[Theatre] Johnny Head in Air

Well, the next theatre piece I am performing in is Johnny Head in Air which is a Bhuto dance piece with live music by Vultures Quartet. Again this is a piece by Tom Bailey and the Mechanical Animal Corporation and really exciting and strange. I love it.

Sadly for the audience VQ will be onstage dressed like I am above. Hmmm. Oh, I haven't put loads of weight on I'm wearing 5 layers of clothes as it was so cold in the rehearsal place. 

We're on at 11:45 am at the Arnolfini in Bristol on Saturday 25th February. I hope you Bristolites I know will come - that means you, Leila, James, Mark, Anna, Annette and Caroline!

We're going to do some other performances at other festivals later in the year.

As ever - thanks so much to Martin and Mary Bailey for putting us up, putting up with us and cooking for us as well as scooting all over Bristol in a car full of maniacal props. It's a wonder the police don't stop us...

[Pd] Finally...

After what feels like months of working on stuff where I work with other people I've finally made a new piece. It's on my site - on the Audio page and is called The Chase.

The patch is composed of 4 sets of FM synths (well, ok they may not be strictly FM) and, well, anyway, you can see how it works above.

[Live] Videos added to astrometria.co.uk

Just found some videos online of Vultures Quartet - most notably footage from our 50th gig at Boat Ting in December 2011 and footage from a gig we did at Tate Britain in December 2010. There are some others from The Foundry (with Ampersand) and one from The Others.

I'd forgotten footage existed for these gigs. They're on my website.

Thanks to Giles for recording most of these. You can see more of his films of bands here on YouTube.

[Programming] FAUST

FAUST or Functional Audio STream is an amazing discovery. It is a functional language designed purely for writing DSP applications. What makes it really useful is that programs can be compiled to standalone applications (as in the picture above, which also shows almost all of the code written for that app) using the Qt library. More usefully, for me at least, it can be used to compile Pd externals.

It took me a while to understand how to write code in this language but it seems to be fairly simple once you get the hang of it and is definitely much more concise and simple to write than the C++ equivalent and because it is translated to C++ then compiled it runs just as fast.

As well as being able to compile standalone apps and Pd externals it can compile to all sorts of other plugin/app formats (VST, LADSPA, Max/MSP, iPhone and more). 

The code for the above app is as simple as this, and I think I have probably written this badly - I am sure it could be much easier to read - as you can see most of the code is for the positioning and creation of the GUI elements. The actual DSP stuff is quite simple.

declare name "SINES";


import("music.lib");
import("oscillator.lib");
import("math.lib");
import("effect.lib");


samplingFreq = 44100;


osc_group(x) = vgroup("[0]", x);
osc_group1(x) = vgroup("[1]", x);
knob_group(x) = osc_group(hgroup("[1]", x));
knob_group1(x) = osc_group1(hgroup("[1]",x));
kg1(x) = knob_group(hgroup("[1] OSC", x));
kg2(x) = knob_group(hgroup("[2] LFO 1 (SINE)", x));
kg3(x) = knob_group(hgroup("[3] LFO 2 (SINE)", x));
kg4(x) = knob_group(hgroup("[4] LFO 3 (SINE)", x));
kg5(x) = knob_group1(hgroup("[1] Filter", x));
kg6(x) = knob_group1(hgroup("[9] Output", x));
kg7(x) = knob_group1(hgroup("[2] Echo", x));


vol1 = kg1(vslider("[1]Volume [unit:dB] [style:knob] [tooltip: abc]",-30,-120,+4,0.1) : db2linear : smooth(0.999));
freq1 = kg1(vslider("[2]Freq [unit:Hz] [style:knob]", 440,5,200,0.01) : smooth(0.999));
squw1 = squarewave(freq1) *(vol1);
sine1 = oscr(freq1) *(vol1);


vol2 = kg2(vslider("[3]Amount [unit:dB] [style:knob]",-30,-120,+4,0.1) : db2linear : smooth(0.999));
freq2 = kg2(vslider("[4]Freq [unit:Hz] [style:knob]",440,0.01, 10, 0.01) : smooth(0.999));
sine2 = oscr(freq2) *(vol2);


vol3 = kg3(vslider("[3]Amount [unit:dB] [style:knob]",-30,-120,+4,0.1) : db2linear : smooth(0.999));
freq3 = kg3(vslider("[3]Freq [unit:Hz] [style:knob]",1,0.01,10,0.01) : smooth(0.999));
sine3 = oscr(freq3) *(vol3);


vol4 = kg4(vslider("[5]Amount [unit:dB] [style:knob]",-30,-120,+4,0.1) : db2linear : smooth(0.999));
freq4 = kg4(vslider("[5]Freq [unit:Hz] [style:knob]",1,0.01,20,0.01) : smooth(0.999));
sine4 = oscr(freq4) *(vol4);


moog_f = kg5(vslider("[4]Freq [unit:Hz] [style:knob]",5000,1,20000,0.1) : smooth(0.999));
moog_r = kg5(vslider("[5]Q [style:knob]",0.01,0,0.99,0.01) : smooth(0.999));


N = int(2^19);
interp = kg7(vslider("Interpolation [unit:ms] [style:knob]",10,1,100,0.1))*44100/1000.0;
dtime = kg7(vslider("Delay [unit:ms] [style:knob]",0,0,5000,0.1) : smooth(0.999))*44100/1000.0;
fback = kg7(vslider("Feedback [style:knob]",0,0,1,0.01) : smooth(0.999));
dvol = kg7(vslider("Volume [unit:dB][style:knob]",-120,-120,+4,0.1) : smooth(0.999));
skew = kg7(vslider("Skew L [unit:ms][style:knob]",0,0,5000,0.1) : smooth(0.999));
output = kg6(hslider("[4] [unit:dB] [style:knob]",-30,-120,+4,0.1) : db2linear : smooth(0.999));
a = sine1+squw1 <:
_, *(sine2) :>
_ <: _, *(sine3) :> 
_ <: _, *(sine4) :> 
moog_vcf_2b(moog_r, moog_f);


process = a <:
_, ((+ : sdelay(N, interp, dtime)) ~ *(fback)) /(dvol) : 
((+ : sdelay(N, interp, (dtime+skew))) ~ *(fback)) /(dvol)+(a), _+a :
*(output), *(output);

[Live] Vultures Quartet Live 18th Dec 2011

Vultures Quartet will be playing a short set at the Mopomoso Christmas Party, tomorrow (18th Dec) from around 7pm.

This takes place at the Vortex in Dalston.

Should be a lot of fun!

[Live] Gig with Vultures Quartet - 5th Dec 2011

I am playing with Vultures Quartet tomorrow night at Boat Ting - the information is slightly incorrect on the Boat Ting website as we are actually playing with Steve Beresford rather than Neil Packer.

This is our 50th gig so far and a bit of a celebration for us. Should be a lot of fun and we all enjoy playing with Steve, which is something we haven't done for a while.

[Live] The Miller Test and The French Electric

I played with The Miller Test on Friday at the Bowery which was a great gig, lots of people there, good venue and more importantly we played well. 

On Saturday (after about 4 hours sleep) I had to run sound again using the dreaded Yamaha 01v. This was for an Amnesty International benefit gig at the King's Head in Islington. The line up included Gagarin both solo and with Roshi on vocals and keyboard - I am something of a fan of the music they create together and really rate Gagarin as a solo artist. He's also worked with all sorts of people, Nico and John Cale  amongst them.

Also playing were the Rude Mechanicals - who are absolutely brilliant fun. 

Grassy Noel was reciting some of his poetry. There's a video of him doing just that at the Foundry on YouTube. Great to see him as I don't think I have seen him since the Foundry closed. Don't get me started on what happened to the Foundry - suffice to say I think it was criminal the way it was closed down and the reasons for it - it was the last outpost of anything decent in Shoreditch - an area which was truly re-established by the artistic community which has now been completely ousted by corporate crap and moronic lowest common denominator "entertainment".  At least the Foundry managed to stick it out for longer than  most.

There were other people playing but I can't remember who they were! Brilliant accordion player and a good singer songwriter.

After doing the sound I had to scoot off to a gig with The French Electric at a burlesque night at Dusk Till Dawn (or what used to be the Archway Tavern). It went pretty well. The picture above is of Simon (left) and Jim (right) at that very gig - thankfully I am not in the photo!