Music of Sound

Its not often a software v1.0 release is celebrated by the users – historically it often means its been rushed to market & will be buggy as all hell, but it would seem the opposite is true of the release of Processing 1.0 which has undergone a lengthy development period in the hands of many very clever visual & audio artists…

So what is Processing exactly? “Processing is a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts. Initially created to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing quickly developed into a tool for creating finished professional work as well.”

For any artists, choosing tools is critical, especially when those tools have a serious learning curve… Choosing to learn ProTools, or ableton LIVE or Logic is challenging enough, but then choosing whether to pursue more open-ended audio programming environments such as Max/MSP, Kyma, Reaktor etc adds another whole realm of complexity. And that is where Processing has achieved a quiet revolution. Re-read that description: “since 2001….” – its now near the end of 2008; thats a long time in beta, but the evidence speaks for itself.

I remember on my first trip to Tokyo back in 2004 visiting the fantastic ICC Gallery and getting to play with an audio visual generative toy by the name of SONIC WIRE SCULPTOR (it was created in Processing by Amit Pitaru) & below is a video of it… but you can also try it in your web browser here

Another example of Processing I recently read of in pingmag is a very interesting project called Advanced Beauty: “Advanced Beauty is an ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound, an ever-growing collaboration between programmers, artists, musicians, animators and architects.”

Read the full article here, find the Advanced Beauty site here & check out the trailer for the DVD release below:

Advanced Beauty / Out Now from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

As with any creative medium (or artist), the best advertising is created through inspired works of art being made & I find the work of one of the artists featured on Advanced Beauty to be truly inspiring; namely Robert Hodgin, who’s flight404 blog documents development of his work.

Here are just a few examples of his work with Processing (note – go to vimeo to view in HD)

Audio-generated landscape from flight404 on Vimeo.

Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo.

Short Royksopp experiment from flight404 on Vimeo.

Check more of his videos on vimeo here

Paul Devereux is a researcher & theorist of archaeoacoustics, that is megalithic acoustics & their possible application… heres a short video from a lecture he gave at the Future of Sound conference – check here for upcoming events.

The examples he plays of ringing rocks even survive youtube compression as being significantly different, but as to their actual significance, who can say… But one observation that Paul Devereux has made after gathering evidence from many archeological acoustic sites is that many of enclosed chambers they measured had a resonant frequency of 111 Hz, which apparently has effects on theta waves generated by the brain stem. Whether that is likely true or more likely a gross simplification, dumbed down for a recent BBC documentary on the subject, it doesnt take a rocket scientist to appreciate the effect of acoustics on any ritual, be it as immediate as playing music or as manipulative as going to church.

But sympathetic resonance has to be a core reason for such things and as far as rituals go, the only archaeological place I have been where I have experienced such acoustic properties was a place about an hours train ride from Tokyo called Taya Caverns. Its on the same train line that takes you to Kamakura but is actually in Yokohama. Quoting from wikipedia: “From about the year 1200 to 1700, Shingon Buddhist monks gradually excavated this underground maze of tunnels as a site for spiritual training.”

These caves went many hundreds of metres into the mountain & every so often you would come to a small chamber where presumably monks would sit for long periods of time & meditate and chant. The reverb in these caves was truly amazing; rich & complex with a very very long decay and a very strong low frequency resonance. It was easy to imagine how overwhelming it would be to sit there, in the dark, chanting drones that were tuned to both the other monks in the cave but also with the cave resonance itself.

There is an interesting article (PDF here) titled: ‘In time with the music: The concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology’ which illustrates plausible directions as to why acoustically enhanced spaces were found and/or made for ritual use.

If you want to find out more about Paul Devereux’s research & theories maybe check out this book

Its kinda funny; maybe next millenium archeologists will unearth old drum & bass venues from the dark distant 90s or dubstep venues of the late ’00s & theorise as to how the venues seem to be built to reinforce sub bass waves… c’est la vie, nothing much changes, except maybe the preferred resonant frequencies for trance inducement & general euphoria are getting lower?

The interweb is all about sharing, so heres a rant about music ie some albums that i have recently been wearing out… its a funny thing, moving locations, because the first thing I wanted/HAD to do was establish a decent listening environment at my new location. No surprises there I guess, but first to be moved was my little spare genelecs (‘spare’ cos i am not a fan) plus a mixer & my ipod… so now when i am at the new place i can at least listen to music, relatively properly ie still pending acoustic tuning but most of the frequencies are there to be enjoyed…. & a note for the kids, by ‘wearing out’ i mean this like old school, you know? not that any of you have ever done this but there are people (me included) who bought records that they loved to the point of obsessing & thereby finding a few bars they could beat juggle, and beat juggle they did, to the point of making 2 bars of the song (on vinyl) kind of muffled… if you’ve been there you know what i mean, if you havent, skip it (on your ipod or metaphorically – whichever is more convenient)

Back to the music: i source my new tunes from a a bunch of places, most of them legit… but it is a 21st century quandry (well apart from radio & ‘home taping’) that I only discover some music through illegitimate means, but then fall in love with, search & search & search & search… and then discover that I simply cannot buy it online as a download… so I order the CD, wait 3 weeks, the CD arrives in my POBox, i admire the CD artwork…. but never actually open the CD case or even remove the shrinkwrap because I already have the music, I already love it… moral of the story: YES! these are transitionary times & staying on the high moral ground is often self defeating, because some people are stuck in another time & place….. C’est la vie…

Anyway heres the tunes that have been on recent repeat listen here in my new space…. and there in my old:

SHED – Shedding the past
its techno jim, but it is as listenable & inspiring as it is ignorable…
check tracks: 5, 6, 10 (& 7 for a lecture in the ‘why’) here

ECHOSPACE – OBMX
hypnotic textures & pulses….
check tracks: 1, 3, 5 here

BVDUB – Return to Tonglu
check tracks: 1 + 4 here

PENDLE COVEN – Iamnoman EP
more space, more dub, less step
check track: 1 here

PIERRE BASTIEN – Visions of Doing
(caught a gig of his kinetic meccano music machines in auckland a year or two ago…)
check tracks: 1, 7 here

AUS – sonorapid
japanese melodic glitch
check tracks: 3, 8, 9 here

BURNT FRIEDMAN & JAKI LIEBEZEIT – secret rhytms 3
i love jaki liebetz – burnt friedman needs a cleverness bypass
check tracks: 4, 7 here

TAPE – luminarium
i totally love tracks: 1, 2, 9 here

BEAT PHARMACY: wikid times
check tracks: 3, 4, 8 here

LULLATONE – The bedtime beat
kawai overdose!
check tracks: 2, 5, 9, 10 here

Moral of the story? Much respect to boomkat for being more relevant to me than itunes, bleep, emusic, blogs, torrents & sadly, my local record shop – I gave up getting excited about buying new records locally years ago. I think it was a case of hearing one too many times: ‘never heard of it, its not in our database, maybe we can get it in 4-6 weeks…’ Ahhhhhhh thanks but dont bother…. But if you find yourself unemployed sometime in the near future please put it down to a case of being superceded, as opposed to incompetence…. maybe?

Note: incase you dont read the comments, John just reminded me of a great service boomkat provide, namely selecting/recommending tracks in a given genre/style via their 14tracks site…. subscribe to the 14tracks newsletter here

When you play this clip, at what time do you start hearing sound?

I sense something at 0.03, and can definitely hear sound by 0.05… you? does it matter? what is matter? never mind… what is mind? no matter… Have a read of this instead: Basswatch #3: The Cult of the Sine Wave – enter the Temple of Boom

More photos, but at least they are audio/gear related and maybe relevant to someone other than myself! Prior to moving I’ve been investing time working out how to fit my essential gear into a much smaller space… And while searching ebay/tradme etc I came across this 19″ rack:

Its a standard 19″ rack & as my Doepfer modular synth had outgrown its suitcase home & was being moved into two G6 19″ racks it needed a new home, so I set to & won the auction and soon enough the rack arrived… After a bit of assembly I was impressed – its very solid, moves easily & best of all it felt balanced when loaded with gear… As the Doepfer cases were still in transit I loaded up the rack with some of my favourite outboard gear, which also needed a new home, before it moves to its new home. Top to bottom: dbx 386 valve preamp/AD, Lexicon Vortex reverb, dbx 120XP subharmonic synth, Orban 674a paragrpahic EQ, AKG BX-5 stereo spring reverb, a patchbay and down below my favourite outboard EVER: the Roland SRE 555 tape chorus echo..

So I kept an eye on the auctions and these things kept appearing, always with $1 reserve… I sincerely hope its not a new obsession, because I own four of them now & I am running out of things that are 19″ wide! So rack #2 will have my little mixer (a yamaha 03D) up top & currently below it is my Roland Space Echo 201, a Roland SRV2000 reverb (which died long ago, so now its a fancy looking 19″ shelf for the space echo) then an HD1500 Ibanez harmonics/DDL, DigiTech RDS8000 time machine, an HD1000 Ibanez Delay and uber-crappy Deltalab Effectron – most of which I would circuit bend if I didnt fear for my life messing with devices that plug into the mains…

Finally the Doepfer G6 cases arrive, along with my third 19″ rack & I thought at last! Problems solved! I shift all my modules over & start playing around & begin to think hmmm, unlike outboard (which I use sporadically) I tend to use my modular synth for prolonged amounts of time ie long enough to make my mouth run dry… and having it on that angle all the time was making my arm ache… if only I could tweak its angle more than what the makers intended.. See, if you look at the first photo above, the angled rack part can only go from about 45 degrees to horizontal… or upside down… hmm upside down? With the Doepfer cases loaded & all securely screwed in, I tried it upside down & it works! In fact it works better than whoever designed this thing probably imagined! So I took out the Doepfer cases & the patchbay, flipped the rack over backwards & upside down, faced the vertical 19″ rack bit away from me & reinstalled… So heres my new synth; finally how it was destined to be:

For what its worth, if you are local to NZ these things just seem to keep appearing on TradeMe, always with their $1 reserve – here is one as an example… So I can only presume someone in Auckland imported a container load of them, and as it turns out that someone equals this company which lists them for NZ$119! Which makes the price I bought them for seem like a very good deal (ie between $35-$65 via an autobid of $99)
Anyway, here is where my modular synth is at – there are only two modules I am waiting on now for it to feel completely freaking fantastic & far far beyond this synth addicts wildest dreams: click on the image for the large version

For those who care, heres a row by row, rack by rack list of whats what…. and yes I will bore you to sonic death with tweaky videos once I get moved, get recovered & get time to get inspired! Soon come…

case 1 row 1: Analogue Solutions MT16 MIDI to Trigger (so I can program beats etc via my monome) + AS HH88 (TR808 hihat) AS SD88 (TR808 snare) + space for the BD88 (TR808 kick drum) + Plan B M37 LFO + AS VCO SUB + AS SQ8 Sequencer

case 1 row 2: Analogue Systems RS310 Reverb/Chorus + Doepfer A132-3 dual VCA + Livewire Frequen Steiner filter + Livewire AFG VCO + TipTop Z3000 VCO + Doepfer A185 Bus access

case 2 row 1: Doepfer A137 Wave Multiplier + Plan B M378 ADSR + A140 ADSR + A143-1 Complex Quad EG/LFO + A180 multiples + A148 Dual S&H + A118 Noise/Random voltage generator + A190 MIDI interface + A185 Bus access

case 2 row 2: Doepfer A119 Ext in/envelope follower + A138d FX loop + A138d FX loop + TipTop Z5000 Multi FX Processor + A105 LPF + Harvestman Polivoks filter + A138 mixer + Harvestman Stilton Adaptor

phew!

The two modules I am waiting on are: Analogue Solutions BD88 (TR808 kick drum module) and a Cwejman AI2 which provides nice high quality balanced outputs… although I suspect once I experience the notoriously high quality modules from Sweden, the AI2 wont be my last…

I havent used it for long enough in its current configuration to know how sensibly it is laid out, but I thought of it this way, starting from bottom up: all the processing & FX loops are in the bottom row by the patchbay as I will be using all my outboard with the modular, second row from bottom is all about envelopes & triggering, second row from top is VCOs, a bit of processing & VCAs and top row is the beat & sequence generator…. Any modular users with more experience than I, please feel free to comment re whats missing/unlikely to be ergonomic etc….

I’d guess the proof will be in how convoluted the patching gets when making it do the stuff I imagine I’ll be doing with it, but then half the fun of a modular synth is the discoveries made along the way, but my basic ethos is that i want to be able to program it intuitively from my monome to make wicked beats + basslines… with, of course, lots of processing: everything sounds better with a bit of space echo on it, and every time I for example look lustfully at the Doepfer spring reverb module I stop myself & think: FORGET IT! my AKG BX5 spring MUST be better – its got that wicked sweepable EQ on both sides for a start… henceforth I now think fo my outboard as modules…. all patchable into ProTools land of course…