I’ve been sitting on this name for a good.. I don’t know, maybe 7 years? And so haven’t really mentioned it to anyone.. or not much anyway… and finally I’ve bought the URL, and posted a trailer to the site.. or the site is now a trailer for the future of the site.. or better yet, its a work in progress version of the trailer of the site.. and by work in progress what I really mean is that it’s like.. I’m sitting on my computer in the studio.. working on it, and you come over, peer over my shoulder, and see what’s going on.. and now I’m asking you for feed back.. and I really want it!
So, the site is… drum roll please Bad Sphincter Oedipus. It may take you a moment to decode.. so I’ll help you out.. Bad Sphincter Oedipus, of course, translates to Bad Ass Mother Fucker.. It is somewhat of an homage to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.. The mother’s used to be called just mothers.. for mother fucker, but the label made them change it.. It’s an old term you’ll find in blues meaning someone who can really play “like a mother fucker”..
The basic idea of the trailer is that the real site I want to put together will be a lot of work, and its not clear to me exactly when I’ll get through it.. particular as my attention is often on other things.. I wanted to post some content around the Bad Sphincter Oedipus project.. and I felt like I needed to put up the site before I could start posting content.. and then the content would link back to the site.
Ok, lets talk about Matt’s Self Criticism / where I think it needs to go.
The Flash movie just loops.. and um.. plays sound, and the user doesn’t really have control over the sound.. this is bad.. though less bad for a band / music site then a conventional site.. but still not good. I’m not quite sure what to do about this.. should I give you youtube like controls where it plays through once, pauses, and you can replay if you like? Should you have to press a button to make it start?
The design really isn’t thought out well. If you don’t watch the Flash movie, you wouldn’t know what the site was, or anything. To this I should add that I think the only way you’d come to this site is from a profile link on ether twitter or Youtube, or from a facebook fan page.. (once they let me set up such a thing, seems like they don’t like the name Sphincter) or whatever it is I set up.. you could see it in other ways, but that’s really what its there for.
It is REALLY just thrown together, not really well designed at all.. as I say, its just a place holder for a site.. but depending on how long I keep it up there, before I get onto replacing it with an actual site… it might not be a bad idea to design it well.
And so, I’m looking for your feed back
What do you think? Do you think it’s bad to throw up a site like this as an interim solution? If I were to make an effort to not just finish this work in progress, but bother to design it right, what do you think I should be thinking about as I design it? Any other thoughts or feedback? Would love and appreciate any feedback anyone might have.
So… a couple ages ago I started talking about the idea of bringing vocals to my music.. and all this time latter.. still no word from me on the subject.. well, that is likely about to change.. and this post will cover some of my preconceptions on the subject…
I “can’t sing.” Err.. maybe I can, I don’t really know.. but the point is that I don’t sing, and so from a “practice makes perfect” perspective.. if I were to start taking singing seriously.. it’ll probably be a while before I get good enough so that the results aren’t painful.. never mind brining them up to the sorta level I’m aiming for which is like… “good enough to be a part of a music I’m aiming at a global market with,” to put it sorta crudely..
Ahh, but my fine bother’s and sisters.. lets get serious.. I’m a producer, right? I’m an electronic studio guy.. I’m a mad scientist of.. well.. music.. do mad scientists really need to sing? No.. mad scientists have there robots do it for them! Or.. you know.. use technology to mitigate the limitations of the situation… which brings us to where we sit today.
UPS Tracking information informs me that the latest bit of production tools.. the “AVOX2 Antaras Vocal Tool Kit” left Ashland MA at around 5:24 this morning.. for delivery.. Ashland is basically in my back yard.. which suggests its not at all unlikely that it could show up today! Oh the excitement of it all!!!
Ok, so let us talk about our vocal tool kit.. (Not Necessarily the AVOX2)
There are many tools in my studio that can be pressed into service for vocal stuff.. but lets just focus on the sorta.. “are actually meant for this kind of thing” tools.
Melodyne
You’ve no doubt heard the term “auto tune?” Basically.. you take a tone def vocalist.. throw him or her through auto tune.. and botta-boom-buttah- bing.. the tones are in tune.. It’s of course more complicated then that.. on a sorta aesthetic level.. but.. well anyway.. so Melodyne does pitch correction.. as well as.. err.. working with.. is it called “foment?” Um.. certain qualities of the voice that can be modified a bit..
I actually have Melodyne studio.. which.. among its other interesting features… you can out put performance data… based off its analysis of the audio who’s pitch and.. err foment? you were playing with.. and this performance data can then be applied to other things.. like say.. synths, or.. a vocal synthesizer…
Cantor
I’ve talked a bit about Cantor in the past.. it’s my vocal synth.. It has, in my view, a number of problems relative to work flow.. but.. so the story goes.. its pretty easy to go and throw the performance data generated from Melodyne.. at Cantor.. so that you now have Cantor singing, kinda sorta, as if it were you singing.. if you can quite dig what I’m saying…
We interrupt this blog post with late breaking news
Looks like the Antares stuff just showed up
AVOX2 Vocal Tool Kit
So.. AVOX2 has been on my radar forever.. well AVOX1 was there to.. but particularly when the thoughts of bringing vocals to my music came up.. or I started to really think about it.. this really looked like the sorta best suit of tools for the job.. and its worth mentioning that the company Antares, that makes AVOX, is also the folks who make a product called “auto tune.”
The trouble was that this bundle was a little pricy.. or pricy enough, at $600, that it was resigned to sit on a table with stuff I want.. but don’t quite know if I should actually drop the cash on.. fumbling around with the question “is there price equal to, or less then, its priority in the budget scheme.” But then.. and I forget why, just a few days ago.. I decided to go check out the price.. and found it had dropped to $300.. Which is enough to make me feel thankful for the bad economy! At $300 I figured “Ok, I need it,” and so bought it.
The Guitar Center shopping experience
I went to the Framingham Guitar Center to buy… and I feel like this is a story worth telling.. cause if you’re putting together a studio.. you might run into this sorta thing.
Guitar center.. and I don’t in anyway mean to impune the guys over there I’m often dealing with.. but.. it’s broken. Generally I prefer to buy from Guitar Center over online for two reasons.. #1 I can use cash.. and that’s really the big one.. and #2.. which isn’t small.. I can have some sort of a relationship with someone as I buy.. where I can get information and sorta shoot the shit with.. and whatever.
The trouble, however, is many fold. #1 They almost never have what I want in there inventory.. and it’s not like I’m necessarily buying obscure shit.. Buying a program like Altiverb.. perhaps the industry standard for convolution reverb.. they don’t have in stalk.. and let me tell you.. this is a bread and butter tool for anyone serious about mixing! BFD or.. Big F’n Drums.. they normally have the expansion pack.. but not the core of it.. and its certainly one of the leading drum sample engines.. nearly everything I buy from Guitar Center has to be ordered.
Currently.. Guitar Center is running promotions for the Euphonics MC control surfaces.. tools I really want.. expensive tools.. and the kind of thing you’d really like to see a display of that you can touch and get a feel for before buying.. and they don’t even have them in stalk!!! Ånd they’ve got signs throughout the store promoting them!
Guitar Center.. and I don’t know the details on this.. has some sorta of relationship with musiciansfriend.com, which is probably the #1 online retailer for musical instruments and gear.. and you can order stuff from them at Guitar Center.. plus there’s a guitar Center website were you can buy stuff.. these places actually have the tools in questions.. or most of them anyway..
What would make sense, from a brand perspective.. what I would do if I was running all this madness.. would be to view Guitar Center from a brand experience point of view.. it would be all about customer service.. You’d empower the sales staff to do whatever they could to create the best customer experience possible.. but..
Well I’ll put it this way.. to buy the stuff with Cash.. they have to sell me a gift card for the amount in question, and then buy the software with the gift card.. They had a bit of old music mags.. There’s a number of them coming out of the UK that normally go for about $15.. but, as they were old and they want to get them out of the store.. they were selling them for $1… but.. they had to fix the price to sell it to me.. which required finding the manager.. and somehow buying these two things kept me in the store for a good half hour or more (not an uncommon occurrence).. and I had to explain to sales guy about the gift card technique for allowing me to buy the stuff with cash…
Plus.. they want you’re information… you’re name.. so they can keep all that data on you.. and because there computer sales system is.. horrible.. I had to give it to them, along with my email address.. about 4 different times.. as we fumbled through the process.. so like.. you’d have to be a very experienced sales guy to know how to do it…
The way guitar center and musicians friends have managed to be successful up to this point is via competing on price.. and they’ve managed to push much of there competition out of the way this way.. so they are a near monopoly.. There’s certainly no near by stores carry the same sorta inventory.. or by which I can order most of this stuff.. Which is why they can, at least in the short term, afford to be broken.
The thing is.. you really want to buy from a place where you can have a good relationship with.. a kind of relationship that you can’t really get with guitar center.. can you buy a Mic, discover its not right for your voice, and then return it.. or does “doing it by the book” get in the way of customer service? Mind you I’m helping all the sales people there put there kids through college at this point.. the cost of customer retention being so much less then conversion.. I should be getting a whole lot of special treatment.. and I sorta do just by how the guys treat me.. but how far that goes is limited by the system.
Ok.. brand experience rant over.. back to..
The AVOX 2 Tool Kit
AVOX 2 is really a bundle of effects for processing voice.. lets see if we can’t talk about them.
Harmony Engine
This would be.. the most complex / deep program in the bundle.. as its name might suggest.. it’s a real time plug in for essentially creative vocal harmony arrangements from a single vocal line.. the idea here is.. to both make things simple.. from a process / workflow perspective.. and also powerful.. with a lot of creative control.. I wonder if they support any kind of microtonality?
Throat
Throat is a “physical modeling vocal designer” which.. in english.. much of the sound of your voice, to put it lightly, is a result of.. well.. you’re body and throat.. and what Throat tries to do is.. take the incoming vocal.. neutralize it.. in terms of the influence of your throat.. and then sorta morph it into some other sorta throat..
Duo
What we got here is a vocal doubler.. using pitch, delays, and vocal modeling / vibrato stuff to try and create a convincing double of a vocal
Choir
As near as I can see.. its like Duo with more vocals.. but.. offers some unique control.. that you want when generating multiple vocals.. basically it’s about creating a choir from a single vocal line.
Punch
Apparently we are talking about compression and limiting.
Sybil
Basically a De-Esser… when singing.. or speaking for that matter.. particularly when you get to EQing stuff.. bad things can happen that De-Esser’s help with.. is the long and the short of it.. or at least the short of it…
Articulator
Here we have our selves “a vocal formant and amplitude modeler.” Err.. formant, that was the word I was searching for before.. this one probably deserves some explanation..
Articulator is basically a new kinda vocoder.. what a vocoder does is.. you speak into it.. it analyzes it.. in terms of how loud different frequencies are at any given moment.. you then put another sound through the vocoder.. and it pumps up and pushes down those frequencies.. corresponding to how loud or soft they are at that moment in your speaking.. so you get a kind of funky robot voice.. that you’ve heard before on many an album.. Well, that’s basically what articulator does.. accept now we are talking about formant instead of frequencies.
Mutator
Pitch shifting, throat modeling, ring modulation, and blah blah blah.. it mutates your vocals.. for kinda sound design / special effects type purposes.
Warm
basically this is for coloring / warming stuff, in a tube esk fashion.
Aspire
Basically we are effecting the breathiness of a vocal independent from other attributes.
AVOX 2 Conclusions
There’s more to be said.. but.. I don’t really know that much as I haven’t jumped in yet.. so stay tuned.. It’s a bundle that’s gotten very good reviews.. and I think.. or I hope, it’ll go a long way in helping me realize vocals in my music.
Areas that need attention
As I said before.. there are other tools in my tool box.. including a vocoder from VirSyn.. and… well various things..
The real weak point is.. well stuff for recording.. where you really want high quality microphones, microphone preamps, and analog to digital conversion. I have decent, which is to say not necessarily excellent, pre amps and analog to digital conversion.. and I have super cheap / budget microphones. I also have an audio filter that takes out the background reverberations of the space I’m trying to record the vocal in..
I don’t really know what the right path is to take as far as the upgrades are concerned.. this kind of stuff tends to be very expensive if you want uncompromising pro studio grade results.. I don’t know how far I should compromise, if I should.. or any of this sorta thing..
My plan is to explore what I got.. and see what happens. Could processing stuff lead to creative results that could mitigate the effects of the weaknesses of my recording gear? How high a priority should I put on recording gear? If I’m planning on recording.. well, drum kits, or field recording.. as a pose to just one track at a time.. the calculous changes.. so thinking about the future of my studio is something to be very careful about given the budgets involved..
Stay tuned for future post where I get into the attack plans.. and reflect on actual production work… and where I’ll be in a better place to talk about how all these pieces fit together in practice.
I regard exploring new possibilities, as an artist.. stretching into new things.. as being one of the most important things you can do.. and it’s probably true in most other walks of life. Generally it’s a kind of oscillation.. between that area where you are really strong.. and the new areas you’re just starting to explore… It’s about integrating these two things.
In some of my newer directions.. I have some fear that what I’m doing might be nieve… The reason being because I am venturing into areas that are more conventional then my work normally is.. so that if you’re taking you’re first few steps on a very well trotted road, how excited can you be about what you find? I mean.. sure, you’re excited.. but maybe for everyone else its “Ho hum, I’ve seen that before.”
Still.. it is still me making the music.. still a product of my aesthetic thinking.. my aesthetic sensibilities.. still something that largely comes from within.. still my process.. etc. So whatever it is I’m doing.. it’s still inescapably me.. still has a certain.. I’m not sure what.
Ultimately.. where I see the future in the new stuff is finding ways for it to be more and more imprinted with.. whatever it is that’s unique in me.. and integrating it with the older stuff.
Into the New Music
If you’ve been listening to my stuff for any length of time.. you’ll note that this new track is basically an evolution of some of what we heard on ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures:
What we hear here is what we were hearing in Deep Space.. but now arranged, mixed, and sorta composed around.. in a kind of new way. It’s been said that the Deep Space stuff was like exploring out into space.. and now we are listening in on Alien conversations..
It’s a crazy kind of dark and harsh ambient.. or that track is, isn’t it? Makes me feel like a journey into the shadow side of the soul.
About this direction
The direction opens up a whole lot in the way of possible possibilities… err, so let me describe the process of the above track.
Inside Reaktor
I started out in Reaktor.. with a sound source by which you can make music / sound / whatever.. via twiddling some knobs with your mouse.. by twiddling the parameters of sequences, synthesizers, sound generators, effects processors, and mixers.. you can only adjust one parameter at a time.. and you tend to not do it too abruptly most of the time.. you spend a lot of time navigating the interface just to get so you can get the thing you want to tweak’s parameter…
Controlling one parameter at a time.. sorta slowly.. with gaps between where you can tweak.. has the effect of making for a somewhat slowly organically evolving sound.. and because we are talking about parameter tweaking.. its as if the resultant sound is.. well it sounds like its coming from the same device who’s pattern and behavior is shifting over time.. and expressive in that way.
Parallel Compression
So you do this over and over again.. generating a few sound files.. and you take these sound files and submit them to an automated process of what is called “parallel compression.” Parallel compression means.. you have a sound source.. that gets thrown through many compressors working in parallel.. and you mix the outs of the various compressors.. indeed I mix the sends into the compressors as well as the sounds out.. The idea is that the various compressors you’re dealing with all color the sound in different ways.. in relationship to things like.. the dynamics of the audio.. and they also effect the dynamics of the audio differently..
So we are both colorizing the sounds and shaping there dynamics.. the latter of which will allow us more control once we get to the mixing and arrangement process.
The Mixing and Arranging Process
Next I take the audio files and load them into my DAW.. Digital Performer.
There’s certain interesting aesthetic issues that pop up about this point. Because each sound file was generated independently of one another.. there’s no “design” to there interrelationships accept that they were all created at the same tempo… There relationships of timber and pitch (counterpoint, harmony, orchestration).. are.. in essence indeterminate.. which kinda brings us into John Cage Country…
What is similar is that.. in many cases the effects treated to the instrument are the same.. or at least some of the effects are the same.. and they are all created via the same process.. so the way they evolve over time is very similar: Process dictates a probability distribution of attributes.. so that its as if there’s a systems level interrelationship of stuff.
The process of mixing and arranging is then our chance to insert a little design into the production.. For now I’m not doing anything much more sophisticated then deciding when an audio recording should be inserted into the arrangement, choosing additional effects for that instrument.. effects of the general mix.. and mixing the instruments.. –Although I have been creating custom stuff with say.. Native Instruments Machine.
The Mixing
In my conventionally unconventional music.. harmony is at least in part conceived of as 3 dimensional.. What I mean is.. the issue of overlapping frequency ranges is a central issue to the mix engineers stock and trade.. and some of how this is dealt with is panoramic positioning.. and just where a sound should be located in a virtual sound stage. Because in my music the mixing and the composition are integrated.. harmony is conceptualized in a context of spacial relationships.
So if you think about it.. the process of mixing.. can be like a process of contextualizing material.. which means embedding meaning into it.. and um.. that kinda thing.
What you end up doing is listening to the material of the audio.. the various audio files you have.. and asking questions.. What you do is making decisions about.. what to highlight at one moment or another.. what should be dominant in the mix.. how the sounds should interrelate.. how to make things interesting in terms of how the track evolves over time..
So in essence the mixing is the composing.. moving things around in space.. automating effects.. and all this kind of thing.
Where Maschine fits into all of this?
Maschine is in essence a pattern based percussive sequencer.. and a little bit more. You compose in it various patterns.. and then in your DAW you tell it when to play what patterns..
So, at the very least Maschine represents the possibilities of pattern based sequencing.. to my music.. something that’s very good for real time music production.. and based sequencing is a big part of what’s going on inside of Reaktor in much of this production.
Machine gets mixed in like any other element.. though its the one element where we have conscious control of.. so that it works to somehow.. fit things together.. I guess.. another layer of it..
Where to go from here
It seems to me that there’s an incredible number of possibilities moving forward from here.. I have an obvious interest in working out how to create a kind of music that is similar to this.. in a live scenario.. and then there’s all the kind of possible mutations of this…
With Kore [ and hands on controllers more genearally ]
Kore, shown here:
represents one obvious set of possibilities. You can load up various software instruments, effects, and what not.. into Kore.. and control them via its buttons and knobs.. which you map to various parameters of the instruments / effects in question.. You have various pages of mappings that you can then move between.. allowing you real time control.. without a mouse.. and in a way were you can control multiple parameters at once.
Real time control of software, in this fashion.. radically changes the way you think, and how you work with.. the software.. it’s really awesome.
A day or so latter:
Implications
The full implications of real time hands on control of software in this fashion, and relative to this sorta production style are really.. well more then I can really lay out in full for you here today… but I can throw a bit at yea
Manipulating multiple parameters at once
As mentioned earlier… mousing around single parameters at a time produces a certain kind of organic evolution of the sounds.. hands on control is a very different beast.. we are not talking about… well there’s a certain artistry of performance.. kind of more power.. and with that power comes the need to know how to temper it.. and anyway.. there’s a good deal to explore here.
Beyond this.. things can get a little complex.. especially is we are using multiple controllers.. and the idea that we can now play with interrelationships on the performance level.
Recording Automation rather then Audio
A significant difference between the way I was tweaking away in Reaktor.. and tweaking away with controllers in a DAW is that we are now recording automation data of a performance.. and not simply the resultant audio.
This means we can go back in and edit the performance.. we can perform on one set of parameters on one take, and another on another take.. so that the results can become a good deal deal more complex in how they evolve over time..
There is a kind of negative.. which is.. well has to do with most modern music.. that you don’t really have to make choices.. when you can alway edit / adjust things latter… this is a kind of long conversation.. but basically it has to do with.. the creative process.. and being pushed into situations where you have to work your way out of the hard way.. and in so doing.. often that’s how brilliant things happen.. But without going to far into this topic.. I will say that ultimately its up to the artist, in how to relate to the technology on this level.
Taking it to Ableton Live, and the joys of patterns.
I imagine the next phase of things is to take the whole production, and bring it into Ableton Live.. creating patterns.. using MIDI effects to tweak the patterns.. and make it so the whole production is produced this way…
Here we really get to thinking deeply about how to take this into the live arena.. also… we are getting out of Reaktor.. and using the rest of my instrument library.
This is sorta like.. “lets go do stuff in the usual studio” stuff. It’s hard to say too much about a path you’ve yet to walk but.. An Ableton Live based… pattern based.. compositional process.. can actually lead you into a world of more control.. more.. lets say design developed.. stuff.. then traditional linear sequencing…
Basically.. you have a bunch of patterns.. and you play with how the different patterns play together.. this can be how you think of production and composition in the real design sense.. or it can be like the design of a framework for improvisation.
There’s perhaps more to say here.. but I’m tired..
Integration
The final subject is really integration.. to integrate this stuff with the stuff that I’m actually good at… or maybe the better way of putting it is where I’m already strong..
I see this kinds of hands on.. tweak it.. kind of organic evolution of sound.. as having certain elements that my more programmed.. crazy attention to detail music lacks.. In case you haven’t heard this stuff.. a reasonable example might be this remix of the Cobert Report Interview with Lawrence Lessig.. I did recently
This track took me about a month to do.. there’s a hell of a lot more attention to detail then you might notice at first.. ( including a fair amount that doesn’t really come out when listened to streamed).. the problem with this track is perhaps mostly how short it is.. as so much of this sorta thing for me tends to be about taking a little trip.. and its hard to go that far in a couple of minutes.. In some ways you can listen to it as a prototype for the new direction of what we are calling my conventional work.. Even with whatever it’s flaws might be.. it does represent a step forward on that trajectory…
I love the idea of taking a whole month to do a single track.. I mean just the level of detail you can achieve that way… that much love and attention to every moment.. of course it’s a little on the unrealistic side.. but still!
The integration can probably happen along multiple axises
If you create a music form where it literally takes a month to finish a couple minutes of music.. to have this along side music where in a day’s work can give you twenty plus minutes worth of music.. well.. now the month for a couple minutes is realistic..
I have this notion of a whole album that is of the tweak kind.. where via creative mixing.. the super programmed detail stuff.. sorta comes out of that world.. where in you’re really considering the album as a whole. ( which may not make a lot of sense for custom play lists )
The Tweak-age stuff could be an element inside of the super detailed programed sequence stuff.
There’s a lot of stuff I’m thinking about where.. you have.. say.. a kind of tweakage space reverb and delay inside of a deeply programmed mix..
A Concluding Statement
Stretching is important.. and that’s really what this is about.. What’s slightly strange about this post is that it seems to almost emphasize the.. let call it objective facts.. over the sorta internal organizing principles that would be.. what is actually known.. the facts.. we must.. as Hunter Thompson would say.. buy the ticket, take the ride.. to really get at.. so it is a strange synthesis.. and we’ll have to see what happens.
In any event.. in the end.. this is just like a confession of one tiny piece in a much larger puzzle
Well.. what I ought to do now, perhaps, is finish up the part 2 of the remixing project posts.. and then move onto a kind of postmortem of it.. and I would do that.. accept that I’m now onto a new remix project.. and that’s kind of where my mind is at at the moment.. so… lets dig into that.
Working on Remix projects means moving out of my safety zone.. I’m fine with that.. accept.. I tend to like to “orbit” my safety zone.. another words.. go out into the difficult stuff as much as I can.. and then once I’ve had enough, go back to the safety zone.. work in such a way that you’re incorporating new stuff.. going on an explorative adventure.. but you’re also integrating it with your already built muscles.. and so far.. I feel like I’m a little further afield from my safety zone then all that…
The problem with jumping too far out is.. suddenly you start to realize how badly you suck.. or that’s the feeling you get.. It disturbs you’re feeling of comfort..
As we speak I’m moving into a world of “being serious about electronic music.” Was I ever not serious about electronic music? Well.. serious in a kind of more focused way.. a kind of thinking that runs something like “this is what you must do to be successful out here” and then going after it.. in a focused sorta way. All I can really say is that I have a hell of a lot of work to do before I get to where I want to get to along this front.. enough so that I’m feeling a little unsure of myself.
Some of the basics of what it probably takes.
Get to know electronic music: I mean this from a.. “what’s happening” kind a level.. there’s a marketing element to this.. of knowing the market and figuring out how you want to position you’re self in said market.. but it’s also a kind of.. just feeling connected to it all. Electronic music is a world of a zillion generas and sub generes.. enough so that it’s possible that no one really knows this world in and out.
What are the production styles of the various generas.. how do you make the stuff? I’m me.. I’ll make my music my own damn way.. but.. having the ability to work inside of generas, or at least relate to various generas, will likely have some kind of pragmatic value.. I figure at least it would have some value to add to my musical vocabulary…
Ok, fair enough.. lets look at some other stuff.
I’m looking into the subject of live performance..
So.. I’m looking at gear like Mashine:
Here’s a video I rather like on it:
This video might give you some sense of what can be done with Native Instrument’s Maschine.. though it doesn’t really go too deep into it.. Native Instruments site does a bit a more.. but it’s still a little limited in what it tells you.. I’ve had the following twitter conversations:
Tweeting with CynicOne..
cynicone@MattSearles ps: saw you were interested in MASCHINE. you’d get better use outta ableton live + pad kontrol or a mpc1k with jjos2xl IMHO…
cynicone@MattSearles …spent 2 hrs @ guitar center with one and it’s not ready for prime time. wait for v2 of the software at least.
MattSearles@cynicone well I already bought Maschine, it was on back order, so I’m waiting for it at this point
cynicone@MattSearles aye….the lack of vsti sequencing, groove quantization & sample layering/editing capabilities were the negative 4 me.
MattSearles@cynicone you mean Maschine? Couldn’t you use it as just a controller in a DAW to drive external vsti’s?
cynicone@MattSearles u could use it as a midi controller but really it’s a sequencer in itself. u have 2 run drums in maschine, then synths in a daw
cynicone@MattSearles its sort of a 1/2 baked software mpc at the moment. i like the idea but it’s not developed fully.
Lets see if I can’t translate this into English…
Maschine has a built in sequencer.. kind of the old analog style pattern thing.. which is really how I think you want to work with it.. in large measure.. and for God knows what reason.. Cynic One is telling us that this Sequencer can’t be used to control external virtual instruments.. which does sound rather insane.. you can, as near as I can tell, export MIDI from what you’ve sequencing in Maschine, and bring it into you’re DAW to then use with you’re more robust instrument library.. assuming you have such a library.. but you would think you’d be able to use some kind of inter application midi communication.. or something..
Sample layers is important to.. how hard you hit something.. say a piano or a drum.. effects the sound in more ways then just volume.. with sample layers you use different samples for different… well levels of how hard you’re hitting the thing.. basically.
Groove quantizing is.. if you have notes on grid.. as you would with a step sequencer.. things can get a little robotic… which depending on you’re aesthetic inclinations and the project at hand, can be a good or bad thing. Groove quantization is a means for turning a robot into… well, a groovy robot… err.. gives it a more human-esk feel.
In terms of how this effects my analysis of “if it’s worth it.”
Prior to the announcement of Maschine at NAMM, I was thinking I wanted to get into “this type” of technology. Everything I do, pretty much, takes place in the computer with software.. so I was figuring I might just get one of these types of controllers… and then when I saw Maschine I was like “oh, yeah, I probably want that.”
I’m very much attracted to the idea of this kind of production… and this falls into a number of categories.
I want more of my music production to involve controllers and human performances, even if quantized
I want some kinda controller set up for doing sorta “groove box” style production.. including for generative sorts of stuff.
I’m interested in playing with step sequencers that are connected to actual controllers. I think the reason I usually don’t like working with step sequencers is that I’m normally using them with mouse input.. which is not terrible exciting, and can often be a bit on the tedious side.
Maschine will operate as a controller for Ableton Live.. which at least has some value to me prior to investing in the new Ableton controller..
If I could kind of summaries it all.. Maschine is a pretty expensive piece of gear.. if it’s worth the asking price.. that’s probably a matter of how you plan to use it.. and I think Native Instruments making it with these limitations.. really works against it being worth the asking price. Still.. It’s a “we’ll have to use it our selves to really know” kind of thing.
Of course the thing is that I’ve already bought Maschine.. I’m just waiting for it to arrive.. so.. I’m sorta in the position of having to wait and hope for the best.
Tweeting with Veerrgg
I had a somewhat related conversation with “Vergel E,” whom makes electronic music up in Canada.. and has a blog and podcast on electronic music that can be found here, where we got a little into Kore 2 and speculation on subjects related to Maschine Integration stuff…
MattSearles Wow.. some of the compression in Kore 2 sounds better then you’d expect
vveerrgg@MattSearles#kore2 is actually a pretty sweet DAW alternative. I’ve fallen in love with it as a “simple” environment to create/record in
MattSearles@vveerrgg yeah I don’t think I’d normally take a compressor from guitar rig.. in a certain process sense.
vveerrgg@MattSearles thats part of why i like it so much. it reminds me of the old days when I would just plug stuff together and see what happens
MattSearles@vveerrgg makes me wonder if I should work out how to program more of my Instruments/effects into its data base. Maybe program some patches
vveerrgg@MattSearles that might be taking it to the extreme… but i agree there is alot of value in that database and “scene”interface
MattSearles@vveerrgg I’m thinking I’m going to have to do that.. was thinking of doing pseudo similar stuff with Ableton/Max/Jitter
Ok, some context on this conversation
On Resolume, Abilton and Max/Jitter
Vergel and I share some interest in sound visualization.. and with this VJ-ing. Ableton have announced “MAX for LIVE” which you can use “Jitter” with.. This is a long conversation that I don’t really know too much about.. but basically MAX is a somewhat visual programing environment for all things electronic music.. and Jitter is something you can add to MAX that allows you to process video.. and is perhaps one tool that could be used for audio visualization.
I think the big thing is.. it will turn Ableton into a VJ tool.. and potentially a rather amazing video tool at that… Which along with the new Ableton Controller.. could be quite amazing.
On the subject of Kore..
I pretty much always use Kore as plug in in my DAWs… Kore is a combination of hardware and software.. it can load instruments and effects in it.. and stuff can be routed around, and controlled via its hardware controls.. which is pretty damn cool.. On the software side it comes with a number of effects, plus utilized a number of native instruments effects / instrument library engines.. and provides a way of managing them.. and you get this “super instrument” sorta thing where you have multiple instruments and effects programmed together into a single patch..
What I take to be how Vergel is using Kore
But then there’s the stuff I find a little more mysterious.. which I guess is where Vergel is having his fun. For starters there’s a way of using it for live performance out of the DAW environment..
As a part of that is a system for live performance.. where you essentially create something like a “live set” where you can move between Kore patches.. where Kore essentially turns off the unused patches.. and you can move between these sets for different parts of a song or set list.. This is one of the areas where Vergel has been running into problems.
Another thing worth mentioning.. which I guess Vergel is also using? Is a built in.. gosh, I’ve never even used it.. what is it? Is it a step sequencer of some sort? It is.. well pretty rudimentary.. and I suppose this is a larger part of what Vergel was getting to with the question of Maschine and Kore integration..
There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of an ability to modify the sequence as its playing.. not from the Kore controller anyway… and not only that but you don’t get banks of sequences…. and you can’t sequence modulation.. or I say all this without really knowing what I’m talking about.. but that’s my impression.
What would be kind of amazing is if Native Instruments really thought this out.. to the point that you had something like a step sequencing environment that integrated all these technologies..
It would make sense for them to do this as.. besides making the kinds of studio tools I use, they also have a rather substantial suite of DJ-ing tools.. which Maschine fits into rather nicely.. and you could see how the integration of all this stuff could really be cool… and make business sense for them
A few latter
To somewhat complicate matters I’m looking at the Jazz Mutant Dexter and Lemur
Here’s a couple of videos:
First the Dexter
Dexter gives you a multi touch graphic interface.. think iPhone, for controlling you’re DAWs
The problem with Dexter.. besides being pricey, is that it doesn’t actually work with the DAW that is now my main DAW.. Digital Performer… So I’d ether have to revert back to Cubase or… go to Logic.. the latter of which being pretty expensive ($500).. as a pose to just an upgrade ( probably about $200)…
And now for the Lemur
Lemur is like Dexter only.. you can make you’re own interfaces.. and I guess would generally use it for controlling like.. Ableton Live, MAX, Reaktor.. VJing stuff.. etc. What follows is one fellows swing at making such an interface.. to go along with.. I believe it’s a MAX patch.. working with Live?
The biggest problem with Dexter and Lemur is that its super expensive.. though for a few days past my writing of this.. it’s half off.. which actually makes it something worth considering for my self.. and yet……
You know there’s rumors that Apple will come out with a tablet Mac.. sorta iPhone on steroids.. that would be all touch screened out.. one assumes that such a device would be a much better device for doing what Lemur and Dexter do.. and its not at all unlikely that it could actually be cheaper..
If this were not enough, Microsoft has been working on multi touch technology to.. which it is likely to use as a means of differentiating it’s mobile OS from Google’s OS.. But even outside of all this, I’m sorta assuming that given the economy.. it’s not unlikely that the costs of the Dexter and Lemur will drop..
The list price of a Dexter is in the ball park of a Mac Pro.. at that price.. the potential market place is rather small.. I’m guessing.. It seems to be very much in the DIY MAX planet.. that’s the target audience.. which is often a little on the avant guard side of things.. not a group known for an excess of wealth… if the price were to drop.. and you were to focus on economies of scale.. you’d have a much huger potential market.. and you gotta be thinking with the possibility of Apple and Microsoft coming into that market place that.. well.. you really need to do something.
There are other issues I could drag up but.. but.. lets move back to the more or less original subject of all this stuff for live performance.
So electronic live performance
I’m gathering various tools along these lines.. There’s a really big challenge to working this stuff out.. if I can make my production style live.. The only way I can imagine it being possible is via MAX.. which is a very complex kettle of fish with which to attempt to tango..
But we won’t get into all that here.. we’ll end here.. with just saying.. well I don’t know.. that there’s an interesting set of challenges around this stuff.. and I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it more soon
Editors note [ brother new Ape V was like “yo, when we gonna get a new blog post from ya” and seeing as I had this one in draft form.. figured I’d finish it up and post it.. this is really a kind of subject point of view on the subject of remixing but.. with any luck, you can dig it ]
So Evan’s suggested I get into remixing.. which on the surface sounded like.. well something interesting to try out.. it’s not something I’ve really done before.. so I haven’t been too sure that I’d be any good at it.. or.. how much work it would take to get good at it.. as a part of this.. he suggested I take a look at entering this contest to remix Empire State Human….
First Impressions
I started by listening to the Melancholic Afro track.. featuring Wofgang Flur.. a part of the original Kraftwork group.. and started to try and figure out what I was supposed to do.. that is “what is remixing anyway”.. what’s it all about.. and where could I take this music.
The early ideas where not so much the ideas of someone doing remixing.. as they were those of a mix engineer.. and when I download the original session material.. I somewhat freaked when I realize all the effects they used had been printed on the tracks provided for the remix.
When a mix engineer builds up a mix.. he or she uses a whole lot of effects.. mostly EQ and compression.. reverb, delays.. that kinda thing.. in such a way to make the tracks fit together in a certain sorta way.. into a mix.. if the effects are printed.. meaning you get audio tracks.. with the effects in the recordings.. you loose a lot of flexibility in terms of how to mix them… cause there’s no getting those effects off the tracks.
First directions
My initial reaction was… “well, I have some audio to midi conversion abilities in my software” which translates into software analyzing the recordings.. and creating MIDI performance data.. that can then be performed by various digital instruments.. thus allowing you to use your own sounds, more or less as if played by the band.. Besides this it also allows me to rearrange the melodic and harmonic material.
It turns out.. my project studio at this point, in terms of electronic music production tools, is very strong.. by professional industry standards. The areas where I feel the need to invest more in tend to be mix engineering and recording..
The result of all this is.. I probably have the tools to create a kind of new version of the track.. that is perhaps more to my aesthetic sensibilities.. and probably realize it on a very high level.
But then a strange thing happened
Direction shifts into Ableton Live
I’ve been haunting the local guitar center.. doing gear research and picking up a few things.. and generally shooting the shit with the sales staff. In one of those conversations one of the guys suggested that Ableton Live was a very good tool to do remixing with.. and of course I own Ableton Live..
Ableton is a loop sequencer with.. somewhat immature MIDI, recording, and mixing tools.. Because of the way I usually work.. I don’t really use Ableton that much.. and don’t really feel like I have a great mastery of it.. I, along with many other musicians, feel that Live has a kind of.. different paradigm for how you work with it.. and thinking in that paradigm doesn’t feel totally natural.. at least not yet.
But of course lots of people LOVE Live.. is it just that they are more the type who works with pattern sequencing as a pose to linear sequencing? I wonder this.. and yet, though I’ve always been more the one to go the linear sequencing route.. so much of my music is actually about patterns…
Jumping in
So I started out by loading the Melancholic Afro session into Live.. taking the tracks and creating loops out of them…
The process of creating Loops is.. interesting. You could create a loop that’s just like a normal repeating riff.. or you can create loops.. where based on where the start and end points of your loop is.. basically creates something very different then the original music.. like creating a glitch in it or something.. So, for instance.. I quickly created a drum part from what was originally fairly synth pop-e, and turned it into something more Slayer-esk.
Loop Envelops
Ableton is very powerful in how you can work with loops.. even if I do crave more power… in that you can use “looping envelopes.” A looping envelop.. well an envelop is.. it controls a parameter.. So.. pan, volume, pitch, effect send, any element of how an effect unit is processing sound.. the envelop can control and automate.. and a looping envelop simply loops that parameter automation.
Also worth noting is that the envelop loop lengths do not have to conform to audio loop length.. and that you can have many envelop loops going.. that are all of different lengths.. which allows you to work with a kind of polymetric textural evolution.. that’s, say, awesome for ambient music.. and has a lot of creative compositional applications..
How things look from where I’m standing now
I have a kind of vision, along with a road map for getting there, for what sorta remix artist I might like to be.. and some sense of what I’m probably capable of.. and so it is that I see remixing Empire State Human’s Melancholic Afro as a one step in the process of getting there… lets see if I can kind of describe this a little bit.
All the software tools at my disposal have there own individual strengths and weaknesses.. and so you want to work in such a way as to maximize there strengths and minimize there weaknesses.. which ultimately brings us to the subject of workflow.. and workflow is currently the real challenge for me…
Working on a remix in Live.. I start out making loops.. loops that will allow me to reconstruct the music as it was.. but also loops that are like experiments.. explorations.. “lets try this.” And for each track.. of the original sessions.. we’ll have a whole number of loops.
The next step is to arrange the loops.. this is really the compositional part.. It starts out by fiddling around playing different loops together.. and playing with possible orders for how we could move around from loop to loop.
It strikes me that there are some interesting things that could be done during this process.. We can take our loops.. or sections of loops.. or other material.. and convert them into REX loops.. perhaps for use in Reason or Kontakt.. sections could be treated as samples in Kontakt.. and different parts could be bent around in different ways to make sense in our evolving arrangement mix.. and of course things like audio to midi conversion.. or different pitch shifting technologies.. could be used to further manipulate things into a new form.
Next Day Some Time
All of this is basically “manipulation vocabulary” or tools of facilitating that.. the process of arranging is basically composing.. this in combination with mixing..
The way I plan to move forward on this project is to finish creating loops.. play with loops, arrange loops, mix loops..
This post is starting to wander around a bit.. so how about I talk about what I think is special in how what I’m doing.
I’m getting ready to slip into unconsciousness.. and feeling sorta in awe of how long it’s been since I’ve posted.. and all the 100s of drafts I’ve rejected inside of that time frame.. mixed with all the things I feel inspired to write about… So I figure I gotta post something.. and whatever it is, its got to be short.. so..
I’m thinking about electronic music a little bit.
Electronic music, to mind at this moment, is like the most incredible genera of music around.. I suppose this is in large part because it doesn’t really refer to a genera, but more a way of making music.. and if you’re familiar with how music is being made today.. I think it’s reasonable to say that at least 90% of everything made today is made on a computer.. and thus is electronic music.. even if we don’t generally view it as such.
But what I really dig is the seriousness of the genera.. or that there are areas of electronic music that are so serious.. be it from a compositional perspective.. philosophical sorta aesthetic perspective… and then.. you have club music, rave music.. dance music so to speak.. and then it goes so far as the music that underlies Rap.. or you think of the stuff going on in Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson…
History of Electro Acoustic Music 101
The history of electronic music can probably be told in a variety of ways.. but basically you have these major universities.. and only a few of them.. back in the early early days.. that were able to afford these computers that would take up whole rooms.. big rooms at that.. that were the only places with the power to make it happen.. and so only a very few were able to get access to these things.. and so the early stuff has this rather serious classical sorta influence..
Eventually.. out comes these analog synths from folks like Moog.. made popular by Wendy Carlos and the like… and eventually made cheap enough that regular musicians could afford…
Now.. all these years latter.. there’s a hell of a lot of tools for electronic music that you can down load for free.. and then we have the commercial software..
Seriously Serious Avant Guard fun
I’m getting ready to enter a phase where in I’ll call myself a serious electronic sound artist.. seems like a good way of putting it. Not that I ever wasn’t.. but now there’s a kind of new focus to it.
One of the areas I’m naturally attracted to is.. a kind of world of seriously serious seriousness.. of.. avant guard delights. Historically this is music Frank Zappa might call “ugly,” …ugly not being a negative term here. I think of the 60s revolutionary spirit.. the rethinking of basic values.. and the effect that some stuff became very difficult listening.. and something good for the more snobby among us.. to listen to and think we is better then them…
Matt’s mitigation of the ugly
LOL, of course I am better then them.. where’s my Thursten Howl voice? But um.. I’ve never meant to make music that was in anyway unapproachable. The issue of approachability is a design consideration.. But.. I’m also interested in exploring sorta far out ideas…
I guess.. and I don’t know.. it’s hard to tell at this point.. but it seems like there’s certain compositional ideas.. ways of thinking.. a kind of.. set of things.. which kind of characterize my music at this point.. and then.. there’s a set of things that I’m exploring with the idea of adding new dimensions to it. So.. basically I have a set of strands.. all at varying levels of maturation.. that I basically weave together.
At the moment I started to write this post.. I’ve been contemplating the development of a whole lot of new strands… some of these strands I’ve been contemplating for the last.. almost 20 years.
The construction of these strands.. some of them anyway.. seems rather daunting.. steep learning curves required to get anywhere near my vision.. Should I speak of these? Well.. it would take a whole post to explore but a part of this but…
Algorithmic Composition
What we are talking about here.. basically, is writing programs that create compositions… Indeed create performances. Or perhaps we aren’t writing the program.. perhaps we are just setting up conditions..
My first thoughts on this matter… I was probably about 15 years old.. having just taken up guitar.. and was a bit of metal head.. Early on I had become interested in making music that was.. strange.. out there.. experimental… in part as a kind of philosophical reaction to the music I’d heard before.. it was a revolutionary spirit..
Let’s say we wanted to use an algorithmic approach to making heavy metal music.. how might we go about it?
Theory Geek-O-Ree
My view had been.. lets start with a scale.. create a randomly generated synthetic scale.. 8 tones.. where we could use a regular diatonic framework.. warped into our synthetic scale. From where we could have a probabilistic framework..
Perhaps it would start by thinking about chord progressions for a riff.. or something like that.. divide time up into.. a few parts.. say what chord it is.. and that would be like the center around which the various instruments would play.. generally play one of the 3 notes that would make up that triad.. or perhaps playing the 7th, or perhaps playing a 3rd below the route..
We could.. at any given time divide up the chord.. saying this or that instrument would play around this or that note of the chord.. so you’re talking about a kind of harmonized modalism…
The Aesthetics of which are?
In a certain way.. the kind of ideas I had were like a quantified version of how I actually make music… how I think about composition.. accept that my compositional framework… it’s like a way of thinking… and eventually.. in my process.. I leave my thinking behind.. go on this or that tangent.. and whatever.
I don’t actually have much of a music theory background.. what little I have is.. extrapolated, questions.. I eventually came to think of it as.. like being the product of an out dated cosmology… and so set out to build a new one… and I suppose that’s what my music actually is about. It’s really a kind of revelation of an intuition.
A few latter:
Think I better post this.. if for no other reason then to say I’ve posted something recently at least!
