I ran in to this stuff on accident tonight. They are nspired by The Blue Man Group(ripoff of the Smurfs -HJS) of course. I realized a year ago at this moment I was watching them in Vegas. Ah, Serendipity. Anyways, any instrument you can build from parts at Home Depot is cool by me. These are cooler than the PVC flutes I posted earlier. Here are some vids and links to PVC instruments:
BMG Construction 101
Building a PVC Instrument
PVC Hang drum
Ableton Live Resources List
Crowd Chamber is a new plug-in from QuikQuak. It is not exactly your normal effect. I may never hear a enormous crowd cheering for me but a can simulate one. Actually more appealing is the weirdness you can create with this. From the site:
* Simulates a crowd of up to 2,000,000 voices.
* The perfect new tool for sound design.
* Voices vary in spectral content and delay.
* LFO’s for temporal changes in voices.
* Fast visual editing, with parameter randomisation
functions.
* From simple chorusing effects, small crowds and
stadiums, and on to impossible situations.
* Creates massive stereo sound washes, and extremely
weird animal effects.
* Low Cost
I love free stuff and like anything that can help me be more organized. Naturally the Wusik Vm caught my eye when it became free just recently. It is a VST organizer. Basically you load all your preset from all your plugins in it and organize them however you want. From example you could group all the preset that sound like synth leads from the 80’s. Then select a preset called Flock of Sea Gulls and the right preset in the right instruments will load and you have everything but the crazy hair. You can see the possibilities. You can have say all you digital bass sounds together regardless of the actual plugin they use.
Jeff Tweedy - People Talking During Concert
I am a Wilco and Jeff Tweedy fan so I am biased but I think that this is great. I am sure others would disagree. There seems to be more and more self centered people. They are too absorbed with self to have any regard for those around them. I am all for rock and roll but seriously if the performer at an acoustic show can hear you on stage talking in the back of the house you are an asshole. It is to bad the communal experience of being a member of a group feeding off of each other emotion has to be explained.
The argument that paying your hard earned money listen to music not a lecture doesn’t fly with me. I did not pay my hard earned money to listen to a few jerk talk over the music. If intervention is needed I am all for it. It is no different than talking during a movie. But I am not stodgy. If it is a horror movie and someone spontaneously yells, “don’t go it there.” Fine. OK. If you talk all the all through the film you are just an ass.
If it is a loud rock n roll show and you are talking who cares no one is going to hear you 3 feet away. The is a different code of conduct but there still is a code of conduct. But still people can ruin it and send out a bad vibe. Being a stick in the mud at a kinetic loud show is as bad. I have seen some get mad at people for standing or dancing. It is as bad as being a loud mouth at a quiet show. I have seen people get mad that people are pogoing or when mosh pit breaks out at a hardcore show. You have to go with the flow. At more aggressive shows intervention is still needed sometimes. I hate crowd surfing but at giant summer rock festival you might have to live with it. But people take it to far. Still I always remember the show being stopped to tell some serial crowd surfer that being a giant of a man (he was something like 6′4″ 300 lbs.) that he was simply too enormous to except for people to keep him aloft and people were going to get hurt. I have seen acts ask at least that the pass people back away from the stage so people did not get there necks crushed. I have been to other shows where they have put an end to crowd surfing, fighting, over zealous security guards. Most of the time I haven’t had a problem with it. Yet others do. I don’t think purchase a ticket is license to do what ever the hell you want. The artist have the respect and and a mic plugged into the PA which gives the a voice and power. Who else at a show is going to lead the sheep when the need to be lead.
Jeff Tweedy can come to the movies with me anytime.
I have been out of it for about a week. People in more northern and less deserty places might find it hard to believe but last eight days ago i got sun burnt. The water was supposed to be cold so I was only going in for a moment but it was quite nice so I stayed in to long. Nordic people in the desert burn. It wasn’t that bad but I did not react well to it. The burn lead to a two day fever and repressed immune system that lead to me catching a nasty bug of some kind. So, I have kind of been under the weather and neglected almost everything including these pages. But here are a few things I have ran in latley when I was actually awake. Oh, yeah wear your sun screen.
The Electronic Peasant built the amazing portable synth above. The plenty of more picture on the site. One of the better DIY projects I have seen.
This video points out just how faulty insidious prejudices can. I was prejudice against Theremin’s. Which is a surprise since I like them. But I thought they were for background music in movies with evil scientist and aliens or strange sound for very trippy trip-hop or experimental music. A very special effecty kind of instrument. But I of course was wrong.
Peter Bennent has a bunch of cool musical interfaces. The Beatbearing above being the coolest. It reminds me of the Bubblegum Sequencer.
Finally here is some alternative recording tips. Number 7 works great when you have a sun burn.
Some plug-in news form two devs with good stuff.
A new version of the KarmaFX Plugin Pack, version 2.0, has been released. During the hectic months up to the release of the KarmaFX Synth Modular, development of the KarmaFX Plugin Pack was heavily down prioritized. Therefore it is now time for an update of this useful pack of VST effects. Bugs have been fixed and features have been added or improved. The main change however, is the inclusion of a brand new 15 page User’s Manual.
I think this a good collection. I use the EQ often and worth be worth a donation alone.
NOVAkill releases the NOVAkiller:
NOVAkILLER uses the FM Oscillator found in ANGSTkILLER but addsHard Sync and a few other goodies to it’s arsenal. Envelopes are simplified, slider-driven ADSR jobbies and Envelope modulation can be inverted for long, evolving pads.
It is as much an exercise in style as substance but still has plenty to offer.
UPDATED to Version 1.5 - more filter features, enhanced VCa envelope and tweaked UI.
That should make for some good FM fun.
I visit the Guardian quite often for being not only on the other side of the pond but almost to next pond. Sometimes it is good to get a foreign perspective on US events(there is less bias in indifference) but mostly being a football(no the other kind) in America I can’t read about by teams second half of the season collapse in the local paper.
I need to check the Culture section more often when I need to stop by because the is usually good stuff. Live and Let DIY is such. It shares my idea that people should have the power to remix there own culture. It is nice to see an article in a major publication not running with the standard line.
Today’s gear porn(above) is from Bill on TDPRI. I need a deck with that on it.
Circuit Locution is to the third part in the on bending a Yamaha PSS-460. There is not a lot of bending instructional stuff shown in detail this well. If you have interest in circuit bending you should check it out.
de la mancha has released sfilter:
“sfilter creates a stepped filtered sequence, to create gating, sweeps or rhythmic modulation of filter cut-off. It uses a variable state filter, varying between 2 adjustable cut-off values according to a tempo-sync’d step sequencer. An LFO can also modulate the filter for extra movement”
If you have interest in copyright(copywrong) issues or like me just have and interest in getting all straightened out and returning culture to people I found a very through and thought provoking article via the ccMixterblog & The Patry Copyright Blog. Prof. Robert Brauneis of George Washington University has a paper documenting the convoluted history of a copyright icon the Happy Birthday song in great detail. It can be downloaded at SSRN. The detail history illustrates very well the problems of copyright. I can’t imagine trying to figure out the owner ship of something that has been orphaned.
Obsurica Records is doing some thing a little insane that I like called Sloppy Seconds:
I am accepting submissions for a comp entitled “Sloppy Seconds”.
Submissions must be exactly one second in length. They may be found sound, original compositions, previously released or unreleased.. anything. They are all being strung together into a massive, A.D.D. inducing, pummeling, roller coaster ride of an audio experience.
I have a weakness for Telecasters. I just like ‘em. Jeff Miller has built some tele that are bit different. He mixes Line 6 Variax electronics into a more traditional Tele. I think it is pretty cool even if regular tele is already perfect.
And speaking of Teles Electric Guitar Review has begun a project relicing a new tele. While I love the look of old beat up to closet classic relics I kind of think making relics is a little lame sometimes. Of course parting with 5 figures to get a real one is also lame. I am really curious to see the whole process works and the results.
And continuing the theme Swineshead Pickups have release some good looking Tele pickups the Spotlight-TC & the Dragonfly-TC. I really dig the wood but the different color plastic is cool also.
Bad Times Good Music or Crunches, Burst Bubbles and A Crisis of Confidence
I promise this becomes music related.
I work in a bad neighborhood. Some past mayor must have appointed his mentally challenged brother in-law as city planner. Warehouses and industrial buildings winding like a river through the area divide pockets of run down houses into shitty neighborhoods. People into those neighborhoods have no choice. It is mostly illegals with a minority of legal citizens way down on there luck. Who wants to live surrounded by salvage yards, carpet warehouses and pallet making operations the occasion that often go up in flames.
The thing is it has gotten hot but there are more street people than ever. And by street people I don’t mean just homeless. I include prostitutes, drunks, tweakers and other assorted sorry losers. Normally the heat thins there numbers dramatically. Normally there are not some many people outside. Normally not as many whores in thrift store prom dresses people outside and tweakers zooming around on bicycles over loaded with crap. The dive bar up the street must be bursting. People always in and out. You see a cluster of drunks when the door swings open. I love dives but this ain’t that kind of place. It not a place hipster hang out because Charles Bukowski drank there decades ago before the neighborhood was gentrified. This is the kind of place that sells fortified wine by the shot and you wish it smelled like stale beer. Twice I have seen a drunks stroll outside to piss on the side of the bar next to a long line of cars in the Taco Hell drive through next door. Not exactly an appetizer. Business I imagine most likely has surpassed the facilities.
Some of the things I see are in that neighborhood are better economic indicators than the clueless economist at the Fed will ever see. There seems to be a palatable sense of desperation in the air. You can breathe in the downturn. Even outside of that neighborhood people seem down. To steal a line from a famous peanut farmer there seems to be, “A Crisis of Confidence.” A kind of war that kind of has no end in sight, a credit crunch, a burst bubble, a disconnect between the American Dream and America and terms popping up not spoken since the era of my birth like stagflation. It seems like it one big bummer. You don’t need to be a pollster to know people aren’t feeling too great about things at the moment. It seems like people are cynical and tired. But It makes me feel more motivated about being creative. That malaise & desperation seems to inspire me more than when things are more warm and fuzzy and completely lacking that “Crisis of Confidence.” Smog makes me want to make art more than a rainbow.
It is really not that strange. Bad times in bad places make for good art. I am not claiming to be Barry Gordy Jr., Wayne Kramer, Iggy Pop or the Belleville Three but they serve as examples. When things got the most “interesting” in Detroit you got the birth of Motown, Punk Rock and Techno. The former murder capital has had made some damn good music. There are other examples like the summers of ‘76 in Manchester or ‘67 in San Francisco. Maybe if burst bubbles have silver linings it is these bad times will make better music. Whether we want to think about our problems or forget them the soundtrack might be better.
This idea reminds of the Harry Lime speech from The Third Man(it is at the end of the end of the clip.) It maybe more a about bloodshed but it still fits to my mind.
I can not mention The Third Man is with out bringing up the Anton Karas zither score. Maybe there has never been a better meld of music and film. The bouncing zither score would not have work so well with out the back drop of a battle scared Vienna that was that was suffering from very real post war fatigue. Great Art from bad times.
FIN