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June 29, 2006
Create Digital Motion Launch
Again I would like to draw your attention to another one of the Peter Kirn industry productions; which is Create Digital Motion. It's just launched and it is a site that provides information to the video/vj crowd in the same vein as Create Digital Music. I put together the design & artwork, Jaymis coded and wrangled my unruly artwork into beautiful sweet technojabber (Please visit the The Oxygen Kiosk should you need high quality coding and web design services) and Peter Kirn wrangled & organised me and was ever so patient with my other commitments. We worked on this project completely via the web, as we did with CDM, and I've gotta say that doing this kind of stuff online is just so much fun.
This has been a lovely project to work on, the communication and the professionalism of both Peter and James have made this project a joy to work on, and a privilege to be involved with.
Visit: Create Digital Motion
Also visit: Create Digital Music
Don't forget to also see: Jaymis.com & his commercial venture The Oxygen Kiosk
Posted by funnelbc at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2006
Tenori-on now has a blog + Sonar 2006 Clips!
I'm just about ready to open up a Toshio Iwai section for this website! There is now a blog for the Tenori-On development team. There's a bunch of great photos, and information directly from Toshio as well.
Of special interest to fans of Toshio's work is SOUND-LENS. A grid array of leds, that triggers as the arm moves in front of it. It reminds me a little bit of Laser Harps I geuss, but basically any grid based trigger system would probably more analogous.
Because the player moves the arm in the air, it looks like playing Theremin a little. So I may say this is like "Theremin of Light."
Visit the tenori-on blog.
After the jump you can see some clips from Sonar 2006. If anyone has video for the Naoaki Kojima performance with SOUND-LENS at Sonar, please let me know!
The second clip features electroplankton in action as well as the Tenori-On.
Sort of cool and related: Check out this snap of a sheet of score for the Tenori-On. Cool!
Related:
Tenori-On Video roundup
How to Make Electroplankton Rock - A wishlist
CDM- Tenori On Live Performance
Posted by funnelbc at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
The Museum of Techno
Every music nerd should look at these clips at the museum of techno and have a laugh. I'm pretty sure this reminds me of my art school days, where drinking alcohol that came in the box format seemed like a fantastic idea. And then getting down to some serious craft work, in my case, it was sewing bearsuits, but it seems these guys got down to some serious kraftwerk instead. Haw!
Feel free to click here, it'll take you the Museum of Techno.
Via Music Thang
Posted by funnelbc at 12:05 AM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2006
Minimusic notepad 1.4 is out.
Palm based composers/musicians might be interested to know that miniMusic have released version 1.4 of NotePad. It's a rather groovy little notation program for Palm OS.
You can check it out here.
Posted by funnelbc at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)
Visit ozmusic.com.au or I will steal your teeth.
John from ozmusic.com.au dropped me a line to let me know about something that sounds pretty groovy. I came across the website a couple of weeks ago, filed under "to investigate" and then promptly forgot about it! Sorry guys! They're setting up a Australian music community website, and the focus will be on providing support for local artists.
Think of a MySpace with more user friendly features targeted specifically at local artists.
They looking for artists to sign up for the initial launch of the website. You could be beta-testers of a sort, as they may add more features as time goes by. Sounds very cool, and if you're in a band here in Australia they're looking for you!
An excellent initiative and you should go sign up at ozmusic.com.au
Posted by funnelbc at 06:31 PM | Comments (0)
June 20, 2006
Rock's Longest Night - 21st June (melbourne australia)
I do a bit of graphic work for a charity called Open Family Australia. They're holding a fundraiser gig, called "Rock's Longest Night" at the Prince of Wales here in Melbourne - featuring Killing Heidi, The Inches, Shifter, Window + more.... The night will raise money for The Longest Night Appeal to help more young people break the cycle of homelessness. All the bands are donating their time and it's going to be a great night!
Tickets are only $15 +bf Available from Polyester, Missing Link and usual outlets (+ the venue, call 9536 1168).
Posted by funnelbc at 08:13 AM | Comments (2)
June 15, 2006
While my guitar gently weeps on ukelele
I make no apologies for this. While my guitar gently weeps. On ukelele.
Posted by funnelbc at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 13, 2006
Harp Guitar Gathering
Here is a nice collection of clips of harp guitar players. I've always been fascinated by these guys. It would have most likely been my fanatical tea party fandom from a few years back that would have done the trick I think. (I must clarify that I mean the Good Tea Party stuff not the newer ones. The combination of beautiful alternate tunings and alternate instrumentation make that album an absolute classic. But I digress.
The instruments themselves look amazing, and you can catch a glimpse of other guitar rareities in the background as well. The clips seem to be taking a while to get down, so might be a tad 56k unfriendly. They're worth waiting for though!
Posted by funnelbc at 09:59 AM | Comments (0)
June 09, 2006
Animusic - Animated Music. (cooler than it sounds)
woah.
Posted by funnelbc at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)
Justin King - guitar virtuoso
I will get this embedded video thing out of my system shortly. In the mean time, enjoy the clip... This guy is incredible. (His personal site linked from Doolin wasn't working at the time of writing)
Posted by funnelbc at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)
Tenori-On Video Roundup
Thanks to some kind commentors on my CDM Article I have the 3 (count em' three!) Tenori-On videos to share.
The first is from Artfutura 05
2 more clips from Siggraph 2005 after the jump!
Posted by funnelbc at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)
Site news june 06
I have added a new video category, as the trend for youtubin' and google videoin' cannot be denied. So expect a few more video links in the posts to come. It's the way of the web (2.0) *insert winky eye smiley face*
Also I extended and rewrote my electoplankton wishlist as well as wrote a short peice about Toshio Iwai's collaboration with Yamaha to create the Tenori-On, and they're on Create Digital Music. This is cool because CDM gets about 10 squillion more viewers than I get in a given day. So anyway, you can read my guest posts on CDM here:
CDM: How to make Electroplankton Rock
Tenori-On upcoming live performance at Sonar 2006
Posted by funnelbc at 06:49 PM | Comments (0)
Hannes Coetzee = legend
This is excellent. Hannes Coetzee playing slide with a teaspoon in his mouth leaving his left hand free to finger as per normal.
Via: Neat-o-rama
Posted by funnelbc at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2006
Commodore 64 Sequencer is GO!
I was frankly amazed when I first wrote about this, and I still am. The Prophet 64 has arrived and you can pick it up for $39 Euro. Excellent.
The Sound samples on the website really do sound quite good, and you know you can pickup a commodore 64 for virtually nothing these days. It's not all retro mind you, the Prophet 64 folks have built it for ease of use. You can preview the chip by downloading rom file and checking it out on a Commodore 64 Emulator if you can't wait.
Buy it, or try the rom file in your emulator: Prophet 64 Home page
Previously: Preview: Prophet 64 Cart & the Commodore 64 SID Music Scene
Via the mighty CDM!
Posted by funnelbc at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2006
Free EMU IIIX Sample Library CDs
I'm in the middle of cleaning up my study. (It's a horrible mess) And I came across these. They're sample library CDs for the EMU IIIx (Edit: I think they also work the EMU ESI-4000 units maybe? I can't remember to be honest). I used to work at a music shop and they were lying around upstairs in our miscellaneous broken bits department (that's where your stuff goes to die when you take it back to the shop and they don't do anything to fix it).
Anyway, they weren't doing a great deal there, and I was optomistic that I could find a program to extract the samples because I didn't have the EMU hardware. About a zillion years ago these cds retailed for $125 each (AUD) here in Australia but now they're pretty much worthless unless you have a way of extracting the samples or the appropriate hardware.
They are: Emulator Standards, Vintage, World Percussion/Ensemble, Sound Effects & Emu Classics.
So. If you have the appropriate hardware and are willing to take a picture of your EMU box with a bit of paper with "onetonnemusic is rather good" or something to that effect written on it, I will mail out these sample cds to you free. Email info at ausmusician.com to enter. First in, best dressed!
Posted by funnelbc at 04:26 PM | Comments (3)
June 04, 2006
How to make Electroplankon rock (a wishlist)
I've had Electroplankton for a while now, and I feel the need to document my experience. Reviews of Electroplankton in general are redundant, people either get it or they don't. If you're a music nerd and enjoy experimental music you'll love it. Enough said.
Hence, this exposition, or perhaps exposé - you choose. For anyone who came in late, Electroplankton is a title for Nintendo DS that basically has a set of 10 "minigames" that revolve around music creation.
Electroplankton is one of those titles that you hear about and assume that will never surface with an English translation. Lots of interesting titles come out in Asia and never see the western market. But then again, there's very little to Electroplankton and translation of the game itself would have taken all of about, say, 10 minutes. The manual is a work of art though, and well worth a look in it's own right. These days most games don't really have printed manuals of any description. Thanks be to the folks at Nintendo who have chosen to release this game and documentation in such a complete way to the western market.
What's fascinating about this title is not so much the fact that Nintendo have released a music title for their hand held, but the crossbreeding of music creation and art interaction could be so compelling and commercially successful.
Hopefully that's everyone up to speed. Electroplankton is a music toy. You could conceivably use it as a tool in your musical arsenal, but right now, it's just not suited to that, at least not in a regular performance sense. However. With some changes it could be absolutely mind bending. So lets call this the...
Electroplankton 2 wishlist
Or how to make Electroplankton ROCK...
I'm relatively optimistic, but I realize that most of these things just won't happen. This was created bearing in mind, and should be entirely achievable with, the confines of the existing DS hardware.
1. Collaboration.
Playing music together is fun. Playing games together is fun. The DS has in built wireless and support for online play. When Electroplankton initially came out the multiplayer scene for the DS was pretty weak - but now its starting to mature and the infrastructure is there. It would be an incredibly compelling title if the wireless sent timecode and allowed collaborative composition. Given Electroplankton's current setup which revolves around 1 plankton (instrument) at a time, the simple addition of multiple units synced wirelessly would realize it as a more complete performance instrument.
The speed of the wireless connection (802.11b 11mbits p/sec) is more than enough to support the transfer of basic control information, if not audio itself from one unit to another.
2. Two Plankton at once, on one unit.
Given that the DS is a multiscreen unit, and the second screen is at the moment mostly used as decoration (currently a closeup of the plankton that you are manipulating), the simple addition of a button on the touchscreen that swaps between 2 sets of plankton would be the ideal next step. I don't think that it would be necessary to have more than 2 plankton at once, (it may be beyond the processor and sound chip on the DS anyway) and having a limitation of 2 plankton would be a nice way to encourage more collaboration as well.
Currently without some recording hardware on hand you cannot record your compositions and from the perspective of the serial public transport commuter, it would be nice to have a wider sonic canvas.
3. More plankton
I like the plankton that came with the game, some of them have fantastic little personalities (at least in my mind), but I'm greedy and I would love it if there were more plankton to play with. The DS game cart could hold literally hundreds (thousands?) of plankton. Also, if the plankton were user editable (make use of the stylus to modify set attributes of the plankton) how amazing would it be if you could share your plankton via the DS's inbuilt wireless.
There's a variety of new sounds that are easily generated with Electroplankton, and having a some user editable attributes would be a nice way to diversify the sound even more, and also make it more functional as a reliable noisebox for performance.
4. Genepool.
Another compelling way to encourage interaction would to allow wireless gameplay that placed the your plankton and others in a pool, where you can affect the plankton by placing it in closer proximity to other plankton. As you get closer the behavior of the plankton could change. A simple and appropriate reaction could be falling into similar tempo with the nearby plankton.
The addition of collision detection would create interesting interactions from the user's perspective. Simple AI that affected the default behavior of the plankton when they are closer to other groups of plankton could be another useful idea for meaningful interaction. While I'm not suggesting that the plankton should fight or anything of that ilk, an appropriate auditory response to proximity to other plankton would further promote the idea of the plankton as interactive creatures in their own right.
(This thought is brought to you courtesy of flow.)
5. Add a simple sequencer/recorder
It doesn't have to be Abelton Live, but a simple system that allows recording of your settings and songs would turn this into a performance device. Regardless any features that could be added, the addition of this to Electroplankton as it stands would see it turning up on stages all over the place. If it could reliably record your songs & settings for playback, it would be a viable option for anyone who wants some new and interesting sounds.
Electroplankton is a fun bit of software, and I'm aware we may never even see Electroplankton 2, but if even a few of these features turned up in a new version, it would be AMAZING.
Related Electroplankton webzen
Nintendo Electroplankton Site
Mile Zero - Composition in Electroplankton
Mile-Zero Electroplankton Composition - Innsmouth Blues
Tenori-on - Toshio Iwai's collaboration with Yamaha
MTV.com fluff piece
DJ Dave Hollands talking Electroplankton
flow - Indie microbe game with soothing ambient tunes.
Nintendo.com Electroplankton Wallpapers
Wallpaper 1
Wallpaper 2
Wallpaper 3
Posted by funnelbc at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
June 03, 2006
Trough Lollies & King City Seven @ The Brunswick Hotel
I now have a serious addiction to doing these. I can't explain how unnatural the noises are coming out of my study when I work on these. It's half giggling and half cursing at not getting it quite right. Love it.
I have another 2 shows I'm doing posters for and after that I should be clear for a few more. Wouldn't mind doing a poster for a bit of a indy electro band if someone out there in the onetonne broadcasting radius is interested?
Show Details:
Trough Lollies &
King City Seven
June 17th
Brunswick Hotel
140 Sydney Rd
Melbourne
Related: More gig posters
Posted by funnelbc at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)