Isidore preparing Absinthe

"I love Absinth, and I love modular synthesizers, so I thought it would be a good idea to do something featuring those two wonders... And as it actually looked quite good and kinda hypnotic, I taped and uploaded it.
This shows the absinth ritual using a see saw brouilleur and Verte de Fougerolles Absinth (I love that brand). The sound of the see saw brouiller is captured by a microphone and used to trigger stuff in the modular synth (Doepfer A100, with the one and only Isidore robot cabinet)... so that every drops (approximately) changes synth parameters such as pan, fm, filters and delay clock.
I also added some melody from my micromoog and some rvb (on the moog only).

I had to make several takes and edited the thing while I was totally drunk.
I hope you enjoy it, if you do, don't forget to rate, comment, subscribe and all that stuff."

It is Halloween and it does have a kind of spooky feel... thanks to DamagedMeat for posting it.

DEAF Festival - Push Move Click

This picture is from the Push Move Click gig last Friday night. Simon Lynch, Matthew Flanagan and myself put on an improvised analogue modular gig in the newly refurbished Twisted Pepper. The sound system was an impressively powerful Function One system. The basses rumbled. The visuals, supplied by Ben Gaulon from Recyclism, comprised of 4 security cameras and 3 projectors all running through a Jitter patch. I whipped out the touchscreen drum machine for the last couple of tracks and..... it didn't crash :)

To be honest I was surprised with the crowd turnout. We got good numbers and a great reception considering the extremely electronic nature of the sound. Lots of clapping and smiling faces... a few paranoid heads completely freaked out. A good night all round :)

Push Move Click played for about an hour and then we asked everybody to go downstairs where the Dubstep was just kicking off. The Dubstep was all Irish talent. We put on a similar thing this time last year just to show there was a dubstep scene in Ireland. The difference in quality between then and last friday was massive. Twoc from Dublin, Radical Guru from Cork and Crysis from Galways Get Lo crew were all there playing there own releases and dubplates. 2Bit and Colz played a stormer. The night was wrapped up by a live Dupstep set from 16Hz and Johnny Oakley - a mix of laptop, modulars and effects boxes.

It was a good mix of DJ, Laptop Live and experimental electronic music. It was All Irish which might seem a bit cheesy but in Ireland we have a large problem with importing talent from the UK and the USA and our local talent suffers. This was one of the best gigs I've been at all year and nobody had to pay for flights or accommodation... sweet.

The next day was more nerdy fun. I got up a little late but I still got a chance to have a chat with Andreas Schneider. A very nice man. We talked mostly about music and gear. Nothing out of the ordinary. His talk was good but it was difficult to judge the crowd so it was basic in parts and complex in others.

You can see another few pics HERE. Thanks to 2Bit for the pics.

Squareband

The Square Band is a portable square wave synthesizer. The Square Band is worn around the wrist like a watch and includes a set of eight buttons to trigger tones of varying octaves. Additionally, a light sensor is used to change the pitch of the tone within the octave allowing for a wide range of musical possibilites.

As the Square Band is worn throughout the day, a flexible solar panel generates power that is stored within the Square Band for use whenever you choose. The Square Band is designed to be as ubiquitous as possible so that when creativity strikes you, it's no easier than just plugging in your headphones.

More at www.squareband.net

D n B meets religion

Part 3 of 3 - Reverend Andy C & MC GQ Praise it up @ Baptazia NYE 2007 in
The Last Night of the (Sacrament of the Sick) Tour.
THE 3RD AND LAST OF THE BAPTAZIA VIDS.

TRACKS 1. TC - ROCKSTAR (gets a rewind)2. RAY KEITH - RENEGADE TERRORIST (main tune) 3.TAXMAN - TOO BAD 4. SUB FOCUS - SWAMP THING 5. CHASE & STATUS - DUMPLING RIDDEM

cheers to airloaf for posting it and to The Mull for sending it my way.

Touchscreen Drum Machine Up Close

A little pic of the touchscreen. The next plan is to get a few arcade buttons connect them up to an arduino or a Doepfer Pocket Electronic kit and have buttons that I can use to access different pages. I'm hoping to make a kind of live touchbox with sequencers, drum machines, effects, modulators, various control sources (joystick, wii, camera etc). That'll be a while coming though :)


I made a little video showing how the touchscreen was housed and how I used Max. The Max patch is very simple and really uses Eric Lyons object in a very simple way. For all the links check out yesterdays post. The audio is very distorted in the youtube vid but you get the idea.

DIY Touchscreen Drummachine :)

So I finished my touchscreen interface. Myself and a few other lads are putting on a bit of a show for this years DEAF festival (Dublin Electronic Arts). We are going to do a live improvised modular synth session with custom controllers, touchscreens, some handmade electronics noise boxes, 4 camera's and a projector. The touchscreen above was made for that. If you want to come down we'll be in the Twisted Pepper on Friday 24th at 8.00 - It'll be us for an hour and then a mix of Dubstep DJs and livesets for the night.

The vids above are recorded into a cheap webcam. I used the mic in the webcam as well. Next time I'll do a better job. The first vid is a demo of the drummachine just to show that it works and that the touchscreen is very responsive. I have another vid but I had troubles uploading. Try again tommorow.

If you want to build one yourself you'll need MAX/MSP. You can download the demo for a month and give it a go. If you're a student you can get it for $59 for 9 months and the $211 after that. If you are just a working stiff (it's normally $700) go over to Dance-Tech.net and find out if you can avail of the special offer for artists (same deal as students!!!)

The touchscreen was $65 from http://www.lavatechnology.com. It's a 5 wire resitive touchscreen overlay. If you buy one from Lava mention this post and I get a free~ish one :) You can find out a lot about touchscreens if you go to Elotouch. They have a great comparison chart that makes it all pretty easy. 5 wire resitive seemed to suit me the best. It is supposed to be good for a million touchs, works ok in heat and cool (venues) and is pretty cheap.

The last piece was Eric Lyons Potpourri externals for Max/MSP. Although there are some problems for me the simplicity of the sample accurate timing wins out over many other concerns. Download it free from http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/~elyon/LyonSoftware/MaxMSP/

The VST effects I use come from Audio Damage. The Reverence and Dubstation are two of my favourite effects. I just find them easy to use and pretty musical. I could have used a reverb external in Max/MSP or built my own feedback delay but I like the Audio Damage stuff so leave well enough alone for now.

Careful with the AKS, Peter.. Schulze & Namlook.

VIII/2~VIII/6. Two classic tracks from The Dark Side of the Moog. Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook. featuring Bill Laswell. ( video made and edited by zrnho ) Thanks again for watching.

http://www.klaus-schulze.com/disco/39...

thanks to zrnho

Drexciya Interview - 27 mins

"Drexciya - Rare Interview with Liz Copeland (May 2002)

A truly inspiring interview from an individual 100% dedicated to their artform.

James Stinson died in Sept 2002, only a matter of months after this interview, aged just 32.
I didn't want this interview to fall under the radar of old and new Drexciya fans.

Unofficial video." thanks to Lardossan for posting this.


Just in case you've not heard of Drexciya I made a little YouTube player. It starts with Hydro Theory one of my favourite Drexciya tracks.

Free RIAA/Vinyl+DoubleTrack plugins

More free plugin goodness (again for PC AND Mac!), this time from VacuumSound. A double-track plugin for thickening up vocal performances and an RIAA curve simulator for recording straight from a turntable, also inverse RIAA for 'scratchy record player' effect or home dubplate cutting. Very little info on who he/she/they are but thanks for the plugins!

And while we're at it, here's a link to the free Vinyl plugin from iZotope, great for dirtying up those pristine digital tracks!

Audio Damage Rough Rider-Free VST

Free Rough Rider compressor plugin from the lovely folks over at AudioDamage...

"Rough Rider is a modern compressor with a bit of "vintage" style bite and a uniquely warm sound. Perfect for adding compression effects to your drum buss, it also sounds great with synth bass, clean guitar, and backing vocals. Definitely not an all-purpose compressor, Rough Rider is at its best when used to add pump to rhythmic tracks."

Get it here.

Arduino 12 Released

Update to the Arduino software to version 12...fixes a few bugs and tidies things up...available here.