I just finished collaborating on a grant funded project titled Words to Dead Lips at Intermedia Arts last month. I did live electronic music and sound design, as well as build sound objects that the dancers used in the piece. The collaboration began with choreographer Pramila Vasudevan and visual artist Matt Wells with whom I joined to expand the project in December, 2009. Here’s more documentation including project notes, photos and press:
For the last few of years I have been craving the sound of polyphonic, analogue synthesizers. Although I’ve got a collection of aging monophonic (and one duophonic) beasts, I haven’t owned an analogue polyphonic slab since I had an Oberhiem Matrix-6. Before that, it was one of my first instruments, the Korg Poly-800. Both of these synths sound great, but I can’t forget the frustration I experienced with their lack of tactile potentiometers. Although I wish I still had it now, the membrane buttons on the Matrix-6 were especially annoying.
Recently I joined a trio name DGK (Jon Davis, Tim Glenn, and John Keston) that I think would benefit from a versatile polyphonic analogue instrument on top of my Rhodes electric piano. I have few rigs in mind (insert vintage Korg, Roland, or Akai), but I’m looking for a good knob to dollar ratio (more knobs and less dollars). What are your favorite poly-synths and why? Ever get rid of something you wish you hadn’t? Or have you been assimilated by the latest software synths?
As I’ve mentioned in some previous articles, I have been working on a multi-media dance collaboration, Words to Dead Lips, with Annichia Arts since last December that has finally come to a close. We staged three performances at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis this weekend to a mostly full house. My part in the collaborative effort was to produce the music, and I was given an open mandate to do so. As is my preference, I opted to perform the work to the dance and projected imagery, rather than submit pre-recorded material. Although I adhered to an agreed framework for the soundscape, the improvisational nature of this approach made every performance unique.
Another component to the sonic environment was the noise shield. This device, that I built into saucer sleds, was used by the dancers to synthesize sounds using body contacts and a light dependent resistor. Here’s a five minute excerpt of audio from the closing night’s performance.
I’ve been meaning to start an entry for ACB for a while, but only just got around to it after completing this sound. A few months ago, I stopped by Weirdo Records in Cambridge, MA while visiting some friends in Boston and I picked up a few different battery powered noise boxes. My favorite turned out to be this small chanting monk device that has a built in speaker, a headphone jack, a button to change chants, and a volume knob. I immediately found a bend on the board that doubled the speed of the chanting and made it a high pitched chipmonk chant.
Once I got back to Minnesota, I plugged it into the input on a Korg Electribe and saved the results of some crazy effect work. From there I ran the file (then a 2 minute file) through the open source paulstretch software. I slowed it down by about ten times and the end result was a 28 minute ambient drone that fluctuated and sounded something like a desolate ice cave. I used Ableton to EQ out the ear-bleeding high end and to add a bit of reverb. The end result is a haunting drone sound-bed that I’m pretty fond of. Feel free to use it for any sampling or remixing or whatever you kids are doing these days.
Here’s a new look at the Grain MachineM4L device. Since last time I have updated the device to allow drag and drop samples that are stored with the Live set, and added a visual for the filter that’s controlled by the accelerometer on the controller (iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch).
The best thing about using this in Live is being able to live-loop and layer the output from Grain Machine into clips on different tracks, not to mention processing. Another advantage is saving the state of the device in the Live set so that one document has sample set X, while the next has sample set Y. Here’s a piece I created with the Grain Machine in Ableton Live using some samples I randomly selected from my sound library.
