CMS Guide

Here's an interactive guide to the CMS (it is interactive in the sense that you click on the links and they take you to pages that explain each function.)

Hexagon on Saturn

More here.

Absynth 4 Patches

Last summer I made some patches for Native Instruments Absynth 4, one of them made it into the official selection. If you are interested, here are some of the rest. Tweak the knobs, the sounds change quite a bit when you do so. My favourite is the ride cymbal simulation.

Torino customers

27 January 2007

Schwyz Kru

I humbly agree, of course I could never make such a claim myself.

Tek-Now!, X-mas 2006, Schwyz, in the Swiss mountains.

Zagreb customers

Zagreb mosaic

Taken last November.

KmeansToBPSet1

This oscillator, by Nick Collins, is part of the SLUGens package of plug-ins for SuperCollider. It "uses succesive iterations of a k-means clustering algorithm on random data with random initial means to form break points in a 2-D space. These are then converted to wavetables in output synthesis based on the oscillator frequency." Test track below.

Faderboard

I saw this post, and thought I'd have a go at making a fader only track, using one of these hooked up to the Cylob Music System and multitrack recorded in Ableton Live. I've done some fader playing many times in the distant past (ie "Rewind" scratching noises, "Scram" melody) although somehow I had forgotten how much fun it can be. My track, which you can listen to below, is quite literally the greatest music ever made.

I wouldn't mind checking out the Vestax Faderboard, since word is they made the faders really robust and playable, although for sure I could do without the cheesy horrible sounding presets.

Salford / Manchester 12 May

Part of the Futuresonic festival:

CARBON

12th May 2007
11:00PM TILL DAWN
£15 ADVANCE TICKETS

ROOM 1
Clark (with Alvin Ryan) - LIVE (Warp Records)
Cylob (Rephlex)
Ceephax Acid Crew - LIVE (Rephlex, Firstcask)
Ultre - LIVE (Audiobulb, Overkill)
Computer Controlled (Sequence)
P45 (Room 237)

ROOM 2
Alexander Robotnick - (Fuzz Dance, Crème)
Legowelt - LIVE (Bunker, Crème)
Peter Mangalore (Human Shield, Sequence)
Slippery People (Naïve Melody)
Tommy Walker III - LIVE (Human Shield)

Islington Mill, James Street, Salford, M3 5HW

Private Life

A few months ago, I went round Ed DMX's house and we made a track called "Private Life." It is a 4 to the floor anthemic electronic disco number with vocoder singing. We just signed it to Soul Jazz records for release as a single, under the artist name "Private Lives."

It doesn't really sound like anything either of us would do alone. It's certainly much more "straight" than the stuff I usually come out with. We have both played it out a lot and it always goes down well, so it will be exciting to see it released and to find out how it does. I don't know when that will be, within a few months I guess.

Roma 20 April

Updated Rome date: I'm now DJ'ing there on the 20th of April. The details will appear on my website when I can be bothered to update it. That's what I like about Blogger, you don't have to mess with web design.

BreakEuphoria

20 Apr 2007, 11:30 - 05:00
Rashomon Club
via degli argonauti 16
Rome / Roma
Cost : €8

http://www.myspace.com/breakeuphoria

I usually play a range of music, but they like it stomping in Rome, so I promised not to play any breakbeats.

Bangface March 2007

All my posts this weekend are about things that happened last weekend. Number 2: Bangface. Bogdan Raczynski, Ceephax, DJ Rephlex Records, Mike Dred and Headcleaner: not a bad lineup, as it goes.

DJ Rephlex


Ceephax


Bogdan

Inland Empire

So I saw it last week. This entry won't contain too many spoilers, since I didn't really have a clue about what was going on, although my friend was able to pick apart a lot of the meaning. It's not giving too much away to say that there are lots of unsettling moments, many scenes of visual brilliance, and a few compelling monologues, so that even though I failed to connect with the piece as a whole, there was plenty to keep me awake in the meantime.

The first thing to say about it is that it looks really horrible. Even the nastiest moments of David Lynch's previous films look sumptuous, thanks to the quality of film, but this was shot digitally. He seems to have really used the hard edges and washy colours to his advantage. There are many parts of the film that seem like self parody, and that I couldn't help laughing out loud about. For instance, the constant use of extreme out of focus facial close-ups. After the millionth such shot I thought it was going a bit far, but then again it did make for uncomfortable viewing, which (I suppose) was the point. The rabbits thing made no sense to me whatsoever, although I did enjoy those bits a lot. (Which came first, "Rabbits" or "Donnie Darko"?) Also, a monologue near the end had me giggling... well I won't give it away.

What I did take from this film was the feeling that if David Lynch could make something so fantastically and extremely indulgent, then I could do anything. It's as if he set out to make the most Lynchian film he possibly could, and with the use of digital technology he could be free to do so without anyone saying, "no you can't do that." I also really got the impression, rightly or wrongly, that he just made this film without stopping to think if it was "good" or not, that it was in his mind to do this so he simply went ahead and did it... of course, having been a genius director for thirty years counts for something, so his instincts are well honed.

As films go, I much prefer Mulholland Drive, which looks positively conventional in comparison to Inland Empire. Another friend compared this film to an art installation, which makes sense. You are definately strapped in for a ride when you sit down in front of it. The more I talk about it, the more I want to go and see it again.

Happy to be crappy

I made 4 demo tracks yesterday, they are all diabolical but I'm happy about that. It's the worst thing in the world to sit down and start being creative, in any capacity, with the expectation that something should be immediately "good". In my experience, it's the kind of thinking that leads to writer's block, especially if your living depends on that particular creative activity. "Mistakes" are good for experience and exploration. As it happens, I did come up with some interesting sounds anyway. For instance, a "snare" made from a rapidly retriggered physically-modelled mandolin with a pitch envelope, a "kick" using a clarinet model, an acid line played with a chaotic oscillator. As soon as I give them some decent notes to play, instead of the dismal ones I chose yesterday, we'll be rocking.

Cassini

Cassini really floats my boat. That's all.

Free Mac Ware

Sorry this is such a boring post, it is just to say that if you have a Mac then you must check here if you didn't already, it's a blog linking to lots of high quality freeware.
... OK then to make it 1% more exciting, here's a fave: Celestia, a program for exploring the solar-system (and beyond)

Old News but...

...worth posting anyway. Advanced stuff from Barcelona, more info here. Thanks EJ.
Edit: This posting came to you courtesy of Gemma Tortella, she can provide you with all of your ukulele and poetry needs.