[All Sorts] Busy, Busy Busy!

Well, it's been a while since I posted an entry on here. I've been kinda busy - rehearsing, recording, gigging and even had to do some live sound.

Played a gig with The French Electric last week which went really well. Did some recording which will be used on some new Vultures Quartet sometime in the new year. I had to do the live sound at a friend's birthday - which was scary as I had to use a Yamaha 01v which is a pretty old digital mixer - not amazingly easy to use as it is menu driven. 

Vultures Quartet played at The Cube in Bristol which was excellent and a brilliant venue, really friendly and I saw lots of the Bristol theatre people. Thanks Anna for giving me a lift up there and somewhere to stay - and the same for James and Leila the next night.

More gigs coming up in the next few weeks.

Also look out for the new Classwar Karaoke online compilation - I've got a piece on there made with Daniel Thompson - an electro acoustic piece with realtime Pd processing and acoustic guitar. Have a look at the site - this will be the 16th "survey" so there's plenty there to listen to before it is released on the 30th of November.

Also, Seth and I listened to what the Goldsmiths students on his MA course had to say about our prototype for the video piece we've been working on for ages. Thankfully that went really well and they had a lot of positive things to say about it.

[News] Gigs, Recordings, Java

The next Miller Test gig will be at 229 - a club on Great Portland Street - 229 - we'll be on at 8.30pm and we'll be "showcasing" our new backing singers and some songs you haven't heard before. Emma and Ida are great singers and we've been working on harmonies for them, in fact we're doing more this afternoon in  the luxurious environs of The Premises.

I've submitted a track for the forthcoming Classwar Karaoke compilation - a kind of weird, glassy, algorithmic, downtempo electronic thing. So, all three Vultures will be on it as solo artists (Astrometria - ie me, Will Connor and murmurists - Anthony). As I mentioned before there will be some famous names on this one including Fred Frith.

Seth and I have done some more work on the video looping project, well actually, to be fair Seth has digitised a load of old video material ready for looping. I am still trying to work out exactly how to display it and use OpenCV to control the program or patch I write for it. I'm going to forge ahead using Pd/GEM but I also had a look at using Java. I programmed Java professionally for a few years and one of the things I used was QuickTime for Java. Having not used it for a while I was a little saddened to see that it has been deprecated. In fact Apple did that in 2009 - shows it has been a while since I looked at that API!

I had a look at Java Media Framework but I just don't think it will cut the mustard for what I am trying to do which is a shame. I have seen a similar application to the one I am trying to write built with Max/MSP/Jitter - but I can't afford Max so that's a no go. I just need to work out how to display and manipulate several videos with audio in Pd/GEM I think. I could try Processing but the overhead is immense compared to Pd so that choice is a no brainer.

Some people I have mentioned this to have asked why I don't program this thing in Flash - the simple answer is twofold: I can't afford the development tools and more importantly Flash is the only thing that makes my computer so hot that the fans in it are running so quickly it sounds like it might take off... remember the sound of the nine (?) fans in the old G5 Mac Pro things when you booted into single user mode? Very similar... 

[Website] Updates

I have finally uploaded the other improvisations from Und to my website. These were performed by me, Seth Guy and Mark Pearce. Mark contributed vocals - some improvised some from texts and some old songs.

Mark also shot a couple of short videos of me and Seth explaining what we were doing and how. I can't say I really like seeing myself talking on film but, it's documentation I suppose.

I've also uploaded two videos of The Miller Test from a recent gig (13/04/11) at Nambucca a brilliant venue on Holloway Road in London. Apparently some of the PA was rescued from the recently demolished Astoria and it really does sound good in there. Turns out it is owned by the same bloke who owns the rehearsal studio we use who very kindly made us a cup of tea when we got there and shouted us a few drinks - not something that happens regularly!

[Pd] ADSR "Random" Synth

This patch came about as a sort of rewrite of a Max/MSP patch I wrote about a year ago, intended as a backing track for some live improvisation using contact mics. The Pd version is actually a less complicated patch but actually works better than the Max version.

It uses three oscillators the pitch of which is determined by randomly choosing from a set of midi note messages. The ADSR values are different for each synth (although I should experiment randomising the values for these envelopes). The speed of the [metro] can be changed and delay and reverb can be added.

In the end the synth was used as a backing track to a spoken word piece by me and Seth Guy, which will be released as a very limited edition together with doctored earbud headphones.

There are a couple of pieces made with an earlier version of the patch and also some short pieces using the original Max version here.

[Acoutstic] Und

Well, this is interesting - my first foray into the world of theatre as a sound artist. Not only that as there is no PA in the venue the sound will be created entirely acoustically. I am working with a more recent collaborator on this - Seth Guy - who was a member of London Concrete. Like me, Seth studied visual art but ended up playing music. We're collaborating on other projects at the moment with a far more visual bent but for this one, it's all sound.

The play is called Und and will be performed in Bristol at the Paintworks.

We went through the script and the musical direction and it looks like we're going to have a lot of fun. The space is something like 160 x 100 x 10m so must have amazing natural reverb. The audience will be moving around following the one actor who is performing a monologue and the whole thing will be lit with torchlight.

Expect lots of scraping metal, bowed objects, breaking glass and who knows what else - depends what we can find in the local scrapyards and charity shops.