January 21, 2008
Producer Masterclass with Bushwacka!
Here's a clip courtesy of Computer Music Magazine that has Bushwacka! explaining the production process for the Layo & Bushwacka! track After The Love, it's 48 minutes long, so make yourself a cuppa before you settle in to watch it!
Thanks dylan!
Posted by funnelbc at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2006
Aleatoric Composition... THE MOVIE!
In my screen debut, I present to you, aleatoric composition THE MOVIE! Starring me. This outlines the method for this method of composition in a (hopefully) fairly simple straightforward & accessible manner. Please forgive the average sound and video quality, last night was the first time I have ever edited video, and I spent several hours trying to figure out how to get it uploaded and have it play correctly.
You can download the midi result here. Should you wish to do something with this midi file, please do so, I would love to hear (geddit?) from you.
As a follow up to this post on Aleatoric Composition, I was contacted by a writer from Future Music Magazine, which has spurred Dylan & myself onto more work in this area.
This time we went down to the train station and recorded an entire platform of video, and scored it as faithfully as possible in Sibelius. I took a little bit of liberty with what exactly made up each note - as at the far ends of the train station the grubby marks (notes) get pretty faint, and I didnt want 24 bars of silence before anything at all happened.
Dylan was along for the ride, and I have supplied him the midi. I'm going to have a tinker with it, and see what can be done using the music composed from the train platform. If we manage to cobble something that's not entirely awful together, you can expect another youtube monstrosity from yours truly.
Related: Aleatoric Composition
Posted by funnelbc at 11:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 30, 2006
DIY Modular Synth Group in Melbourne
Oh My. I'm a bit excited about this. There's a group of folks in Melbourne, Australia that are getting together and building modular synths. I have signed up, and am very keen to give this a try.
This is an excellent way to share knowledge and a passion for music nerdology. I'm really looking forward to getting involved with this. This band of desparados who wield soldering irons aloft like mighty swords are calling themselves VICMOD
If you have a local synth building chapter and would like to let me know (info at ausmusician dot com), please do and I will post it up your details.
Posted by funnelbc at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2006
PSP Homebrew: Control Live Wirelessly
You could be forgiven for thinking that I'm not as excited by the PSP homebrew scene, you'd be right. Mostly because I offloaded my PSP and bought a DS (for the second time) and I really haven't looked sideways since... But here is something very tasty.
It's a homebrew app for PSP that allows you to control Abelton Live from the PSP. It allows you trigger clips, and also lets you use the joystick as an x/y pad controller. Fantastic. The potential for using relatively affordable consoles as interface devices for software is a really appealing one.
Now all we need is a version for DS! ;-)
Via CDM
Download playLive for PC from e-mu.org
Related: PSP2Midi
Posted by funnelbc at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2006
News from hardcore nerd land: DIY Open Source Midi Keyboard
For anyone who's got the itch for homebrew & music creation, there is an excellent tutorial on how to convert a cheap (£5) keyboard into a midi sending machine. It also details how to get it working by rolling your own firmware for the AN2131 Breadboard for *nix.
I can only applaud this effort - there's some reasonably hardcore soldering and general purpose nerding behind this. Excellent.
Headfuzz - MidiHack via Make:Blog
Posted by funnelbc at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2005
how to cut up a breakbeat using a tracker
Over on Kuro5hin there's a rather tasty looking article on how to use a tracker. It's pitched at a music nerd not necessarily a musician and will give you the hookup with various trackers that are worthwhile to get into. Trackers are something that I've heard of, but never really used, as they always seemed pretty hardcore and inaccessible. After reading this article it seems like something that is worth a go for the easily distracted music nerd. LSDJ for gameboy doesn't get a mention, but that's a darling amongst the 8-bit set.
"Even if it turns out you don't particularly enjoy this type of music or sequencer, learning to cut a breakbeat in a tracker is an excellent way for nerds to dive into creating music. No musical training is required to, literally, hack this particular breakbeat and you walk away with the fundamentals necessary for further electronic musical exploration."
You should go and read it because it's a good read. the author of this fine article is trotch. Extra credit reading: Wikipedia page on trackers
Posted by funnelbc at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2005
the history of sampling 1.0
This is nicely done. It's a little java app that links songs to various artists who have sampled those songs. It looks really slick and is fun to use! Edu-fun-tainment!
History of Sampling 1.0 Thanks reelfour!
And also check out DJ Food's history of the Cut Up. (click the info button down the bottom to get access to a Bit Torrent or E-mule version of it). Thanks Solutio!
Posted by funnelbc at 07:35 AM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2005
how-to turn your mac mini into an audio workstation
In the mac mini fawning department of engadget I proudly bring you this finely handcrafted link Let's turn that mac mini into an audio workstation". Fancy. I reckon that a mac mini with an external hard disk drive and a copy of ProTools LE (mbox rather than 001 probably) would be a really nice little solution for multi track recording, and natch - it would truly be portable.
I would of written a similar column, but really couldn't be knackered - good on them though, theres a decent basic run through of a music setup.
Posted by funnelbc at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2004
watch out t.v!
So you’ve made it, you’ve run the gauntlet of gigging, you’ve established yourself a loyal following and you’ve snagged your first big record contract. But somehow your life as a performing artist feels a little… hollow… What could it be that’s missing from your life?
Originally posted On June 8, 2004 by Funnel
It’s it the adoring groupies? Nope, got plenty of them…
Smelly roadies that have seen more concerts than have seen showers? Yep.
Is it the sleazy agent who’s secretly skimming 10% over and above what he was supposed to take at the door? Hell yeah! You should see his new gold teeth.
So what is it then… is perhaps that the hotel room you’re staying at isn’t totally destroyed yet? But what do you mean? Ahhh… Now I see the problem… read on genteel rockstar.
But first a little history...
How long have rockstars been trashing rooms? I mean were Led Zep the collective fathers of room trashing and everyone else a pale imitation of their sheer genius? One of the earliest recorded room thrashers was the great man himself, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The dead classical dude. Apparently the virtuoso was pretty cranky and erratic and had quite thing for trashing hotel rooms, and he hated to clean up after himself. He would trash the room and just get another. What a trailblazer! An inspiration to all aspiring rockstars the world over. This guy had it all, a funky wig AND a dirty room. Rock out 1791!
So after that, everyone else was just paying tribute to the big M. Man, that’s pretty impressive I think, back then I’m sure if you could get transported to prison in the colonies for stealing a loaf of bread, Mozart was probably racking up enough criminal charges to go around the world about 666 times. But of course because he was a genius he gets away with it – another approach is to leave before anyone finds out, but old Wolfgang was the pioneer of the punk “I don’t give a toss, give me another room” attitude.
At the movies…
Of course the best way to get a good idea of how to trash a room, you only have to go down to your local video store… My top 2 (because that was about as many as I care to remember) room thrashings of all time on film…. Grab some popcorn and just watch the masters at work…
The Wall – Pink sits in his seat and quietly builds up the inner tsunami as a groupie is increasingly weirded out with his silence. And he snaps, and in one of the most incredibly full on room trashing scenes in a movie, Pink dismantles the room, piece by piece. He is careful to leave no stone unturned in his destruction. This is an important aspect of the hotel room trasher. Equally important when recalling this tale is that he gets even weirder when he rearranges everything in the room into neat little patterns, cigarette buts, food, broken instruments....
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - when these guys trash a room they really elevate it to a whole new artform. It’s more than the hallucinatory montage and odd lighting.. it’s the collection of pool toys and the foot and a half of water. It’s the surreal level of destruction. If you’re the aficionado you cannot go past this style of habitat re-organization. Not the presence of copious quantities of illicit substances – you need to be really famous to get away with this level of destruction and the amount of gear on you. You’d really need to be playing big stadium events to make that shit fly.
Of course trashing can be available to all levels of fame and musical accomplishment. Here’s a quick set of guidelines to help you identify where you’re at.
1. You just played a six year old’s birthday party.
You are allowed to double dip one savaloy and drop a bit of sauce on the carpet.
2. You just played the school social.
You are allowed one snog with the popular girl of your choice and a bottle of spumante, which you will vomit up about ten minutes later. The vomit can be placed anywhere within the bathroom.
3. You just played your first pub gig to a disinterested crowd.
You are allotted a pickup from the bar of anyone who’s left at the end of the night, a slab of draught beer, and a couple of mates to come over and watch the English soccer. Vomit is allowed anwhere in the bathroom or kitchen. Make sure to do some after midnight cooking and leave a lamb chop down the back of the couch.
4. You’ve just played a bigger pub to an audience who know your music
You get free beer during the gig, and if you’re quick you should be able to nab the bucket full of grog and take it with you. (Some savvy bands will call for their rider drinks to be put in a wheel barrow for easy relocation – highly recommended.) The band and other acts are to be invited back to the room, for a round of spin the support act. Vomit on carpet is essential at this stage. You may also consider putting your head through the plaster board near the door. Check first that it is, in fact, plaster board and not brick – unless you’re truly rock and roll. Make sure to break a mirror and put that lamb chop up inside the range hood where nobody can find it, but will certainly be able to smell it.
4. The Tour – Stadium Rock
This is where things really start to heat up, you are required to step things up a notch. Feel free to bring back concert PA gear to your room. Any other items from the gig, such as screaming groupies, a dagwood dog van and the contents of the bar are all acceptable – nay essential. Especially the dagwood dog van. At this stage of the room thrashing game you should be able to perforate the walls, burst a water main, clog up the toilet and smash every glass surface all by yourself in about 30 seconds. What you can achieve in a weekend blinder with a cast of 150 people is truly staggering. Remember, even every day substances can take new properties with just a little bit of creativity. Vomit on every suface is also mandatory. Consider bringing along a set of screwdrivers so can you open up the back of the hot water service and put 50 kilos or so of raw beef in there. Remember to close it up, but not so tight that the smell won’t get through. Just picture the horror on the hotel mangers face when after finally cleaning the room they think they’ve just found a body. Blue chalk is good for knocking up occult circles too.
Okay, so that’s the basics. Remember to keep the art alive people, be creative and never let them say “Oh Trashing a room, that’s so cliché”. Prove them wrong. Oh and don’t forget the dagwood dog stand.
Posted by funnelbc at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2004
synthesizers - the basics
Synthesizers (Synths) are increasingly popular item with DJ/Electro music set, and I thought that it would be nice to talk about them as an informal primer on the subject. There are a few basic flavors of synths – and it’s easy to get confused with how they work and what their actual purpose is. Let’s take a look shall we?
Originally posted on Feb 23, 2003 by funnel
A synthesizer basically uses electronic means to generate sounds. An analogue synth is still electronic. The sound can sometimes be quite similar to those of traditional instruments, but more often synths are sought after for their weird electronic noises and facility for flexible sound creation. Synthesis means to create something out of separate parts.
Above: The Roland MC303 Groove Box
So how do they work? Most synths on the market have variations on the following components – filters, oscillators, voltage-control amplifiers… These all by varying means offer methods for the basic sound waves to be modulated and controlled. Often the presence of multiple filter banks
help to facilitate more interesting noises, or the creation of more organic noises.
There are several different kinds of common synthesis methods, subtractive, additive, wavetable, sample playback, physical modeling, FM synthesis, phase distortion, wave shaping, wave sequencing, VAST synthesis, granular synthesis. You can read more about these kinds of synthesis here http://tilt.largo.fl.us/faq/synthfaq.html at the excellent beginners synthesizer FAQ. For the sake of brevity, synthesis is all about the manipulation of sound electronically, to derive an audibly interesting result.
Above: The Kurzweil K-2000 Keyboard - (Kurzweil are generally
regarded as among the best keyboards made.)
Synths can be found inside all sorts of commercial music making hardware, soundcards, keyboards, sound modules, and rack units. The variety of hardware that has some form of synth hidden inside it is virtually limitless. More often than not, a musician will purchase a synth in a keyboard for performance, or get a synth in a rack module which will be hooked up to a trigger device – such as a keyboard. They then work with presets which they save to the synths memory (for saving of presets the most often used term is SysEX Dump) for performance. Hardware synths are generally expensive, but often have a distinct sound which some consider the somewhat hefty outlay a worthwhile tradeoff.
Above: The Roland Jupiter 4 Keyboard
There is however, another alternative – software synthesis. Which is fast becoming the most often used option. Usually costing much less than expensive and sometimes arcane hardware synths, software synths allow anyone with a computer to make music with. This has in a way democratized the music making process more than just about anything else – a basic computer can be setup fairly cheaply and the software can be picked up readily. A commonly used piece of hardware for performing musicians is the laptop – which are a viable alternative for those looking to cheaply build a portable performance setup.
Posted by funnelbc at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
Building a PC for working with Audio
One question I’m often asked is how to go about setting yourself up to record/make music on your PC (It’s not so much a question for the Mac users as they usually already have all they need to get started ). We thought now would be a good time to help outline what you need to consider when purchasing hardware to make a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
Working with MIDI
What you can get away with spending on your DAW is down to what you want to use it for. If you are planning to do some basic MIDI sequencing and just want to play around with a MIDI keyboard you really don’t need much more than a 100Mhz machine with a soundcard with wavetable synthesis (SoundBlaster AWE32 onwards in general terms). In the case of working with MIDI the “work” of voicing your keyboard (or other midi parts) is best reproduced either by a soundcard or an external sound module. Of course in an ideal world you’ll have a beast PC to work with, but it’s nice to know that requirements for this end of town aren’t too high.
For someone who is more interested in traditional composition and arrangements (such as piano, jazz, classical music and the like) you will probably find that MIDI won’t require much out of your PC, and is quite cheap to get into.
A suggested minimum configuration for MIDI would be a Pentium 100+ machine with a SoundBlaster AWE32 card or greater with a dumb MIDI (dumb MIDI means the device has no sound of its own, it’s purely a controller) device, and a program such as Cakewalk Home Audio, Cubasis or similar.
Working with Digital Synths
The next step up in terms of PC requirements is Digital Synthesizers. We look at some of the basics of understanding synthesizers here if you want to learn a bit of background information. Digital synths are often cheaper alternatives (and often are more flexible) compared to their hardware cousins. (Its worth noting that often outboard synths are used for their reliability and the fact that they don’t use much in the way of computer resources, so bear that in mind) The good news about digital synths is that often they don’t require masses of processor power, and even very current programs (Such as Propellerhead’s Reason) can be run successfully on slower machines. In many cases what will really kill your processor is the application of effects to your synth – not the synthesis of envelope filters and all that hoopy stuff. Audio effects have traditionally been processor intensive and one way to get around this would be to purchase a cheap outboard effects unit. Working track by track on a slower box is a good way to recycle that older machine into a decent music composition sketchpad.
So the requirements of Digital Synths vary, you can rest easy in the fact that the more processor power at your disposal the more simultaneous tracks will be available for use. I spent a period using Reason 1.0 with a Pentium 133 and although I really could only work with a few instruments at a time, it was still a satisfying and cheap way to be working with audio. If you are into Electronic music, Drum and Bass, Ambient music you will be into working with Digital Synths.
A suggested minimum configuration for Digital Synths would be a Pentium III 500+ ideally, with a outboard effects unit for a slower machine (Units such as the Digitech S100 are great places to start for basic outboard effects). A control device such as the those made by Kenton, Roland, or MidiMan would certainly help with getting those tracks down and manipulating parameters on the fly.
Working with Digital Audio
If you want to lay down audio tracks on your PC you are going to be spending the most money of all. It’s a shame but it’s the truth. Because of the sheer amount of internal bandwidth uncompressed stereo audio takes up, you really need to be running as fast a pc as possible. The more tracks you want to play back at once, say in a 12 track stereo 96khtz mix the more data being moved just to play that audio back to you.
With this in mind, it becomes reasonably clear why the hardcore audio heads use 10,000 and 15,000 rpm SCSI hard drives. Large mixes are terribly resource intensive. Combined with audio effects being applied in real time, they are also very processor intensive. once again, you can opt out for outboard audio effects, or as many high end cards have specific hardware onboard the card for dealing with effects, you can do it on card without sacrificing processor speed. (That’s called onboard Digital Sound Processing (D.S.P) for the anoraks out there. It’s where megabucks are spent in hardware and software and it’s the domain of professional recording studios.
A suggested minimum configuration for Digital Audio recording would be a Pentium 1ghz+ (or Athlon) processor with a dedicated secondary HDD for audio (7,200rpm would be ideal for starters). Big money can be spent in getting that analogue audio into your computer, but there are several beginner solutions that begin as low as $70 AUD for ADAT or $350+ AUD for dual stereo 24bit/96Khtz audio inputs. 512mb of RAM or greater is also recommended, for fairly obvious reasons.
The Operating System of Choice for Digital Audio
As you would be well aware, Microsoft has released quite a few different flavors of its now ubiquitous OS, Windows. There is a great deal of conjecture about which operating system is ideal for audio. At the moment the lead seems to be with Windows 2000 professional. It’s reasonably un-bloated and configurable (especially with regard to an audio pc in a networked studio environment), driver and software support is very good on this platform now. It’s just a little more mature than Windows XP, and for a single role computer it works very well. Software support from the various audio companies is always a little behind the ball and as can be seen with Digidesign only just supporting Windows 2000 (you can forget windows XP at the moment) at the moment we can only surmise things are going to stay that way for a while despite promises of updates coming soon. It’s often to go with a known option, and for that reason, we’d recommend running Windows 2000 pro for audio on a PC, with the caveat that you check the software that you want to run works with it. Check out online forums for the company involved, it’s always to get a good perspective from current users of the software and hardware combinations you are planning to go with.
Conclusion
If you want to get into audio on the PC the best thing to do is to start looking at all your options, doing as much research as you can, look at all your alternatives before you invest large amounts of cash there. Do your research and ask about, and you won’t go wrong!
Posted by funnelbc at 10:58 PM | Comments (1)