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A Bunch of Mixes
Doing some catch up over the long weekend and thought I’d post some mixes I’ve had lying around and meant to upload some time ago:
4.26.11 Hawaii Mix (did this one while on vacation in Hawaii - nothing beats DJing in the sun!) This mix is probably my favorite among this bunch.
4.17.11 Mix Mostly classic progressive house in this mix, with some older tunes by Sasha and Mark Knight mixed with newer stuff. Starts slow and picks up, hitting a crescendo about 2/3 of the way through.
5.30.11 Mix A lot of electro in this mix, including some really fantastic tunes (the Madeon remix of Deadmau5’s Raise Your Weapon is probably my favorite tune recently).
1.22.11 Mix This one starts out a bit more techy before going straight progressive. Lots of melody driven big-room stuff in the second half.
5.8.11 Mix A lot of really poppy & catchy tunes in this one - gets a little crazy (and sloppy) at the very end, but worth a listen.
Hope you enjoy them - thanks for listening!
July 5th, 2011
Posted by Paul in Music and Movies, Uncategorized | No Comments »
New Mix
I’ve been meaning to put this mix up for some time - it had a couple clicks in it that I wanted to go back and edit out (which I don’t normally do, but I liked this one so much I thought it was worth it). In the meantime a new version of Traktor, the DJ software I use was released - so I’m hoping to have lots more mixes up soon.
Enjoy!
April 9th, 2011
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New Mix
I picked up a nice little Behringer audio interface/Midi controller for DJ mixing a couple months ago, and have been steadily re-learning how to DJ using nothing more than my laptop, Native Intruments’ Traktor LE DJ software, and the new controller. It’s a lot of fun because for the first time in years I can come home at night and simply sit down and DJ with whatever music I’ve been listening to lately (the whole setup works with mp3’s).
Here’s a 2 hour mix I did last night - it’s a mostly new progressive set with a few old favorites mixed in.
Thinking about how I’ve learned this new ‘interface’ for DJing has me wondering about the implications for designing other interfaces. Very often, we try to build interfaces using known paradigms - we believe that users don’t want to learn new ways of doing things. This is often true - there’s a delicate balance that needs to be achieved between the amount of effort needed to learn something new and the benefit gained by doing so.
But when the user truly enjoys the learning process, as I did with my new DJ equipment, the learning is it’s own reward, shifting the balance quite a bit. How do we make new interfaces on other devices, say a portable mp3 player, a joy to learn? In the world of DJing, I think there’s a good argument that the new ways of doing quite directly enable new means of self-expression. Maybe gadgets need to do a better job of allowing users to express themselves? I’ve mentioned before that I believe the future of interaction design is deeply involved with the idea of “designing tools to allow people to design.” More and more, I think that a central tenet of any interaction design project should be: how can we enable personal self-expression with this design? Therein lies the successful product.
August 16th, 2009
Posted by Paul in Design, Music and Movies | 1 Comment »
New Music
I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with Logic Studio this past week - the program really has phenomenal sound quality. I’ve thrown together a couple tracks:
City Streets and Lights in the Evening
Enjoy! Thanks for listening!
February 16th, 2009
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Generative Doormat!
While I’m in the posting mood - I wanted to show off a little demo video I did for a quick assignment in Mark Gross’s Making Things Interact course. The class has been great fun so far, allowing me to finally learn how to do my own circuit-bending, build things with arduino’s, and play in Max/MSP. This assignment asked us to construct our ownswitch, so I built a generative musical doormat of course!
February 4th, 2009
Posted by Paul in CMU, Music and Movies | No Comments »
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
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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 CMU, Music and Movies, Processing | 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
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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 CMU, Music and Movies, Visualizations | No Comments »