ISSTA 2019 Call for Proposals

October 31st and November 1st, 2019 the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association annual conference and festival will be held in Cork, Ireland at CIT Cork School of Music. Keynotes include a performance and lecture from Robert Henke (Ableton Live, Monolake) and a performance and workshop from Ellen King (ELLLL / Gash Collective).

I starting going to ISSTA in 2017 and have had incredible experiences while attending and performing. It’s usually a fairly small gathering of like-minded artists, educators, performers, and scientists all of whom are experimenting with sound in fascinating ways. I’ve participated in many events, festivals and conferences, but nothing aligns better with my interests and practice than ISSTA does. If you appreciate the music and sound experiments I share here on ACB, then please review the call below for details about this wonderful gathering. Continue reading

Keston and Westdal at Nublu, NYC Circa 2009

I just had a listen to these videos of Keston and Westdal with Graham O’Brien on drums at Nublu in New York, Feb 7, 2009. The eight year old recordings were shot by my mate, Benjamin Montag, who is responsible for the majority of the art and design work for Unearthed Music, including the art on my new solo album, Isosceles.

I was using the Nublu house Rhodes, which I repaired earlier that night replacing a couple of broken tines and tuning a few notes. I brought along a laptop and interface to live-loop the Rhodes and send a click track to Graham. I borrowed the Korg MS2000 from Simone Giuliani. You may also notice distortion on the Rhodes at about 6:47. For that I brought along my BOSS DF-2 Super Distortion & Feedbacker pedal, which I have been using on Rhodes since the ’90s.

Since I had the laptop to loop the Rhodes in Ableton Live I ended up a few nice phrases that I ended up posting here on Audiocookbook. For example, in one post I shared a nice phrase and discussed my repair job before the gig and another includes a field recording inside a taxi on the way to the show. Checkout a few archival recordings from the gig below:

Rhodes Loop from the Nublu Backline
Another Rhodes Recording from Nublu
Segment of Recording from Nublu
Inside a Taxi in New York with Ben and Simone

SoundsCloud Flashback: Music for People on Shelves

peopleonshelves

I used Ableton Live to produce in real-time and my wavetable glitch machine Max patch to make most of the noises, which I routed into Live using Soundflower.

This five year old set is one of the very first things I ever posted on SoundCloud and it’s 86 minutes from a live solo performance with Minneapolis Art on Wheels. Checkout the original posts here:

Video documentation:
audiocookbook.org/people-on-shelves/

The original article:
audiocookbook.org/music-for-people-on-shelves/

Coleoptera

pixel-beetle

In this no-overdubs-performed-live track a paraphonic chord pattern from the Korg Volca Keys is prominently featured. I used several other favorites in the piece including the Roland D-50, Roland Juno-106 arpeggiated by Ableton, Novation Bass Station II, and the DSI Tempest. There’s also signature delay feedback swells from the Memory Man.

Korg Volca Keys Delay Circuit Noise

KorgVolcaKeys

I have had the Korg Volca Keys for a little over a week and have gotten quite comfortable with the unit. The feature set can be learned in a matter of minutes, but the sonic range of the instrument is impressive and much more broad than I expected. The strength of the Volca Keys is in the modes: poly, unison, octave, fifth, unison ring, and poly ring. The sound I posted earlier, for example, demonstrates the poly ring modulation mode. Lately I’ve been enjoying syncing the Volca Keys with my DSI Tempest and Korg Monotribe, but more about that later.

Screen Shot 2013-10-12 at 1.02.44 PM

Of course a hardware analog synth that exhibits the diminutive size and cost that the Volca Keys does is bound to have some limitations. From my perspective the most obvious limitation is the quality of the onboard delay. According to Korg’s block diagram the delay is the final circuit in the signal flow. Therefore, high frequency noise coming from the delay can’t be rolled off with the filter. The noise is most obvious when playing a sound that is programmed with the cutoff frequency most of the way down, the delay time at the slowest setting, and the feedback at the highest setting.

To illustrate the noise introduced by the delay circuit I created a few versions of a simple test sequence. One without delay, one with the internal delay, one with Ableton’s Simple Delay, and finally one with my Electro-harmonix Memory Man Delay. The sequence sounds pretty clean on its own, but buzzy, high frequency aliasing becomes audible when the Volca’s delay is introduced. In comparison, Ableton’s Simple Delay doesn’t add any noticeable noise, while the Memory Man adds a little noise (and pleasant chorusing), but nowhere near as much as the Volca delay.

Korg Volca Keys Sequence with No Delay:

Korg Volca Keys Sequence with the Internal Delay:

Korg Volca Keys Sequence with Simple Delay:

Korg Volca Keys Sequence with Memory Man Delay:

Some might find the buzzy delay noise desirable at times. To me it sounds more-or-less like a cheap, digital delay circuit that uses some down sampling and/or bit reduction to handle the memory requirements for the repetitions. I have also noticed that the filtering on the delay trails is significant. Cranking up the cutoff and lowering the attack, decay, and sustain on the EG produces obviously muffled delay trails. All of these limitations are not that noticeable when you’re using the Volca alongside two or more other instruments, but I plan on using my Memory Man as an alternative to the on board delay when it’s convenient to do so.