John Cage on The Meaning of Sound

"I love sounds for what they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are."

Sound Design: "Sensory Overload"

I stumbled across this animated short from the "Interacting with Autism" project through Robert Krulwich's blog on the NPR website. In it, we follow a boy on his journey through a nondescript urban landscape made unexpectedly nightmarish by his (and thus our) inability to filter and prioritize the sounds around him.

Sensory Overload (Interacting with Autism Project) from Miguel Jiron on Vimeo.

While I find the visual style compelling, the brilliance (and in fact the focus) of this work is the soundtrack. There is no music- just pure diegetic audio that's been mixed, mashed, and manipulated to overwhelm the listener in a way that might approximate the experience of a person living with autism. Sound designer Katie Gately did an amazing job sculpting a whirlwind of sonic energy from the sounds that we city dwellers are surrounded by, and the success of her effort really sets this apart from the pack.

Herbie Hancock & Quincy Jones on the Fairlight CMI

"These instruments were designed for people to use… for PEOPLE to use. It's just a tool, another tool, the way an axe can be a tool to cut wood to build a house, or it can be a tool to slaughter your neighbor."

The Nutcracker Unbound - Spanish Dance

Late last year I was approach by my friend Tommy Evan Lee -- a Los Angeles-based choreographer -- about writing the score for a reinterpretation of Tchaikovsky's "Spanish Dance." The piece was to be performed as part of the LA Unbound dance company's December production "The Nutcracker Unbound," a retelling of the famous ballet using all new music and choreography. Having collaborated with Tommy before (my 2009 track "Forever and Never Again" was the musical backdrop for one of his works a couple of years ago) I was excited to take part.

The foundational constraints for my reinterpretation were the meter, tempo, and cues of Tommy's choreography. The form and length of the lead-in and lead-out sections were also specifically requested, but otherwise I was given only two requirements for the final product:

1. The piece had to include some recognizable elements of the original score.
2. The dynamics of the music needed to reinforce but not overwhelm the sounds of the dancers' fans, a central feature of the choreography.

My primary challenge as composer was to create a piece that was recognizably related to (and in fact contained some sound from) the original 3/4 score, but in the 4/4 time signature of the new choreography. I chose to use a filtered orchestral sample from the original version as a transitional "bridge" between sections, which allowed for some nice syncopation while evoking Tchaikovsky's work; you can hear this element around 0:56 in my version:



I also wanted to include some recognizable instrumentation from the original version to further tie the two together in listeners' minds. I introduced a castanet rhythm in the second half (starting at 1:34) which nicely evokes the original piece, and used string and woodwind lines to balance out the strictly-electronic elements. Of course, I couldn't help but throw in a few very low 808-style bass notes to accent the chord changes and keep things from getting too organic =).

Overall I'm quite pleased with the outcome of this project. I think the music satisfied all of Tommy's requirements while still being pretty nice to listen to, too. Looking forward to the next one!

Laurie Spiegel on Electronic Music

Though this previously unreleased (and sadly incomplete) footage from a 1985 interview with electronic music pioneer and secret crush Laurie Spiegel only lasts about twelve minutes, it took me at least three times that long to finish it. This wasn't due to any sense of boredom or confusion, but rather that her statements felt so perpetually "right on" that I kept pausing and rewinding the video in an effort to write them down. I'd hoped that a pithy quote from the interview would motivate a few readers enough to make it through the first couple of minutes of non-Laurie footage and into the really good stuff, but I suppose this meta-anecdote will have to do.

Most interesting to me is just how relevant her comments on the role of computers in the music making process are to my experiences more than twenty-five years later. While I feel that the "time saving" aspect of computer-based composition vs. traditional pen and staff paper has had perhaps less expected repercussions (e.g. for a computer, playing the same musical phrase one hundred times is as easy as playing it one time. Thus: house music), her thoughts on the value of creative discovery through interaction with an instrument (electronic or otherwise) vs. using that instrument to realize an already-formed idea perfectly describes a significant component of my compositional process. Not to mention her thoughts on how the new sonic possibilities made available by electronic instruments broaden the scope of what constitutes "music," or the performance possibilities that emerge when one is freed from strict interactions with limbs and notes, or... actually, just watch the interview.

Here's a clip of the performance she mentions in the interview:

Finally, it might interest you to note that the YouTube user that posted these interview videos is... Laurie Spiegel herself.

John Cleese on Creativity

UPDATE 6/29/12: CoCreate just posted a writeup on a more recent Cleese creativity lecture. It's a nice overview and update to the one presented above, but the video is still well worth watching. Thanks to Deepa for the link!

Finger Drumming Heroes

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

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:



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.

Auto-Interviews: New and Old

Sneak Peak

New collaborative project in the works...

Angie and Adam at the console.

Nonagon & CSTNG-SHDWS @ LoveTech SF

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)

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.

Further Adventures With Max For Live

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)

Aspirations

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.

'Lil LoveTech Vid

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!

Should've Made That Drive To Sacramento...

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.

New Remix Project

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 Collected Man (Redux)

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

... 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

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.