Nonagon

Vestax VCI-400: Nonagon Performance Template

2012-01-24T02:19:00.000-08:00

As promised I've done a little cleanup on my Vestax VCI-400 performance template, and can finally release a version for your controller hacking enjoyment. Highlights of this template include:

Clip Choppers (quantized recutting of up to four audio clips with LED feedback)
Pattern Recorders (four independent record / playback modules for clip chopping)
Jog Wheel Management (map wheel touch / release to manipulate any rack control; variable wheel motion -> parameter control ratio)
VU Meter Activation (master channel output level represented by master VU LEDs)
Visual Metronome (scrolling LEDs reflect 1/4 notes and downbeat during playback)
Toggleable "Smart" FX (granular distortion, "fade to grey", reverb, LP / BP / HP filters, gate, bitcrusher, etc)

You can download the Ableton Live set (including a bunch of my effects racks and VCI-400-specific Max for Live patches) here:

VCI-400 Nonagon Performance Template

I'm very interested in getting feedback on this initial release, particularly about whether or not all of the embedded Max for Live patches load correctly. I'll do a little more testing on my own, and once I've been able to confirm that no subpatchers or other dependencies got left out, I'll upload everything to controllerism.com.

Documentation and a full description of what I've done here will need to be forthcoming; for now, know that the whole shebang (including all individual Max for Live patches) is being released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which basically means that you're free to download, share, and modify everything here, but you're not allowed to include any of it in a commercial product, and must use equivalent license terms for any derivative works that you choose to release.

Enjoy!

Collaboration: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

2012-01-16T00:12:00.000-08:00

Electronic music production can be -- and for me usually is -- a solitary endeavor. I've experimented with collaboration over the years, and while there have been successes (a couple ongoing, in fact) I still usually feel most comfortable writing music alone- at my own pace and on my own schedule.

I think it's important to recognize, however, that just because this is the way I'm used to working, it's not necessarily the most efficient, productive or even creative approach for me personally. I've long recognized that pushing boundaries and forcing myself to explore outside of my comfort zone is a valuable habit when it comes to generating creative energy; perhaps I simply have yet to stumble upon the right angle of attack when it comes to writing in synergy with others.

In considering the myriad "ways of being" in an collaboration with other artists, I consider Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' work on "The Social Network" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" soundtracks incredibly compelling case studies in effective musical partnership. Have a look:

Finger Drumming Heroes

2011-12-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

The performance setup I've been developing for the past couple of years relies heavily on triggering a bunch of audio loops with an APC40, then manipulating them with effects and rearranging them (to an extent) with my 8x8 monome. This has worked well, but as time has passed this fairly abstract approach (relative to playing a traditional instrument, for example) has left me feeling more and more detached from the music that I'm making.

Figuring out how to manage an orchestra's worth of instruments by oneself is something I once dubbed the "Perpetual Performance Problem." It's an issue that pretty much every performing electronic musician has to address- one that underlies everything from DJ culture to traditional bands playing backing tracks, to more recent developments in what's come to be known as Controllerism. One of the oldest approaches -- and in my mind one of the most successful -- is finger drumming.

As I embark on a serious rethinking of the way I perform my music, you'd better believe I'll be carefully evaluating the work of these finger drumming masters.

Jeremy Ellis

Araab Muzik

Edison

Vestax VCI-400 Hacking + Demo

2011-12-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

I've recently been brought on as a contributor to the live electronic music / instrument hacking blog Controllerism.com. My first contribution to the site (apart from reposts of the interviews I conducted for BenevolentBeats.org) is an in-depth "remap and hack" of the upcoming Vestax VCI-400 controller, a DJ-centric (or is it?) all-in-one MIDI controller and audio interface.

I adapted a number of the Max for Live patches I've developed over the past couple of years to this new controller, and remapped most of the default controls to suit my performance style. Here's the short version of a fourteen minute performance I filmed using the new setup:

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Click the leading or trailing links in the video to watch a walkthrough of the setup or to see the full-length performance, and don't forget to check out the full article on Controllerism.com where I'll be posting all the patches and templates I created for these videos very soon.

Fuck It

2011-11-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

Truth.

"Ashra" Remix

2011-09-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

A remix I created earlier this year for multi-instrumentalist and world-music maestro Goyopod has finally gone live with the release of his debut album. Have a listen, and if your interest is piqued be sure to check out the rest of the album.

Goyopod - Ashra (Nonagon remix) by nonagon

Renegade Lights Media's First Release

2011-07-26T02:39:00.000-07:00

I'm proud to announce that I --along with a number of my esteemed musical colleagues from San Francisco and Chicago-- will be releasing some brand-spanking-new music on the upcoming Renegade Lights Media artist compilation.

Yours truly at the second Renegade Lights show in San Francisco, March 5th 2011.

After organizing three incredibly successful live electronic music events under the Renegade Lights banner in the past year, label founder Raja the Resident Alien is taking the next step by soliciting and publishing a collection of exclusive new work by our diverse and talented crew. The compilation will be available as both a digital download AND a double-vinyl LP, both mastered by Oakland, CA's esteemed Shawn Hatfield. Needless to say this is an exciting moment.

As a new label, the available budget for mastering and manufacturing a project of this scope is fairly daunting. To help build momentum and cover a portion of the sunk costs for this release, the label has launched a Kickstarter campaign with a fundraising goal of USD $2,300 by August 9th of this year. If you're interested in supporting this effort, you can pre-purchase the digital version of the comp, the double-vinyl release (which includes the digital version), or packages with additional tasty items at the official campaign page:

Kickstarter: Renegade Lights Media's First Release

I'm really proud to be sharing a roster with this incredibly talented group of musicians. Can't wait to reveal what we've got in store!

Ruts and Inspiration

2011-07-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling a bit baseless these past few weeks. I recently uprooted myself, moving to Oregon for three months to get some perspective and complete a third album, and I'm spending significantly more time working on music than I have in years, but thus far I feel a sense emptiness and indifference to the ideas I've been coming up with.

My response to this problem has so far been to force myself to continue "working" as long as possible before eventually collapsing into some mostly mindless activity (watching a movie, browsing the internet, etc) which I immediately make myself feel guilty about. "I've come all this way, spent all this time and energy to be in this space and write my masterpiece!" You can imagine the internal monologue.

I've been doing this long enough to know that you can't force inspiration and that the vibe will eventually return, but it's a disheartening process nonetheless. Thankfully, I just happened across this short essay:

Chasing Inspiration by Tarakith

In it, the author identifies exactly the experience I'm going through and outlines a few ideas for dealing with it. All of his strategies are good ones, and, despite the fact that pretty much every creative person I've spoken to has gone through a similar rut, it's reassuring to be reminded that I'm indeed not alone in this affliction.

While this essay is oriented towards music makers, many of the ideas apply to the creative process in general. If you've ever felt lost and helpless in the creation of your art, this is a highly recommended read.

Performing Live: Tim Exile

2011-06-16T01:11:00.000-07:00

Tim Exile has been pushing the state-of-the-art in live electronic music performance for years now. His approach- developed and honed over as long a period- relies heavily on looping and manipulating his own voice, a technique that gives him a huge amount of control over tone, timbre, and rhythm in real time, and without any need to muck with synthesis settings. Here he is giving a brief overview of his setup:

If this feels like Beatboxing++, it is. Now just imagine the magic that could result from pairing these tools with the vocal skills of a professional-level mouthist (my brilliant term, btw):

This approach- creating a well-defined workflow and a fixed set of well-practiced tools, then relying almost entirely on improvisation to construct both the structure AND the content of a performance- feels like the holy grail of live electronic music to me. This is the true intersection of virtuosic musicianship and technical acumen. As usual, I can't wait to see what he does next.

Sound Design Hero: Diego Stocco

2011-05-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

In an era when musicians (electronic and otherwise) have literally thousands of high-quality digital instruments at their disposal, each with tens-to-thousands of immediately accessible preset patches, it's become frighteningly easy to ignore the once crucial art of conceptualizing and executing a "sound idea" from scratch. I've been as guilty as anyone of relying on soft-synth presets as a kicking-off point for my instrument designs, which is why I find the work of artists like Diego Stocco so inspiring.

Here's a glimpse into Diego's process for fabricating the sound of a fairly abstract DTS logo spot:

Beyond his obvious technical proficiency, I'm most impressed by the way he's able to conceptualize the final aural result, then construct the sonic components of that result piece-by-piece. I'd love to know how solid his ideas were pre-recording: did he have a firm idea of what he wanted from the beginning and stick to it, or did his ideas evolve in the process?

Mr. Stocco also works on less-abstract (but no less compelling) sound pieces, including music for soundtracks. Here's a short piece showing the construction and recording of his "Experibass":

Sound design has become a larger and more important part of my compositional process as I've become a more experienced producer, and it's incredibly exciting for me to learn about how others are using non-traditional (or perhaps more-traditional-but-since-forgotten?) sound sources and recording techniques to create truly original music.

For a start on more about Diego Stocco, check out his YouTube channel and his Bandcamp page.

Interviews with Clint Mansell

2011-05-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite film composers (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Black Swan) shares his thoughts on the process and the industry.

Score For "Daily Praise"

2011-04-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

I recently completed the score for a five-minute short film based on the poem "Daily Praise" by Annie Yu, directed by my friend Ian Wang. The version I've embedded here is a special score-only cut that Ian graciously allowed me to use to highlight my work on the project.

I ended up writing the bulk of the score over a period of two days, with some revisions made a couple of days later based on feedback from Ian. I hope to write more about the process soon (interpretations, writing to edits instead of a fixed timeline, etc), but for now just watch and listen!

UPDATE: The short was accepted into the Poetry Projection Project competition, and will be screened free on April 16th at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco.

A Visit With Ulrich Schnauss

2011-03-17T17:01:00.001-07:00

A great glimpse into the mind and studio of Ulrich Schnauss. If you aren't familiar with his music, I hope this will convince you to change that ASAP!

First Amazon.com Fundraiser Results

2011-03-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

Back at the end of December 2010 I launched a last-second effort to turn money from an Amazon.com promotion into a donation to one of my favorite charities, Project Open Hand. I've just now received the results of that effort in the form of a statement from my distributor, CD Baby: we managed to raise $43.50. Less than I had hoped, but a lot more than nothing.

I just made a $43.50 donation via P.O.H.'s website; here's as much confirmation as I can offer:

Greetings from Project Open Hand!

Thank you so much for your donation. You should know that your support helps feed over 7,100 people each year. 

In order to save money on postage and paper, please accept this as official acknowledgment of your donation. 

Merchant: Project Open Hand

Order ID: VXJE6E63842B
Order Placed: Friday, March 11, 2011 03:23:03 PM PDT

Amount of Transaction: $43.50
Payment Type: MasterCard

Of course, this was only a first attempt. Last month I launched BenevolentBeats.org with a cadre of like-minded artists to take advantage of a repeat promotion, and in a couple months we should know the results of that effort. You can be sure I'll post here (and there) as soon as we find out.

Son Lux on the RPM Challenge

2011-03-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

It turns out I wasn't alone in my effort to write an album in February- Son Lux, a musician for whom I have an enormous amount of respect, also stepped up to the plate, and NPR followed his progress through the twenty-eight day process. It's a really interesting read, and his descriptions (and audio clips) of the writing process are really informative.

Son Lux on the RPM Challenge

RPM Challenge: Finished!

2011-03-01T17:49:00.000-08:00

Quick recap: I wrote an album entirely in the month of February as part of the RPM Challenge. And here it is:

Nonagon - Verdigris (Premaster) [320Kbps MP3 download]

Download now. Commentary coming soon.

One of the nine tracks for your streaming pleasure:

Cipher Test by nonagon

RPM Challenge: Update 2

2011-02-23T00:51:00.000-08:00

Six days left until the end of the challenge. I finished the outline for my ninth and final track today. So much work left to do! Time constraints are breeding new approaches, which was what I'd hoped would happen... we'll see how it all turns out soon!

RPM Challenge: Update

2011-02-14T02:31:00.000-08:00

We're officially half-way through the month of February, which means that I and my fellow participants have exactly two weeks left to finish our albums for the RPM Challenge.

I've been trying hard to spend at least a little bit of time each day working on the songs I'll end up submitting, and so far I've been fairly successful despite the inevitable distractions we all face. At this point I have five songs in progress, zero completed. I've decided that my RPM album will have nine songs (go figure), so given the parameters of the challenge I'm on the hook for about four-minutes per song; this isn't necessarily the way I'd prefer to think about composing, but it's hardly a normal situation so I'm giving myself a pass.

One decision I made very early on was to try to minimize my internal editorial process as much as possible while coming up with ideas for each song. In practice this has meant that as soon as I come up with a chord progression or riff or beat that seems reasonable, I commit to it as the foundation for a piece and immediately start building on it; I spend very little time wondering if my initial idea is the "right" place to start, and instead I just go with it. Since my songs tend to evolve away from the seed idea that started them anyway, it feels right to devote as much time as possible to writing parts instead of nitpicking decisions that are likely to be thrown away anyway.

Next, I've taken a lesson from Ill Gates' "Ill Methodology" and started creating arrangements very early in the writing process, often before I've written more than three or four rough parts. Sketching out a skeleton of how each song will progress from start to finish has been helpful in forcing me to think about the big picture early on and keeping me from spending an inordinate amount of time on details that might be tossed with the next broad stroke. This being electronic music (and more importantly me being me) I've still caught myself getting sucked into detail work, but I'm trying hard to be cognizant of my workflow and save the small things for last.

Finally, I've decided not to try to finish anything until I have ideas and basic arrangements for all nine songs. I know myself well enough to be convinced that I could easily spend ten times as long on a project of this scope (I have, and more); I also know that it's very likely that I'll be working on these songs until the very last minute before having to mail in my CD. It's unlikely that I'll be entirely happy with the outcome of all the pieces I ultimately submit, and I don't expect to feel like they wouldn't each benefit from more work. But damnit, I'm going to submit something, and so I'm focusing first on breadth and leaving the detail work for iterative refinement as time allows.

Music (and art in general) is an interesting endeavor precisely because there is no universal right or wrong. I could send in a CD-R with nine four-minute tracks of perfect digital silence and, had that been the realization of my particular artistic vision, I would have successfully completed the challenge. On the other hand, one might argue that I could find myself on March 1st with fifteen five-minute songs full of elaborate arrangements and stunning detail, but if I myself felt that they had somehow fallen short of my vision or intent, I would have failed the challenge. This latter argument, of course, is exactly the kind of mentality that the creators of the RPM challenge are trying to combat, and I wholeheartedly reject it. The point of the challenge is not to craft your magnum opus in four weeks, but rather to constrain a precious resource (time) and force yourself to make shit happen. That shit might live up to its name or it might be brilliant, but either way the effort is its own reward.

Assuming I successfully complete this challenge (which, given the caveats I've started I know that I will), I'm most interested to see if and how this experience affects my usual unconstrained and mollasses-like writing process. I have not (and don't expect to) reject my tendency towards detail-oriented music, but I'm becoming more and more convinced that truly great work and truly efficient work are inexorably tied to one another.

I'll try to check in again at least once more before the challenge ends. Wish me luck!

BenevolentBeats.org

2011-02-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

I accidentally turned my Amazon promotion idea into a full-fledged website:

Endless thanks to kc! Bradshaw for creating our beautiful banner image in a matter of hours with no advance warning. True design talent.

I'm really excited to explore the long-term possibilities of a site dedicated to bringing together independent musicians with charitable causes. If that statement sounds vague, it is. I have some ideas, but I'll get to those after the Amazon promotion wraps and I have little more time to ruminate.

The Amazon MP3 Promotion Is Back!

2011-02-07T13:40:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: I've launched a website to support this effort in the short term and similar ideas in the longer term:

http://benevolentbeats.org

Right around Christmas of last year I posted about an idea I'd come up with to redirect Amazon.com promotional funds to Project Open Hand, a non-profit, non-denominational organization that feeds low-income and disabled people in the Bay Area. Though I'm (still!) waiting to find out exactly how much of a donation we were able to generate (Amazon.com apparently only reports earnings every few months), an identical promotion has just been launched, and I want to jump on it as quickly as possible.

The deal is exactly the same as last time: Amazon.com has published a promo code that gives you $2 worth of free credit to spend in their MP3 store. If you'll use this free money to buy two tracks from my album, I'll then donate my portion of the proceeds to Project Open Hand.

As I calculated in the previous post, after Amazon.com and my distributor (CD Baby) take their respective cuts, we should be able to donate ~$0.63 per-track sold. Not a lot on its own, but multiplied by a few hundred people and we're on our way to something significant.

Here are the steps:

Click here and enter coupon code VDAYMP3S. You'll have $2 credited to your account.
Purchase any two tracks from my album. Your free credit will be used automatically.
Project Open Hand profits!

The promotion runs through February 14, 2011, at 11:59 p.m. PST. That gives us just one week to make this happen.

In my follow-up to last-year's initial description of this idea, I made some observations about what I would do differently "next time." Chief among them was enlisting other artists to broaden the network of friends and fans that might be willing to contribute to the cause. I'm pleased to announce that a few of my fellow musicians have already signed on to donate their income from Amazon.com MP3 sales during this promotional period. I'm setting up a basic website as we speak that will link to each of these artists- it should be up by tomorrow (Tuesday). I'll post info here when it goes live.

As a final note, one of the biggest difficulties in getting an idea like this off the ground is the issue of trust. While taking part in this endeavor won't cost you anything (we're using Amazon's money!), there is no way for participants to ensure that I won't just run off to Tijuana with the proceeds we generate. The best I can do is pledge that my intentions are genuine, and promise to you that my desire is ONLY to see a few corporate dollars go toward making a direct and tangible impact on the lives of people in our community. I'm not in this to profit, nor to promote myself as an artist.

Thank you for your trust. Now let's get the word out!

RPM Challenge

2011-02-03T01:52:00.000-08:00

Today I signed up for the Record Production Month (RPM) Challenge. The goal is to write and record 10 songs or 35-minutes of material during the month of February with no head starts (i.e. previously unfinished work) allowed.

Given my track record of re-re-thinking every musical decision and spending hours fiddling with minutia, writing an entire album in three and a half weeks seemed like a ridiculous idea at first. After giving it some thought though, I realized that it was actually the best idea ever. I am officially giving myself permission to write music quickly. There have been a handful of occasions in recent memory that I've written what could stand as a finished track in one day, but couldn't accept that it could possibly be finished in anything less than three weeks of full-time work, and so set it aside or ruined it with unnecessary tweaks. I'm hoping RPM will by my psychological escape from that kind of thinking.

So what am I going to write? My number one goal for the RPM challenge is to foster spontaneity. Instead of wondering if a direction is "correct," or whether I'm moving closer to some ideal "perfect" piece of music, I'm just going to churn out ideas and fit them together. I'm not going to allow myself to deadlock.

A few other guidelines I've set for myself:

Focus on creating with few musical elements, but with depth and evolution involved in each. My tendency is to combine a great many relatively static (i.e. unchanging) sounds to create motion and depth in my music. I think this is a useful approach, and I like the results I can achieve using it, but this month I want to try to focus on modulating and manipulating individual sonic elements to change their character over time instead of relying on dozens of component parts. I'm not convinced that this will be a time-saver, but it'll be a good exercise for me.
Value emptiness and silence. This is something I've been working on for some time. When there are no limits to the number of layers you can pile onto a track (which practically speaking there aren't), I have a natural tendency to increase complexity, even when it ultimately hurts the musical statement I'm trying to make. I want to recapture the power and drama of silence. If there was a theme to my as-yet unwritten RPM album, I think this would be it.
Leverage the performance techniques and workflow I've developed. I am a very different beast on stage than I am in the studio. If I've prepared properly, I can really get into a zone when performing that leads to (I hope) really interesting and spontaneous musical discoveries that I almost certainly wouldn't have come across during production.

In a live context I can't go back and fix mistakes, so I don't dwell on them. I also feel much more connected to time and how the music I'm creating moves through it. This probably comes off as an odd statement, but consider that most production software presents music as a "chunk" that you can (and almost must) absorb in its entirety with your eyes. The beginning and end of that eight-minute epic sit just a few inches from one another, and you can skip between them in half a second. The psychological effect this has had on me is interesting, and something that I'm only now really beginning to understand. I'd like to write more about that someday, but for now suffice to say that I'm going to try to bring the spontaneity I feel during performances to the production table this month.

Success in this endeavor is far from a certainty, but I know I'm going to finish it. Meet me back here on March 1st for the results =).

Dead Prez Remix

2011-02-01T02:31:00.000-08:00

Just wrapped up a remix of the classic Dead Prez track "Hip Hop."

Dead Prez - Hip Hop (Nonagon remix) by nonagon

You can download a high-quality MP3 of the remix with the little down arrow on the right-hand side of the player widget.

The repeating synth bassline in the original track is so iconic that I decided to ditch it entirely to give myself a little more creative freedom. I went for a slower tempo (big surprise!), deep sub-bass and sparse, atmospheric production that opens up into edgier distorted synth lines in the last third. When I say "deep sub-bass" I really do mean it- the bassline in my version gets down to around 40Hz, meaning it'll vibrate your entire body on a proper club soundsystem, but will likely completely disappear on smaller speakers and most headphones. You should've retired those iPod earbuds years ago anyway.

Dead Prez's lyrics on the original are fantastic, and were a big part of why I chose this song to remix, so instead of chopping them up I left them alone and instead tried to accentuate and emphasize the message of the original tune with my new instrumental backing. Unfortunately, the only acappella I could find had all the PG-13 words chopped out, though on a positive note I guess this makes my remix more toddler friendly for all the hip parents out there (you know who you are).

For comparison, here's the original track in all of its (youtube compressed) glory:

And of course, for you loyal readers the instrumental version of my remix can be had right here:

Dead Prez - Hip Hop (Nonagon remix) Instrumental

Shadowless

2011-01-23T21:50:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months, I've posted some cryptic photos and vague comments here and on my Facebook page about a new collaborative project I've been working on. It's finally time to pull back the curtain (at least a little bit) and share a taste of what's been brewing.

The new project started out simply enough- I had some unfinished instrumental tracks that I thought would be perfect for vocals, so I got in touch with my friend Angie Donkin, lead singer for the LA band Vibrasol to see if she'd be interested in collaborating. Luckily enough she was, and over the next few months we got together a handful of times here in San Francisco to share ideas and record some of what she'd come up with. Angie's brother Adam (a talented musician, studio owner and audio engineer) initially came onboard to direct our first proper vocal recording session, but before long it became clear to me that the ideas he was bringing to the table necessitated his being part of the project. And thus the unnamed project came to be.

Today I'm proud to present you with "Shadowless," one of the first tracks born of our new collaboration. The version you can listen to (and download) below was only given a hasty mastering pass by Adam, but I think it sounds fantastic, and should give you a good idea of the vibe we're going for.

Nonagon - Shadowless by LoveTech2011Comp

We currently have five complete tracks in need of final mix and mastering sessions, and four or five fairly well developed demos that are well on their way. We'll be giving our first live performance on Friday, January 28th, 2011 at the LoveTech 2 Year Anniversary party here in San Francisco (I'll also be playing a brief set of my solo instrumental work immediately beforehand), and presumably releasing a proper EP in the month or two that follow.

It's great to get a chance to work with other musicians with similar styles and visions, and I'm really looking forward to sharing more of what we've been working on very soon.

Amazon Scheme Reflection, Pt. 1

2010-12-28T01:18:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com's MP3 promotion has come to a close, and so necessarily has my scheme to take advantage of their pile 'o cash to fund a Project Open Hand donation. Unfortunately, it could be a while before we find out exactly how much of the money pit we managed to redirect: it turns out that none of the major online music stores (Amazon included) report earnings immediately- in fact, they can take up to three months (!) to get back to artists with income reports. Having given away my album for free since day one, this was news to me.

The one metric that I do have is that this blog had 153 unique visitors between the time I made the initial post and the time the promotion ended. Based on that number, and given an expected net donation of ~$1.25 per participant (see my previous post for an explanation of how I calculated this number), I'm hopeful that we'll be able to donate at least $100 when all is said and done. That's enough to feed three people for a week- not insignificant by any means.

In my heart of hearts I'd hoped that the scheme would go viral and we'd be able to generate an order of magnitude more income than that real-world estimate, but it's likely not to be. Turns out it's a lot harder to spread the word about something like this than I thought. The major difficulties as I see them were:

The holidays. Amazon's promotion (and consequently the scheme) happened to fall on a couple of days before and one day after Christmas. It's debatable whether this ought to have made spreading the word easier or harder, but I suspect it was the latter (see (3) below).
I stood to benefit. Unfortunately, the only way to convert Amazon's restricted "free money" into USD fit for donation was to channel it through tracks from my album in their MP3 store. This meant that my music would move up the sales charts and presumably make it into the hands of new listeners that wouldn't have otherwise heard it (albeit at no cost to them). The fact that I stood to benefit from what I was trying to frame as a purely philanthropic gesture probably prevented some people from being comfortable participating, particularly those that didn't know me personally. Since this was the core of the scheme, though, there wasn't much I could do about it other than find a better and more convincing way to explain my intentions.
I waited too long to / didn't successfully publicize. At first I thought that a few posts to my personal and band Facebook pages would be enough to get the ball rolling. It wasn't until the second day (halfway through the promotion) that I thought of actively contacting blogs and other organizations with info about what I was trying to do. Unfortunately, none of the sites that I contacted ended up passing the story along, likely in large part due to (1) and (2). If I had to do it all over again, I would have jumped on the publicity train from minute one.

I'm guessing that this is not going to be the last promotion of it's kind. Based on my experiences this time around, I think that the best approach to take next time would be to build a coalition of artists that all pledge to donate income from sales to charity. I think this would go a long way towards solving problem (2), and would multiply the "publicity power" of the group as a whole, potentially ameliorating (3). I'm in the early stages of planning just such a coalition so that we'll be prepared to hit the ground running next time a giant corporation offers free money as part of a promotion. Get in touch if you're interested in helping out.

Overall, I know that we'll be able to make a donation to Project Open Hand, and regardless of how much it ends up being, there's no doubt that it will help feed more people than had we done nothing. Many thanks to everyone that trusted me enough to participate! I'll post final results as soon as I get them.

Help Me Trick Amazon.com Into Donating To Charity!

2010-12-23T12:41:00.000-08:00

Amazon.com is running a promotion through Dec. 26th of this year: enter a code, get $2 to spend in their MP3 store. They're presumably doing this in an effort to increase their name recognition and better compete with the juggernaut iTunes Music Store. While I'm sure this will be an effective way for Amazon to bump "sales" during the holiday season, it also presents an interesting opportunity: game the system to redirect a tiny amount of Amazon's promotional budget to charity.

Here's what I'm proposing: use the $2 that Amazon is giving away to buy a track or two from my album, and I pledge to donate all income I receive from that sale to Project Open Hand, a great organization that feeds thousands of people in the Bay Area.

How much money will that end up being? Here's the breakdown:

Music is sold on the Amazon MP3 store for $0.99 per track. Amazon takes a cut of ~$0.29 per track sold, passing the remaining $0.70 to the track's distributor, who (potentially) takes their own cut before passing things down the line, finally ending up at the artist. My distributor (CD Baby) takes a 9% cut of the Amazon payout, meaning that all told, Project Open Hand will get ~$0.63 per track sold. Not bad for a minute or two of work.

If you want to help me with this scheme:

Click here for Amazon's page about this promotion. It takes 15 seconds to enter the promo code.
Once your account has been credited, buy any two tracks from my album.
Project Open Hand profits!

If you're having trouble, here's the original slickdeals.net page describing the promotion.

Now, there is certainly quite a bit of faith involved in trusting me to keep my word on this, but for what it's worth I promise to uphold my end of the deal (and I'm an honest person- honest I am). One might also interpret this whole scheme as an effort to promote myself as an artist, and I'll admit that the idea had occurred to me. But considering that my album has always been available free (and licensed under the Creative Commons), I hope you'll consider me worthy of being the vehicle for this cause.

I'll post back on the 27th to let everyone know how much income we generated for Project Open Hand. Thanks for your help!

UPDATE: If you're feeling extra ambitious, you can get an extra $1.29 free from Bing. More opportunities to feed the hungry.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-25T23:44:00.000-08:00

Bandmates getting sorted. November 2010.

Auto-Interviews: New and Old

2010-11-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

Blackalicious Remix

2010-10-08T00:39:00.000-07:00

Like the Missy Elliott remix I posted last week, I didn't start this track with a remix in mind. I was in the process of preparing for a show when I happened upon the acappella and thought it fit with one of my unfinished songs. You can hear the result below.

Blackalicious - Feel That Way (Nonagon remix) by nonagon

I ended up spending quite a bit of time on this one, working and re-working the vibe to try to get something that felt true to both my initial instrumental ideas and the spirit of the Blackalicious lyrics. I decided pretty early on that I liked the lyrics too much to manipulate (and thus obscure) them, so apart from a few timing changes and adjustments to the length of some of the "choruses" the acappella is basically straight out of the original track. Check it out:

The biggest struggle for me in developing this remix was figuring out how to work all my musical ideas in without overpowering the vocal. I think I was at least marginally successfully on that front, but my instrumental-leanings are still pretty apparent in the second half of the track.

From a technical perspective I worked a lot with panning to keep musical elements from fighting for space with the dead-center vocal parts, and used EQ on most of the higher-register instruments to "scoop out" frequencies in the ranges dominated by the acappella to give it a little more breathing room. The original acappella has a pretty tinny sound, so I EQ'd it as well to try to restore as much life as possible. Overall I'm happy with the rough mix presented here, but I might actually prefer the instrumental version, which you can download free right here.

Blackalicious - Feel That Way (Nonagon remix) Instrumental

More projects wrapping up soon (I hope)- watch this space.

Amon Tobin On Production

2010-10-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

Just rediscovered this excellent interview with Amon Tobin in Sound on Sound. It's from 2003, but his comments on production and arrangement are as relevant now as ever (though his complaints about the reliability of the first Final Scratch audio interface are mercifully no longer of much interest).

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Apr03/articles/amontobin.asp

Missy Elliott Remix

2010-09-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

Project "Finish All the Work I Started Over the Last Eighteen Months" has officially begun. Despite the lengthy title (albeit with a moderately pronounceable acronym: FAWISOLEM), this should mean a lot more public output from me in the last quarter(ish) of 2010.

To get things started, here's a little remix of "Lick Shots" by Missy Elliott I wrapped up today. You can listen in the embedded player or download the track with the little arrow icon- or both!

Missy Elliott - Lick Shots (Nonagon remix) by nonagon

For reference, here's the original (produced by one of my heroes, Timbaland).

And, as a little bonus for those of you following the blog, here's my instrumental version:

Missy Elliott - Lick Shots (Nonagon remix) Instrumental

Sneak Peak

2010-08-28T02:06:00.000-07:00

New collaborative project in the works...

Angie and Adam at the console.

Bonobo On "Kiara"

2010-06-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

Bonobo walks Computer Music through the creation of a track. This is one of the better glimpses into the compositional process of a respected artist that I've seen, and I think cuts to the heart of composing electronic music (and to an extent all music): starting with an inspirational sound or idea, then experimenting and playing with peripheral ideas until things start to sound "right."

Bonobo Producer Masterclass Pt.1 from NJF on Vimeo.

Bonobo Producer Masterclass Pt.2 from NJF on Vimeo.

Amon Tobin On DJing

2010-05-18T01:53:00.000-07:00

Life lessons from one of the best producers (and best DJs for that matter) of our era. I think this pretty much sums up why it's so frustrating to me that electronic music is inexorably associated with "DJ Culture" in so many peoples' minds.

Trent At It Again

2010-05-10T02:05:00.000-07:00

The prolific one returns! Given how long it's been since my last post, it's clear that I'm not talking about myself- Trent Reznor is back with his new project (in collaboration with his wife), and is kicking things off by teasing us with some beautifully shot gear-porn clips:

How To Destroy Angels

Can't wait!

Insights Into The LoveTech Promo

2010-04-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

Colin of CSTNG-SHDWS was recently interviewed by Create Digital Motion editor Jaymis Loveday about our collaborative performance at LoveTech in January. Colin's responses touch on every aspect of our mutual creative process leading up to the performance, as well as the work he put into creating the four-minute promo video linked below. Well worth the read, and very exciting to be featured on such a well-regarded blog!

AV Inspiration + Interview: CSTNG-SHDWS & Nonagon Live Promo

Create Digital Music, we're coming for you next...

Nonagon & CSTNG-SHDWS @ LoveTech SF

2010-03-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I collaborated with visualist duo extraordinaire CSTNG-SHDWS and my good friends Angie Donkin (vocalist) and Jay Golden (violinist) of Vibrasol for a blowout show at the LoveTech one year anniversary in San Francisco. CS have edited together a beautiful HD promo video from footage of that night, and I couldn't be happier to share it here.

CSTNG-SHDWS x Nonagon Live Video/Audio from Colin Sebestyen on Vimeo.

Brian Eno - Another Green World (documentary)

2010-03-12T12:03:00.000-08:00

While the point could be argued that we too often elevate well-known artists to the status of demi-God geniuses, I think few would argue that Brian Eno's life and work have done the heavy lifting for him. Inspiring to say the least.

Untitled from Fjb on Vimeo.

Inspired Flight Remix

2010-02-01T02:16:00.000-08:00

After more than a month of what seemed like non-stop work getting ready for last Saturday's LoveTech performance (which went great, and of which footage will be posted here soon), I finally feel free to just relax for a moment. I decided to unwind by finally finishing up my entry for Inspired Flight's remix competition and submitting it one hour before the midnight deadline.

Inspired Flight - It Always Takes (Nonagon Remix) by nonagon

If you dig the vibe and are the voting type, you can drop my interpretation a +1 on the competition page here. Regardless of the outcome of the contest, though, I'm really happy with the way this one turned out. Hope you are too!

Further Adventures With Max For Live

2010-01-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

Making lots of progress in my effort to learn Max/MSP (though I haven't touched the MSP part yet). I've actually had some significant success with porting mlr-style monome loop chopping to native Ableton Live clips:

Ableton Live clip chopping MLR-style w/ Max for Live from Nonagon on Vimeo.

I started a discussion on the Monome forums about the patch-in-progress here, which you can follow if you're interested in more day-to-day planning and development.

I'm happy when my things work. (That's what she said)

It's Alive!

2009-12-30T03:39:00.000-08:00

After a solid 18 months of fun with mlr, I've been working on building an entirely new performance setup built around the good 'ole Arduinome, my spankin' new APC40, and the behemoth that is Max For Live. Tonight I had my first success: tempo-synced control of the APC40's LED matrix (in three lovely colors), and successful parsing of button presses from within Max. It's a small but significant achievement, and the beginning of what I hope will be a long and fruitful relationship with my new robot friends.

Let there be lights!

Free Plug(in)s For You And Me

2009-12-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

Up until about ten minutes ago I'd been using the v1.0 release of Tal-Dub II, my most favoritest tape delay plugin in all the world. Then out of the blue, I do a random check and discover that they're now at v1.6, and that many of the little quirks I'd come to accept (incessant low-frequency hum if the LP filter was opened all the way- oops) had been fixed months ago.

I feel more excited than perhaps I reasonably ought to. But this is a great time to plug (pun intended) a great developer of free plugins for both Mac and PC:

Togu Audio Line

The aforementioned tape delay is my favorite, but their other offerings are nice too. Support the folks giving their hard work away for nothing! They deserve it.

What Makes A Good Performance?

2009-11-20T14:03:00.001-08:00

This is an excellent rumination on the subject by Robert Henke aka Monolake aka founder of Ableton.

Unexpected Goodbye

2009-11-02T15:12:00.000-08:00

My friend Vinay was killed in a motorcycle accident in the South Bay yesterday morning, November 1st. He was twenty-nine years old.

There are a lot of things I'd like to say about him, and at some point I probably will, but I'm struggling to organize my thoughts right now. Suffice to say that he was, at his core, a kind and giving person, and I'm grateful for the good times we had together.

I'll miss you, Vinay.

Photo by Spencer Wohlers.

Happy Nonagon Day!

2009-09-09T14:44:00.001-07:00

Credits to RJ55.com for the image.

Thoughts From The Unlit Studio

2009-08-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

For me, the most difficult part of starting work on a new song is coming to terms with the absolute knowledge that most if not all of the initial effort will serve only as a path to the ideas that will ultimately constitute the final product. The time and thought put into that which will ultimately be discarded is entirely necessary, but it's never easy to surrender to the process knowing full well the twisted road ahead.

Nonagon Live @ Otis Lounge 8/15/09

2009-08-19T01:47:00.000-07:00

Enjoy!

(It's probably best to save that file instead of streaming it, as it's fairly large at ~80MB).

Mixing Lessons

2009-07-26T22:37:00.001-07:00

In the process of getting acoustics handled in my newer (by the way, don't you hate that term? It's like rental apartment code for "not new at all") studio room, I went back to the impeccably written manual for my beloved Mackie HR824s to figure out which settings would best help tame the Beast of Boomy Bass, and there found this bit of sage advice:

It's a real rush to mix really loud. But remember that the resulting mix only sounds good when you play it at least that loud. However strange it may sound, mixes made at lower levels sound even better when played loud; perhaps even a bit bigger than life.

Get that sound level meter out. Decide what level you're going to mix at and use the meter to help keep your mixing at that level. Your ears will thank you, and your mixes will be better for it.

I have a definite tendency to monitor loud, and this is yet another reason I need to kick that habit (the first being the longevity of my ears, of course).

Thanks, Mackie!

Aspirations

2009-07-17T13:35:00.001-07:00

Haven't posted in a while, but many things are in the works that I'll hopefully get to at some point soon. In the meantime, here's Edison showing us all a thing or two about rockin' da monome:

edison.... new set up....! from edison on Vimeo.

Evan Morris Remix

2009-06-28T01:41:00.000-07:00

Back from beyond with a just-released remix of Evan Morris' chiptune powerhouse "Death Face."

Evan Morris - Death Face (Nonagon remix) by nonagon

Full remix album available here.
Original album "Vector Krush" available here.

First Review of "Days Away"

2009-05-30T11:50:00.001-07:00

BlackPlastic.co.uk just published a very favorable review of "Days Away." This is a pleasant way to start the day!

Dubspot Tutorials

2009-05-18T01:19:00.001-07:00

I came across Dubspot's series of video tutorials while searching for info about the new Akai APC40 controller for Ableton Live. The tutorials are well produced, no-nonsense, and actually useful- even for someone who's been working with Live for quite some time. I found the discussion about using the new Corpus effect to create a sub-bass follow track particularly interesting. Check 'em out!

Dubspot on YouTube.

What Is Music?

2009-05-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

I found this short post by Stretta (modular synth extraordinaire, to pigeonhole him) a thoughtful response to this deceptively simple question. My favorite of the quotes he, well... quotes:

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we ﬁnd it fascinating.

-John Cage

Productivity, Simplicity, Mindfulness, Et. Al.

2009-04-29T01:01:00.000-07:00

I want to point you to my friend Kevin's blog: A muse; me. Kevin posts really insightful ponderings on why we humans do the things we do, and how we can adjust our way of approaching the world to make the way we are a little more in line with the way we'd like to be. I've found almost every post personally relevant, and I suspect some of you might too. Check it out!

Deadlines, Bless Them

2009-04-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

I find this hard to fathom, but it's been about ten months since I last posted a new song here. I've been working hard the entire time, but since last June or so my focus has been on figuring out the P^3 and getting Days Away out the door. I've developed a sizable backlog of unfinished work during that time, some of which is "almost there," but I've largely succumbed to the desire to generate new material instead of sweating out the details to finish any of what I've started. Enter The Deadline.

A few months ago I read about the Tra la la blip project on the Ableton discussion forums. In their own words:

tra la la blip is an artist collective based on the far north coast of new south wales. (...) our first release is titled "soundbeam sessions volume 1" We did 100 copies, each 1 individually stamped by the musicians/artists. (...) soundbeam sessions is a compilation CD, all artist[s] on the CD have some form of intellectual and or physical disability. all the songs were created live during jam sessions at Multi Task human resource foundation in Lismore nsw. It is loop based electronic music created using multiple midi controllers and instruments like the tenori-on, soundbeam, kaossilator, microkorg, a macbook running ableton live software and a microphone.

While the concept alone strongly appeals to me, the best thing about TLLB is that their music is fantastic: sometimes playful, sometimes moody, melodic, and dare I say "deep." Thus, when artistic director and organizer Randolf Reimann posted an open invitation for remixes, I decided to get involved. And getting involved meant actually finishing something for the first time in almost a year.

I'm proud to present my finished remix of Indigo Caroline by Tra la la blip. The original TLLB track is somewhat unique in that it consists of just three components: a vocal track (participant Gaye singing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline") over Monolake's song "Indigo" layered with an original synth line. The result is haunting and atmospheric and right up my alley. My remix takes things in a very different direction, but (hopefully) without losing the spirit of the original. I hope you like it!

Indigo Caroline (Nonagon remix) by nonagon

P.S. I'm trying out Soundcloud streaming for the first time with this song. I'm going to hold off on making it downloadable until I get clearance from Randolf, as the track will be making its way onto the Tra la la blip remix CD to be released later this year.

The Faint Of Heart

2009-04-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I got a bloody nose. Could be that I've been watching too much Dexter, but once I got to the bathroom I decided to let it bleed a little. There's something simultaneously fascinating and repulsive about this photo of the aftermath. The intimacy of the medium in particular has a really visceral impact on me.

My apologies to the squeamish!

'Lil LoveTech Vid

2009-03-30T00:46:00.000-07:00

My friends at Socialush put up a little edited video of part of my set from last month's LoveTech. I'm not a big fan of watching myself on screen (gotta solve the modesty problem if I'm ever going to be a real rockstar, I know), but this deserves to be mentioned.

The era of strictly short posts may soon come to an end- new projects 'n things to write about soon!

Ochre I Love You

2009-03-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

Been focusing a lot on filling the creative tanks with new music recently. Ochre was recommend to me by the cool dudes at the Knitworks show back in February, but I only just got around to checking him out today.

This is the first artist in a long while that I've immediately wanted to tell everyone I know about. Every track so far is pure brilliance. This is a happy day!

Go now.

History, Pt. 2

2009-03-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

Time to get back to our (my?) roots.

NIN: The Making of the "Closer" Video from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

The Downward Spiral is one of the most personally significant albums I've had the luck of encountering in my lifetime. Wonderfully, though, the genius didn't end with the music. These are thirty minutes well spent.

100th Post: A History Lesson

2009-03-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

Come And Get It!

2009-03-07T22:19:00.000-08:00

Days Away (Digital Download)

A limited edition run of CDs with beautiful full-color artwork by Josef Baar will be ready to ship next Friday! Feel free to comment or email me for ordering details: nonagon [aht] nonagon [daht] net.

LoveTech Audio

2009-03-06T00:22:00.000-08:00

As promised, here's the full recording of my recent set at LoveTech. The levels and mix relationships are kind of all over the place (that's life when you're setting levels based on an overdriven monitor speaker), but otherwise it's a pretty clean recording. Lots of elements from unreleased tracks in this one!

Nonagon @ LoveTech SF, 2.28.09

I recommend saving the file to your hard drive instead of playing it from within your browser, as the file is fairly large. Hope you like it!

The Power Of Tweet Compels You

2009-03-04T13:33:00.000-08:00

The Liberal Media

2009-03-04T01:53:00.000-08:00

This must seriously be my lucky day:

LEGENDmag interview

LoveTech photos by Socialush

Reporting Live

2009-03-02T22:05:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Chris B.

The LoveTech gig was great- good turnout, good sound system, and a truly amazing performance space. Komega and Moldover were gracious hosts and just generally cool guys, and the crowd was receptive and open minded to each of the performers. My friends from Socialush showed up and shot some photos and video, which I'll be sure to link to once they've gone live on their site. Overall it was a really fun night, and I felt pretty good about my performance. I actually captured an audio recording of the set, which I'll post here shortly; from my brief once-over it's a little rougher than I remember, but full disclosure is the name of the game here, so I'm not going to keep it locked away.

On the home front, I have some pretty exciting news: I've approved the mastered refs for Days Away, and should have the final master in-hand later this week! Case artwork for the physical CD packaging has been ordered, and should be here in a similar time frame. That just leaves printing and burning the CDs themselves (which my brother Eric is graciously handling), and it'll be finished! I'll write more on my plans for the album when it's in-hand, but this definitely qualifies as the home stretch, and not a day too soon as far as my sanity is concerned.

I'm going to be taking it a little easy for the next few days, but I'm really looking forward to a creative clean slate. There's a whole lot of material sitting on my hard drive just waiting to be finished (can you believe that the last completed track I posted here was in May of last year?), and it's going to be great to "reset" and focus on writing (music) again. For right now, though, it's tea, ice cream, the couch and me. Sometimes you've got to take a break, even from the things you love.

Fly(er) Away Home

2009-02-24T22:35:00.000-08:00

Nothing new, just a little flyer action for Saturday's show.

In other news, Days Away went to mastering yesterday. At long, long last. More soon.

LoveTech FTW!

2009-02-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

I guess it's true what they say about rain (and we've had plenty of it this month): I've been booked for the February installment of the new LoveTech monthly! Many thanks to Mr. KC Bradshaw of legendMAG for putting me in touch with the organizers.

http://www.lovetechsf.com

From the LoveTech site:

Saturday, February 28th
9pm - 2am

10 Komega (LoveTech)
11 Evan Morris (Lost Science/Hexawe/EMP)
12 Nonagon
01 !INCLUDE (NYC, WarperParty.com)

9pm Workshop:
Visionary Instruments presents: Six-Strings From The Future
Visuals by Sexy Robot and !INCLUDE
Roominant Installation by Komega
Time Machine by Rich DDT

@ The Ranch
1433 Van Dyke Ave
San Francisco, CA 94124

$7, All Ages, BYOB

If you're in the area two weeks from tomorrow, it sounds like an event not to be missed!

Follow Up

2009-02-07T23:56:00.000-08:00

The SF gig on Wednesday was a real treat! A whole gaggle of friends came out, and some even brought friends of their own! It all made me feel quite loved indeed. I was a bit nervous about my first local set, but as usual the negative emotions melted away once I got going and I had a positively splendid time. I think the set went about as well as I could have hoped, and since I yet again neglected to record anything, it will live on as such in my memory unimpeded by potential disagreement with reality.

As happy as I am that things went well, ultimately I think the best part of the night was getting to meet and hang out with a really friendly group of fellow electronic musicians. It was wonderful to find myself in the company of others who spend their time exploring the same territory I do, even if (and perhaps particularly because) our music and techniques differ so significantly from one another's. It's nice to feel part of a community, and I'm looking forward to getting more involved in this one.

Jump cut to present day: I'm writing this while auditioning the one-thousandth(ish) version of an old song in preparation for the perpetually-delayed album. I am committed to getting everything on my end finished by this weekend. It will be done. If nothing else, at least I've proven that the last five percent of a project can indeed take practicaly as long as the first ninety-five percent. Here's to the final push!

Days Away Teaser

2009-01-30T03:58:00.000-08:00

This And That

2009-01-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

It appears that I've been negligent again, letting things slip by with nary a mention on "the blog." In penance, a summary:

First: I've been down in LA for the past week doing a series of shows with my S.Cal. friends Vibrasol in collaboration with the lyrical pole-dance troupe Goddess 13. For two weekends (one just passed, one upcoming- six shows total) we're the main act at the trusty Unknown Theater, performing a sort of hybrid mash-up of Nonagon and Vibrasol songs to set the stage for Goddess 13's lovely pole antics. From a personal performance standpoint these shows are necessarily less dynamic and improvisatory due to the nature of choreography and band synchronization, but it's still been a great experience, and one that I'd recommend to any Los Angeles readers looking for something to do this Fri-Sun. Also they gave me a costume, which doesn't quite vibe with my whole "introverted, moody electronic musician" thing, but is a fun change of pace nonetheless. At least I get to keep my (yellow women's) pants on.

Second: I've been booked for my first show in San Francisco! I'll be playing at the one-year anniversary of the San Francisco Electronic Music Association (SFEMA, though the event now appears to be called Knitworks), a monthly gathering of (you guessed it) live electronic musicians. There's a flyer and everything:

My set will probably be around thirty minutes long, starting sometime around 11pm. I'm really excited to have something going on in the Bay at last! A little nervous about having only one day to prepare (I'm driving back from LA the Monday before the show), but I'll hopefully be able to leverage most of the stuff from one of the previous LA shows. If you happen to be in the area on Feb 4th, please come out! It's always nice to see familiar faces.

So that's the news for now. Album preparation continues, and I should soon be able to post some of the amazing artwork my friend Joe Baar has been working up. Some other interesting developments in the works too, but you'll have to tune in next time for more on those. In the mean time: happy new president, USA!

Hello 2009

2009-01-07T00:23:00.001-08:00

New Years Resolution: Spend less time obsessing over minute details of long-finished songs.

Current Success Rate: 0 for 6 days.

Limelight Radio Pt. Deux

2008-12-26T00:47:00.000-08:00

For what it's worth, I just got news that Nonagon made the "Best of 2008" show on Limelight Radio, the weekly segment I did a little interview for a few months back. The show (presumably also featuring other artists) airs on the actual radio in San Francisco this

Saturday, December 27th @ 3:30pm on KUSF 90.3FM

It'll also stream live (and appear archived) at the Socialush blog.

Nice way to end the year. Now if I could just finish re-finishing these tracks for the album...

Happy holidays!

Should've Made That Drive To Sacramento...

2008-12-17T21:47:00.000-08:00

A short video describing MomentFactory's incredible on-stage visual displays for Nine Inch Nail's most recent tour.

Trent, you have done it again. Thanks to Create Digital Motion for the head's up.

Performance Configuration, Pt. 2

2008-12-12T00:28:00.001-08:00

After many weeks of distraction, it's really about time that I finish up the description of the performance setup I used for the last couple of shows. And by "finish up" of course I mean "describe at all." The diagram I posted previously is fairly descriptive, actually, but here's the rundown in good old fashion verbiage.

MLR (AES edit) was used as the sound source for the entire performance. Briefly: MLR is a real-time sample manipulation application designed for the monome. Much has been written about it elsewhere. The AES edit adds a few features that I find really useful, in particular the ability to address six "groups" instead of the four available in the standard version- to make a long story short, this means that I can have six discrete audio parts playing back simultaneously instead of four. In the diagram, the numbers to the right of the monome grid show how I mapped these six groups to rows on the device. Note that group six gets two rows- this is an example of a choke group. Each of the bottom two rows can have a separate sample mapped to it, but only one of the two rows can play back at a time. If one of these rows is playing and I trigger the other (by pressing a button in the other row on the monome), the sample associated with the playing row will be stopped and the other row's sample will start. This opens up interesting possibilities for "gating" samples against one another, but is also a technical limitation of the six-group limit.

The top row (labeled "Control" in the diagram) is not associated with a sample; instead, it provides (you guessed it) controls for turning off individual groups and controlling other aspects of the program like pattern recorders. I won't go into it apart from saying that the top row lets me stop sample playback in any group by pressing the associated button (labeled 1-6 in the diagram), and provides access to four pattern recorders for "recording" button presses for a set period of time.

MLR lets the user save an unlimited number of "presets," which in this case refer to specific configurations for the seven rows on the monome. A preset stores which samples are mapped to which rows, the playback characteristics for each sample (e.g. forward, reverse, playback speed) and the global tempo at which those samples should be played back. By saving a number of presets, I can change swap all the samples mapped to the monome's buttons with a single key press.

So far this has mostly been MLR 101. In my personal use of the application, one of the most important decisions I made was to be as consistent as possible between presets. Thus I set things up so that the bottom three rows always controlled beats (two beats in a choke group and one independent), the fourth row from the bottom always controlled bass, and the first sample row (second from the top after the control row) was always a part that could stand on its own, e.g. as the first thing brought in to a new song. The other two rows were open. By making things consistent in this way, I was able to let muscle memory start to come into play when moving quickly between song elements. Speaking of- for these past two performances, almost every "song" has been limited to a single preset, meaning seven samples. This made setup fairly difficult in that I was forced to distill each track into a relatively small number of sounds, but provided a great platform for improvisation on themes once the presets were constructed. I also used a set tempo of 127bpm for every preset (lots of my songs fall into the 110 - 130bpm range as it turns out) to avoid having to futz with that.

OK, so that's MLR. The rest of the setup (and the diagram) relates to how the audio was affected once it was playing back. I used Soundflower to route each group (i.e. six stereo channels) into an individual audio track in Ableton Live. I then had the X-Session and O2 knobs and buttons assigned in a mixer-type configuration for each of these channels. Thus, for each group I was able to individually set volume, reverb-send and delay-send, as well as momentarily solo the group by pressing the corresponding button (in other words, mute all other groups until the button is released).

This left six knobs and two buttons "free," which were mapped to global effects parameters and triggers. In Live I clustered the six MLR channels into two busses- one for beats (groups 5 and 6) and one for "everything else." I then had individually controllable Beat Repeat effects on each of these channels (with a shared grid-size knob to determine the subdivision size for the effect) triggered by the two remaining buttons on the O2, as well as individual filter controls (low-pass on the beats buss and high-pass on the everything-else buss) and a volume gate with controllable threshold on the beats buss. From there the two busses were mixed down to the main stereo out, and off they went to the speakers.

Almost-finally (I know this is getting tedious!), I had a few "hard wired" in-line effects on the beats buss controlled by the actual piano keys on the O2. From middle-C on up (so the upper-half of the two-octave keyboard), each key would engage a specific effect, e.g. a fixed band-pass filter, bit crusher, distortion, flanger, reverb on full-wet (yes that's a technical term), etc. Middle-C was "dry," so pressing that would always bring the channel back to clean, un-effected sound. And last but not least, I had the lowest C# key mapped to Live's tap-tempo; since I didn't have any tempo-sync set up between MLR and Live, this was designed to let me get the Live effects close enough to a tempo match if I decided to change things up in MLR.

And that was it. Like all things technical this would all make a lot more sense if I could just show you- maybe I'll try to find time to make a little video or something. The important thing, though, is that with a little practice this all became quite natural, and I found myself able to "just play." And that's what I've been going for all along. I'm already starting to develop some new ideas to complement this setup, but I'm proud to have finally hit upon a configuration that let's me be creative (at least within the confines of a few samples) and spontaneous, but most of all lets me have fun instead of freaking out all the time. I guess if 2007 was the Year of Production for me, 2008 will have been the Year of Performance. Now onward to 2009: Year of Exposure.

And all that that implies.

Dec 5th, 2008 @ The Unknown Theater

2008-12-06T04:52:00.001-08:00

Image courtesy of E. Kirby

In The Meantime...

2008-12-02T22:27:00.001-08:00

I suspect that any "anticipation" built from that last post has long since faded- I will return to it at some point, I promise (myself). The unfortunate fact of the matter is that I've been consumed with work this past month. The project I've been managing / lead developing ends tomorrow, which means I've had plenty on my plate, none of it music related. Once again I've been stuck looking forward to a calmer, gentler future filled with buttons, knobs, and the requisite bleepbloops. This is how we pay the bills, I suppose.

Heading into that future, however, I've got another show scheduled for this Friday! Same deal as the others: Unknown Theater (Los Angeles, CA), $5 at the door, 10:30pm start time. If you're in the area please come by! If you're not: I might try to record this one for posterity, though I don't have much time to un-rust myself (sounded better than "lube myself") in the one day between project completion and show. Nevermind that though- it'll be good to jump in and keep pushing the "having fun" approach to performance. Last time I had Barack to celebrate; this time I'll have the freedom to not work weekends for a while! It truly is the season to be merry.

Performance Configuration, Pt. 1

2008-11-10T01:34:00.000-08:00

The show this past Friday was a big success! I'll go in-depth in a later post, but for now you can ponder this teaser-diagram of my performance setup. Explanation and elaboration coming soon.

We Did It

2008-11-05T01:07:00.000-08:00

Angst: So Hot Right Now

2008-11-02T21:46:00.000-08:00

When it comes to this performance shit, I've become a certifiable manic-depressive. And this, unfortunately, has not been one of my better days.

I want to know how I should be doing this. I'm tired of re-rendering, re-interpreting, re-arranging, and re-starting everything a hundred times. I'm tired of re-inventing the wheel. I'm tired of these songs. And more than anything I'm tired of feeling overwhelmed.

When things click I feel natural and connected and inspired. I want to feel that on stage, but there are so many options and so few guidelines. And so much preparation.

Note to self: some people have real problems.

P^3 Progress, AKA "P^4"

2008-10-28T01:03:00.000-07:00

If you're not a regular reader, "P^3" is the brilliant acronym for my "Perpetual Peformance Problem."

Work continues in preparation for next month's performance. I vaguely stated a post or two ago that I'd be presenting a "complete deconstruction" of my tracks, and while that particular choice of words is a little overblown, the basic concept has so far survived. This will be my fourth re-architecting of the electronic music performance concept; prior iterations were:

The Four Track (Plus): each song rendered out to four audio streams (rhythm, bass, pads, and melody) with key elements like fundamental beats and melodies on their own tracks for real-time manipulation. All tracks routed to global effects sends (mapped to fixed-function knobs), allowing me to manipulate any of the four independently of the others. Song-specific effects (e.g. the global saturation effect in the second half of "Forever And Never Again") routed to physical knobs that changed function per-song.
As a performer, this technique allowed me to present the full instrumentation for every song, but forced me to stick to the existing overall structure and didn't offer many opportunities for real improvisation outside of effects and the few "key elements" that got their own tracks. Overall a fairly low-stress (by design) configuration, but with limited expressive depth.
The Four Track (Monome Edition): a similar approach to the above, but with two to three of the global tracks mapped to rows on my then-recently-completed monome, and key remaining elements mapped to their own rows (and sometimes half- or even quarter-rows). Effects setup similar to the above, but with everything routed to two effects busses (one for beats and one for everything else) instead of using global sends.
As a performer, this technique opened up the possibilities for real-time improvisation (to an extent determined by the number of song elements mapped to the monome), but still relied on song-length "macro" tracks to collect most of the remaining instrumentation. A fundamental difference from the Four Track approach, however, was my ability to jump around within these macro tracks using the monome, though in practice this didn't end up being very useful, as the time-jumps at that scale were pretty large (basically eight cue points per song, evenly spaced) and consequently difficult to utilize in a musical way.
Performance-wise, things were complicated by my attempts to map as many song elements to the monome as possible, leading to a confusing and unpredictable layout that changed completely from one song to the next. I also had to remember to explicitly enter tempo changes between songs (using a tempo change row in Live's Session view), whereas in the above those changes could be automated in the Arrangement view. Oh, and it took absolutely forever to set up all the follow actions in Ableton Live. That was a pain. Overall, not a very successful configuration, though that was largely due to the complexity of my monome mappings coupled with zero practice before the performance.
MLR Deconstruction: For this upcoming show (Nov. 7th), I'm throwing the Four Track technique out the window; instead, I'll be using MLR (rewired into Ableton Live) exclusively, and largely (if not completely) reinterpreting the content and structure of my music in real-time. This sounds very fancy, but in many ways it's really a simplification of my prior attempts based on a fundamental paradigm shift: instead of struggling to recreate the recorded versions of my songs in a live context, I'm going to try to create something spontaneous using key features of those songs as building blocks. For this show, I'm going back to the original project files for each song and rendering fairly short loops of the elements that are most fundamental (or most interesting) to the spirit of that song. I'm then creating collections of these elements in MLR (using a strict mapping that I'll describe in a later post) that I can mix, mash, and chop live. And I'm rethinking my effects setup, which I'll describe once it's been finalized a little more.
More than anything, I'm trying to let myself have fun with performing these songs instead of stressing about getting them "right." MLR is an inspiring application due largely to its simplicity, and that's something I can really appreciate having worked my way through the more complex setups described above.

I know that most of this won't make a whole lot of sense to people not familiar with music production, but I'm hoping to update this post a little later with diagrams that'll help make things more clear. Or maybe just satiate the music nerds further. Either way, it'll be interesting to see how this new approach works out. I dream of a day when having a show doesn't mean dozens of hours spent reinventing the wheel...

Maybe someday.

Creepy Sounds To Hear Out The Window At 12:30am While Home Alone

2008-10-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

Episode one: music box / ice cream truck.

Seriously, WTF?!

It's Sure Been A While

2008-10-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

... since I've posted anything about new Nonagon tracks. The sad reality is that this dearth of details is due to a dismal (and damned near disgraceful) deficit of creative days. Most of my "me time" these past few weeks- nay, months!- has been devoted to getting everything ready for my little album "release," and working on the perpetual performance problem (holy crap, I just out-alliterated myself! That one's a keeper. I'll call it "The P^3."). These are good things to be busy with, but I feel like it's been just about forever since I finished a new song. Oh wait- it has been just about forever since I finished a new song! Really considering tightening my belt and going for a twenty-hour work week next year...

This is, of course, not to say that I've done nothing on the new music front since May. I actually have quite a few song stubs that I'm pretty enthusiastic about, I just haven't had the time to go full-bore into any of them yet (or at least I don't feel like I have). I will say this much: they are different from most of what you've heard out of me up to this point. One of the biggest reasons I've been so adamant about getting this album thing finished is that I'm dying to put a period on my work thus far and free myself psychologically to experiment with some new things. Nonagon '07, full stop. The feeling of being very "done" with my existing tracks has spilled into The P^3 too, to the point that my next performance (November 7th, Unknown Theater, Hollywood, CA- mark your calendar) will be a complete deconstruction of everything you've heard up until now. OK, I didn't really mean for that to sound quite so dramatic, but you'll see. Or hear. Or at least hear about. From me. After the fact, and probably a little before too. Such is the way "I roll."

Want to know how weird and different these mysterious new songs are? Wait for it... Waaaait for it...

Every one of them will have lyrics. *Gasp*

I don't know why, but in the little moments I steal away for new production these days, songs with words have always resulted. Not that I know what all the words will be yet- that's the hard part. But I think we're in for some refreshing changes 'round these parts in the next few weeks, and I'm not just talking about November 4th. You'll see. With some things you never can tell.

A Little Off Topic, But...

2008-10-02T15:02:00.000-07:00

... wouldn't you just love to see CNN.com's repository of emotional stock trader photos? I swear they get everyone together after the gavel and run scenarios for a photographer: "market's up- yay!" "biggest drop in history- nooo!" "the future's uncertain- hmmm..."

Come to think of it, add presidential candidate facial expressions to that list. It's like a bad game of charades.

Macbook Pro Hard Drive Replacement Tips

2008-09-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I upgraded the hard drive in my Macbook Pro (aka my computer) from the stock 160GB 5400rpm Fujitsu to a shiny new 320GB 7200rpm WD Scorpio Black. Besides doubling my storage capacity (I can actually have MP3s on my laptop again!), the increased speed and responsiveness of my "computing experience" makes this feel like a whole new machine. I'd highly recommend the upgrade for people working with apps that generate lots of data and rely on high throughput, e.g. recording musicians. Unfortunately, the actual replacement process was a bit of a pain, and though there are a number of thorough tutorials available online, I'd like to add a few notes on my experience for others who run into the same issues I did. My apologies to non-techies- there'll be more self-centered reportage coming soon, I promise.

If you've read through an existing tutorial (like the one from iFixit.com linked above), then you already know pretty much everything there is to know about carrying out this replacement. The two steps I'd like to elaborate on are the removal and replacement of the top case i.e. the piece of aluminum with the keyboard, trackpad, speakers, etc.

Once you've removed all the screws from your MBP case, pretty much every guide I looked at (and I looked at a few) tells you to lift the case off starting from the edge closest to the LCD and moving forward. So far so good. Then they tend to say something like "you might need to finesse the front edge of the case to get it to come loose from the chassis." Slow down. At least in my case, you've got to do a lot more than "finesse" the case. I spent a good half-hour gingerly rocking, prodding and prying the top case trying to get the damn thing to come loose, but to no avail. Considering the cost of these laptops and the fact that this sort of replacement isn't covered under warranty, I think it's pretty understandable to not want to take a crowbar to the thing. As it turns out, this is one of those situations where you've got to use a lot more force than you think you do.

There are five plastic clips that hold the front of the MPB top case to the chassis, and the only way to get them to detach is to pry the top case up at close to a forty-five degree angle. At least to me this felt like enough to snap the case in half, but lo-and-behold, once I actually committed and started working the top case up and down farther than I dared before, the clips let go one by one. A note on this: that loud CRACKing sound is normal. That's just the sound the clips make when they pop out of their sockets. Talk about nerve-racking! It's OK though, multiple sources (citation needed) have corroborated that this is normal and to be expected. It's just not fun. Here's the video I found that convinced me that "gentle" was not the word of the day in this case.

OK, skipping ahead: you've got the top case off, you've pried up a couple of sticky ribbon cables, replaced the hard drive, and put everything back. Time to replace the top case. Well, wouldn't you know it: the clips strike again! It turns out that you're once again going to have to use way more force than you'd expect in order to get the clips to re-seat in the chassis. Line everything up, making sure no screw tabs are out of alignment, and then PUSH DOWN HARD on the top case above each clip. Since four of the clips happen to be above the optical drive slot, it's helpful to put something non-compressible into the slot while you're working over it to avoid bending the aluminum; I used a piece of paper folded a few times and gently inserted about a quarter-inch into the drive. You'll know you've re-seated a clip when it makes another cracking noise. Do this for all five clips along the front of the case, and you're free to screw everything back together! Now you too will understand why Apple calls the MBP "non user serviceable."

I hope this ends up being helpful to someone. Oh, and I guess I should protected myself from litigation and say that I'm not responsible if you break anything following these instructions. So don't sue me. Please.

Until next time!

New Remix Project

2008-09-23T00:12:00.000-07:00

If you don't agree that this (already great) song is ripe for a gritty step-core workover I'll eat my hat:

In related news, the Nonagon feature on Socialush has gone live! Apparently I only post regularly when I can make narcissistic references to my accomplishments.

Or when I can embed pleasant videos of pleasant songs.

I guess half good ain't bad!

A.K.A. JB A.K.A. Nonagon

2008-09-21T20:06:00.000-07:00

Well, it aired! I can now definitively say that hearing my own (muffled) voice on the radio makes me self-conscious. This being the weekend of the Treasure Island Music Festival, though, it's unlikely that anyone was actually listening- lucky me =).

The Socialush blog has yet to be updated (as of Sunday 9/21), but for anyone with twenty-eight minutes to kill, I've got you covered in their stead:

Nonagon on Limelight Radio, 9/20/08

I actually feel pretty good about the show- they edited down my excessively wordy responses, and actually managed to fit in clips from five songs. I could come up with some whiny technical complaints, but what's the point? I'm thrilled and honored to have made it even this far. Next stop: TRL.

JB On The Radio

2008-09-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

Exciting news! Nonagon's getting a thirty-minute feature on Limelight Radio this Saturday! If you happen to be in the Bay Area you can tune in on the 'ole transistor box:

KUSF 90.3 FM, 3:30pm - 4:00pm

... otherwise you can listen in on the new transistor box (your computer, get it?) at the archives afterward. The piece will include a brief interview we recorded over the phone this evening, in which I will probably come off as a total douchebag. Or maybe not. But probably.

Check it if you can!

Days Away

2008-09-16T16:31:00.000-07:00

The idea had been growing in my brain for some time: TRUE force. All the king's men cannot put it back together again.

Alright, yeah, that's maybe a little dramatic. But the idea part is right on. For a while now I've been toying with actually putting together an album from my finished work thus far... unfortunately I've spent an equal amount of time worrying about things like "cohesion" and "singularity of vision." I'm acutely aware that my output this past year-and-a-half (or so) has been all over the map stylistically, and that's made me worry that I haven't developed my sound enough, that my artistic vision is still too out of focus (great metaphor, me!). I thought that I'd figured out "my thing" with tracks like "No Time For A Change" and "Forever And Never Again," but after a long overdue return to songwriting in earnest, I find myself going in completely different creative directions all over again. This has forced me to conclude that, at least at this point in my musical development, I need to embrace a broader style as a positive attribute and not try to force myself into a single conceptual box.

Which brings us to The Album. In a lazy moment I did a little craigslist browsing to see what audio mastering costs these days (I say as if I knew what audio mastering cost "before"), and lo and behold- a guy offering free mastering for liner note credit! Assuming this was much too good to be true I shot the guy an email, to which he responded quite positively: he liked what I've put together and was willing to master an album's worth for free. Now, I'm well aware that generally speaking you get what you pay for, but I can't come up with what scam this could possibly be a part of. Is they guy going to take my music and sell it to a label? Doubtful he'd have more luck than I have =). At very worst the mastering job could be shit, but that won't leave me any worse off than I am now. And the possibility of finally doing this has gotten me off my ass about putting together a real album tracklist. Here it is:

Undelayed By Reflection
Forever And Never Again
Process of Illumination
Mr. Sniggles' House
From A Platform Above
South Without A Candle
It's Come To This
Your Eyes Sparkle When You Cry
Fixed Action Pattern
The Distant Glow
No Time For A Change, Pt. 1

Thoughts?

The one thing I'm still deciding on is whether to include the full version of "Process of Illumination" or the shortened (to a mere seven minutes!) reedit I've been using for performance. Guess I'll A/B the two and see which I like best. In any case, I'm now undertaking the process of going through each of these tracks and taking care of any last-second tweaks to the mix before sending them off for mastering. I get the feeling that, hard as it'll be to call these songs really, truly finished, it's going to be a cathartic experience to finally do something meaningful with this music I've poured so much of my self into.

Post Mortem

2008-09-08T03:10:00.000-07:00

I really want that title to be a blogging pun, but unfortunately I think it's too accurate to qualify.

Another sleepless night, another post. "They" say you shouldn't work in bed if you can't sleep, but "they" didn't seem to consider that just about every place that's not bed is colder and requires a great deal more clothing. Once the in-apartment jacuzzi arrives I'll likely be singing a different tune, but for now bed it is.

So the show on Saturday went alright. I decided to go way out on a limb and control the whole thing with the monome. The initial plan was to play the first couple of tracks freeform with MLR, then crank out the rest of the set in Live using MonoGrid (can't find a link right now, sorry), but due to last minute technical cold feet (Max/MSP and MiniAudicle wouldn't play nice in my dry run 10 minutes before heading to the venue) I nixed the MLR component at the last minute in favor of an all-Live set (pun not intended, for once). I'd spent pretty much every evening of the week leading up to the show preparing my big Live set for use with the monome: deciding which elements of each track were important enough to warrant dedicated buttons, setting up clips and follow actions, defining about 100k MIDI mappings (alright not quite that many) configuring effects, etc, etc. The end result of all this work was a set of seven tracks each haphazardly and inconsitently mapped to a monome "page." It turns out that when your songs average 30-50 tracks each in their "full" versions, it's a bit of work to cram it all into four-to-eight button groups on an 8x7 grid (eighth row dedicated to selecting pages for those keeping score).

In order to compensate for absolutely zero practice with my new configuration, I scribbled up a little map of each song indicating which sonic elements were mapped to which buttons. Unfortunately, come actual performance time (queue the atmospheric lighting) my map became completely invisible, and so I just had to wing it. This coupled with a whole new (and equally bizarre) glitch in which my "pads" track kept randomly starting and stopping led to a fairly stressful but ultimately not terrible (I hope) performance. It was a great learning experience though- a couple of things I'll certainly make time for in the next go around are:

Forcing mappings to be consistent between songs. It's hard when the instrumentation of each track is so different, but it's becoming more and more clear to me that in order to become proficient at this new way of performing I really need to be able to know that particular locations on the grid correspond with particular song components (e.g. beats, etc) without having to refer to a piece of paper.
Practice. I simply didn't have time for it this show, but with greater control comes greater responsibility, and practice is going to be essential from this point forward. Who would have a thought: an electronic musician practicing! I think we're on to something.

Michael was kind enough to bring his camera (though there weren't any good places to put it and it was hot in there and I was unattractively sweating like a dog) but there should at least be a solid audio recording of the set that I may or may not post depending on how bad it ends up being =). As always, though, it was a good experience, and I think I'm growing with each show, though my ambitiousness might be outstripping my experience at this point. You know, back when live performance was but an abstract possibility I figured I'd come out of the gates fully-formed and guns blazing, ready to amaze the world with my prowess and stunning professionalism; the reality has been much more humbling. But it's a good fight, and I'm slowly inching towards more compelling ideas and greater skill- it just might be a while.

Until then...

A Collected Man (Redux)

2008-08-24T01:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a sneak-peak at one of the many monome-centric performance setups I've been experimenting with recently. There's still a lot to learn, but I'm excited about the possibilities of this new toy.

Nonagon - A Collected Man (Monome Improv) from Nonagon on Vimeo.

Full Disclosure

2008-08-10T13:25:00.001-07:00

... has got to be a big part of the solution to a compelling electronic music performance. This has been hashed and re-hashed a thousand times, but the back of a laptop screen does not give the audience sufficient insight into what's happening onstage, no matter how many glowing pomaceous fruits it's adorned with. A willingness to be open and honest about one's performance is just one of the reasons I'm so impressed by the setup DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist had on their most recent tour:

True, they're laptop-free, but I think the idea would still translate pretty well into the digital domain. Next step: more physical interfaces.

The Meaning Of Life

2008-08-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Nonagonome in all it's (slightly unfinished) glory! Since this video I've actually mounted all the hardware inside the enclosure and given it an amateurish stain and finish. Glorious!

Monome (v0.9) Life Test from John Brian Kirby on Vimeo.

On The Road

2008-08-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

Trying something a little new: train weogging. Since last we spoke (around the time I reported my car getting bullied) I've bought a bicycle, and have been biking and taking Caltrain to work. I'm pleased to say that it's been an absolute revelation! The bike ride on either end is relatively quick (~10mins) and not at all unpleasant (save the vengeful wind that blows up now and then on my way home in the evening), and not having to worry about controlling a vehicle for the lion's share of the distance leaves me with all kinds of time to myself. For the few weeks that I've been operating under this new system I've spent most of my train time doing work-work, which is nice as I can get about 45 mins done on my commute (a little over 20 mins each way) meaning a little less time at the office. Today, though, I decided that a post was long overdue, so here we are. I'm approaching South San Francisco at the moment, if that helps set the scene. And... begin.

Recent musical developments: I got a couple of new toys this week, a Novation Remote SL 37 and a home-built monome. Got a really good deal on eBay on the former, and finally got all the components collected, sorted, soldered and assembled on the latter. I haven't had a whole lot of time to work with either, but I'm excited for the possibilities these will offer to the performance concept. The SL largely (and I mean largely, the thing is pretty huge compared to my little O2) offers a bunch more continuous controllers (knobs, sliders, pads, etc) which is the primary reason I went with it, though the added octave over the piddly 25-keys I was working with before is a welcome addition. Shame it doesn't fit on my desk at the moment.

The monome is a wholy different beast, and one that I have a different sort of connection to given the months that I've been planning, sitting on components, re-learning to solder, etc. in preparation for actually building it. I ultimately went with the official monome keypads, but replaced the logic components with an Arduino and a custom shield (basically a PCB that piggybacks on the Arduino board and holds the LED driver, shift registers, and other little components like resistors and capacitors) and put the whole thing into a poplar box I built over the weekend. (You should have seen me with those power tools- it was like a Budweiser ad, but back when they were still Amurican Maide.) I still need to actually secure the logic boards inside the enclosure (where there's a generous 0.1mm of wiggle room, if that), but it's already usable and a lot of fun to play with. Oh, and the LEDs are blue.

As far as actual composition, I've started a few new projects in the months since I've posted anything new, and I think they're coming along well. I'm trying some new angles with this upcoming material- trying to focus on structure before detail and keeping things clean and relatively simple. It's an interesting experiment and I'm curious to know how it'll end up. I've also been trading tracks with Vibrasol, and apparently they had a little recording session over one of my skeleton songs that went well, so I'm excited to find out what they came up with.

And now, magically, it’s the train ride home after a thoroughly unproductive day at work. Just could not focus at all today… I guess it happens to everyone. I’m not in much of a mood to write anymore, and this post is already pretty hefty, so I’ll cut myself off here.

Ciao.

Taking The Good With The Bad

2008-07-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

Show #2 in LA went pretty well. Technological demons had my number that night, unfortunately, and all of my MIDI manipulations suffered from a half-second delay to audio. Reason unknown. "Rocking the laptop" is a hell of a lot harder when you have to anticipate what's coming up in seconds instead of beats, and so rock I pretty much did not. I at least managed to keep things going, and people didn't seem to know the difference in the end, though I don't know whether to feel relieved or perturbed by that. Either way, things went along and Vibrasol tore down the house with their set. AND it sounds like I'll be back in September for the next one! Some bigger ideas brewing for that one...

In other, shittier news, my beloved Prius was hit-and-run'd by someone (still anonymous due to slow police reporting but we have your license plate number, bitch!) on June 26th, and I only just today learned that it'll be repairable, albeit at a cost of almost $12k to my insurance company. Bad luck, but I'm tired of thinking about it so I'll leave it at that.

Thankfully I'm able to end this post with something a little more upbeat:

http://legendmag.net/#id=issue21&num=9

Check the "We Heard" column, third from the left... big things indeed.

Over and out.

Quiet Again...

2008-06-26T00:52:00.000-07:00

My apologies for the silence 'round these parts lately. Somehow all of my time seems to have disappeared. I'd like to write more, but it's already late and I've got to get SOME sleep one of these nights. It's generally been a good busy, though, so no need to worry =).

I will mention that I've got another show coming up, once again opening for (and then playing with) Vibrasol down in LA. Mark your calendars: July 5th, 10pm, The Unknown Theatre in Hollywood. Michael and I are going to try to get a higher fidelity capture of the performance this time around (with a direct audio feed!), so stay tuned if you can't make it to the show.

More as soon as I can manage!

June 7th, 2008

2008-06-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

Unknown Theatre, Hollywood, CA.

It's Alive (Show)!

2008-06-04T01:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks Mr. Mau Mau Starter for blowing my super-secret cover up in comments on the last post- now I'm forced to announce that I have a live show coming up this Saturday. At least it's only a few days away, which is such short notice that anyone reading this will already have plans and be entirely unable to make it to the Unknown Theatre in Hollywood, located at 1110 Seward St.

C'est la vie. (Thanks Eric)

Seriously though, this is big news! I'm opening for the band Vibrasol, who are planning quite an extravaganza of light, sound, and free booze. I'm on from as soon as I can set up once the doors open (seriously) until Vibrasol is ready to go, which, considering they have eleven people to account for, should be at least forty-five minutes. And as if that wasn't enough, they've asked me to stay on stage for their set to contribute some live weirdo electronics to their tracks. I don't know about you, but that seems like some serious hospitality to me.

Since these plans were only solidified a week and a half ago, this development has obviously forced the question of how I'm going to perform my stuff. I've been spending pretty much every free minute (that I'm not at "real" work) working on solving this. After a number of quashed attempts and a healthy dose of futile exercises, I finally hit on a methodology that should at least carry me through this show. In brief, I'm rendering each of the tracks I'll be playing down to between four and six audio files, not counting the FX return (which is rendered to another file), and one or two instruments that I'm keeping around as Audio Units. In general, the files map to the beats, bass, pads, and melodic elements in the track, and the AUs (obviously) map to the instruments they represent.

Though I've been building each "performance" track in it's own separate file, I'm ultimately going to arrange everything into a single huge project in Live that will represent my show from beginning to end. Now, if this was all I was going to do I might as well buy a Lay-Z-Boy and call myself the Chemical Brothers, 'cause all I'd be doing is hitting play and having a beer. Instead, I've given myself a few different options to make each song as "live" as possible: first, I can choose to actually play any instruments I have in AU form live on keyboard. This scares the hell out of me as I'm not a keyboard player, but hopefully I'll manage. Second, I have a series of effects hardwired to the four master busses of the project (the beats, bass, pads and melodies I mentioned earlier) which will allow me to effect each buss separately. I'm controlling those with a 16-knob midi controller (8 for beats, 4 for pads, 4 for melody) which is dedicated to this function, so hopefully muscle memory will be my friend here. Finally (and most fun...ly), I've cut out snippets of each track (usually the beats) and arranged them in Live's Clip View, which will allow me to cut-up beats in real time. The really cool thing about this is that as soon as I start pushing buttons, my changes immediately override the recorded track I'm editing thanks to the way Live is set up. I can slice and dice all day long, and as soon as I'm done (or need to get ready to play a different part), I can hit the midi button I have assigned to the "back to arrangement" button, and immediately be back to the recorded track.

How all of this is going to work in real life, under pressure, is a big unknown. Good or bad, I'll write a little summary for posterity once the show's over. Really though, I'm just excited to have the opportunity to attempt something a little different than the traditional DJ set or knob-twiddle-email-check that I see a lot of in live electronic music performance. Wish me luck (and come out this Saturday night if you can)!

Happy Memorial Day

2008-05-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

... here's a little present to help you celebrate:

No Time For A Change, Pt. 1

I feel good about the way this one turned out, but as you might have guessed the whole story's not being told today: it's a two-parter, and for now you only get the first half. It's a bit of a cliff-hanger, but rest assured that the thrilling conclusion is forthcoming. It's like old-time radio up in this!

In penance for the aural blue-balling, behold the awesome limited-edition print Jess made me for my birthday, post front and center- there are a total of twenty photo-etched, individually printed copies of that image in my possession now, and you'd better believe I have some exciting ideas about what to do with them. I guess that makes for two cliff-hangers... stay tuned!

Improvisatory Live Electronic Performance Solved!

2008-05-05T17:16:00.000-07:00

...at least if you're Tehn. Here he is performing live on an early prototype of the monome:

I've become obsessed with this controller (dare I say instrument?) recently, and I think this video is a perfect example of why. Even though I've known about it for more than a year and a half, the brilliance didn't really hit me until I started thinking hard about live performance. It obviously won't work for everything, but the simplicity and power of this simple button grid is truly astounding. Now if only you could still buy one =). I'm waiting for the kit to become available again, at which point I'm planning on building my own. Stay tuned.

The Big Wheel Keeps On Turning

2008-04-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

Despite the lack of recent exposition on the blog, things actually are happening with Nonagon out there in the real world! (And FYI, no: I haven't turned into that guy that refers to himself in the third person by the name of his band. I mean that things have been happening for me musically. Non-music stuff has also been happening to me in the real world, but I'll save that for the tabloids).

I've been spending a portion of my music time recently going through old tracks and starting to prep them for live performance. Figuring out how to do this was something that was long overdue for me, so I'm glad to have finally bitten the bullet and gotten started. So far I've discovered that, as far as creating a compelling live performance, I'd be much more effective if there were two or more of me. Perhaps this is one of the reasons people form "bands." While I might be able to handle all of the instrumentation and production alone thanks to my friend the computer, when it comes to interpreting what I've created in a live context, things get a lot more complicated. For this first foray, I've decided to just do what I can: for each song, I'm choosing a few melodic parts that I think could be played live on keyboards, keeping them around as AU instruments with midi data, and then rendering the rest to a limited number of audio tracks (e.g. beats, bass, pads, etc) that I slice up into sections and arrange in Live's Session View. I'm also experimenting with setting aside a few chopped drum breaks for live rhythmic improvisation (monome, I yearn for you!). The idea is that I can choose at any moment to control either the flow and structure of the song on a macro level by manipulating the audio and midi clips, or I can control a single instrument by taking over from the pre-recorded midi clips and literally playing it live.

This all sounds great in theory, but how well it's going to work in practice- particularly under performance pressure- has yet to be seen. I'm trying to make the setup as foolproof as I can, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there are a lot of lessons out there that are going to have to be learned the hard way. Then again, if things go to shit I can always say I was just playing jazz! (No offense to jazz.)

On the familiar composition front, I'm working on a kind of unique idea that I think I'll be ready to reveal soon. Sorry for the vagueness- you'll see what I'm talking about before too long.

That's all I have the energy to write for now, but big things are looming on the horizon! Actually they're probably small things, but when it's as flat as it is here in Nonagonia, 'lil things sometimes look real big. Until then...

A New Approach?

2008-04-08T00:19:00.001-07:00

Pretty much since the beginning of this blog I've stuck to a single-minded approach to releasing new music: new songs go up the moment they're finished, in the order they're finished. Though I don't usually have much to say about tracks when I post them, the whole process is always immensely gratifying for me; there's something really satisfying about performing the final render, encoding MP3s at a few different bitrates (nothing but the second-best for my readers!*), and uploading a new track to the various servers and websites that Nonagon calls home. It's a fun and easy end to what's usually a relatively long and arduous creative process, and I've come to really cherish it.

Recently though, I've gotten to thinking that what I'm used to doing might not be what I should be doing. The biggest problem with the track-at-a-time approach is that it frames each new song as a distinct entity, both in my mind and (presumably) in the minds of anyone who happens across it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in the last few weeks especially I've become more interested in establishing cohesive themes that tie the material I produce into something bigger than the individual songs that comprise it. If I seriously want to start tying things together, I might have to stop "releasing" songs to the world in individual units and start holding out for bigger things.

This is a really tough idea for me, and (for reasons stated above) certainly not something I'm looking forward to doing. For now I'll probably continue on the old path of posting a song at a time here, if for no other reason than to maintain morale. Sooner or later though, I might work up the courage to change my habits and secret new tracks away until the work as a whole is complete. I guess as always we'll see. And as always I'm interested in hearing thoughts any of you might have on the matter. Fire away! Or hold your tongues.

[* The clips I post here are encoded at lame -V4 quality, where -V0 is best and -V9 is worst. If this bugs you, drop me a line and I'll be happy to provide you with any encoding you desire! Even beautiful, raw WAVs. Mmmmm... WAVs.]