announcement even before it became public, comparing leaked price info for Native to an Apogee rig. If you haven’t been reading the AIR blog, they’ve hardly been shills for Avid; they’ve savaged some of the company’s decisions. And they’re actually pretty positive here. (Spoiler: Avid winds up being cheaper than Apogee by a few hundred bucks in their calculus.)
Is An Avid Pro Tools HD Native Core System Expensive?

What you get for that investment, though, is something worth discussing. It also reveals what’s necessary to get real, low-latency audio operation, which is relevant even if you aren’t in the market for Pro Tools|HD Native. CDM gets some insight into that from the developers.

First, Pro Tools|HD Native at a glance. Bundles:

Native core: $3495 buys you the necessary PCIe native card plus Pro Tools HD 8.5 software. The card comes with two Digilink mini ports on it.

Native core + OMNI Add an HD OMNI interface to the above. Total: US$5995.

Native core + HD I/O 8x8x8 Get a full 8x8x8 HD I/O interface. Total cost: US$6995.

Native core + HD I/O 16×16 analog US$7995.

Availability: November 4.

So, why bother with “HD Native” when there are versions like LE? The difference is that some of the more serious studio features remain:

• Surround, VCA mixing
• Destructive/track punch, advanced automation
• Solo Bus AFL/PFL, track-based input monitoring
• Sync HD support
• 9-pin Machine Control
• Venue support. (Yeah, that’s pretty huge, since Venue rigs don’t necessarily need all the TDM stuff.

This isn’t a TDM solution, though, so you don’t get TDM plug-in support, which for many is one of the big draws of Pro Tools. That includes the recently-announced HEAT, an analog-modeling sonic sweetener based on the qualities of tape. (There’s more to say about HEAT; I just got off the phone with its talented designer Dave Hill, so expect the results of that interview soon.)

It is a significant “mid-range” studio solution, and will likely fill a big need for Pro Tools customers. Avid told CDM in a briefing yesterday that they’ve gotten enormous demand for just such a solution. Just doing a discounted upgrade to HD got a big response, and users have wanted something between LE and the TDM-based HD for project or secondary studios. It also seems to me that it demonstrates Avid is willing to change, which could have greater implications down the road.

What you get is, says Avid, not a replacement for their DSP solutions, but otherwise unrestricted in sync, I/O, and functionality. It has the mixing and I/O LE lacks, and it even supports legacy “blue” HD converters (192, etc.), making it a likely candidate for upgrading studio setups that didn’t make the leap to 8.5 software.

If you don’t want to use Pro Tools as your DAW, you get 64 channels of I/O with any Core Audio (Mac) or ASIO (PC) system. Avid says they’ve tested extensively with Logic and Nuendo; Digital Performer, SONAR, and others should work, too.

And, notably, it’s a native system with extraordinarily low latency. Pro Tools|HD does .44 ms (at 96k and a 64 sample — yes, sixty-four total – buffer). But HD Native does a very respectable 1.6 ms; less than half that if you choose direct monitoring while recording, which you can do with simple stereo monitoring or even 7.1 surround setups. That’s 1.6 ms through the native setup, through PCI, and through the kernel and operating system. We’ve heard those kinds of theoretical numbers, but it’s a big deal to get it consistently on a computer system with a single, stable setup.

The Latency Story

I was curious to hear more about how Pro Tools|HD Native achieves those low latencies. The answer says something about the direction of Pro Tools, but also the potential of native computers for this sort of processing in general, regardless of the tool you use. (And that’s the sort of information we like.)

Bobby Lombardi, head of Pro Tools Product Management, explains to CDM:

The magic answer to all this is the Core Audio/ASIO “safety buffer” which is an additional layer of latency used by third party IO manufacturers (HW) manufacturers who provide Core Audio drivers for their HW. We also use a safety buffer for all of our hardware (including LE and M-Audio) that have Core Audio and ASIO drivers.

A safety buffer can have a very wide range of values. PCIe based hardware IO is the best case where manufacturers could theoretically get down to a 9 sample buffer, and go as high as several hundred samples for USB devices.

The key for a high-performance, low-latency system is PCIe-based IO and quality low-latency converters. This is the main reason why a PCI-based Pro Tools HD Native system combined with an HD IO has such exceptional latency.

The story gets even better at 96kHz sample rates where most converter latencies where the host CPU latency halves itself, and many high-end converters are capable of a low-latency converter mode without sacrificing quality. Our new HD IO and OMNI IO have such converters and perform in a low-latency performance mode when used at 88.2 and higher sample rates.

So to recap. The best possible latency story for Pro Tools HD Native using AD/DA converters is:

Pro Tools HD Native
Pro Tools HD Software @ 96kHz, 64 sample playback buffer
HD IO or HD OMNI interfaces

If anyone wants to get deeper into these issues with Avid (or anyone else), let me know; I’m game.

Don’t Write Off TDM Yet

Worth saying: this is probably good news for the future of DSP-based, TDM Pro Tools systems, not bad. The business advantage for Avid is, they sell more hardware and software, and keep more people on their platform. (I don’t think they can be faulted for that.)

But if you’re wondering, why bother with the pricier TDM systems at all, the story there doesn’t really change. As Avid puts it, TDM’s advantages don’t suffer when your CPU becomes more powerful. That just means you can use all the horsepower of the CPU and all the additional DSP processing of the HD TDM iron. Some of their customers are also using pretty extreme use cases, like recording 500 channels a time of a symphony orchestra. (I got an angry note regarding Logic Pro after writing a review of Apple’s DAW for Macworld where someone complained that Logic was choking over just sort a setup. Naturally, as a home producer, I had neither tested – nor could really conceive – what that setup looked like.)

There’s also time. Developing highly-optimized TDM plug-ins in Assembler is a different game from writing RTAS (or VST, or AU, etc.) plug-ins in C, and not everyone will port from one to the other.

What’s interesting to me, though, is that some of these issues transcend usage scenarios, budget, and the like. I don’t doubt that every musician would love 1.5 ms latency. And those fundamental architectural issues I believe will continue to be relevant for the entire musical community – whether their tools count as particularly “Pro” or not.

Call it cable addiction. Italian-born musician Alessandro Cortini, known for his live keyboard work with Nine Inch Nails, retreated into the studio with classic and contemporary Buchla modular synths to make “SONOIO.” Guided by his uniquely personal compositional style, he was able to wrangle that mess of chords and layers of analog sound into a genuine collection of beautifully-written songs, stacked high with Buchla timbral goodness.

The first four songs are free, with downloads starting at US$7.99 and physical records with bundled music at US$9.99 and up.

But SONOIO isn’t just a record release. The album itself is accompanied by a a portable synthesizer called the SuONOIO, custom-designed for the record by legendary synth maker The Harvestman (Scott Jaeger). I don’t think this is the first album release to have hardware alongside, but the SuONOIO itself is something special. Not just some toy or player, the creators endeavored both to incorporate the sounds of the album (via pitch-controlled sample players) as well as advanced features that allow you to make your own sounds. The synth, then, becomes a kind of art object reinterpretation of Alessandro’s own working method and tastes, building into an affordable, portable package his love of patch cords and sound tweaking.

All of this might be a stunt anywhere else. But quality and intent interferes: the album and synth alike could be major highlights of 2010. Via email, I talked to Alessandro about his creative process, his rig and how he attacked an all-modular album, and how he made the self-release and synth release work.

Yes, yes, “Create Analog Music.” (I’ve tried to go back and time to tell myself I should include a less literal name for the site, but my past self didn’t believe me.) But that’s the funny thing about it — this is a digital album. It’s also proof that the working techniques from the analog age — from doing recordings in a single take to treating the arrangement as a multitrack tape to patching sounds with chords — are just as relevant today in the world of the eight-core Mac Pro that did the final mix. And without the instinct to write songs, one Alessandro carries from childhood, it’s all just noise. Let’s let the artist explain.

http://www.sonoio.org/ [All purchases, from album to t-shirts to synth, plus free downloads]

On musical creation…

The sound world I think is what people will encounter first in this music, and generally in electronic music, so let’s begin there. How do you tend to think about timbre as you work?

I never know what I am going to write or create. That’s probably the main thing, to begin with.

I usually sit in front of an instrument to fiddle, to play with it like it’s a toy of some sort, hoping to come up with a sound unique enough to trigger an idea.

The idea can develop into a full composition, or stay as a simple two-hour time waster. Both results are very welcome, at all times!

The sense of the songwriting on the album to me is really strong. What’s your approach to assembling the songs, compositionally, particularly as many people tend not to associate sitting behind a Buchla modular with something like songwriting?

I have been writing songs since I was 7 years old. I started recording on a small boom box, with my voice only, making these tapes of songs I wrote for my grandparents to listen to on their way back home (they lived out of town).

I have been thinking of music in a song format as long as i can remember making music. Even the less song0based, more experimental work I released (i.e. blindoldfreak) still retains a song structure, even though it’s less obvious and instrumental, so to speak.

The thing is, I don’t really think about writing them. Each song comes from playing around with the instrument, in this case the Buchla. Sometimes it’s a sequence triggering a chord progression; other times, it’s a drone patch which triggers a melody in my mind.

For the SONOIO album, I tried to let the instrument dictate the structure. A song like “Just Me” doesn’t really have a repeating chorus, and it evolves through quite a few sections in the few minutes it lasts. I forced myself not to cut and paste anything. Everything in songs such as “Just Me,” “Not Worth Remembering,” and “Hold On Let Go” are one-takes, with the Buchla being multitracked and vocals/vocoder overdubbed.

How did that grow into the album, or what was the conception for the whole release?

The album started as soon as i realized that most of my “fiddling” with the modular was taking me into song territory, as opposed to more experimental [ground].

It took me a bit to realize that it would be great to try and write a whole collection of songs strictly on the modular, as opposed to layering instruments as I usually do, but when I committed to this process, things became challenging and refreshing at the same time.

The bulk of the album was written in January ’10, with most of the remainder of the time spent learning to mix it!
the “story” is really not that clear to me either, to be honest. I’ve always been attached to music that , even with a clear lyrical content, lends itself to personal interpretation, so i hope the listeners will take what they want from it.

What did you take away from your time with Nine Inch Nails? Did it impact your sound or the way you approach playing?

Of course it did — especially the time in the studio working on Ghosts. It was revelatory to see how much can come out of a single sound, if nurtured the right way. Also, those sessions taught me not to spend too much time over-thinking: if it sounds good, it’s time to move on.

I also learned that I don’t enjoy playing shows as much as I like being in a studio environment. There is something about the repetitivity of a live show that slowly erodes the magic of the songs. And while there are things you can do to keep it interesting for yourself — look at the spaceship that was my rig with NIN! — it eventually becomes a race to finish and get to the bus to sleep. It becomes the most feared thing: a real job.

What artists are inspiring you currently?

I don’t listen to a lot of commercial music these days, but here are a few of my current favorites: Belong, the last Telefon Tel Aviv album (amazing), Tim Hecker, BigBlackDelta, HEALTH, HowardAmb, Christopher Bissonette and pretty much anything on Kranky and Raster Noton.

Tools and Techniques

What’s your rig like in the the studio for this work?

The creative rig for this album (and for most of my work these days) is based around a Buchla 200 and a Buchla 200e More recently, I have been spending time with a keyboard version of the Monomachine [the SFX-6], which i use as an alternative writing tool.

The recording rig is a Mac Pro 2.26 octo [8-core], Logic Studio + [Apogee] Symphony system and a [Universal Audio] UAD card. It’s been the most stable and powerful rig I have ever had. Not one single crash during the sessions!

There’s a richly-layered, fat analog sound to the whole the mix. How do you balance all of these textures in a mix, and get everything to sit right?

Mixing was what took the longest to complete, and mostly because of the lack of experience/skills on my part. For a series of reasons, I decided to mix the album myself as opposed to outsourcing it, and I figured I would learn from the process, too.

I was lucky to have friends helping with suggestions and advice, including Jon from Big Black Delta who helped me when I got stuck in the vicious circle of “does this sound good enough?” Joshua Eustis from Telefon Tel Aviv was very helpful, too, in giving his feedback. His work on “Immolate yourself” is amazing … that album was a huge inspiration.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there aren’t many layers in each song. I would be surprised if I have more than 16 tracks running, total, including FX buses.

I usually stem out 8 outputs to my mini console, where I can mix the single elements as groups (1/2: effects, pads, drones, 3/4 vocoder, bkvox, 5: main vox, 6: bass, 7/8: drums/rhythmic elements).

An Independent Release, and Releasing a Whole Synth, Not Just a Record

What about the decision to self-release? How has the response been?

I didn’t [rule out] releasing through a label, in the beginning. The album was sent to various places I thought I would have liked to hear feedback from, but even the ones that were receptive were tied to a working schedule which turns days into months. The last thing I wanted to do is to release an album that was a year old, when I am ready to move onto new stuff the moment I master it.

I do miss the feeling of being part of family and some sort of financial support (which would have been limited, regardless, considering I am a newcomer), but I think I made the right decision to release it this way.

The album came out with the aid of the Topspin platform (http://www.topspinmedia.com/)

I took an online course at Berklee Music, since the tool itself didn’t make too much sense to me on its own, in the long run, without a proper marketing campaign and plan of action.

It’s something anybody can do, and not necessarily with Topspin. I chose them because I knew them as real music lovers, and great people I could communicate with and exchange ideas.

The audio player widgets, store buttons and email list/analytics are all their software, which I have learned to integrate in my own site, with the aid of a webmaster. (Phillip Farmer, http://crosshatch.net/)

And then you decide to release a full synthesizer to accompany the album. How did that come about?

I always wanted to release something that wasn’t necessarily a CD, vinyl, or similar, along with my music. I thought about it for a long time, and the synthesizer answer came quite naturally, a few months back.

My priority was to offer something that was unique (and a “first”, if possible), yet relates to who I am and what I do, not simply a publicity stunt of some sort.

How did you and Scott (The Harvestman) work together on the design?

Scott came to mind as the ideal candidate to solve my main problem with designing a synth (besides the fact that i don’t know how to design anything, of course…). How do I create something that is both related to the album AND allows [users] to create new and independent sounds and textures?

I contacted Scott and asked him if he’d be interested…we had a long and fruitful conversation over the phone and that’s how it began.

We then opened an email communication, exchanging ideas and concepts,which in no time led to a prototype.

What went into some of the design features of the synth? How did it evolve? I really like the cross-modulation capabilities and miniature patch cables.

The patch cable implementation idea came from Mike Brown of Livewire, who is a great friend of mine and Scott’s.
He suggested it, knowing it’d be a great way to extend my cable addiction to this instrument…and he was right!

The initial idea was to utilize carefully-selected sounds from the album and find a way to modulate them and make the, interesting with the minimal amount of controls. Scott’s knowledge in the field has allowed the instrument to evolve from this rather simple design to a much more expanded array of options, while retaining the “make sound immediately, no manual required” attitude.

We both wanted the instrument to be:

• Affordable: It’s roughly 160 $ (and even less if bought in the bundle with music, CD, poster, and shirt). We decided to skip the enclosure since it’s the most expensive part of the instrument, usually. BugBrand has pioneered this sort of design, I believe, and it was definitely an inspiration (I own a few of his clever instruments).
• Great looking: The final version’s colors will recall the album artwork, to a certain extent, so it’ll definitely belong to this particular release. In addition, we will create templates for paper/cardboard faceplates that the user can download, print and mount on the instrument. We both thought it’d be a great way to start a community to share designs, but mostly, I wanted mine to have cats on it so that’s why… There is also going to be an option to design aluminum faceplates and get them custom ordered somewhere else. We’ll provide the design and manufacturer’s contact info, if needed.
• Easy to play: There’s no keyboard (yet) for it, only 7 knobs and patch points. Even without patching, you can really mangle the built-in samples and turn them into something creative and different. If and when that will become obsolete, the user can take advantage of the 16 patchable points and add functions such as distortion, delay, FM destination and more. We wanted the instrument to be appealing to seasoned electronic musicians as well as people who had no idea of what it is, but are curious enough to pick it up and make noise.
• Easy to interface: It comes with a battery holder, 9V Boss AC connector, built-in speaker and 1/4″ audio output. It can also be connected to another SuONOIO instrument for further manipulation or to create more complex sounds.

How do you hope this instrument will be used, or what do you hope may come out of getting this in the hands of listeners? What does that mean for the listener/maker relationship? And could you see this idea catching on?

I hope to see people making music with it, or just using it as a hobby tool of some sort — as something you keep on the coffee table and play every now and then, or something you integrate in your state-of-the-art electronica rig.

I think it can be several things except a normal-sounding instrument, because that it is not!

The response has been overwhelming so far, both for the album and the instrument, thanks to the word of mouth of the online community and Trent Reznor who has been very supportive with spreading the word about SONOIO.

Thanks to Alessandro for sharing so much. More shots of his studio environment below.

http://www.sonoio.org/

I’m done with posting for this week as it’s time to overhaul my (very, very humble) apartment studio space and gear closet. But that seems the perfect time to ask you how you set up your musical workspace. (I think people imagine that I have rooms full of gear, but I really do a lot of work in-box on computer, which I’m gradually augmenting with some “boutique” – but reasonably affordable – DIY synth boxes. As an urbanist and someone on a limited budget with limited space, that works well.)

I’m a great fan of Lifehacker’s ongoing series on their readers’ workspaces, which show off marvels of productivity, efficiency, and attractive interior design:
Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell [Flickr]
For some of the best examples: http://lifehacker.com/tag/workspace/

It’s funny; the notion of “bedroom producers” is often disparaged, but I think the ability to have personal workspaces are a great thing for music. Now, a musical workspace can range from an impromptu setup on a hotel room desk to a corner of an apartment to a space you’ve built in a barn to a traditional studio. Each of those locations has its own advantages (and in a way, make you appreciate what’s special about the conventional studio even more).

So, whether you’ve worked out a mobile rig with a Nintendo DS and a tape recorder or you’ve got a dream studio you get to work in — or you want to show off how you’ve managed to organize your closet full o’ gear and cables — we’d love to hear from you. Send us a link to a public gallery in comments, or upload to CDM’s Flickr pool:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/cdmu/pool/

Also, do us a favor. Either send a note explicitly allowing us to reproduce your image, or even better, license your photo on Flickr as Creative Commons ShareAlike. (Because CDM runs ads against content, we apparently do not qualify as a non-commercial use. ShareAlike, though, means that anyone using your content also needs to share their content, which helps protect against exploitation.) You can add the license directly on Flickr, and then it’s more likely that we can use your images. I’ve actually thought of doing regular round-ups of images on Flickr, but getting individual licenses would be too time-consuming; if people do start doing this, I will easily feature the images you’re sending in!

I’m really eager to see your musical environments. Part of the joy of music is that ability to take your mind and spirit to another place, and that means setting aside physical space. (I recall a Buddhist friend of mine and the importance that had for where he would chant. It wasn’t anything extravagant, just a decision to set aside a location for the activity.)

To kick things off, Thomas Dolby has the location most of us would dream of: he’s got a wind- and solar-powered restored lifeboat on the north coast of England.

Dolby talks about his studio and the ideas behind it, followed by a new song he wrote in the boat, at TED:

Keyboard Magazine took a tour of the boat and covers all the gear contained onboard):
On Board Thomas Dolby’s Solar Studio Boat

More photos at Tiny House Design

But I’d love to see your less-exotic music making locations, too.

It’s the end of an era: pioneering synth guru, engineer, sound designer, instrument importer, composer, producer, and owner of the landmark Sear Sound recording studio in New York has died at age 79.

Sear’s career covered almost everything you could do in sound. He played tuba in the pit at Radio City Music Hall, imported and sold tubas. He studied chemistry. He befriended Bob Moog, introduced Moog to Walter Carlos, and is credited with helping convince Bob to make synths you can lift. He wrote music for Jim Henson, among other soundtracks and his own “switched on”-style record.

Sear is best known in recent decades for founding and operating Sear Sound, a spectacular, sought-after studio in Manhattan packed to the gills with gorgeous vintage gear. The four-studio facility has become a Mecca for lovers of studio recording, even well into the age of digital, attracting artists from Paul McCartney to Clapton to Sigur Ros and Wayne Shorter and even major TV and film projects (“A Bronx Tale.”) The studio almost needs a list of clients who didn’t work there since its 1970 opening. Just as Sear was an expert in what tuba players and would-be synth customers wanted, he managed to turn Sear Sound into a monument to great audio, collecting the ribbon mics and vacuum tubes needed to keep it all running.

Obituaries elsewhere:
R.I.P. Walter Sear [Consequence of Sound]
R.I.P. Walter Sear [Synthtopia]

I’m sure there are others; if you have something to share, let us know.

Here’s a fantastic 2005 interview by Steve Guttenberg for Stereophile:

Walter Sear’s Analog Rules

Wise words on synths:

The producers didn’t understand the capabilities of the instrument—and they still don’t. It takes imagination to think of a sound no one has ever heard before. The Moog could have been a contender, but I didn’t sell what it could do hard enough. Then again, it all started in the 13th century, with the invention of the hurdy-gurdy, the first instrument designed to eliminate musicians.

And the closing quote says it all:

I don’t want to make money, I just want to make good recordings. I’m doing this because I hope people will realize what they’ve been missing. I’ve had a pretty full life—I’ve played tuba, made a bunch of films, manufactured tubas and guitar amplifiers, sold Moogs. I’ve been married 52 years and had two kids. I did all of these things because I get bored easily. That’s why I’m always on to something new.

SunVox, the quirky and cool modular music creation software, already runs on a ton of platforms. Starting now, most of those platforms can run the tool for free. (The one exception: iPhone/iPad.)

That means you get a rich music creation environment that can run on everything from an ancient PDA to a desktop computer, complete with FM, virtual analog, and sample-based synths, effects, modular routing, musical arrangement, and even tracker-level detailed editing, all for free. SunVox works on Mac, Windows, and Linux, plus mobile platforms Palm, Windows Mobile, and iPhone. In fact, it’s an ideal choice to resurrect one of the now-nearly-worthless yet still-very-powerful used PDA devices. Seriously: hit auction and used sites or ask someone for a device, or perhaps search your own closet, and you have an extra music-making device that costs you nothing. (I’ve heard some arguments about the iPad and value, and ditto $300 or $400 netbooks, but I’d like to see the iPad or new netbook compete with $20 or free.)

SunVox

That said, if you do own an iPhone or iPod touch, SunVox is a no-brainer at US$4.99.

And developer Alex Zolotov tells CDM he’s submitting an iPad version of SunVox for Apple’s new platform, as well, plus working on new features. Stay tuned.

My own President Obama is this week off making his pitch for why Chicago should host the Olympic Games. Correction. Oops. I need to read the news. Chicago was eliminated first. But look out – our friends at Antipop (slogan: “antipop music for a pop music”) are using a different tool in their arsenal: music.

Watch the video for some fun gear spotting, plus one vintage arcade cabinet. I could point out stuff I see, but that’d spoil the fun. Shout out in comments.

There’s definitely a commercial gloss on this, but it’s nicely executed, and felt so absurdly Olympic to me that I actually couldn’t help but smile listening. (In fairness, either Chicago or Madrid ought to be able to do better than New York did with 2012; I recall dignitaries in traffic while rowers paced the polluter waters of Flushing Meadows. Yipes.)

Here you go, probably the most commercial music we’ll ever run on CDM:

Makes me want to, like, train or something.

Updated: From comments, I like these alternative suggestions by safd in place of “anti” pop:

superpop, poppypop, hippop, popcore, purelypop, universapop

Popcore is something I need to work on. It was worth posting this for that word alone.

Background: “Antipop is the Antonio Escobar music production personal studio, one of the most awarded Spanish producer and composer.” [sic]

Update: Superpop or antipop, the song alone couldn’t melt the hearts of the Olympic Committee. Congrats to – Rio!

“Building an apartment studio” to many of us means adding a laptop, clearing off a desk, and donning some headphones. But Brooklyn-based Katherine Belsey Davis, who does all sorts of wonderful (non-musical) things in wood, glass, fabric, and other materials, had lofty plans for a NYC studio job:

Since this studio was built for mixing sound and music for film and TV in a residential coop apartment building in NYC, both sound proofing and treatment had to be near perfect. It also had to look good for clients… on a very tight budget.

The studio in question is for John M. Davis in Brooklyn Heights. Even in a coop, they pulled out all the stops — silent air conditioning, sound absorbers, floating floors, and decoupled walls. (I’ve been in a few apartments in the city with decoupled walls and floors, but not in a way that lent itself to acoustics so much as deferred maintenance.)

Studio Photos
Belsey Davis homepage

Stained glass and sound studios? You’re one Renaissance woman, Katherine!

She’s shared her work. Studio construction is a science (and a dark art), and not one I pretend to understand. And much of this is specific to the job. But for those who do know what they’re doing, I imagine this could be interesting inspiration – and to the rest of us, provides some insight into what’s involved.

I also quite like the multiple screens and Novation ReMOTE Zero for compact control. Here’s the process on Instructables:

Build a music studio in an apartment building – More DIY How To Projects

An old PC laptop could be relegated to the closet or (worse, since it’s highly toxic) landfill. But filled up with tasty freeware plug-ins, it’s a virtual studio full of tools and oddities. Via the feast of gear that is the CDMusic pool on Flickr, our friend Jumahat Leman aka uncle bigbrown artfully captures his budget software setup, described as follows:

• A 4+yrs old Acer laptop (a desktop replacement to be exact)
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/lots of freeware VSTs
• using same earphones/headphones/ToneportGx for recording

** My observation:
If you’re a “free VSTs/plugins” hunter/user like me, there’s tons of them available for download for the Wins platform in the worldwideweb. That’s where “cheap” Mac users/lovers (like me) are at a disadvantage with our OSX. So its always good to have a Wins machine at your disposal…

The Mac doesn’t get left out either, though. A G4 tower has become a virtual guitar stompbox and recording studio:

• 9 yrs old Sawtooth “Earache” G4 Mac
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/freeware plug-ins
• $80 Toneport GX
• old iPod earphones or $50 Sennheiser Headphones (for recording/monitoring/mixing)

**most times i load the “mixed songs” into the iPod to listen/compare/mix and check eq/volume.

(The guitar is a PRS SE Paul Allender.)

If these visuals got your attention, there’s another lesson to be learned here. Not only does this visual illustration give you a sense of what his workflow is about and perhaps passes along some tips, but he uses photos and illustrations as a great promotional tool. It helps that Jumahat is a talented designer. I love his mini-portfolio, below. He also makes wonderful promotional posters and stickers. As I noted earlier this week, the ability to make something visually expressive that is meaningful to your music can be powerful – starting with album art, but going beyond that.

Or, to make a more important point, Jumahat has one of the only tasteful MySpace pages I’ve ever seen — and that’s a feat.

Happy weekend projects to everyone; hope this provides some inspiration.

drechohead, Jumahat’s MySpace page
echoinmyhead @blogpspot, with more visual goodies

Updated: Plug-in List

Now, the answers revealed. (See if you guessed any of these correctly.)

Mac

• Studio Devil BVC (for my guitar needs)
• Togu Audio Line TAL Tube (to “tubify” guitar or other sounds, or “overdrive” them more)
• Togu TAL Dub (for my delay needs)

PC

• BTE Audio Juicy77 (for most of my guitar distortion needs)
• BTE Audio TSS (tube screamer stompbox simulation)
• Audio Damage Pulse Modulator (for crazy sounds)
• E-phonic Retrodelay (for mild delay needs)

ALL of my plug-ins are freeware coz i’m cheap! ; )