Walter Kitundu, one of the recipients of this year's MacArthur Grants makes some truly spectacular instruments.
This photo is of him playing his 1200 phonoharp, a mix of live and pre-recorded analogue signals. He describes it on his website as, " incredibly versatile and can sound like bass guitar, a lap steel guitar, a hammered dulcimer, a drumset, chimes... many sounds are unique to this instrument. There are many ways to play it. The built in mixer and cross-fader allows cutting and scratching with the turntable and there is even a headphone jack for cueing records."
There's many more where that came from. Tons and tons of beautifully crafted pieces. Truly stunning.
Is it just me, or are there actually a lot of new musical interfaces coming out recently? Maybe it's one of those perception things. Like when you worry about losing your hair and suddenly everyone you see is bald. Or, rather, like when you met your first co-worker in a wheelchair, and then there's people in wheelchairs all over the place. So innovation is like bald people in wheelchairs. Or bald wheelchairs.
Anyways, today's new interface: Stanton's Da Scratch, which Stanton claims will "change the DJ world forever." I'm not exactly sure how a virtual turntable will turn the world upside down, but we'll have to wait until tomorrow for the official unveiling to find out for sure. Maybe it will just mean less DJs with back aches. Either way, it's still pretty neat looking, and I'm so easily taken by touch sensors. And blue.
Continuing in my fervor for all things Raymond Scott, I am very excited about On to Something the documentary about his life that his son is currently working on. It looks amazing, but, as it's not done yet, the trailer will have to do for now.
Raymond Scott is destroying my mind. He is bashing it in with a hammer and shooting it in to space. He is filling it full of dynamite and confetti, then igniting it from a short distance away to laugh and laugh as he is showered by my sparkling joy. He is the newest and brightest star in my sky of electronic musician/experimenter/inventor forefathers.
Scott (born 100 years ago today in Brooklyn, NY) built some of the earliest synthesizers in the 1960's. People said he was like a mad scientist. He invented all sort of great musical tools, including, some say, the first sequencer. He was one of Bob Moog's influences.
Check out his electronium.
That thing is hot.
Not only that, but he made amazing electronic music himself. It is fantastic. It's Brin Eno before Brian Eno. It's electronic when electronic was something new. He also collaborated on most of Jim Henson's experimental films. I just got the Manhattan Research INC collection and I cannot stop listening to it. Check out his song Lightwork from the late 50s early 60s. (If it sounds familiar, perhaps you recognize the sample from J Dilla's Donuts)
Lightwork - Raymond Scott
Pretty sweet, eh?
So, all that to say, here's to Raymond Scott, all-around musical genius and someone to look up to during this next 9 months of MFA exploration.
While working on my thesis over the past few months, I've been exploring the different forms of musical expression that are possible in a synthesized environment.
Here is an experiment I did with automatically generated musique concrete. Using Max/Msp I can record 3 seconds or audio in to a buffer which then randomly moves the playhead through the recorded audio at a set speed.
I call it "When You Wish Upon a Synthesizer." This one's for all those avant-garde Disney fans out there.
My copy of Nanoloop that I ordered from ebay just came. It goes nicely with my sweet Gameboy Pocket that I got a few months ago.
So far, I am super impressed with Nanoloop. I saw Bubblyfish give a talk on chiptune music a couple months back, and immediately saw how much nicer Nanoloop was to work with than LSDJ, which I had played around with a few years back. It's not nearly as powerful, but it's a great way to come up with some super fun songs. The interface is extremely easy to understand. It's easy to navigate between the different screens, and it visualy makes sense what is happening when you apply certain functions on the sound. I need to keep this in mind when developing my own interface this coming year.
Thought: It may be interesting to actually map the key commands from the Gameboy to an external device, making it more performative.
Also, a side note: I am crapping myself over that picture of Rabato's rig. Check out more at his Gameboy music site.
Dipity.com has a fascinating chronological map of the history of internet memes. It is a really nice information layout. Timelines really are generally the wayto go. Just ask National Geographic. They have placed bigger (more popular) memes towards the top of the screen, which is a great navigation element. You can also drill down and display all of the content from a given time period. Clicking on a topic will launch a window to either read about the item or watch the video.
On a side note. It's also fun to see how we have advanced in our tastes.
It is a great little exploration in the world of sound and machines. Much of the material covered, especially the earlier chapters (soldering?), I am already familiar with, but there is a great deal of fun projects in here. Ripe with possibilities! I have been feeling stone-walled with the simplistic microchip sounds I've been making (a person can only take so many square waves), so I look forward to chapters 20 - 24 with some more advanced oscillators. Hopefully Bob Moog is smiling down.
I am getting very excited about this upcoming year of school. I can't believe there's only one more year left. I want to play with electronics, music, and the internet 18 hours a day, forever.
This 3D controller is an interesting concept. I'd really like to see it working in a sound-based application for better evaluation purposes. I wonder if it would be possible to take this technology and include more fluid transitioning, like a theremin? File under: things to consider.
Bleep Labs released their Thingamakit last week, a D-I-Y version of the Thingamagoop, which captured my imagination earlier this year.
This comes at a perfect time since I just bought a kick-ass little robot that I justified by saying it was vintage and cool (but really had no specific use for it). That is until now. Hopefully in a few months the world will witness the rise of Thingamachat! Stay tuned.
I just realized that I have not updated my "Reading" selection in a very long time. I read "The Old Man and the Sea" on a plane ride over Easter, so it's about time I caught you all up to speed.
I won't bore you with a list of all the books we've read over the past few months, but I will tell you that my current selection, "This is Your Brain on Music," by Daniel Levetin is fascinating.
This wonderful book has a wealth of information for anyone who is interested in, as he puts it, the "science of a human obsession." In it he discusses the functions of the brain as they pertain to both music-listening and creating, and, as I begin working on my MFA thesis, I find myself continually dwelling on these ideas. Music as "organized sound." The direct mapping of pitch from the auditory cortex to your brain. (Neurons in your brain fire at the exact frequencies of sound you hear!) Does 10,000 hours of practice really make a virtuoso? These questions and more will certainly effect the way I approach the coming year of studies. So, heads up, it's about to get real nerdy around here for the next 9 months.
