Here is track 3 of 14 out of a collection of Ostracon mixes from three consecutive live shows last year. Each track is an untitled improvisation roughly mixed and edited for length. Ostracon is currently working on a new album and is performing on August 5, 2012 at the Kitty Cat Club in Minneapolis. If you’d like to hear the rest of these bootlegs, please share, or comment. Thanks!
As promised here’s the second of fourteen live tracks. I would love to hear from you if you’d like to hear more. Thanks!
I have been back in the studio recently with Graham O’Brien to record our second Ostracon record. We are still using the GMS, but doing things a little differently this time around. More about that later. But, since I have Ostracon on the brain I thought it might be nice to release a collection of fourteen live tracks from three shows we performed last year on SoundCloud. Each track is an untitled improvisation mixed roughly and edited for length. Today you can enjoy track one. If you like it, please comment/share and I’ll keep them coming.
Many of you know that I have been working on an eight channel, spatialized sound, projection, and dance collaboration for almost two years. I composed the music entirely using my collection of analog synthesizers. I also designed an octal sound system (eight discrete channels) to spatialize the music and sounds. The performances are Thursday, June 7 at 9pm, Friday, June 8 at 9pm and Saturday, June 9th from 9pm until 6am (yes that is 9 long hours). Checkout In Habit: Living Patterns for the location and other details.
What may be of particular interest to ACB readers is how I am processing the music for spatialization. The outdoor stage is a raised 18′ x 18′ square that the audience can view from any angle. At each corner I have outward facing wedges to project sound toward the audience. Behind the audience I have inward facing speakers on stands, also at each corner of the venue (a public space under the 3rd Avenue bridge in Minneapolis by the Mississippi river across from the St. Anthony Main Movie Theatre).
Using a Max for Live patch that I developed and another that is part of the M4L toolset I am able to rotate sounds around the system in many ways. This includes clockwise and/or anti-clockwise at variable frequencies around the outer or inner quads or both. I can also pan sound between the inner and outer quads with or without the rotation happening simultaneously. Quick adjustments allow me to create cross pans to for sweeping diagonals and so on. I originally thought I could do this with one of many M4L LFOs, but found out this would be impossible. In a future post I will explain why I had to develop my own patch to do this. For now, please enjoy a sadly two channel rough mix of Kolum, the second in the series of sixteen vignettes, and come to the performance to hear it in all of its spatialized, eight channel glory.
Here’s another analog synth, electro-funk composition that I have kept in a locked drawer for almost a year, taking it out occasionally to brush of the dust and hold it against the light. If this track doesn’t become your Summer jam then it is time for me to give up on music and wonder When did music become unimportant? Aside from the drums, this track was made entirely using my restored Roland Juno-106. Few instruments rival the punchy sounds that the 106 seems to spurt out with only a few careful strokes of her many sliders. Please enjoy responsibly.