Sonic Terrain, a New Site Dedicated to the Art of Field Recording 9 Sep 2010, 3:53 am

If you want some hope that good things can happen online, look no further than Designing Sound, a blog/online magazine by Miguel Isaza and Jake Riehle. They’ve built a place where pro legends regularly rub shoulders with newcomers eager to learn more.

Now, Miguel has a new site, entitled Sonic Terrain, that promises to do the same for the “art, science, and craft of field recording.” Whereas Designing Sound focused on sound for visual media, Sonic Terrain is really for anyone who wants to take a mic out into the wilds, whether a composer, an amateur, an ecologist – anyone.

The first post is already a must-read, taking on three “missions” for packing your gear:

• Packing a Handheld Recorder
• Stealth Recording
• Packing a Microphone Windscreen

Co-founder Nathan Moody is our kind of artist, with a background in multitouch design as well as multimedia, sound, and music. His existing blog has adventures with parabolic mics, toy helicopters, and much more – all with copious SoundCloud-hosted sound example:

http://www.noisejockey.net/blog/

Nathan can take you into a glorious dawn world of ibises and cows in the Sierra Nevada:

Ibises and Cows in Sierra Valley by noisejockey

So, go enjoy!

http://www.sonic-terrain.com/

Twitter / Facebook

(Incidentally, while CDM hosts Designing Sound, we’re otherwise unaffiliated… the template looks like CDM because I installed it as a default choice on our server.)

Shimon, Percussionist Robot, Gets Smarter; A Talk with its Creator 8 Sep 2010, 5:29 pm

Shimon, an adaptive, improvisational, percussion-playing robot, is getting smarter – and more famous, with appearances in places like the Stephen Colbert show. Now, humans have been known to get a big head under such circumstances. Shimon’s head has gotten “more social” – gestural intelligence helps the robot relate to fellow players and nod its head in time to the music.

I got a chance to talk more to project creator Dr. Gil Weinberg, director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology. He’s also taken some of this technology and built it into mobile app ZOOZBeat which you can spot in one of the videos here alongside the (much more expensive, no you can’t have one) robot.

What might surprise you about the Shimon project is that it isn’t just about copying what humans can do with a robot. In fact, if anything, says its creator, it’s about human-robotic relations. “The project was always aimed at creating new and inspiring interactions between humans and robots, with the goals of creating new and exciting musical outcome that cannot be created otherwise,” says Weinberg. He emphasizes that, while the robot assimilates human listening, it has a musical style all its own.

And yes, if there’s any doubt that Georgia Tech students can kick our ass in smarts and drum chops, even the ones who aren’t advanced robots, that’s Caity in the new promo video at top, an architecture major with LEED certification and drum line experience right up to the pros (having drummed for the Atlanta Falcons). That’s their fight song at the end. In fact, the only thing Georgia Tech students can’t do, evidently, is sing. (Though, based on my undergrad alma mater, I really, really, really can’t make fun.)

Shimon on Colbert from Georgia Tech on Vimeo.

Talking Machine Music

CDM: You talk in the NPR interview about not wanting the robot to play just like a human. So, I wonder – would you think of the robot as an expression of the musical taste and instincts of its designers? In some ways, it does sound different from a human; could we think of Shimon as having its own style, or being interesting because of its non-humanness?

Weinberg: Our motto is “listen like a human, play like a machine”. The idea behind it is that in order to connect with humans, Shimon has to understand music the way we humans do. For this purpose we developed perceptual modules based on music perception research for concepts such as tension and release, stability, similarly, etc. When Shimons responds, however, we want him to be surprising and inspiring, introducing new ideas that humans are not likely to use, whether by using mathematical processes that humans cannot process in real time or just through mechanical abilities. For this purpose we developed algorithms that utilize concepts such as genetic algorithms, fractals, morphing of HMM-based improvisation, etc. So for example, Shimon can respond by morphing the styles of Monk, Coltrane and his human co-player, in a way that humans probably will never use. In that sense he has its own musical style. For each different piece, though, Shimon may have a different style or “taste” based on the algorithm we use. I assume that one could say that his “taste” is a combination of all of his styles, which are inspired by the designers’ input.

How has the robot’s algorithm evolved since we first talked about it? What sorts of modifications have you found useful?

An important recent addition to the project is Shimon’s social head, developed with the help of my former post doc – Guy Hoffman. In order to create the connection with humans, we explored ideas of embodiment and gestures, as instrumental aspects of expressive musical group play. Currently Shimon can detect to the beat and nod his head accordingly, which helps humans get into the groove. He would look at what he finds interesting (if one player is playing something different than before, or different than the other players, Shimon would look at her rather than the other players). If Shimon plays something sophisticated, he is more likely to look at his own arms etc. We are also working on anticipating and coordination. We installed a camera in his head, and are currently working on letting Shimon use the visual input to anticipate and coordinate his playing with humans, along with the auditory information it currently processes.

Did the Colbert Bump go to Shimon’s head?

First Shimon was somewhat insulted, for himself and for the idiom of Jazz in general. Then he realized that they spelled his name correctly, so he started bragging about it. He also started to play in other styles to distance himself from the genre :)

But seriously, I am wiring a new piece for Shimon in an African Marimba Band Play style, which will help show its versatility in genres. (And here is an old clip where he plays an Indian Raga.)

Any other work we should know about, or other research growing out of the Shimon project?

To validate the importance of visual cues in music group play (i.e, validating the importance of Shimon’s embodiment and physically of the robot in comparison to interacting with computer generated music) we conducted this research: Visual Cues:
The Effect of the Visual Modality on Musical Ensemble Synchronization

Also, check out this paper, which won the Best Cognitive Paper in ICRA 2010. [That's the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, for those of you not in the know. And IEEE originated as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Whew. -Ed.]
“Gesture-Based Human-Robot Jazz Improvisation” by Guy Hoffman and Gil Weinberg [PDF link]

Shimon in Videos

Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology

Apple’s Ping Launch is a Dud, But The Web is Alive with the Sound of Music 7 Sep 2010, 3:01 am

Before diving into the litany of gripes from artists regarding Apple’s Ping social service, it’s worth saying: some critics say they expected better. Many artists want a smarter, more social iTunes. That’s the only reason anyone is spending time talking about the service’s perceived flaws.

Cellist and laptop musician Zoë Keating, an independent artist with collaborations from Imogen Heap to DJ Shadow, reminded me of that via Twitter. Even amidst her own criticisms, she was quick to add:

“But it’s Apple, so good or bad we all want to be invited to the party!”

That sums up not only the most disappointing aspects of Ping, but also why anyone would care in the first place. This isn’t the age of the hit parade, of Ed Sullivan, or even MTV. It’s the era of the Web, and people expect music media to be genuinely participatory. Because of the popularity of iTunes, the introduction of Ping seemed to artists like an opportunity.

Apple has responded to criticism, addressing some user concerns: Forbes’ Philip Elmer-DeWitt, asking “Can Ping be Saved?” last week, updated his article to reflect that issues with spam and forward and back navigation were fixed over the weekend.

The problem is that the fundamental complaints – and those of artists – run deeper. They may or may not be fixable.

Every artist I talked to said the same thing: the problem with Ping is that you’re not invited to the party. Missing from the guest list: independent (or, indeed, almost any) artists, alternative music stores, iTunes listening data, musical genres, and, above all, the World Wide Web.

Artists can’t make their own pages; Apple invites artists. In May, I criticized analysts for describing the iTunes App Store as being curated, a term I felt didn’t fit. This, on the other hand, really is curation: Apple invites a small number of artists at their discretion, which is why Ping makes some curious recommendations. As Keating puts it, “I’ve never bought Lady Gaga or anything remotely similar, but she is the #1 recommendation and I have to see her everytime I log on. That goes for Katy Perry too…I’ve created a world where I can pretend she doesn’t exist, but Apple really wants me to listen to her.”

Here, there’s a perfect contrast between Apple design and Apple curation. Apple design is beloved in the musical community, for the reliability and attention to detail of their hardware, operating system, and software. But Apple as curator, as tastemaker, is another matter. Apple’s (or Jobs’) obsession with artists like John Mayer had been a punchline, not a source of inspiration. For that matter, why should your computer vendor be responsible for musical taste? Would you ask Microsoft what clothes to wear today?

Apple ignores other music sources. When iTunes is criticized for promoting “lock-in” to Apple’s music store, listeners often respond that they rely on other sources for music. Apple may command big statistics when it comes to online sales, but that’s an aggregate of all music styles. For independent artists, everything from free distribution to specialized online stores – and physical CDs, which still rake in billions of dollars in sales annually – can matter more than iTunes.

Here, Apple runs into the tension between iTunes the player and iTunes the store. Ping as an add-on to iTunes the store makes some sense. As a modest feature that tells you what other iTunes shoppers are buying, it’d be unremarkable but also reasonably uncontroversial, at least before Apple hyped it as a new social network.

But iTunes the player demands higher expectations. iTunes is, for many, the virtual jukebox that the tool was when it began its life, before the debut of the integrated music store or even the iPod. I’ve even talked to frequent iTunes users, people who buy a lot of music, who have only purchased tracks from Apple a couple of times. For nearly anyone, iTunes – and by extension, Ping – must catalog all their musical activities, not just stuff they bought from Apple.

Ping is dumber about iTunes data than non-Apple services. Leaving other music stores out of the picture is perhaps unsurprising. But leaving out iTunes itself is more of a puzzler. The beauty of services like Last.fm is their ability to collect data about yourself that you can use. Sharing that data should obviously be a choice, but as Last.fm has demonstrated, the information can be useful to yourself, to fellow listeners, and to artists. It can make sure you see a favorite artist live or discover musicians based on human interactions, without violating privacy. But Ping is an inferior tool for iTunes data, compared to a third-party service like Last.fm. Wiley Wiggins, an Austin-based visual artist, has an extended complaint about Ping.

The killer insight: Ping is “store-centric,” not “user-centric,” says Wiggins. Flaws in genre handling and awkward mechanisms for tracking music and friends “make Ping seem like it is currently designed for users who 1) do not listen to much music, and 2) do not have many friends.”

Ping Feedback Form [Wiley Wiggins Blog]

Apple’s curatorial tendencies don’t make for a social network. Keating argues some of the tension here is philosophical: “Good social networking is chaotic and grassroots,” she says. “Apple is all about top-down control. Not sure this blend of the two works.”

And then there are … the genres. Aside from limiting you, comically, to choosing three genres you like, Apple seems to have lifted its genre categories from a BMG Music Club sign-up form.

It’s all too broken to be social. User interface trainwrecks, hidden “like” buttons, a “lonely” scene devoid of users or artist pages, and a laborious process to add friends made worse by Apple’s row with Facebook mean that getting anything social going is a waste of time. Mario Anima, who has led community efforts for Current and Community Speak Up! sums up the problems in an excellent post. Even with some navigational tweaks, there just isn’t much in the design that works. Even with Apple’s user base, I that could spell doom for the service. If users don’t spend time, the whole thing becomes pretty useless to artists, who are already fatigued by the amount of heavy lifting they have to do to get noticed online as it is. (See more on that below.)

Apple ignores the Web. Wired Magazine infamously ran an inflammatory cover this summer claiming The Web is Dead. That article could have been written about Ping. Ping isn’t visible on a browser; click on a link to a Ping profile, and it looks for an iTunes 10 client. Ping isn’t searchable. Ping is completely disconnected, at least for now, from the rest of the world – no integration with other services, and no public API. (One developer source told me an API is coming, with extensions to be approved by Apple, but I can’t yet confirm that, and that’d still fall short of making this a Web app.)

Ping is more than a walled garden: it’s a room with no windows or doors. It’s a tomb.

If Ping were the future, the Web might be dead – but early indications are that the reality is just the opposite. (Among many retorts to Wired’s “Web is Dead” thesis, The New York Observer is spot-on, and Boing Boing negates the graph they use to open the story, which turns out to say the opposite of what they claim.)

In fact, if anything, the negative reaction to Ping proves that the Web is more important now than ever before. People expect open participation, they expect browser-based interfaces (at least as an option), and they expect open interoperability and data portability in some form.

Browsers and links matter. Even Twitter and Facebook are popular partly as ways of linking back to other sites – I know this personally, because they’re two of this site’s biggest referrers. The Web make these services publicly searchable, connected, and accessible anywhere. They are the Web, and they also make the rest of the Web even more popular. Apple’s iPad and iPhone may focus more on “apps” than the “browser,” for now, but that singular example hasn’t yet been proven elsewhere. Meanwhile, competing browser-based music services have done just fine without an iTunes client.

Oh, yeah – and don’t forget that the lack of an open API also means hackers are shut out. This past weekend, Music Hackday – which I’ll cover separately – again gathered hordes of geeks to create new musical tools. That included things you’ll never see on Ping, like MixCloud on iPad.

Best of all: Brian Whitman of The Echo Nest had a pithy answer to how recommendation services should work. He created The Future of Music, which tells you which music you shouldn’t listen to. And that brings us to the last point:

In the end, maybe recommendation services aren’t everything. Whitman has a strong argument as he describes his tool:

I have a strong aversion to music recommenders and music similarity services. I especially deal with a lot of cognitive dissonance as the company I co-founded makes a lot of $$$$$ (that is 5 dollar signs) selling ordered lists of artists to multinational music streaming conglomerates.
Nonetheless, we recently completed our first live recommender system (to be announced near the Boston Music Hack day in October) and to perhaps get myself more comfortable with a future in which children will no longer ask their cooler older dope-smoking brothers what to listen to in lieu of some HTML table in a UL, I decided to really sign up wholesale to this movement. If we rely on these computer programs to learn about music, well we might as well rely on them to fix the sins of our past and delete the crap we are obviously not meant to listen to anymore.

“Future of Music (2010)” is a Mac OS X app that scans your iTunes library and computes the music you are not supposed to listen to anymore based on your preferences. It then helpfully deletes it from iTunes and your hard drive. Skips the recycle bin.

I don’t think Future of Music will have one million users any time soon. But it does raise the most important point: the actual music has to come first.

Whether or not the general public is fatigued of social networks promising to revolutionize music, you can bet musicians are. Oliver Chesler is the blogger behind “wire to the ear” and, as The Horrorist,” an electronic musician who has topped German charts. He sums it up best:

As a musician the word to describe how I feel about the new Apple Ping social network is: exhausted. Musicians have become the tech industries guinea pigs. Why not? We try anything and work cheap right? After creating and curating profiles on MySpace, Last.fm, Imeem, Facebook and then Facebook Fan Pages and on and on now it’s time for Ping.

For his part, Chesler says he’ll make his own Ping page and promote it, even as “the Lady Gaga’s get all the love.”

Remember why we were all excited about the Internet for music in the first place? It’s a chaotic, level playing field. That can be scary, but given the miraculous, mind-boggling diversity of musical output and taste on planet Earth, it’s perfectly natural. And any business model around music must be built around that reality.

Don’t believe me? Ping may have one million members, but the fastest-growing musical sensation right now is a guy who came to his sister’s aid in an attempted rape and was AutoTuned into… actually, that’s a long story, told neatly by the New York Times. (I couldn’t wrap my head around it at first, either.)

Take a look at his fans. The guy is, literally, a rockstar. How did he get big? He spread on the Web – not on apps, not in any “curated,” walled garden vertically integrated experience. Not in any way, frankly, that makes any logical sense at all. (AttemptedYou know … on the Web.

My guess is, you’ll know Ping (or a competing service) has been fixed when you find Antoine Dodson’s profile. Antoine, if you have music recommendations, we’d love to hear them.

Magic Bonus Addendum!

Broken Social Scene references that fit iTunes Ping! (thanks to the story above)

“Broken Social Scene”
“You Forgot It In People” (or, at least, you forgot people in it)
“Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” (Katy Perry? Lady Gaga? Even Coldplay?)

Interview: Jon Hopkins Talks Live, Studio Process, Habit, Instinct 2 Sep 2010, 6:42 am

Classically trained as a pianist, musician and producer Jon Hopkins has one of the richest resumes in electronic music. He’s a frequent collaborator with Brian Eno, wand has worked with artists like Coldplay (who featured his music on their last album), Tunng, David Holmes, and Imogen Heap. He worked with director Peter Jackson, and has a sci-fi score on the way. He also has a rich set of solo releases. And we’ve seen him here recently with remix swaps with Four Tet and contributions to Eno’s upcoming Warp record.

Coming to the Electric Zoo Festival, the blowout Randall’s Island Labor Day weekend electronic party here in New York, he’s set to perform a straight-up, genuinely live set, complete with a small squadron of KAOSS Pads. You can catch him Sunday at 1pm if you’re at the event.

I got a chance to speak to Mr. Hopkins by phone from the UK, before he departed for New York and Electric Zoo. He shares here how he works live onstage and in the studio, talks about how Brian Eno got him hooked on the Kaoss Pad, and reveals his addiction to the tools he first used as a keyboard and resistance to software and hardware upgrades. I’m especially able to resonate with what he has to say about working with sound, and transitioning from a piano background to working as a producer – and I’m listening to his work from a fresh perspective after the combination.

(Don’t miss the spectacularly lo-fi film of “Insides” from Live at the ICA, London, below.)

CDM: Not having seen your live show, knowing only your studio work, I’m looking forward to seeing you at Electric Zoo. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do for live sets?

Hopkins: It’s an Ableton [Live] system at the core of it. I ran off all the separate sounds from my own studio, and kind of loaded everything up into Ableton, so I’ve got total flexibility over all the songs. Then I have separate outputs through the interface, so I can have four or five [Korg] Kaoss Pads running in sync with Ableton, where I can do sampling and looping and all kinds of crazy sounds. And then I go into a mixing desk, and I’ve got a lot of control over what’s going on. I’ve got a little MIDI keyboard up there to play stuff on and to keep things triggering. That’s kind of it, really. It’s not enormously complex, because I have to be able to travel around with it on my own.

How do you use the multiple Kaoss effects in tandem?

The card I use has 16 outputs, so I can separate sounds into different ones and have different effects running on each pad. And sometimes I put one at the end to control the master. It depends. It’s a very flexible setup that way.

In order to assemble your clips, are you simply loading stems from the tracks into Live?

Loops, stem loops, and a little bit of everything. One-shot things, longer things. It’s kind of really just about having a variety, so you can take it any way you feel. I found out recently I’m playing for an hour and half rather than an hour [at Electric Zoo], and I normally do an hour, so there may be some slightly longer pieces. I’ve got some time to prepare, so I’ll go and revisit some other songs and try to bring some new things over, as well. So it should be interesting.

Otherwise, it sounds like the live set is mostly dry; you’re doing most of the processing on the KAOSS Pads.

Yeah. Those things – the Kaoss Pad [KP3], specifically — I was working with Brian Eno over the years and he showed me the original one when it first came out, and I’ve kind of followed them as they go. And seeing from him, some of the crazy things he can do with them — I’ve just gotten really addicted to them. You can kind of make them do things they’re not supposed to do. If you record things into the delay settings, particularly the loop settings, and then speed up the tempo, the craziest effects come out. If you got that going into another one, you end up with a sound onstage that you’d never get out of a computer. It’s cool.

Let’s talk about the new single, and the work with Kieran [Hebden / Four Tet]. How did that come about?

Well, we met about three years ago, I think. We had quite a lot of mutual friends. I had been a bit of remixing for an artist on Domino called James Yorkston, who he’d worked with, as well. A year or two later, I signed to Domino.

We did a show together at the Natural History Museum in New York, and it was our first show together – a year and a half ago or something. And the mix of styles went quite well, I think. And we did a few more, and we did a remix swap recently. I did one for his last single, “Angel Echoes,” with the Caribou remix on the other side. And he did one for my new single, which is “Vessel.” And now we have this tour together in October, which I look forward to very much.

Angel Echoes (Jon Hopkins remix) by Four Tet

How do you approach working with his sound, or approach the remix as opposed to your solo work?

It was great, actually, because I love the original. I loved his last album [There Is Love in You] — it was fantastic. The first time I heard it, a guy from Domino played me some of the tracks in the car, way before it was out. And I heard that song, and I just had this idea for it, which was to take that vocal out of the chords he had it in, and write a completely new chord sequence on the piano — have a very natural piano sound, and then have those vocals and those beats flow back in on top of that, and really just try to rewrite the whole chord structure. And he had a live drum loop in there, and I found that if I really squashed it with a limiter … you heard every tiny detail of it. I added an extra few snares here and there, and turned it into a real 3/4 kind of thing, a dance track. And then the main sound — the track was called “Angel Echoes.” I’ve got an old Eventide DSP 4000, which has got a setting called Angel Echoes — which is a complete coincidence; he had never heard of it. I tried putting all the vocals through this Angel Echoes patch and then sent the pitches up an octave and down an octave, as you can with the Eventide in a quite interesting way. There’s this sort of enormous, floating delay. And I had that filtering up in the background while the dry vocals play over top. So you can hear a lot of that effect in the song, particularly in the end. So that was that track.

It seems like the combination really works naturally, that there’s some common aesthetic between the two of you.

There’s some common ground in there, yes. Also… my early albums are completely different than his. I think we’ve grown closer over the years. I think it’s a nice combination, because we have some areas in which we’re similar, and some in which we’re completely different.

What’s your studio setup look like, aside from obviously the aforementioned Eventide?

I’ve got quite a strange combination of things. The core of it is now a Logic system. But I’ve only had it for about a couple of months. Everything I’ve actually released so far was done on Cubase VST from about — I don’t know, 2001 edition; I can’t remember what number it was. And all the sounds I’ve made over the years have been on SoundForge, which is a program I’ve just always loved. I’ve been using it since I was 19; I just got so used to it. I guess it’s whatever program you know best is the best one there is, really. I don’t think there’s huge amounts of difference between one sound editor and another. I’m sure they all can do similar things. But I’ve loved the way SoundForge just has the one massive waveform on the screen, and you can just have infinite levels of undo on every spearate sound. And I have that going into Cubase, so you can have these sounds kind of open live, and be changing them all the way through the process of the song. Just recently, I worked on a film soundtrack, and I found that system finally couldn’t quite handle having any video, so it started crashing a lot. So I’ve got this new Logic system, but I just can’t make any of the more complex sounds on that, because it takes so long. So what I’ve done is hook them up together with an Ethernet cable so now I can drop certain sounds in a folder and have them open in SoundForge and then drop them back in Logic. So I’m using them both, really.

And that’s great. I didn’t want to just completely lose all that, because I think that is what has defined the sounds I’ve been making over the years. I don’t want to change everything in one go. It just seemed like a step backwards in some way.

There’s something psychological about it too, right, when you’ve done a lot of work to have it look familiar? It seems you feel differently about that tool.

You do, I think so, yeah. And particularly when I started on Logic and hooked the two up, I just felt quite bewildered as to how I would ever reach the complexity of editing levels that I was used to. I just operate directly on the waveform. And I love that what you see there on the screen is what you’re hearing, rather than it going through a bunch of live plug-ins. It’s just what I’m used to, really.

So, what don’t you do on the level of the waveform? At what point do you decide, okay, I’m done with that level of granularity with the waveforms and now I’m ready to work with effects and mixing?

I think initially, you go by instinct. In SoundForge, I’d have three or four variations of a loop, and then they would be open in Cubase, or now Logic. And you’d be able to operate on little micro-edits. And then at some point, you feel the drum track is ready, and it doesn’t need any more tweaks — it would be overworked. And I don’t like over-programmed electronic music; I think it had its time, really. Now I really think a solid groove is the way.

And it’s great, at that point you can stick it in Logic. I invested in some crazy plugins, so I’ve got quite a lot of fun things going on in there. Hopefully it will evolve to be the best of both worlds.

And you work a lot with the keyboard, coming at this as a pianist, as well?

Yeah. I didn’t mention that the only keyboard I’ve ever used is a Korg Trinity. I’m sure there aren’t many around these days, but again, like with SoundForge I don’t think it’s about what you use, it’s about how well you know it and how long you’ve been using it. And I know that machine ridiculously well. I’ve had it again since my first setup, when I was 18. And I’ve got a few hundred sounds that I’ve made over the years. Every synth sound on all three of my albums comes from that, with the exception of a couple of bass sounds from a Nord Lead that I’ve got as well.

But it just gets enormously processed. I don’t use them as they are; I stick them into SoundForge and just mess them up, and go through a lot of processes.On the new album, a lot more of the sounds that sound like synths are actually real instruments that have been mangled. A lot of the things that sound like synth pads are actually where I was playing piano through a series of pitch things into quite a deep reverb, and I was using that with a kind of gate to make a lot of the pads and the rhythmic sounds.

You do have a piano in your studio, as well, I would imagine.

It’s, like, behind me when I’m sitting at the computer, so I can swivel around on the chair I can play it. It’s hooked up to a couple of mics, [which] goes into a nice old TL Audio valve pre-amp thing, which then goes into either SoundForge or into Logic, depending on what I’m working on.

It’s the same piano I’ve had since I was a kid, so it’s nice for me, it’s in good condition.

Do you find that piano practice or piano technique are still sort of part of your musical life?

No, unfortunately not; it’s gone. (laughs) I can only play what I need for myself. I used to be a clasically-trained pianist when I was a teenager. I guess it stopped when I was 17; I realize I wasn’t interested in pursuing that, because as a career, I wanted to make my own things.

I used to play a lot of technical stuff which is unfortunately gone. But I couldn’t really justify sitting there and practicing for two hours a day, which is what I used to do. Once you work on musica all the time, music in your spare time isn’t really something you want to do.

Having faced this very issue myself, it doesn’t sound like you feel in any way limited by that. From what I hear in your music, you have far more than enough facility to allow the keyboard to be part of what you do, even if it isn’t central. (And I enjoy that playing.)

Oh yeah. It’s very much limited to the exact thing that I need, but I can still do exactly what I want to hear on what I’m recording. The thing that hasn’t gone is the dynamic range, so I can still play very quietly if I need to, or generally stay in time. It’s just anything fast — but I would never have anything like that anyway, because it’s not really what I’m into playing-wise or writing-wise.

Do you find you draw on the Classical background that you have?

Yes it is, although in a very subliminal way. I haven’t played a Classical piece on the piano since 1998, so whatever’s left — I think I’m more influenced by film scores and what appeals in them, which in turn I guess are influenced classically. But there’s certainly no conscious reference between what I used to listen to and what I used to perform and what I write now.

So what are you listening to these days?

(pauses) My mind always goes blank when that question comes up.

Me, too — or I could say, in the last 72 hours?

(laughs) Actually I think I’ve got my iPod right here. I’ve been listening to a friend of mine, Nathan Fake of Border Communities, who did the other remix of my single. Been listening to his stuff, his album Hard Islands. I do tend to listen to stuff that people I work with or who are friends of mine. I listen to a lot of Brian Eno, very specifically the ambient series. I love all of that stuff. You kind of never get bored of that, really.

But I’m also into a lot of songs and more traditional singer stuff like Arthur Russell or Jim Martin, people like that. Proper lyrics I love, as well, almost listen to more of that than electronic stuff.

Take a listen to Nathan Fake’s remix yourself…

jon hopkins – wire (nathan fake remix) by nathan fake •official•

And then you had the experience of Monsters, the sci-fi film.

That was an amazing experience. I don’t know when it comes out in the US, but it comes out in the UK 12th of November. It was the first film I’ve worked on just on my own. Ed.: Hopkins is no stranger to film scoring by way of collaboration, having scored Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones with Brian Eno. And we’re in luck here in the US – the movie arrives October 29, on demand even sooner on September 24.

And there should be a soundtrack album that comes with that. It’s very much more cinematic style, no beats, much more pure melody and atmosphere and tension. So it doesn’t sound like any of my albums, really. It’s interesting to be pushed in different directions by whatever you’re working on.

Had you had the experience of thinking about visual ideas when you worked on music before? I know it’s very different when you have someone else’s image there in front of you.

No, that was a whole new thing, because I actually don’t tend to think particularly visually. I always wanted videos to get made – but you don’t really get those kind of budgets any more. So I don’t tend to think of anything in particular when I’m writing. I just follow the instinct of the melody and where it goes. So it’s almost like having a film in there takes an enormous part of the pressure and responsibility off, because you’re not the main focus.

How slavish were you in terms of how you lined things up?

Pretty specific. I mean, it was my first time on my own, as I said, doing it. So I pretty much was feeling my way; even simple things like how to arrange the sessions on the computer for each queue — it would have been useful to know that you should have a different session for every queue, because I was trying to do it in one and thinking, wow… (laughs) Just simple organization was quite difficult.

I guess the learning curve is administrative as well as creative!

And it went really well in the end. I was working very strange working hours of 2pm to 4am every single day, and sleeping very strange hours, and not doing anything else. It was the middle of winter, and I barely saw daylight. Life is very simple when that’s all you’re doing. You just feel like for that period of time, you’re not thinking of anything else. I manage to take care of everything else that comes up and come in every day and fight through to the end, really. It was an amazing experience.

It’s starting to pick up some great momentum, so we’re really excited about it coming out.

More Information

http://www.madeevent.com/ElectricZoo/

Official site: Jon Hopkins

Monsters Film

And one more Jon Hopkins remix…

Wild Beasts – Two Dancers (Jon Hopkins Remix) by Jon Hopkins

Critter and Gitari’s $150, Battery-Powered Pocket Piano 2 Sep 2010, 5:00 am

Pocket Piano from Critter and Guitari on Vimeo.

Apologies to the immense powers of lumbering studio gear, but a new lifestyle may be forming around unique, mobile, small, simple synths. The latest entry comes from none other than Critter and Gitari, some of our favorite electronics designers, based in Philadelphia. This time, they’re touting a pocket synth. No MIDI, no control voltage – just wooden keys, some knobs, an audio out jack, and a speaker. But the killer feature is, it runs on batteries. That allows you to take it anywhere, including – as evidenced by the video – on the Staten Island Ferry.

The sounds are decidedly lo-fi, but varied in synthesis methods:

• Vibrato Synth
• Harmonic Sweeper
• Two-Octave Arpeggiator
• Octave Cascade
• Mono FM Synth
• FM Arpeggiator

Twist the knobs to select mode and waveform, with a colored light to give you feedback. Then play on the wooden keys, though they require a bit of what the creators describe as “a refined touch.”

Lots of additional sound samples, including some that sound like they escaped from a vintage arcade cabinet (or a really cheap alien spacecraft):
Pocket Piano

Bonus: Here’s a wonderful recorder called the Kaleidoloop from the same builders, costing $299. They’ve been documenting its many powers over the past months. It’s insanely simple – to the point that somewhere, KAOSS Pad engineers are scratching their heads — but also insanely delicious.

Kaleidoloop: Effecting a Voice Recording from Critter and Guitari on Vimeo.

BOSS Pedal Sketch: BOSS Stompboxes as Free iPhone Download 1 Sep 2010, 6:21 pm

The BOSS Pedal Sketch application, a free download today for iPhone and iPod touch, probably isn’t what you think it is – but it is a novel concept in mobile apps, and a sign of some of the new ideas to be explored.

If your first thought was that this is a handheld set of virtual stompboxes, as we’ve seen recently from the likes of IK Multimedia, you’d be wrong. (That’s okay, that’s what I thought at first glance, too.) Of course, as I’ve observed before, while these apps are cool for practice sessions, they’re no replacement for hardware – not until we have phones you can stomp on comfortably.

What BOSS Pedal Sketch actually is is a handheld, digital notebook for remembering your stomp setups. Find a routing and settings you like, and then record them on your mobile, down to where the knobs were. Use a mic (built-in on iPhone, or external on iPhone/iPod) to record audio and remember later what a rig sounds like. Take photos with the camera.

The result is – uh, how shall we say, this charitably – a bit specific. I can’t imagine a guitar player who exclusively owns BOSS pedals. Whoever you are – you, with BOSS sales posters you stole at NAMM pasted above your bed so you can stare at them – you’re welcome. Go enjoy. But I thought it was worth posting as a separate story because it is a unique idea. (I’m also assuming that’s why this wasn’t emphasized by Roland US in today’s announcements.)

That said, of course, I’d probably just make some quick notes in a mobile app like (my own personal favorite) Evernote. Many of those work on alternative platforms, too, in case you don’t have an iPhone. (Memo to mobile app developers: native is cool, but looking at the features here, this could also be a Web app.)

And it does raise some interesting questions, too, like the best way to provide handheld access to settings via MIDI or (ideally, for more futuristic devices) even wirelessly with Bluetooth. So, at least it’s free, and someone will use it, I’m sure, but I’m going to mostly take it as an indication of more useful things to come.

http://www.bosscorp.co.jp/en/sketch/
Via iTunes

Roland Round-up: A Mobile Juno Workstation, Realistic Piano Models, More 1 Sep 2010, 6:05 pm

Roland dropped a slew of news announcements today, from new keyboards to software. There’s a new JUNO-Gi, which takes Roland’s economical synth workstation and adds multitrack recording and BOSS effects. The virtual piano lineup has all been remade in the image of the V-Piano, with more realistic sampling tech. And there’s a set of offerings as broad as what we’re accustomed to seeing at trade shows, including one nice-looking harmonic stompbox.

Here are the highlights, focusing on what you need to know.

The JUNO that Records

A keyboard workstation, multitrack recording, and BOSS effects, mobile at just over a grand

The JUNO-Gi is the biggest headline here. Built on the JUNO-G, already a slimmed-down rendition of the Fantom in a much cheaper, more compact package, the Gi is a mobile, multi-function workstation at the recession-friendly price of US$1199. It’s a pretty complete all-in-one offering that manages to be cheap and mobile while still cramming in a lot of functionality:

• Battery-powered option.
• Built-in 8-track digital recorder (64 virtual tracks.
• Dedicated mix faders, rhythm machine track, and recording onto a standard SD card (up to 32 GB cards.
• Built-in USB audio and MIDI interface when you’re connected to a computer; SONAR LE bundled.
• Rear-panel XLR mic (thank you, Roland!), guitar, and line inputs.
• Built-in BOSS-GT guitar effects, vocal processing.

To me, the JUNO-Gi looks like a big winner for those who want an all-in-one keyboard workstation rather than a computer when they’re on the go, especially with the addition of real ports, faders, and guitar and vocal effects. And there’s definitely something to be said for that kind of distraction-free workflow.

For background, you can read my 2007 review of the JUNO-Gi’s “-G” predecessor for Keyboard Magazine; I lamented the fact that the “JUNO” name doesn’t really apply in terms of the sound generation, but otherwise found an affordable, balanced keyboard with a friendly front panel. In fact, I really prefer these designs to some of the bigger flagships; to me, it’s like driving a sporty hatchback instead of a lumbering SUV.
Roland Juno-G [Keyboard]

I said at the time – really doubly true now with the addition of BOSS effects and multitrack interface and recording capability:

Despite its price and retro styling, the Juno-G really is a “Fantom-Xpress.” It’s got the processor and sound engine from the pricier Fantom-X line, minus some of the extra bells and whistles. You still get Fantom-class sounds, a multisampled grand piano, compatibility with Roland’s SRX expansion boards, onboard audio and MIDI recording and editing, lots of effects, and a powerful arpeggiator. That makes the Juno-G an unusually feature-packed workstation relative to other budget keyboards.

See also our CDM Q&A on the 2.0 update to the JUNO-G

Digital Pianos Go SuperNATURAL

The other story Roland is pushing is the switch of its digital pianos to a new set of sampling technologies it calls SuperNATURAL. It appears to be a big leap forward for Roland’s pianos, and given the success of the V-Piano, for digital pianos in general.

Roland boils down the technology to three techniques:

1. It’s 88 keys of stereo multi-sampling – no zones.
2. Via tech borrowed from Roland’s V-Piano, it promises smoother transitions between dynamic levels.
3. The decaying tone isn’t looped.

You can watch a video explaining the techniques. (Does anyone else find Roland’s promo videos seem like they fell through a time warp from the 80s? No matter – it’s how the piano plays that counts.)

Now, some of the comparisons Roland makes relative to software piano instruments aren’t quite as fair – a couple of instruments, through clever sampling and/or modeling, do get this right in software. But it is more unique in hardware.

There are four new digital piano products with SuperNATURAL sounds in them. Two of them you probably don’t care about; they’re geared for the home/education market and have notation views built into the music stand:
HPi-6F
HPi-7F

– I’m guessing CDM readers would rather get a keyboard they like and then prop an iPad on the music stand. (Or use this magical technology called paper.)

There’s also the FP series, with built-in speakers:
FP-7f couples the new sound tech with a redesigned keybed. It also adds looping and mic input and harmony effects as new features. US$2190, unless you want it in white, in which case it’s US$2299. Don’t ask.

The keyboard with the new tech most likely to appeal to readers of this site is this:
RD-700NX, the upgrade to Roland’s previous flagship stage piano. As with the FP, this model adds a looper, a vocal mic input with harmony effects, and a new “PHA III Ivory Feel-S Keyboard with Escapement” keybed. There’s also a new, larger LCD screen. US$2999.

The RD-700NX works nicely as a MIDI control keyboard as well as a standalone stage keyboard, so it could be one to watch. I’ll be honest: the Roland action on these keyboards, while solid, was never my favorite. I’m curious to see how the new action feels. And you really have to play simulated pianos to know if they’ve gotten the sampling tech right.

GAIA Editing Software

Part of the whole appeal of the GAIA SH-01 synth is that you work on the front panel and not in software. But I like what Roland is doing with the GAIA Synth Sound Designer – if, for no other reason, because it has an oscilloscope view so you can see the waveform. You can record and play back sound creations in Action Lists, a clever new way of working. And you can use it as an editor/librarian app for backing, organization, and storage – a category that made hardware synths more useful and has been sorely lacking.

d news: instead of providing the app for free, the software, released in October, will list for US$99 (in-store street should be lower). Given the GAIA’s mission of reaching out to new synth lovers, I’d rather see this bundled in box. (Note that this is hardly unprecedented — Moog charges US$79 for their Minimoog Voyager Editor, and a Minimoog owner has shelled out a heck of a lot more cash than a GAIA customer.)

I’m finishing off an SH-01 review, complete with sound design tips, soon, so if you have any last-minute questions, fire away.

A new, multi-effect BOSS pitch stompbox

The BOSS PS-6 “Harmonist” pedal looks delicious. Effects include three-voice harmony, plus four pitch shift modes:

• Harmony
• Pitch Shifter
• Detune
• “Super Bend,” a brand-new mode with “shift,” “rise time,” and “fall time” (so, in other words, it’s a time-based pitch shifter)

US$241.50 in September.

More New Products

In other Roland news:
The AX-Synth is available in black, though at US$1449 list, you’d have to consider the more affordable Lucina AX-09 if you really need a shoulder keyboard. I’m finishing a review of the latter now.

The C-380 is a luxurious-looking, 2-manual modeled pipe organ. I want one, and an underground lair to go with it. (Yeah, sure, it’s the cliche, but I’ve always appreciated the lifestyle choice.)

Roland also has new CUBE-XL guitar amps, though I’ll try to examine those next to a similar announcement from Vox – it’s a good time to be in the market for inexpensive, busk-ready amps.

The Octa-Capture is a new high-res, USB 2.0 10-in, 10-out computer audio interface. Roland is going toward calling these “Roland” interfaces, instead of “Edirol,” and appears to be pushing the quality of these devices. US$699. Unfortunately, this illustrates that we need an updated USB class spec to support interfaces like this without drivers, at least from what I know; you do need the drivers to run this box, so no driver-free operation and no Linux support initially.

The BOSS ST-2 “Power Stack” is a compact pedal that simulates stack-style tube amps. US$162.

If any of this stuff strikes your fancy, let us know, and we can get questions answered for you.

http://www.rolandconnect.com/

In Photos: Discovering Sound Making, Electronics at Culturefix NYC 1 Sep 2010, 7:47 am

Handmade Music found a new home on New York’s Lower East Side, at Culturefix, an electronics boutique cum gallery, bar, and tapas. The philosophy of this event has long been to simply open the doors, letting a community of people come together, make some noise, and have fun and learn. So we’re indebted to the people who made it happen – and I think there were some lessons to hopefully reproduce.

And yes, part of why I share this is I hope we can work over time to provide more resources, so that it’s easier to organize events and workshops to involve people in discovering the music technologies about which we’re passionate.

Highlights:

Great food and drink and art. First, I owe huge thanks to Ari and Cole and the whole staff of Culturefix for serving up delicious food and drinks in the kitchen/bar. There’s no reason tech has to be served on an empty stomach. I gather some purchases went down up in their drool-worthy audio boutique. (I, uh, bought a mixer…) But perhaps best of all, it was nice being in a gallery with an active show and being surrounded with texture and visual inspiration.

Lots of people soldering and making electronics, even for the first time. We had a wide group of people try out the 1976 phototheremin, an original design by Forrest M. Mims III adapted and executed by Eric Archer. Simplicity makes a difference: Forrest’s original design uses a tiny number of parts, which makes it ideal for a workshop – fewer solder points. Folks who had never soldered before nailed it in no time at all; Brian Biggs’ young children even got in on the action. We benefited from having a mix of people who had soldered before and some who hadn’t. Result: everyone one had a great time. (Thanks, great participants!) And apart from one case of swapped transistors, remedied with a desoldering gun, we had a 100% success rate. I think this is an ideal way to learn; I hope we can do more of these and perhaps create a new library of these projects for the online age.

Video and more photos by Joe Saavedra, who helped out with the workshop:

Chip music, invented guitars, dodecahedron side by side. Guitarist Nick Demopoulos captivated the crowd with his homemade Smomid guitar controller, which aligned MIDI pitches with touch-sensitive strips arranged as frets, for a controller more comfortable for guitar. Ted Hayes talked about the fine details of construction and three-dimensional layouts for sequencers on his Neurohedron – a particular enough task that I think we should probably cover it in more detail with Ted. Pulsewave, the NYC-based chip music series, offered chip music. What was interesting about that was that, by taking it out its usual venue, the music reached a largely unfamiliar crowd. (A number of people were hearing chip music for the first time.) This put the notion of making music with Nintendo handhelds alongside other hacks and DIY solutions for music. Thanks to Peter Swimm for making this happen.

Live videos

Thanks to Robots Dreams for the additional photos and videos. If you haven’t seen this superb hacker-friendly site, it’s a definite don’t miss:
http://www.robots-dreams.com/

And to everyone, yes, we’ll do this again, as well as work on ways of sharing these events across geographic distance, whether that’s publishing additional kit and workshop ideas, promoting events in different places, or … well, really, anything else you’d suggest.

Soundhack Goodness, Now as Pd and Max External Objects 1 Sep 2010, 7:46 am

Soundhack, the free audio tool for the Mac developed by audio wizard Tom Erbe, was long a beloved tool for doing strange and wonderful things for sound. It was followed by Spectral Shapers, Mac and Windows plug-ins that built on some of those ideas to do more “timbral morphing” with recorded audio. That includes “timbral filtering” and noise-reducing expansion with spectralcompand, drawn morphing filter shapes with morphfilter, audio positioning with binaural, and a terrific spectralgate for creative dynamics processing.

In what can only come as great news to lovers of patching in the free and open source Pure Data (Pd) and commercial Max/MSP environments alike, those tools are now in beta as objects to include in your own patches. These patching environments really do feel like the virtual modular studios they are. Included:

+binaural, +morphfilter, +spectralcompand, +spectralgate, +decimate, +chebyshev, +matrix, +compand, +delay, +pitchdelay and +bubbler

This release promises a few bugs, so use at your own risk and write good, precise bug reports if you hit any trouble. Windows Max support isn’t there yet, but Mac Max support is, and Pd users can enjoy the software on Mac, Windows, Linux, and even 64-bit Linux. More updates coming later this summer.

http://www.soundhack.com/externs.php

Sounds by Richard Devine, Granulation on iOS, and Footsteps of a Wasp 31 Aug 2010, 7:01 pm

Named for Curtis Roads, Curtis is an iPad and iPhone/iPod touch application that implements granular sound processing – a technique, imagined early on by the composer Xenakis, which divides sound into tiny granules, allowing more liquid modification of the audio. Roads brought this idea to digital synthesis, and the results can transform recorded samples in pitch and time.

Composer, producer, and sound designer Richard Devine has long made use of granular techniques in his own work, so it’s little surprise Richard is turning his sonic compositional efforts to the iPad app. The latest release includes a new sound set he designed, but he also writes CDM to point out a track he’s shared on SoundCloud, free to download and hear and for your remixing and re-compositional use.

The track is a composition of samples, and it shows just how much you can do with recorded audio:

This piece is a Acousmatic composition based on everyday found objects. I recorded various wine glasses, gears, metal, motors, Ratchets, chimes, croaking frog scraper, Indian bells, Tibetan Singing Bowls, Santoor, waterphone, piano, hematite magnets, processed voice, underwater ambiances, computer, and sprinkled bits of Buchla 200e/Doepfer Euro rack Modular.

All of the sounds originally captured at 24-bit 96khz with a Neumann RSM 191 A/S stereo shotgun mic, SMK4060 Stereo Matched 4060-BM Miniature Omnidirectional Microphones and Sound Devices 702 recorder.

Objects Of Granularity by RichardDevine

If you want to try out Curtis, you can do so on both iPad (pictured above) and iPhone:

Curtis for iPad
Curtis Heavy for iPhone

I love the geometric/vector-style twist on the wave display. New in the recent 1.1 release: pitch control, echo effect, volume control … and the all-important MP3 import. (Usually working with uncompressed files is more successful, however. With WAV or MP3 files, simply drag-and-drop files from iTunes.)

In other sound design experiments, Richard records an insect’s footsteps inside a box, recorded on a catch-and-release program, from earlier this summer.

Found a large Velvet Ant walking on my driveway today, and couldn’t help but notice the odd sounds this insect was making. The recording is of the insect crawling around inside a cardboard box, before I let it go back into my backyard. The Velvet Ant, also known as the “Cow Killer” is actually not an ant, but a wasp. I recorded this with 2 DPA 4060 Lav’s and Sound Devices 702 recorder at 24bit-96Khz.

Recording of a Velvet Ant. by RichardDevine