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Chill Mix
Just a little mix I threw together for myself when studying - a nice selection of chill tracks covering a 15 year timespan.
Tracklist:
Earball - Isala
Aphex Twin - Pulsewidth
Silicone Soul - The Hikikomori
Underworld - River of Bass
Kayot - Clear Sky (Manoo and Francois A mix)
Radio Slave - K-Maze
Dark Globe - Atoms (Henrik Schwarz Dub)
Underworld - Mmmm Skyscraper I love You
Pitch Black - South of the Line
Aphex Twin - We Are the Music Makers
Underworld - Tongue
Dobenbeck - Please Don’t Go (Shawn Mitiska remix)
Enjoy!
September 26th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | No Comments »
My life is over!
That’s it, all of my dreams and aspirations have already been accomplished by another, and there’s no point in going there if you’re not the first:
Watch the videos, this is the greatest thing ever made! Everything I’ve always wanted in a box: blinky lights, generative music, motion sensors, and fog!
June 22nd, 2008
Posted by Paul in DIY, Music and Movies | No Comments »
Soniball
Still crazy busy here - have been for a while (hence the lack of posts). This week should finally mark the end however. I just wanted to throw up a quick link to a short video of my final project for Golan Levin’s Audio-Visual Systems class:
I plan to get an online version up sometime in the near future. The piece was an overwhelming success - I heard a lot of really positive comments and a number of people seemed downright addicted. I couldn’t have been happier. It was also really interesting to see how people used the piece (which was a sort of generative musical game) - a number of folk did things I hadn’t even realized you could do. It made me understand why those Europeans are so in to so-called “critical design” - it’s a lot of fun to make something cool and then watch what people do with it.
May 7th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Processing, CMU, Music and Movies | 2 Comments »
Progressive Podcast
I know that when I did my first DJ mix podcast several months ago I said some nonsense about trying to put them out semi-weekly. Well that was clearly quite wrong (life of a grad student), and this time I’m not making any promises about when the next one might come. I have, however, completed a new one for your listening pleasure. For some reason I’ve been listening to a lot of progressive house and trance lately, so that’s what this is. I think it rather pretty. Enjoy!
February DJ Mix (Edit: link removed)
And the tracklist:
Colourbox - Pump Up The Volume
Duplex - Fictional Frequency version
Ananda Project - Where The Music Takes You (Pasta Boys Main)
Gabriel & Dresden - Lament
Risque - Do You Believe in Heaven (Infinite Beat Remix)
Mike Mikhjian & Mike Saint Jules - Bay Breeze
Ray Roc - Sun in My Face (Speakerbox Club Remix)
Adam Freeland - Silverlake Pills (Original)
Adam Freeland - Silverlake Pills (Anil Chawla & Dale Anderson Mix)
KiNK & Neville Watson - Inside Out
Artificial Funk - Never Alone (Seamus Haji & Emanuel Mix)
Solar Fields - Spectral Nation
Hot Chip - My Piano (DJ Kicks)
February 23rd, 2008
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | No Comments »
Visualizing Sound and Sonifying Image
I’ve been meaning to post a couple of small projects I did for Golan Levin’s Audio-Visual Systems course. And hey! I’m finally getting around to it.
In this first assignment, we were asked to create a visualization of a short electronic piece by Scott Gibbons. I tried quite a few different things (none of which worked out) before settling on this format for my image. In this image, the skyline you see is actually a very accurate representation of the piece’s spectral make-up. The lines below the photograph represent my reaction to the timbre (in white) and panning (in blue).
Here’s the original spectrum:
And here’s my image:
For another assignment, we were asked to compose something interpreting a fragment of the visual score to Four Seasons by Robert Moran (1963).
To interpret the score, I decided to apply rules to the image, and then produce music that followed those rules. Broadly, I interpreted left to right as time, and top to bottom as panning from left (top) to right (bottom). I then set rules for each type of shape and visual aspect. Circles are percussion, lines show evolution (of rhythm or tones), solid shapes are full sounds, outlines are more hollow sounds. Triangles were violins and pads, rectangles represented bass and lead sounds, etc. Finally, I took my rules and scripted out what each shape in the score should sound like before sitting down and synthesizing/sampling my sounds and composing them to fit the score. I worked on this piece for days, and was really disappointed when we didn’t listen to it in class. So if you listen to it here, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think. Though it’s not the style of music that I usually make, it was a rewarding experience for me to work on something so ‘composed.’
Here is the score:
and here is my composition: Rhythm is Destroyed
February 13th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Visualizations, CMU, Music and Movies | No Comments »
News from Apple
There was an interesting article posted to Apple’s front page today - basically an interview with Paul Van Dyk focused on his use of MacBooks and Logic in live performance. Worth checking out if you’re interested in any of those things (personally I’ve been a fan of Van Dyk since I first picked up electronic music in the late 90’s).
In other cool Apple news, you can now rent movies from iTunes! $4 gets you a new release, $3 for old titles. You pay up, the movie downloads in its entirety, and then you get a month to watch it (but after you start, you have to finish watching it within 24 hours). I’ll be interested to try this out - I’ve gotten a little tired of NetFlix’s online catalog only containing indy films and B-movies. That’s convenience! Now if only it were cheaper…
And a couple random trends I’ve noticed to the point where I shall now make a prediction:
- 80’s style synth-pop is coming back and will start to hit the mainstream in the next couple of years. This is sad because, as a general rule, I find this style of music extremely boring.
- Leggings as pants are back. This is horrible, but true. Tights under a skirt have been popular for a couple years now, but now the skirts are disappearing, leaving just unattractive leggings (often, but not always, capris). Let’s hope this doesn’t last.
January 19th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CoolHunting, Music and Movies | No Comments »
Gondry Videos
In Golan Levin’s Audio Visual Systems course yesterday I was introduced to the music videos of Michael Gondry, a well-known music video director. Specifically, we watched two classics: Chemical Brothers’ Star Guitar and Daft Punk’s Around The World. I was blown away! The detail with which each of these visualizes the music is stunning. If you haven’t seen these before check them out NOW!
Around The World Vid on MTV.com (they show an ad but the quality is better than YouTube).
January 17th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | No Comments »
Start Again
The first two days of classes are done and things are looking good! Our studio project this semester will be a joint project for Motorola and Microsoft, and though we haven’t yet received the actual project brief, it looks to be something to do with learning using contextually aware mobile devices - pretty cool. Seminar is being taught by Jodi Forlizzi, who has a joint appointment between HCI and design, so it looks like our readings will be much more centered on the nitty-gritty of interaction design and less on the broader conceptual issues surrounding Design. Tomorrow we’ll be getting a visit from the legendary Dan Saffer, an alum of the program, and probably its most vocal proponent (almost all of us read his blog from his time here before we chose the program). I’m really quite looking forward to finally meeting him in person. In Golan Levin’s Audio Visual Systems and Machines we began looking at examples of interesting and diverse visualizations of music - we basically spent the entire three hour class watching cool movies (including a little porn - pretty funny). Here’s a short sampling of what we looked at:
- Autechre’s Granz Graf Video - This entire thing was animated by hand! (i.e., it’s not algorithmically generated!)
- Marcus Coates’ Dawn Chorus - This is cool - the artist slowed down the sound of birds until they were in the human vocal range, had people sing them, then sped up the videos of the people to the speed of a bird. Crazy!
- Phil Worthington’s Shadow Monsters - This is cool too - sensors recognize the shapes of people’s hands and a projector adds everything else.
- Reactable - One of the coolest instruments I’ve ever seen - Bjork apparently now uses this on tour.
- Sesame Street Casino - Just damn funny! (warning - lots of cursing)
- Norman Mclaren’s “Dots” - All the sound in this was made by hand painting on the “optical sound strip” used in early film reels - this is basically pre-synthesizer sound synthesis, wild!
- Pablo Valbuena’s “Augmented Sculpture” - All of the lighting on the sculpture is coming from a projector located on the opposite side of the room, prety wild.
Though Golan will not be teaching Processing or Max/MSP as I’d hoped, it looks like it will be a really interesting exploration of the connection between sound and image. This is particularly good for me, as I am more and more thinking that my thesis project will be an exploration of how we can create better graphic user interfaces for software synthesizers and digital signal processing effects (most of which are still built to look like the hardware they emulate - hardly an effective use of the computer). Dick Buchanan’s course Design, Management and Organizational Change also looks exciting - we’ll be exploring the relationship between organizations (which pervade modern life) and design. All in all it’s going to be an absolutely crazy semester, but a lot of fun too, I think.
January 15th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CMU, Music and Movies | No Comments »
New Track
I spent what little time I could find in the past few days having a blast with my new music software - the Ableton Live Suite. And I do believe I just made my most dance floor friendly track ever. I mean, this track is killer! I am so damn happy with this cut - I couldn’t stop dancing to it while I was mastering it! This one’s going platinum (or at least it would if I ever sent my stuff to record labels - if any record label execs out there are reading this feel free to call me, I’m not taken!). Anyway download this now:
And since I got called out (Yikes! That’s never happened before - people actually read this thing?!) I should add to my last post that the guy who introduced me to Tycho was Bo - a great designer with kick-ass musical taste who was in my Design Computing course. :))
January 13th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | No Comments »
Great Music
While pulling an all-nighter in the studio last semester I was introduced to the music of Tycho by a Belgian undergrad who was hanging out in our vicinity to get Flash help from one of my groupmates. Tycho’s music is incredibly beautiful electronica of the decidedly ‘blissed-out’ variety, and it turns out he’s also an incredible graphic designer (under the name ISO50, check out the About section of his site to read some great thoughts on Design). Anyway, I discovered a wonderful live set of his available free online go download this now!
Also, BPM magazine partnered up with Scion this last week to offer a set of three hour-long or so packs of music downloads. Pick them up free by going here and answering the silly questions (depending on your answers you’ll be offered one of the three downloads - download it, then answer differently to get the other mixes).
Cheers everyone!
January 13th, 2008
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies | 2 Comments »