 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Scroll to the end to see the two videos (I got onto a little bit of a ramble with my explanations) :-)I have a lot of admiration for Raymond Scott. He created his own instruments and he played them well. Raymond Scott lived in times of hardware. We live in times of software. Software is where I see the most potential for innovation and creativity. Ada Lovelace got it right in 1852 when she "acknowledged some possibilities of the machine which [Charles] Babbage never published, such as speculating that "the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent." For years I have worked to gain mastery over the world of music software. I started with the Amiga on MED (getting an Amiga was the sole purpose I had with getting a job as young as I possibly could - paper rounds before and after school almost every day from when I was 13 years old). A few years later and Iwas using PCs and Cubase. I sold my hardware synth (to get a cello) when software synths started becoming viable. I started using Ableton Live from the moment I heard about it - initially sucked in by the realtime time-stretching and kept on it since being able to work with video the same way I've always worked with audio (see my Watchmen Trailer Remix for the most insane project I've tried recently). And let's not forget Propellerhead Reason, and the glory of Rewire. Having had training in classical instruments, I am a great believer in learning how to play my instruments. Ironically enough, the better I get with software, the less good I have to be with classical instruments... (my trumpet teacher would be so un-proud). Sometimes the software you can buy isn't enough. I spent a few years playing in bands and always wanted to use samples to bring some more life into the sound. But it always felt so disembodied and strange to have sounds coming from nowhere when it was obvious what was coming from the guitars or drums. So I conceived this idea of a 'virtual band'. This would give form to the weird and wonderful sounds possible through audio synthesis and processing, and could inject a lot of interest into live performances. Over the years I have tried to realise this vision in many different ways. I've created models with Poser and 3DS Max, I've written MIDI responsive software in Director, I've made sample players in Flash, but there was always too much latency, or 3D modelling, or rendering or... well ... non-realtime problems, and I always ended up putting the idea on the back burner. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Create Digital Motion blogged about Animata. An open source animation tool with a really simple concept at its core, and the ability to do exactly what I've wanted to do all these years, with a fast workflow, flexibly, and in realtime. So I got to work. I'd already used Max/MSP for a project but found it incredibly unwieldy when arrays were necessary. I've attempted to use Processing for a complex commercial project and learned that doing everything within Processing can lead to a lot of problems. I've used the Processing libraries in pure Java but found this was too much of a sacrifice in terms of sharing code and exporting applications. So this time I decided to make libraries for Processing with a bit of scripting to bind little projects together within the Processing IDE. So I built a library for the Korg MicroKontrol (and have some others underway), I got the source code for Animata to compile so I could make changes, I did some drawings, I pulled out some of the ideas I'd had earlier in the year for visuals, and I slapped it all together to make what you see in the videos below. Turns out something that seemed quite simple in my head is gargantuan in terms of implementation complexity, but - well - here it is. Working. VIDEO 1: Software Tour - overview of the sort of stuff I've been doing. It's kinda blurry but I think that's better than 'kinda takes forever to load' like the first version I uploaded ( here, if you're very patient and have a massive screen) Homebrew Adventures from Michael Forrest on Vimeo. VIDEO 2: Demo: Homebrew Adventures - demo from Michael Forrest on Vimeo. Yeah. So my 'tribute' to my heroes comes across somewhat creepy doesn't it... But hey. It was just a quick job to wire everything out so next week I'll try something else :) Hope you got something from that anyway. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!Tags: ableton, animata, c++, java, korg microkontrol, liveapi, midi, music, osc, processing, reason, ruby
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I've just read the handful of music-related articles in the latest New Scientist, and I am in the middle of reading "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks. The New Scientist articles were trite and hollow, and Musicophilia is a nothing more than a tangle of anecdotes and footnotes. It seems that these scientific writers think that simply by using a lot of medical terms for parts of the brain they are somehow explaining anything about music.  My friend was telling me on Sunday about a CV he saw where the candidate had talked about his PhD in Music. Apparently his conclusion was the bland statement 'there is something innate about humans that makes them like music'. A somewhat feeble conclusion, but no less helpful than anything else that any other purported expert is yammering about. Perhaps I am too hard on these people but frankly I'm frustrated that nobody is getting anywhere with any of this thinking. Matt Ridley has done the best job so far . He talks about how singing or chanting unifies a crowd -- clearly a very powerful force in warfare, religion, politics, sports and any other competitive or social situation you could name. Game theory tells us that co-operation is a powerful thing so it would make sense that a 'glue' like music would emerge in a species. But is music always a social experience? It's hard to be sure in this young age of recorded music. In the past, music always required participation - you could watch somebody sing or play, or you could go to church and sing with the parish; you could sing on your own but that was always a smaller experience than joining a crowd. In writing this short post I appear to have reached a conclusion. Music is a 'tribal glue'. Music binds individuals to make them part of a larger whole. I will happily leave it to neurologists (neurographists??) to figure out the details of the implementation - that's the boring part. Tags: music, science, thought
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So.. I'm starting to feel the limits of my not-a-gig structure. With no preparation, all my composition efforts start to be constrained in a mildly unsatisfying, undeveloping, uncontrasting, tunnelled way. I knew this would be the case. I think I can still get away with doing what I'm doing, but there is a strong case for preparing a few bits and pieces of tracks, just to make sure that it's not too tricky to get started. I'm always conscious that whatever I do to begin with will be construed as my 'style', and then people will leave thinking they know what I'm about, and then it'll all change. That said, last night certainly yielded a few very satisfactory compositions. A friend has started hassling me about the stagnation of my mp3 feed. It is true, I have not updated for a while....  So I think I will start a consolidation phase. Get these sketches turned into tracks. I may have to enlist some help for this process as I am extremely bad at working when I'm in my flat on my own. Tags: music
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Friday night was great fun I have to say. I really got a chance to do some proper multi-instrumentalism live on stage - haven't had a chance to do that for a long time. Kaya kept up the clarinet while I tangled myself in a bundle of wires playing toy keys through guitar pedals, glockenspiel and trumpet and cello through Kaoss Pad. Lots of feedback was required to keep the energy up, and I had to get the sound man to throw me a new cable for the keyboard after the guitar amp cut out and I got it working again. It was my sort of thing really - balancing things on other things, using all my arms and legs to keep stuff working, reacting to sound engineering mishaps. After receiving an initial batch of congratulatory sentiments I found myself sat alone. I felt awfully depressed about this. I felt frozen out of all the groups and didn't feel like I was there with any of my usual friends (i.e. I only knew the people I had played with, but they seemed to be talking to alternative, much closer friends). Angrily scribbling in my pad, I think I got to the root of my problem. I think I subconsciously expect that if I prove that I am good at stuff, then more people will want to talk to me. Thus relieving me of that painful ice-breaking stage of any interaction. That is, if I show off then groupies will come to me. But no! This does not happen! My depression, it seems, stems from the fact that I *still* have to make an effort. I cannot tell if my reluctance to socially 'prostrate myself' stems from a sort of childish "it's not fair, it's not fair - why do I have to do all the work?" mentality, or laziness, or something more valid. I'm not being lazy though - I work REALLY HARD on music, I work REALLY HARD when I'm playing live. I'm using my WHOLE BRAIN. So it's another reason I feel this upset indignation when people don't noticeably 'reward' me after a set. If human interaction is all I'm after, then it's an awful lot of misplaced effort! :) So I discussed this briefly with Kaya, and she told me that I am probably perceived as rather authoritative and unapproachable - reminding my of the artist-audience divide whereby a person might be somewhat starstruck(!!!) in my presence. And so I came to perceive the utter irony of my situation. The more I work on getting good at things, the HARDER I am to approach! Holy fuck, what a joke. So I know I have to do the approaching still, if I want to speak to people after I play a set. With my newfound proto-clarity on the situation I made a couple of advances to people that I would otherwise have indignantly avoided ('they should want to talk to *me*!'), and discovered that my performer status does in fact make it easier to start a conversation. With a cute girl. Tags: music
Current Music: muffled bass from the pop music playing at a party upstairs
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
michael_forrest's journal
Previous
click here!
