Benga’s latest video was released early last month and made the blog rounds, but it’s worth considering as we continue our ongoing thread on visual music and how sound can go from invisible to tangible. A stunning video whets fans appetite for the upcoming Benga full-length Chapter 2, constructing a wave shape in physical form as a series of vinyl records. Using some 960 hand-cut vinyl records, the track’s waveform materializes in stop motion-filmed animation.

Physical as it may be, the inspiration, say the creative team, was SoundCloud. UK-based creative team Us, consisting of Christopher Barrett and Luke Taylor, explain:

When we were asked to pitch on the promo they sent us the track as a ‘Soundcloud’ link, we usually get it sent as an MP3. For the first time we were not just listening to the track we were also watching it. There was something mesmerising about this in its simplicity. This ignited the idea to create a real life three dimensional waveform. We started to think about the fact that a vast amount of our music is consumed online and has lost a sense of physicality this lead us to the idea of using vinyl records. We also loved the way it related to Benga as an artist who’s background comes from using records as a DJ or producer.

The maths worked we would need 960 records to create 1 minute and 20 seconds worth of wave form. Each one had to be individually cut to a specific size, hand labeled, hand numbered and then finally polished. This prep took 7 full working days and then the animation process took around 30 hours.

No 3D printers here: the process of making the individual, differently-sized records sounds painstaking. Us tells Creative Review:

To animate the wave form, we built it and then carefully removed each individual record. This had to be done very gently as any shift in the position of the sculpture would result in the failure of the animation and as we had to literally destroy each piece of vinyl to get it off, there was only one chance to get it right. Once the sculpture was finally built, the animation process took about 30 hours.

As you can see in the behind-the-scenes photos, actually working those records onto the pipe involved removing the far end, making this still more challenging (though adding a great deal to the impact of the effect).

This is all quite similar to another radial, sample-by-sample waveform made of physical circles we saw earlier this year:
Voice Messages Become 3D Paper Waveform Sculptures: Paper Note

Making a waveform view in the digital realm is dead-simple. But something about going to physical media makes that decision more than just afterthought, as though these creators really are touching frozen sound.

Having Benga as your soundtrack doesn’t hurt, either. You can grab this single on iTunes.

Full credits:

Directors – Us
Producer – Liz Kessler
Line Producer – Connor Hollman
DoP – Matt Fox
Gaffer – Ben Fordesman
Editor – Vid Price
Grade – Mark Horrobin
Animation – Alice Dupre
Structural consultant – Jorge Betancor
Runners – Tayo Rapoport, Paul Mckelvie, Chaelyn Allcock
Production Company – A+
Commissioner – Dan Millar
Management – Phil Hutcheon / Andrew Foggin

Behind-the-scenes photos courtesy Us.

See the full project page for lots of additional images and details:

http://www.weareus.co.uk/projects/benga-i-will-never-change

Thanks, Andrew Cavette!

Composing the sounds of an animal’s life cycle and ultimate consumption into a musical portrait, Matthew Herbert’s “One Pig” is in turns grotesque and sentimental, rock and opera. I expected squeamishness and vegetarian conversions when I saw it on tour, but instead, the crowd eagerly devoured the creature at the end. (Make of that what you will.)

One Pig is in Manchester, UK tonight before continuing to Brighton and Portugal.

As my own incurable appetite is for musical instruments, for me a highlight of the show is Scotland-based, American artist Yann Seznec’s Sty Harp. (See also our coverage of his iPad music game development work.) Gut strings in historical instruments already make use of animal parts, so a stringed instruments seems appropriate. But by dissecting obsolete, forgotten technology – a bit of a theme in these parts lately – Yann is able to make an effective, expressive instrument.

Sadly, there’s not much video of the instrument in action, but seeing it is a highlight of the live show. Yann’s performance has its own theatricality, rocking out on these extended strings around the “pig pen” like a boxer swinging against the ropes of a ring. First, Yann shares some notes on the show itself:

The album is an elegy to a life lived for the benefit of humans and raises complex questions about our relationship to these often-maligned and misunderstood creatures.

The album is made entirely out of sounds from the pig and its surroundings – the first squeals, the sound of it being alone for the first time, and the dripping of its blood after being butchered. The result is a delicate, beautiful, and occasionally terrifying musical composition with a profundity rarely heard in electronic music.

The live show debuted at the Royal Opera House, London, in September 2011 and has since toured the world, performing at Berghain Berlin, STRP Eindhoven, Club Silencio Paris, Liquid Room Tokyo, Ancienne Belgique Brussels, and more. Future dates include headlining at Future Everything in Manchester, the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

The show explores and questions the life, death, and consumption of the pig. A chef cooking onstage brings the sound and smell of cooking pig, and the performance features a brand new custom instrument – the “Sty Harp”, built and performed by Edinburgh-based artist Yann Seznec. This representation of the pig’s home is used to trigger and control elements of music, forming an integral part of the 5 piece band. The rest of the band is comprised of Sam Beste on keyboards, Tom Skinner on SPDS, Hugh Jones on samplers, and Matthew on various keyboards and samples and things.

Yann explains how the instrument itself is constructed:

In terms of the Sty Harp, the instrument is built using hacked Gametraks, which were a failed proto-motion controller from around 2003. They were sold only in the UK, and worked by using two joysticks with strings attached that you clipped onto your hands. These could then sense the distance and vague location of your hands …a few terrible games were released on PS2, Xbox, and PC for the Gametrak before they were pulled from the market.

In any case, I took apart a whole load of these (I probably have owned more gametraks than anyone in the world, ever) and used their innards for the string/joystick controllers, which are totally great! I built a whole system with Jon (from Lucky Frame) to hook up twelve of these controllers into my computer at once. I’m using an Arduino with a mux shield to handle the 36 analog inputs (x/y/string for 12 controllers) at once, converting them into MIDI and sending them over to Ableton.

In Ableton the controllers are doing a number of different things, slightly different for each song. In the Max patch I made I can send out 5 individual MIDI notes from each string, one for general movement above a threshold, and one each for a push, pull, up, or down movement. These movements are also sending out CC values, as is the pulling of the string. So each string controller is sending a whole pile of MIDI data at all times, and I pick and choose for each song which gestures to use. So in some cases I’m just triggering individual sounds using the strings, but in others I am using some strings to trigger clips, others to control effects on those clips, and still other effects to do master play/stop/effects/etc.

The climax of the Sty Harp happens about 2/3rds of the way through the show, when the whole band joins me in the sty for the symbolic butchering of the pig. For that song each band member controls different strings, building a huge sound wall.

You can read more about my building of the sty harp here: http://theamazingrolo.net/styharp/

We’re playing in Manchester on Friday the 18th, Brighton on Monday the 21st, then in Lisbon on June 29th and Porto on June 30th.

http://www.matthewherbert.com/
Matthew Herbert – One Pig: exclusive album stream [The Guardian]

Tenori-On and iPad apps, hardware designs and visual creations: set against the beautifully-generative mind of Japanese/New York artist Yayoi Kusama, the flurries of dots and circles and patterns in musical interfaces take on a richer meaning. This video, from a workshop hosted at the Tate Modern alongside an exhibition of Kusama’s work, needs little introduction. Instead, the dizzying cuts of geometric abstraction, the array of visual ideas for musical interface begin to take on the same personality of her expansive creations. The galaxies produced out of the minds of musicians somehow overlap with this iconic artist. I hadn’t really made the connection before, even as a fan of her work, but with this workshop, the sympathetic vibrations – intentional or not – become clear. Description:

Sonic Kusama:
Workshop exploring connections between the work of Yayoi Kusama and creation and representation of new music & sound art through visual audio interfaces.
Presented by Simon Little and Kelvin Brown with Chase Lane.
Audio track by Capstone Music
Video production by Territory Studio

If you’re in London, Infinite Kusama is on view now at the Tate Modern.

This may already be the image you have in your mind of Skrillex’s fan base, but let’s get real: these are actual kids, and they really are getting introduced to electronic dance music through Skrillex for the first time.

“What is dubstep?”

Darned if I know any more, kid.

What have we learned?

1. All kids sound cooler when they have English accents. (It’s unreal. They can be throwing a temper tantrum and still sound oddly sophisticated, or at least charmingly in-character. CDM’s sizable readership of English people may wonder what the heck I’m talking about, then dare me to buy an umbrella and take up babysitting until I come to my senses.)
2. This video will prompt haterade in comments so long as you have a soul made of ice.
3. Kids can dance.
4. These kids look cooler than I do.
5. Saying you need to take substances to understand Electronic Dance Music is a fair statement – that is, provided you have entirely lost connection with your inner child or ability to dance. (That’s not to judge the use of such substances one way or another, only to say viewing any substance as a prerequisite to music appreciation may be overstatement. This does bring new meaning to candy ravers, however.)
6. VICE got kids dancing to Skrillex. What should CDM introduce them to? (Xenakis might terrify them; how about Aphex Twin?)

After all, I do hear dance music advocates routinely point out that Skrillex could be an introduction to young folks to electronic music that opens more doors later. These kids are absolutely getting a fresh start.

“Where’s the after-party?”

Updated: Answer – after-party is right here…

3-year old: “I’m a Jungalist!!!”

(Thanks, Gwydion!)

Finding new sounds in our pulsing electronics means refining our working techniques isn’t just a technical matter. It’s a musical one.

King Britt, who has been granted many successful musical incarnations over the years, set off on just such a quest under his new identity Fhloston Paradigm. In a much-watched debut EP for brilliant UK imprint Hyperdub, the Philadelphia artist produces an out-of-this-world, cinematic sonic journey. King is perhaps best known as a name in house music; here, the style is experimental, but the groove rolls behind each track, sequencers softly shuffling along in a way that makes them seem caught in a slow, trance-like dance. Carefully-curated classic synthesizers gather into shared patterns of sound; King worked loosely with rhythm by letting these instruments play freely together, not slaved by MIDI, then crafted and polished the track in the more pristine digital world of the computer.

The “analog” business of these tracks is something of a hook for people describing the album, but that is of course a means to an end. Chaining together instruments lets polyrhythms emerge almost organically like blossoms, as King push their various timbres into undiscovered voices, whether a whisper or a growl. (We’ll have a separate video showing his equipment chain, which I think illustrates this more clearly, but here, let’s just listen.)

I’ve chosen the evocative “Liloos Seduction,” which Hyperdub is generously letting CDM stream. A lazy, drifting journey into exotic synthesized lands, it shows off the fuzzy edges of that gear’s timbres. But I’ll shut up and let you listen.

The EP is three tracks – two long, one short – but covers enough ground that it feels like a meal more than a morsel.

Official release page (and purchase in GBP): King Britt: Presents Fhloston Paradigm (HDB060) [Hyperdub]

Check it out on King’s site:King Britt x Hyperdub x Fhloston Paradigm [kingbritt.com]

Also on Bleep, where you can grab lossless versions for download: King Britt Presents Fhloston Paradigm EP Hyperdub [Bleep.com]

Hyperdub sent over this PR description, and it’s so nicely put-together that I think it also deserves a place. (I love when labels promotional materials are musically insightful and not just a jargon-laden sales pitch.)

HDB060 King Britt presents Fhloston Paradigm March 26th

Hyperdub start the year of single releases off with a brilliant, and subtle curveball courtesy of Philly’s finest; King Britt in his new guise as Fhloston Paradigm.

Built from drum machines, analog keyboards and 303’s, and edited in the computer, these 3 lean and mean tracks, have an unadorned feeling that build on Hyperdub’s love for old John Carpenter style electronics, combined with Dr Patrick Gleason’s ear for the abstract, and bouncy drum machine syncopation that sounds like they’re aiming for an alternative present where analogue synths are still king.

Chasing Rainbows, is first off, with a dark tone that reminds of the opening theme to the film ‘Escape from New York, a wavering 303 bassline and tough kicks and snares giving away to heavy, moody chords.

The Chase works rough rolling drum machine beats that stutter and build into strange fills that threaten to stop the track dead if it wasn’t for the strange stumbling bassline and gently building acid line that resolve into a super funky melodic duel with some stuttering synth strings.

Liloos Seduction is intense, quiet and abstract; a flickering 303 bass line is joined by barely there drums and reflective keys, everything shimmering in a dramatic fashion with gentle echoes giving the track a deep, watery sense of perspective as each part gently and gracefully builds and twists into a tender and effecting melody.

And the Mix

King put together a mix for FACT magazine I think many readers will adore, sprinkled with science fiction references, and veering from dark, film-like dystopias to shadowy club music to symmetrical electronic arpeggios, as if you’ve ducked out of the streets of Blade Runner and into a future cantina before a spin around the arcade.

Track listing:
1. Dialog from 1984
2. Lowleaf – Tala At Twilight
3. Fhloston Paradigm – Live Interlude #1
4. Chemical Brothers – Escape Wavefold (from Hanna soundtrack)
5. Boom Boom Satellites – Dub Me Crazy
6. Tenko – Slope – Gradual Disappearance
7. Eurhythmics – Take Me To Your Heart
8. Blade Runner dialog (rain scene)
9. Sleepy Tea – Specta Cierra
10. Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto – Microon III
11. Fhloston Paradigm – Live Interlude #3
12. Fhloston Paradigm – The Chase
13. JJ Doom – Banished
14. Power Douglas – Little Gong
15. Jerry Goldsmith – Intensive Care (From Logan’s Run soundtrack)
16. Raymond Scott – Portofino
17. Paul McCartney – Blue Sway (Demo)
18. Fhloston Paradigm – Song For Charlie
19. Synergy – The Mystery of Peri Reis
20. Galaxy 2 Galaxy – Frag 2
21. David Sylvian – Answered Prayers / Carla Bley (dialog)
22. King Britt presents Scuba – Bare Naked feat. Imani Uzuri
23. Fhloston Paradigm – Live Interlude #3

FACT mix 322: King Britt presents Fhloston Paradigm [factmag.com]

Don’t miss the FACT coverage leading up to this release, either, which includes some great interview on King’s process and love of science fiction (and how he got the name Fhloston Paradigm – thanks, Rucyl!)

King Britt on Fhloston Paradigm, pulp sci-fi movies and recording for Hyperdub [factmag.com]

To paraphrase the Justin Bieber fans, this mix is PERFECT. I’m going to leave it on repeat all day.

As pundits lament the loss of the album or conventional musical roles, it might be easy to miss a barely-hidden revolution in the craft of sound. Pieced together from the simplest of found acoustic instruments and strange electrified sonic organisms, fashioned with the most sophisticated of digital tools and computer music production machines, artists open an ocean of new musical and sonic discovery. The new venues and patrons proliferate, ranging from interactive installations to so-called “sonic branding,” sound design for games and motion spots and television, and yes, somewhere in there, even produce an album now and then.

Just ask Simon Pyke. As a solo artist, sound designer, composer, and through his sound design and music shop Freefarm, he’s a one-man Renaissance for the ears.

Simon, who tells us he’s a long-time reader, shares a short documentary behind his work. A beautiful short film takes you inside his Brighton, UK studio, a toybox of great musical toys that looks a bit as though someone was granted a wish and got to render the archives of this site in the real world. But it’s not so much the tools as the unabashed discovery of sound. That is to say, I find it impossible to watch this film and not want to immediately drop everything and get to making some sounds and music.

What’s equally impressive is that Mr. Pyke has produced for himself sonic fingerprints, even across varied work, sounds that are whimsical but always modern. It’s a kind of retro-futurism that sometimes draws from musical expressions that nod to everything from folk to Philip Glass.

As a sound maker, it’s easy to thrill at his show reel, but look, too, to a charmingly-personal instrumental EP on Bandcamp entitled Collisions. (In fact, you’ll notice what’s missing in all of this: a label. Instead, Simon does just fine running his own business in boutique sound and music, and releasing his own music to people who care about it.)

Have a look at his work; I know it’ll be inspiring my work this weekend. Thanks, Simon! Keep reading!

http://freefarm.co.uk/

Digital: disposable, identical, infinitely reproducible. Recordings: static, unchanging.

Or … are they?

Icarus’ Fake Fish Distribution (FFD), a self-described “album in 1000 variations,” generates a one-of-a-kind download for each purchaser. Generative, parametric software takes the composition, by London-based musicians-slash-software engineers Ollie Bown and Sam Britton, and tailors the output so that each file is distinct.

If you’re the 437th purchaser of the limited-run of 1000, in other words, you get a composition that is different from 436 before you and 438 after you. The process breaks two commonly-understood notions about recordings: one, that digital files can’t be released as a “limited edition” in the way a tangible object can, and two, that recordings are identical copies of a fixed, pre-composed structure.

Happily, the music is evocative and adventurous, a meandering path through a soundworld of warm hums and clockwork-like buzzes and rattles, insistent rhythms and jazz-like flourishes of timbre and melody. It’s in turns moody and whimsical. The structure trickles over the surface like water, perfectly suited to the generative outline. At moments – particularly with the echoes of spoken word drifting through cracks in the texture – it recalls the work of Brian Eno. Eno’s shadow is certainly seen here, conceptually; his Generative Music release (and notions of so-called “ambient music” in general) easily predicted today’s generative experiments. But Eno was ahead of his time technically: software and digital distribution – both of files and apps – now makes what was once impractical almost obvious. (See also: Xenakis, whom the composers talk about below.)

You can listen to some samples, though it’s just a taste of the larger musical environment.

Fake Fish Distribution – version 500 sampler by Icarus…

12 GBP buys you your very own MP3 (320 kbps). Details:
http://www.icarus.nu/FFD/

The creators weigh in on the project for Q Magazine:
Guest column – Electronic band Icarus on whether algorithms can be artists?

The conceptual experiment is all-encompassing. Just to prove the file is “yours,” you can even use it to earn royalties – in theory. As David Abravanel, Ableton community/social manager by day and tipster on this story, writes:

“As a sort-of justification for the price, all Fake Fish Distribution owners are entitled to 50% of the royalties should the music on that specific version ever be licensed. A very unlikely outcome, but at least it’s sticking to concept.

I spoke with Ollie and Sam to share a bit about how the mechanism of this musical machine operates. Using Ableton Live and Max for Live, each rendition is “conducted” from threads and variables into a sibling of the others. The pair talk about what that means compositionally, but also how it fits into a larger landscape of music and thought. Of course, you can also go and just experience your own download (first, or exclusively) to let the music wash over you, an experience I also find successful. But if you want to dive into the deep end as far as the theory, here we go.

CDM: How is the generative software put together? What sorts of parameters are manipulated?

Ollie: The basic plan to do the album came before any decision about how to actually realise it, and we initially thought we’d approach the whole thing from a very low level, such as scripting it all in the Beads Java library that has been a pet project of mine for some time. But although we love the creative power of working at a low level, the thought of making an entire album in this way was pretty unappealing. We looked at some of the scripting APIs that are emerging in what you might call the hacker-friendy generation of audio tools like Ardour, Audacity, and Reaper, but these also seemed like a too-convoluted way to go about it.

Even though Max for Live was in hindsight the obvious choice, it wasn’t so obvious at the time, because we weren’t sure how much top-down control it provided. (As a matter of fact, one of the hardest things turned out to be managing the most top-level part of the process: setting up a process that would continuously render out all 1000 versions of each track.) Although it was quite elementary and unstable (at the time), [Max for Live] did everything we wanted to do: control the transport, control clips, device parameters, mix parameters, the tempo … you could even select and manipulate things like MIDI elements, although we didn’t attempt that. 

So we made our tracks as Live project files, as you might do for a live set (i.e., without arranging the tracks on the timeline), then set up a number of parametric controls to manipulate things in the tracks. Many of these were just effects and synth parameters, which we grouped through mappings so that one parameter might turn up the attack on a synth whilst turning down the compression attack in a compensatory way. So the parameter space was quite carefully controlled, a kind of composed object in its own right.

We also separated single tracks out into component parts so that they could be parametrically blended. For example, a kick drum pattern could be spilt into the 1 and 3 beats on the one hand, and a bunch of finer detail patterning on the other, so that you could glide between a slow steady pattern and a fast more syncopated one. So loads of the actual parameterisation of the music could actually be achieved in Live without doing any programming. Likewise, for many of the parts on the track, we made many clip variations, say about 30, such as different loops of a breakbeat. The progression through those clips — quantised in Live, of course — could also be mapped to parameters.

Finally, by parameterising track volumes and using diverse source material in our clips, we could ultimately parameterise the movement through high-level structures in the tracks. So we could do things like have a track start with completely different beginnings but end up in the same place. We did this in Two Mbiras, which is probably the track where we felt most like we were just naturally composing a single piece of music which just happened to be manifest it a multiplicity of forms. In that sense, this was the most successful track. Some of the other tracks involved more of an iterative approach where we didn’t have a clear plan for how to parameterise the track to begin with, but that fits with our natural approach to making tracks. At one point, we wondered if we could just drop a bank of 1000 different sound effects files into an Ableton track, to load as clips. To our glee, Live just crunched for a couple of seconds and then they were there, ready to be parametrically triggered. So each version of the track MD Skillz could end on a different sound effect.

The Max software consisted of a generic parametric music manager and track-specific patches that farmed out parametric control to the elements that we’d defined in Live. The manager device centred around a master “version dial”, a kind of second dimension (along with time), so you could think of the compositional process as one of composing each track in time-version space.

We used Emanuel Jourdan’s ej.function object, which is a powerful JavaScript alternative to the built-in Max breakpoint function object, and wrote some of our own custom function generators and function interpolation tools to interact with it. Using the ej.function object, we composed many alternative timelines to control the parameters, and then used the version dial to interpolate smoothly between these timelines, resulting in a very gentle transition between versions. I.e., version 245 and 246 are going to be imperceptibly different, but version 124 and 875 will be notably different (we quickly broke from our own rule and started to introduce non-smooth number sequences into some of the tracks, so for example in Colour Field two adjacent versions will actually have quite different structures). We spent some time making it well integrated into Live so that once we really got into the compositional process it would work smoothly and be generally applicable to all of the different ideas we wanted to throw at it. That said, it’s a few steps of refinement from being releasable software. 

Pictured: the master controller device, very minimal, just a version dial and a few debug controls. Double clicking on bp_gui leads to the other figure, a multitrack timeline editor, with generative tools for automatically generating timeline data using different probability distributions.

How did you approach this piece compositionally, both in terms of those elements that do get generated, and the musical conception as a whole?

Sam: Since 2005, we had been working a lot in the context of performance, not only as Icarus, but with improvising musicians through our label / collective Not Applicable. This is reflected in the records we put out both as Icarus and individually during that time, which increasingly used generative and algorithmic compositional techniques as structural catalysts for live improvisations. (As Icarus: Carnivalesque, Sylt and All Is For The Best In The Best Of All Possible World. Individually: Rubik Compression Vero, Five Loose Plans, Nowhere, Erase, Chaleur and The Resurfacing Of An Atavistic Trait). Our performance software was made using Max/MSP and Beads and we started by crafting various low level tools that would loop and sequence audio files in various different ways, giving us control parameters that were devised around musical seeds we were interested in exploring.

In many respects, our approach was very similar and partly inspired by Xenakis’ writings in Formalised Music, although the context is obviously very different. These low-level tools were augmented by various hand-crafted MSP processing tools which used generated trajectories and audio analysis as a method of automating the various parameters that effected the sounds themselves, the logic being that an FX unit as a manipulator of sound is in some way loosely coupled to the musical scenario it is contextualised in. In both cases above, the idea was to step back from performance ‘knob twiddling’ by using the computer to simulate specific types of behaviour that would control these processes directly (hence the reason why we have never used controllers in performance).

Our search for different methods of coupling our increasing parameter space led us to develop various higher-level control strategies at Goldsmiths and IRCAM respectively, culminating in autonomous performance systems built in the context of the Live Algorithms for Music Group at Goldsmiths College. The autonomous systems we developed used a battery of different techniques to effect control, from CTRNNs and RBNs to analysis-based sound mosaicing, psychoacoustic mapping and pattern recognition. This work resulted in us being commissioned to put together a suite of pieces for autonomous software in collaboration with improvising musicians Tom Arthurs and Lothar Ohlmeier called “Long Division” for the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2010. The challenge of putting together a 45-minute programme of autonomous music really forced us to think more strategically about how it was possible to structure musical elements within a defined software framework and how they could vary not only within each individual piece, but also from piece to piece.

The most obvious inspiration for how we might do this ultimately came from reflecting on what it is we do when we perform live as Icarus. The experience of working up entirely new live material and touring it without formulating it as specific tracks or compositions proved to be an ideal prototype not only for Long Division, but also ultimately for FFD. Here, in a similar sense to the work of John Cage, large-scale structure and form became a contextually-flexible entity, which meant that for us it became to a far greater extent derived from the idiosyncrasies of the performance software we developed and keyed in by our own specific way of listening out for certain musical structures and responding to them in either a complementary or deliberately obstructive fashion (or perhaps even not at all). Creating these two pieces (‘Long Division’ and ‘All Is For The Best In The Best Of All Possible Worlds’) gave us the conviction that we could devise musical structures that were both detailed enough and robust enough to benefit positively from some level of automated control.

Therefore, when we came to start working on FFD, the main question we had to ask ourselves was; within the music making practices we had already been working with, what were the tolerances for automation within which we were still ultimately in control of and ultimately composing the music we were creating? In the end, the framework we set up was comparatively restrained; the generative aspect of each track was always notated as a performance via a breakpoint function and therefore able to be rationalised by us, the variation between different versions of the same track was done using interpolation and is completely predictable and incremental and finally, the entire space of variation is bounded to 1000 versions, meaning that the trajectories of the variation never extend into some extreme and unrealisable space.

More notes on the album:

Web: http://www.icarus.nu
RSS: feed://www.icarus.nu/wp/feed/

Last.FM: http://www.last.fm/music/Icarus
Discogs: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Icarus+(2)

SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/icaruselectronic
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/birdy_electric

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/icaruselectronic
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Icarus/132324596558

CREDITS

Music, Software, Scripting – Icarus (Ollie Bown and Sam Britton)
Mastering – Will Worsley, Trouble Studios
Artwork – Harrison Graphic Design

Icarus gratefully thank the following for their support of the FFD project

The PRSF Foundation (UK)
STEIM (Netherlands)
Ableton (Germany)
The University of Sydney (Australia)
Emmanuel Jourdan (France)

Modular music making is a throwback to the early days of electronic music, in which a spaghetti of patch cords is the price of open-ended sound creation. Fairly or unfairly, it has often been viewed as the domain of the eccentric wealthy musician. You needed cash, endless patience, and lots of space – well, unless you happened to be lucky enough to pick up a vintage modular as people were getting rid of them.

But something has happened: modules have become more practical and accessible. Like any music technology, they can become a rabbit hole into which time and money fall and no music escapes. But also like any music technology, there are ways of bending these tools to your will, applying fiscal and creative discipline to make them musically productive.

Enter the “desktop modular” revolution. Modules are cheaper and more usable. It’s easier than ever to assemble a rig of modular that coexists with your digital gear, be it MIDI hardware or computers. That means just a select set of modules within your budget (and available physical space) could find a place. And modules are more innovative and fun than they’ve been in the past, too. They merge digital and analog tech – just as this site has loved doing (despite our name) over the years.

And just as suddenly, that spaghetti entree starts to look delicious.

I can’t say I’ve personally found room for this kind of gear, but I’ve enjoyed watching the evolution of new equipment. And over the past few months, I’ve witnessed a bumper crop of terrific new modules. It’s time to survey some of that fertile landscape, as 2011 winds to a close. Here are a few of my favorites, sure to inspire other nominees from readers. And I imagine this adds fresh cause to venture into the basement stalls of the Winter NAMM music manufacturer trade show in Anaheim next month, where these sorts of less-mainstream devices flourish.

Notably, these modules all work with the ‘small’ Eurorack (A100) format. German maker Doepfer Musikelektronik popularized this format, and it has since taken off. In fact, that puzzled quite a few readers when Moog’s re-entry in modular eschewed that format. (That may be their loss.) But Moog ladder filters aside, there has been plenty of action in the Eurorack space.

Utility: Kenton MIDI-to-CV and More

Kenton’s Modular Solo is about as nice a utility knife as you could add to a modular rig, for integrating lots of different gear. Plug it in via ribbon cable, and you get:

• MIDI in and out
• SYNC 24 (“DIN SYNC” – think 808 and 606 drum machine sync)
• CV analog and gate output
• Two clock outs, four aux outs (think assigning MIDI to filter cutoff, etc., says Kenton)
• And an LFO – triangle, saw up and down, square, S&H pulse width with several fixed widths

£195.00, though all the extras there easily could make it worth it.

Utility: Expert Sleepers ES-4 Modules

Expert Sleepers’ ES-4 is the latest of their modules, turning a standard S/PDIF signal into five channels of control voltage. Coupled with their Silent Way software, you can also use it for MIDI, only with sample-accurate timing. That makes it a sample-accurate MIDI interface, if you like. (See video at top for a MIDI demo.) You can turn three of those five outputs into any signal you like – gate, envelope, LFO, and so on.

Where do you get that S/PDIF output? Well, lots of audio interfaces have them, and many computers – including recent MacBooks – do, as well.

There’s also an ES-4 Gate Expander add-on for additional 8 on/off gates, triggers, clocks, and so on. The unit is £151, or £64 for the Gate Expander, not including VAT.

http://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/es4.html

More demos:

Sound Sculpting: ADE-10 Reactive Shaper

Justin Owen of Abstract Data sends us this creation. It’s an all-analog waveshaper, wavefolder, feedback unit, with audio to LFO range. That means you can use it as an LFO or design sounds or manipulate synth pads or … any number of things. In fact, it’s nice enough that I could see using it alone, sort of Moogerfooger / stomp style. This is the same nice gentleman who created the Kicker, a synth focused on bass drums.

Loads of sound samples on SoundCloud, in addition to the video tutorial and demo above. It’s yours for £135.00, which I think is quite a bargain.

http://www.abstractdata.biz/ade10/

ADE-10 Reactive Shaper Eurorack Module (2011) by abstractjuz

Synthesis: Monotron in a Eurorack

A bit more left-field, but you can even get Korg’s simple-but-fun Monotron synth in a Eurorack module. Skip ahead in the video below to hear it in action. (Well, unless you prefer field recording crinkly wrapping sounds, in which case the unboxing portion of the video will be your favorite. Toddlers, dogs, and gear lovers agree: unboxing is the best part.)

US$249 puts the Monotron in a rack format. Of course, there, you can do quite a lot more with the Monotron than you can with the original, with both full CV and MIDI control and very, very nice knobs, in place of the awful-feeling (though stunningly inexpensive) controls on the original. All together, that makes a very playable, very fine synth.

http://erthenvar.com/store/monotrone, as seen on Synthtopia

Synthesis: Triangle Core Oscillators

Just when you think you can’t innovate in something as simple as an oscillator — you can.

Synthesist Danjel van Tijn sends news of the Dixie VCO, which, named for its creator, reimagines how to do a triangle oscillator:

It is a triangle core oscillator in Eurorack format that utilises a brand new method of implementing a triangle core oscillator using a design by professor David G. Dixon.

Side note: Trianglecore would make a great genre name.

Professor Dixon co-designed the module and collaborated on its construction. In the video at top, you can see what those waveforms look like. Below, you can see how this might work in a musical context:

Melodic demo of the Dixie VCO. Two Dixies are used (only one at first) along with a Z8000 for sequencing, a uScale for quantizing, uStep for step sequencing and everything is filtered through the new Dr. Octature VCF/VCO.

The uScale is used to help demonstrate the extremely wide and accurate range of tracking of both VCOs. The sequence spans many octaves but the intervals of the two Dixies stay in tune.

PWM, LIN FM and Sync are all played with along with different combinations of waveforms to explore just some of the timbre possibilities.

And here’s what happens when you reverse sync:

We seem to lack purchase info on this particular module for now, but there are loads of other great modules from this Vancouver, Canada-based builder – and yes, they work with Max/MSP and computers, too, not just modules:

http://www.intellijel.com/

Roundup of Other Great Picks

Knowing I could never keep up with all that’s happening on the Eurorack scene, I asked Danjel aka Intellijel to give us some of his picks for some of the coolest modules. He obliged with a drool-worthy – and I dare say genuinely musical – list. Here are his favorites:

There is so much stuff! Eurorack has obviously tried to update or recreate most of the classic synthesis blocks from various manufacturers (Buchla, Moog, Roland etc. etc.) but the past couple of years very interesting developments have been made incoporating brand new designs not found anywhere else. Some of these are completely DSP based, some are hybrids and some like the Dixie VCO are %100 analog.

Other stuff I have put out that is unique (and actually has decent video) would include:

uScale: CV quantizer but it also does intelligent interval generation

Corgasmatron:
This is a dual multimode filter with the same transfer function as classic Korg MS20 but it is a completely new circuit design (nothing related to the original at all) using all modern components.

On the analoghaven page there is a list of about 40 manufacturers each with many modules:
http://www.analoguehaven.com/what/

The Muffwiggler.com forum is extremely active with all things to do with modular synthesis (and synths in general).

Stuff worth noting form other manufacturers (there is so much more from each of these groups):

Cylonix Cyclebox:
FPGA based extremely deep triple VCO with through zero FM and massive amount of synthesis and waveshaping options
http://www.cylonix.com/cyclebox.html

TipTop Audio matrix sequencer:
http://www.tiptopaudio.com/z8k.php?goto=features

Tiptop Audio Z-DSP (user programmable DSP fx processor)
http://www.tiptopaudio.com/zdsp.php?goto=features

Expert Sleepers ES-3 (all their products really) control your analog gear via a plugin in Ableton/DAW and their lightpipe/spdif/db25 connector
http://www.expert-sleepers.co.uk/es3.html

Kilpatrick Audio K4815 Pattern Generator
http://www.kilpatrickaudio.com/?p=K4815

Makenoise Phonogene: digital tape recorder re-visioned
http://www.makenoisemusic.com/Phonogene.html

Makenoise Rene: cartesian sequencer
http://www.makenoisemusic.com/RENE.html

Synthesis Technology Morphing Terrarium: morphing wavetable synthesis
http://www.analoguehaven.com/synthesistechnology/e350/

Synthesis Technology Deflector Shield: thru-zero frequency shifter, phaser and ring mod
http://www.analoguehaven.com/synthesistechnology/e560/

The Harvestman Double Andore: dual a-d envelope generator and 2-channel vca with digital curve shaping and vca law selection
http://www.theharvestman.org/2017.php

The Harvestman Bionic Lester: dual 12db/oct switched capacitor multimode filter with mode selction and clock disruption.
http://www.theharvestman.org/1873.php

Toppobrillo Sport Modulator: Dual VC Lag and CV processor
http://www.analoguehaven.com/toppobrillo/sportmodulator/

Thanks, Danjel! This looks fantastic – plenty to consider as inspiration.

It all makes me wish for a holiday on which some supernatural being, against all rules of material consumption and the conservation of physics, flies around the Earth leaving, for free, the things you desire as gifts. If someone can make this happen, let me know. Also, I’ll need the contract to a flat in which I can house said materializing goods. Until then, I’ll have to hack something together for free in Pd and run it on a netbook.

Dream On: Modular, The Movie, and the Planner

Modular remains such a cultural phenomenon, it has inspired its own movie project, as seen on IndieGogo (trailer above):

I Dream of Wires: The Modular Synthesizer Documentary

If we’ve sold you on this whole idea, Danjel also points us to this:

There is a pretty cool online interactive virtual modular for planning out a system
It contains pretty much every module available.

http://www.modularplanner.co.uk/

More analog…

By the way, if you appreciate this sort of analog coverage and would like a domain at which you can see it, you should complain to Trash Audio. They cheekily registered the createanalogmusic.com domain and redirected it to their site, and they haven’t responded to offers to buy it from them them. I suggest you flood their inbox with complaints until they aquiesce. Alternatively, perhaps you can think of a word that means analog but begins with the letter ‘D,’ as that’d fit nicely with the ‘CDM’ acronym. Or we could come up with something in another language – German, for instance.

I’ve registered createanalogmusic.de for now; I’ll point it at something later this week. And as for how we can get back at TRASH_AUDIO — I’m open to suggestions. Can’t crash their NAMM party; I’ll be on a flight back to Berlin. (Seriously, that crew held a great synth meetup in LA in September I was lucky enough to catch – at least briefly.)

We’ll continue to happily bring you judgment-free electronic music making on a variety of platforms, from the Apple II to a discarded, broken cell phone to analog circuitry you wired up yourself, because that’s how we roll.

If you can find a spot in the rotation with your Mannheim Steamroller collection for something a bit different, CDM reader Leigh Walsh of Cork, Ireland sends in her work. She describes it as “punky gothy electronic … for Christmas,” with any proceeds benefiting Autism research. The single sounds crazy, but for me, things get good with the game world-like, shimmering “Secret Inside the Ice Level” and “Melody for the Sewn Princess” tracks.

I can find myself mentally wandering an 8-bit ice cave level right now…

Loving her work, hoping to here more, hoping not to get folks’ genders wrong next time… oops.

Heck, let’s take this playlist a little further out.

One darned trippy Christmas: HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF! By London-based artist Affie Yusuf, via SoundCloud:

HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF by AFFIE YUSUF

Thanks, Laila!

If that doesn’t cleanse your palette after hearing too many of the Christmas standards on repeat, I just can’t help you.

Now, go and use this to freak out your families and friends.

The first rule of giving is that you need to make sure that the entity to which you’re giving is actually asking for support. In the wake of a devastating fire started during London’s rioting that wiped out a Sony warehouse, indie labels are indeed asking for such support, says a representative of fundraising efforts. Sony’s facility housed, under contract, massive stocks belonging to UK distributor PIAS, representing in some cases the majority or entirety of inventory of dozens of independent record labels. For smaller organizations, insurance funds may not arrive in time to continue day-to-day operation, at a time when small labels are often on the brink of being able to operate from one day to the next.

That’s the picture painted by Dan Salter, who tells CDM about the effort Label Love, which in the immediate aftermath of the fire was already communicating with labels and beginning organizing efforts. Along with Hannah Morgan, Dan is leading efforts to help keep the lights on at labels, and to communicate with the rest of us about what’s going on.

Note that this is not organized by PIAS; you can read their official statements by following the distributor’s official site. (PIAS say they are also working on cleanup and efforts to benefit labels, but no official statement has yet requested funds; they’ve mainly thus far clarified what’s happened and how they’re responding but stopped short of asking for donations, beyond volunteers to help cleanup the site.)

Updated: An official PIAS-organized fund is detailed below. In addition to providing loans to labels, a statement by PIAS and the Association for Independent Music suggests that the effort will also help coordinate third-party drives like Label Love.

If you’re not up to speed with what’s happened, see yesterday’s post:
150 Indie Labels Lose Stock as London Warehouse Burns; Details Emerging, Reports, and Benefits

CDM: First, who are you? Whom do you represent?

Dan: We’re not actually affiliated to PIAS, we are a little group of bloggers & music fans that wanted to do something to help.

Have you communicated directly with any labels? What have they told you, if so?

We’ve been in touch with a number of the labels. We write & run a number of music blogs so we already knew quite a few people involved but many more have got in touch since Monday. Some of the stories are heart wrenching, people’s whole livelihoods have been put at risk by what’s happened.

Insurance will presumably be distributed through SONY. That said, do we know if stocks were covered by insurance? I know that Sony had told PIAS they’re working on keeping stocks flowing.

We’re not totally clear on the insurance situation, as you say it might be a question for PIAS, but I do know that even if insurance is paid it may come too late for many of the smaller labels. These companies run on a day-to-day basis and this kind of break in their cash flow could be terminal.

What do we know at this point about losses that may be suffered by labels? How are they coping?

I’m not sure of the overall situation but we’ve been contacted by a number of labels who have lost pretty much everything & have said it’s very touch and go as to whether they can survive this.

Who made the decision to begin fundraising? Was this something that came up via fans of the labels, or that the labels asked for? What’s their response?

A lot of these people affected are people know personally and are friends with when we heard the news we responded by thinking about what we could offer as gig promoters and the idea of benefit shows was born.

How will funds be distributed once collected?

100% of money donated through PayPal will go to the labels affected. Money raised from the events less costs will also be distributed to the labels.

Ideally we want to distribute the money in relation to the percentage of stock lost by each label. If we can’t get the relevant information to do that then we will split it evenly between the PIAS clients.

If people want to help now, what are some ways they might do so? How can they give or volunteer?

They can either donate through our PayPal account, link is on http://cognitivedissonancerecords.com/labellove/ or if they want to offer their services they can mail us at labellovebenefit (at) gmail (dot) com

Some people were circulating the idea of buying downloads from their favorite labels who have been affected. Would you encourage that, as well?

It’s a great idea but we would encourage people to use independent sites like Rough Trade rather than iTunes or Amazon as they take a far smaller cut & the labels will benefit more.

And more broadly, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how everybody’s doing over there? Much appreciated!

To be frank, our minds are a little bit blown by the scale of the response to our suggestion. We initially envisaged doing a few small gigs around London, we never expected to be dealing with the sheer volume of offers & support that we have, it’s been amazing & humbling. Right now there’s only a couple of us at the core of this and we work full time as well but we’re hoping to have a team together soon to help us cope with what’s happened!

Updated: an official PIAS and Association of Independent Music (AIM) fund has been announced.

This morning, we are announcing the creation of a fund to help independents affected by the catastrophe. They will be able to draw upon the fund to help cover the interruption to their business and the cost of getting back onto their feet.

The fund is being provided by some of AIM’s larger member labels, other well wishers and from AIM’s reserves, and will be made available to affected smaller labels pro-rata to labels’ [PIAS] turnover this year, as required.



Funds will be made available as interest-free and security-free loans repayable within a year. 



Total initial funds available are £250,000.



[PIAS] are first and foremost focused on supporting their labels. AIM will be coordinating the fund, and also other offers of help in the form of promotions and benefit gigs.



Source: AIM, via their site musicindie.com.

The likes of Mute and Beggars Group also repeat what Label Love are arguing: that smaller and emerging labels may not yet be prepared to whether the immediate aftermath of these events without additional help. The fund would appear to help the cash flow problem.