[Update] All sorts of stuff

I just created one of those Facebook page thingies for my music. It's here: http://facebook.com/Astrometria 

I am adding all kinds of videos and stuff to it and it has a gig listing page - although that doesn't mean I won't be posting stuff on this blog or updating my website.

Also, I realise I haven't really been posting much on this blog for the last month or so apart from gig dates. Well, this is because I have been really busy, recording, rehearsing and gigging.

The recording stuff is going well - in fact I will be mixing a new version of Lacrosse by John Zorn this afternoon by Vultures Quartet which will hopefully be released on Zorn's label, Tzadik, along with some of his other "Game Pieces". These pieces are a lot of fun to play will feature guest musicians as well as the normal VQ line up.

The next Vultures Quartet release is currently being mastered - this will be called What's Wrong With Me and will initially be released as a vinyl picture disc (remember those?). It will be coming out on Zos Kia Sounds later this year, followed by a CD release which may or may not have different material on it - undecided at the moment.

So, lots going on and more to be done...

[Album] The French Electric FREE DOWNLOAD

The shiny new album from The French Electric on which I play synth is going to be available to our Facebook fans, for free, for a limited period from 2nd of April. 

You can become a fan here - do it now and get some excellent, new, free music next week. 

You can listen to a couple of tracks here.

And keep an eye on the site for upcoming gigs.

[Recording] Kill Minus Nine

Another new band!

This is a kind of trip hop band, with my friends Em and Paul, who both sing, Paul also plays bass and is writing a fair bit of material at the moment. We're all pleased with the results, lots of beats, dreamy vocals and pounding bass.

Stay tuned for some recordings online somewhere, sometime soon.

[Recording] Mutatorator

Just finished a new piece which I have uploaded to my website called "Mutatorator".

It's basically an experiment in using Pd for realtime processing of sound. It's an amalgam of 11 very short  pieces made using the patch to process a classical guitar. 

It uses a looping samplers and weirdly configured random delay lines and even a bit of Karplus Strong magic. 

Go on, have a listen, you know you want to.

[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... 

[Mixing] Compilations

Vultures Quartet were asked to contribute a track to this compilation (sorry you need to be logged into Facebook to see this). 

I mixed a track from our last recording session in February for this.

We'll also be on the forthcoming Classwar Karaoke compilation due for release later this month, I think.  CK is run by, amongst others, Anthony Donovan from Vultures Quartet. 

The track is from the same recording session.

This should be an interesting compilation and apparently it will include a track by Fred Frith - so definitely worth a listen.

[Mixing] Mid / Side EQ

This is a really interesting technique that seems to be really useful when trying to master bad mixes where you don't have access to the original mix or project. As ever this one was discovered on a weekly trawl of GearSlutz where I regularly seem to find new (to me) and interesting (to me) ideas and ways of working.

The way I use it is to use two copies of the stereo file in a DAW on separate tracks, then use MSED as an insert switched to "encode" with the "side" muted then a linear phase EQ then another inserted MSED instance switched to "decode" with "side" muted. I do the same on the copy of the stereo track with "mid" muted.

I tried this out on a really old (1998) live recording of a band I was in where we have an old tape recording from the desk in the venue. Like a lot of recordings from then (who knows what happens now, it costs so much to get a recording from the desk nowadays) the mix is pretty extreme - loads of bottom end on the bass but no mids, very trebly hard panned guitars, not a lot of drums (it was a loud drummer so not much needed to go through the PA in such a small venue) and a fairly decent vocal sound.

I am definitely not a mastering engineer but this is a really interesting method of splitting the signal into the mono only and stereo only elements and bringing the bottom end into line and balancing the stereo more than you might think possible - just by using EQ and panning on each of the two copies of the original stereo track. It's fascinating to use.

There's much more helpful info here: http://www.about-audio-mastering-software.com/mid-side-eq.html

If you've got dodgy old tapes this could help - the people I was in the aforementioned band with seem to have dug a lot up recently...

[Recording] John Zorn

I am mixing several different recordings of John Zorn's piece Hockey - recorded with Vultures Quartet recently. We used some different instrumentation for these recordings which was fun. I was playing guitar, violin as well as the usual Pd patches and some bits and pieces of percussion. Anthony was on acoustic bass fed through some amazing effects as well as using lots of small percussive stuff and Will used his usual "cymbal tree".

The mixes are not sounding as good as they could at the moment however - a bit thin - so I need to do more work on them.

Stay tuned as they may well end up online, who knows?