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Daniel aka The Interruptor is offering free VST (virtual instument) plug-ins on his website, mostly echo and tape delay effects to be used for Dub production. The interfaces are really tasty--I can feel the yellow spray paint on the top one and love the whole '60s Day-O look. No, I haven't tried them in my sequencer yet, being somewhat effects-shy because they hog CPU resources. I know, lame. I tend to think of Dub more as a flavor than a genre, and yet marvel that The Wire has a whole page dedicated to reviews of new Dub releases--obviously there's a lot of music I'm missing (this is confess my ignorance day--see earlier posts).
Thanks to Michael Bell-Smith for finding this, and for including my "Guitar Solo" video on his new co-curated delicio.us page of videos called Represent or Die. In RSS form the link feed becomes "the flagship D(elicio.us)TV channel."
Update: I should have explained the last quote better. As Michael mentions in the comments, he is "using del.icio.us as a blogging tool for DTV - a cool new RSS video downloader/reader (in beta). While currently mac only, and still buggy, it's well worth the download, if not for its amazing potential, then to check out Some Pig, a video art channel out of Providence featuring vids by Devin Flynn, Paper Rad (P-UNIT Mixtape) and others."
Paul Slocum announces the completion of the first release version of his Cynthcart, a program that turns the vintage Commodore 64 computer into a synthesizer (with a piano keyboard overlay covering your QWERTY keyboard). The cartridge, which also generates lo-fi psychedelic graphics, is available for purchase at the Atariage store.
The music made with the Cynthcart sounds great from the .mp3s; the SID chip's characteristic nasal sawtooth sound is unmistakable, and I like the third track, where Slocum has spliced it with scrambled vocal bits--also the fourth, which is a full blown song with rhythm programming. I know the chip a bit from working with Elektron's Sidstation synth, and yes, I'm a consumerist techphobic weenie for using a current piece of hardware instead of a killer mod of the original gear, but (this promises to be a constant theme today) I'm only abstractly interested in what's under the hood. I've learned a lot about softsynths this year and am increasingly drawn to big, user-friendly graphic interfaces where I can control sound visually.
Speaking of the SID and Sidstation, others doing good things with them are MEQ AND THE URS ("this page is no longer supported in Internet Explorer below version 7 and if you're still using IE you probably won't like this music anyway"--right, Jotsif, or because someone is surfing at work and doesn't have a choice, thanks for condescending to about half your potential listeners) and Receptors, which was one of my favorite acts at the last BENT (circuit bending) festival at the Tank in NY--still haven't posted my pic of him. Someone really ought to do some curating/compiling of the current SID music that's out there. With critical commentary! Dream on. The chatboards mostly talk about the gear, never composing music.
Jack Masters has a funny cartoon up on his page caricaturing the main Internet search engines. Yahoo! consists of signposts pointing in a dozen directions, Jeeves is servile but basically mentally defective, etc. The cartoon leads into a pro-Google, or rather anti-anti-Google rant by Masters that I've definitely been on the other side of. Yes, if Google starts to suck we'll stop using it and then we won't have to worry about it being all-powerful, and if separation of powers starts to slip we'll elect a more aggressive Congress that will stand up to the President. A few weeks back Masters posted a gnarly piece of electro-noise music that I really like. I sampled a couple of snippets from it for my song "Unfriendly Satellites," which I recently realized lacks a bass line and needs one rather badly--working on it. Regarding the Masters piece, can someone please explain the following exchange about it in his comments? I'm curious and baffled:
earthbound called, it wants its background music back
# posted by applesos : 6:29 PM
i thought earthbound's background music was like... a choir... i only have one song from it
# posted by Jack Masters : 5:07 PM
Via Travis Hallenbeck, African textiles using a programming language called Logo, specifically the GS LogoWriter on an Apple IIGS computer. The page linked to, a text written 12 years ago, goes into great technical detail as to how the patterns were created. I was not previously familiar with Logo or even that generation of Apples; it looks like another language-cum-family of gear (like Amiga, NES, etc) with a philosophy and a cult behind it. Obviously I'm spewing hot air here, being more interested in the beautiful finished product than how anyone arrived at it. But see What is Logo? if you're as un-up-to-speed as I am and want to know more.
"Robollywood" [4 MB .mp3]
"Darken Room, Eat Pills" [mp3 removed]
Both pieces use samples from NI's "simple waveform kit," hence the videogamy bleeps, as well as MIDI files intended for drum kits, run through synths as lead instruments. Fans of super-fast nerdy contrapuntal prog-rockish keyboard playing might like "Robollywood"--I'm constantly surprised how well percussion scores translate into tonal playing, with adult supervision in the form of splicing and muting notes.
artist unknown
My essay on painter Kara Hammond appears here, along with some images of her work (link at upper right), a couple of which were previously shown on this blog. The occasion for the writing is her show at the Halsey Gallery, College of Charleston, South Carolina, the school where she is now teaching.