Video by Jon Davis of an Ostracon Performance

I just came across this five minute video shot by Ghostband artist Jon Davis on his mobile phone of my duet project Ostracon performing at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis on July 17, 2010. I’ve been enjoying a lot of these lofi videos that Jon puts up on YouTube, and it reminds me of a quote I read recently from David Byrne in the liner notes for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: “…we came to realize that high fidelity was a vastly over-rated convention that noboby had bothered to question…”. I can’t agree more, except that today, thankfully, it is being questioned more than ever.

Jred Smyth Triggered Drum Performance

Graham O’Brien and I really enjoyed our Ostracon performance at the In / Out Festival recently. Part of what made this festival for us was all of the other incredible performers and speakers at the event, such as Rosa Menkman and Peter Kirn. One prominent example was Jred Smyth who gave an energetic and inspired solo drumming concert featuring triggered sounds that transformed the work into evolving structured compositions. Checkout the video clip above of Jred Smyth with Blair Neal on visuals.

In Out Festival Track Donation: Entropy Procedure by Ostracon

I’m pleased to share with ACB readers the track donation that we made for the In / Out Festival Kickstarter project. The track is titled Entropy Procedure by Ostracon and features myself on the GMS interfaced with Ableton Live, and Graham O’Brien on drums. It was delightfully engineered and mixed by Adam Krinsky, and mastered by the amazing Tom Garneau who, if you read his discography you will find, recorded and mixed Too Legit to Quit by MC Hammer (an unrelated but awesome bit of data for you).

We will be performing similar work to this at the In / Out Festival this weekend on Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 9:30pm at the Tank Theater in Manhattan. Please checkout the entire festival starting on Friday afternoon with free workshops and finishing with the Saturday evening performances. The evening performances are only $15 per night, or $25 for both nights with a total of nine performances. This is unlike any music I have produced in the past, so comments are encouraged.

Entropy Procedure by Ostracon

Unicorn Dream Attack and Ostracon at the Honey Lounge

On Saturday, September 11, 2010 Ostracon is performing a “send off” show for the In / Out Festival in New York. I am excited to be sharing the stage again with 8-bit maestro, Unicorn Dream Attack. Stefen Keen of UDA describes his music as follows.

The music I make is often times called “8-bit” or “chiptunes” (there are many other names but these are the most popular). There are many many ways to make this music. Some of them include using live sounds, trackers, or MIDI inputs on vintage computers (like Commodore 64), game systems (like a Gameboy or NES), old Casios/Yamahas (like vl-tone or vs-30), and circuit bent toys or non-bent toys of all kinds. check out the forums at chipmusic.org, 8bitcollective.com, and micromusic.net for more answers.

I describe it as intense, square wave, head exploding madness, not to be missed. UDA takes the stage at 7:45pm followed by my duet, Ostracon, with Graham O’Brien on drums at 8:45pm. The event takes place at the Honey Lounge, located in the basement of Ginger Hop at 205 East Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55414. The show is free if you arrive before 9:00pm.

Control the GMS Via Ableton Live

Currently I am busy preparing for the Ostracon show at the In / Out Festival of Digital Performance that is coming up on September 17 and 18 in New York (we are playing on the Saturday the 18th at 9:30pm). Part of my preparation involves minimizing my setup for ease of transport. For one thing, I am not bringing my Korg MS2000 as a controller for the GMS, as I have done for other performances. However, because I’m projecting the live video source, I cannot use the on-screen controls in the GMS.

My first idea to solve this problem was to share a single Korg nanoKONTROL between Ableton Live and the GMS. Unfortunately this approach was not practical because it would require some major reconfigurations as well as recompiling the GMS with a set of new external MIDI controls. My next idea was to route the MIDI control and program changes to the GMS via MIDI clips in Ableton’s session view. This worked immediately and I knew I was on the right track. The only problem was that there seemed to be a MIDI signal feedback loop when using the same bus for output and external control in the GMS. I solved this problem by creating a second IAC bus for the external control and using the first bus for the MIDI output. Finally I configured a combination of keyboard controls and Korg Nano buttons to trigger the clips in Ableton that, in turn, trigger the specific functions in the GMS. Voilà!

The flexibility of Ableton never ceases to amaze me. I had never used session clips to send MIDI program and control change messages to an external device, let alone, independent software running simultaneously. Nor had I ever needed to do this in the past. Yet the thought occurred to me, I wonder if Ableton can do this? It turns out that it can. Thanks to Ableton this solution has saved me many hours of redundant and tedious programming, and well as making my setup more streamlined and efficient for upcoming performances. How have Ableton’s capabilities surprised you?