Archive for August, 2004

Waxing eloquent about eloquent wax

One of the 2004 recordings that hasn’t ever strayed far from my iPod playlist or the CD player in my “office” is Deathprod’s Morals and Dogma from that ever-plucky bastion of Nordic excellence Rune Grammofon. I’m a fairly serious fan of Supersilent, the Norwegian improvisatory ensemble which counts Helge Sten (that’s Mr. Deathprod to you) as one of its members, and have foisted their divine fifth release (called simply 5, with pieces named 5.1, 5.2, etc. to avoid any title referents) on many unsuspecting friends and radio listeners. The first place I’d heard the name Deathprod was on a remix disc of Norwegian electroacoustic pioneer Arne Nordheim that he’d done along with Geir Jenssen (Biosphere). In fact, I was so not-disappointed with the big, dark, wet slabs of hovering weave I’d heard before that I decided to spring for Deathprod, a “box set” version that includes the new disc, two long out-of-print recordings from the early 90s, and a disc of unreleased early work. You can’t fault either Sten or Kim Hiorthoy’s design for being too busy-a lovely black box full of lovely black digipacks with just enough information (in the helpful book) to help you tell them apart and identify which disc is which.That’s how the wax cylinder recording came drifting back into my life.

The aforementioned out-of-print Imaginary Songs from Tristan de Cunha featured some exotic sonic treatments which, on some investigation, turned out to be Hardanger fiddler and longtime Deathprod pal Ole Henrik Moe’s work transferred to wax cylinder and then played back for that great turn-or the-century-before-last sound.

Evocative of what I might imagine faraway Tristan de Cunha to sound like and properly faux ethnographic ‘n spooky? You betcha. It got me thinking right away about the proper collection of pluggo plug-ins to recreate the effect (wasteband to really brick-wall the frequency response, and warble for that special wobble? I’m open to suggestions).

Of course, there are other artists who, like Sten, have simply gone to the source and recorded their own wax cylinders. They Might Be Giants “I can hear you” from Factory Showoom came to mind right away (recorded at the Edison Studios in darkest Nueva Jersey). And there’s also the Music Tapes‘1st Imaginary Symphony for Nomad, too. You can hear a snatch of it here at Artist Direct.

But what about the real thing? Those neat historical artifacts? Another triumph for the New Flattened Information Space! Tinfoil.com is a veritable treasure trove of old performances, vaudeville routines, recitations (William Jennings Bryan, anyone?) Morse Code transmissions (apparently about Jack Johnson), and so on. My personal favorite would have to be the “Esquimaux Dance”, a piece written for clarinet, piano, anvil, and dog that appears to date from the 1890s. There’s even an article on hints and tips for Wax Cyclinder recording at home.

But the coolest thing I discovered while cyberrummaging is that a bunch of researchers have turned their attention to using scanning technologies for the purpose of working to restore old and extremely fragile wax cylinder recordings. You can find a PDF of a paper about their work here.

Three small reasons to be happy

I’m sure that we’ll all get our fill of orchestrated images from the Republican National Convention in New York, and that will probably include stuff both inside and outside. Odd as it may be to remember, the whole affair might well be thought of as a huge trade show under seige. here is an interesting collection of how something like this looks to someone who’s walking quiety around during the setup and takedown, noticing lots of the things we don’t get to see.

Alternately, if imagery about culture and politics wearies or depresses you, you can click here and discover what great thinkers in the field of ethical philosophy should be on your drinking/policy team. While I remain curious as to how percentage data that more closely resembles political prognostication than anything else would give me direction, it would appear that I need to read up on my Aristotle and Aquinas (really? you sure about that?).

Since I am of an age when bifocal lenses are um, necessary, it’s a rare pleasure to discover that I can get prescription sunglasses that actually match my real spectacles and wrap as well as those lovely Oakleys. My only quibbles so far are that it’s not more of a frugal pleasure and that the cases for them looks a tad too much like the boxes that false teeth sleep in at night or something from David Lynch’s version of Dune and don’t fit well into cargo pockets. I’ll just have to get out more to ju$tify acquiring them to myself (perhaps not driving into things will help remind me).

Foisting books on a reading public (number ? in a series)

I’ve just finished a “birthday book” that might interest you–especially after I tell you what I think it’s maybe not about.Franklin Foer, whose reporting I’ve seen and admired in places like The New Republic and Slate, turns out to be a fan of soccer, the world’s greatest game. While I cannot possibly approach his level of devotion, one of the things I really miss about moving back to the U.S. from living in Utrecht during J.’s sabbatical year is easy access to FIFA and European Champions’ League soccer on the telly. Oh sure, I can still get snatches of it on NOS Studio Sport from this Dutch and Flemish satellite channel we now get, but that’s just not the same thing.

Foer’s recent book “How Soccer Explains the World,” was a great read, although it seems to me that it’s perhaps hobbled by a title that looks great from a marketing standpoint, but winds up kind of overstating this modest little gem’s intentions a bit. Simply put, it’s a remarkably entertaining set of essays about how the sport provides interesting ways to consider how culture, “tribal” loyalties, economics, and politics appear in the humble guise of strikers, local teams and rivalries, team economics, and (of course) fans. If you’re looking for interesting critiques of globalization, this might be quicker. Or, if PoMo stuff is to your liking, try this one for size (keep your dictionary handy). But it’d be a shame to pass this great little read by because you were expecting a manifesto.

You can read an excerpt from the book here about the now-dead Serbian paramilitary leader Arkan and his club Red Star Belgrade (here’s how they describe themselves, in case you were wondering). Maybe it’ll whet your appetite.

Moog Modular V and Max/MSP geek-o-rama

I thought that Paris Hilton woman was never going to leave! It was bad enough that the whole cultural mission from Absurdistan snarfed all the canapes (I don’t think that anyone bought that flummery about food being a required prop for declaiming their national epic poem), but Ms. Hilton spent the whole party waving that huge ring in everybody’s face and hoovering up the jello chiffon. Well I never….

Alright. I’m lying and trying to make my life sound like a gay, mad whirl. Actually, J. and I spent the afternoon shopping (shoes. for her.) and passed a most agreeable evening at home watching a DVD of Nero Wolfe. The content of the following ramble is so unremittingly geeky that I simply thought maybe I should tart things up a bit. It doesn’t seem to be working.

I’ve spent a little time exploring the new version of the Moog Modular V that I mentioned recently–more specifically, working on ways that I could use it alongside my favorite graphic programming environment.You can stare at the graphs all day long, or try to figure out interesting ways to have fun with it. I appear to have opted for the latter.

I suspect that I am not alone in this. It’s probably that class of people who want to use those filters that’s behind the fact that there’s a second version of their VST plug-in that just handles effects, and is obviously used for processing external audio.

I spent some time trying to make sense of the abbreviations for each parameter (and they’re nearly always cryptic, regardless of who makes the plug-ins. Guess how I know?) and generally trying to make sense of what VST parameters I could control. One of the things I use at times like this is this simple little MSP patch that lets me load a plug-in and then populate a menu with all of its available parameters, which I can then tweak. Here’s a copy of the patch in text format:

—-
max v2;
#N vpatcher 52 46 611 293;
#P origin -38 104;
#P window setfont “Sans Serif” 9.;
#P comment 34 119 196 196617 grab a knob and twist to see messages and parameters displayed here;
#P user ubumenu 34 172 100 196617 0 0 1 0;
#X prefix_set 0 0 <none> 0;
#P hidden newex 99 126 27 196617 – 1;
#P hidden newex 99 106 52 196617 unpack i f;
#P hidden newex 34 126 61 196617 prepend set;
#P user textedit 34 148 246 167 0 3 9 41 0.561785;
#P comment 413 94 124 196617 the parameter values must be in the floating point range of 0. to 1.;
#P comment 274 95 124 196617 you can choose which parameter to control by choosing it from the ubumenu;
#P button 19 -34 15 0;
#P button 19 -54 15 0;
#P button 19 -74 15 0;
#P comment 34 -33 289 196617 if you want to look at the plug-in’s front panel , click here;
#P comment 34 -53 286 196617 click here to fill that ubumenu with plug-in parameter names;
#P hidden message 19 -12 29 196617 open;
#P newex 275 168 27 196617 + 1;
#P flonum 413 147 32 9 0. 1. 35 3 0 0 0 221 221 221 222 222 222 0 0 0;
#P newex 275 190 45 196617 pak 0 0.;
#P hidden newex 274 58 75 196617 prepend append;
#P user ubumenu 274 147 100 196617 0 0 1 0;
#X prefix_set 0 0 <none> 0;
#P hidden message 351 78 32 196617 clear;
#P hidden button 352 59 15 0;
#P hidden message 101 -12 26 196617 plug;
#P hidden message 52 -12 42 196617 params;
#N vst~ loaduniqueid 0;
#P newobj 60 71 79 196617 vst~;
#P comment 34 -73 289 196617 click here to choose a plug-in;
#P hidden connect 16 0 11 0;
#P hidden fasten 1 3 20 0 104 95 39 95;
#P hidden connect 20 0 19 0;
#P hidden connect 7 0 23 0;
#P hidden connect 5 0 23 0;
#P hidden connect 22 0 23 0;
#P hidden connect 15 0 2 0;
#P hidden connect 2 0 1 0;
#P hidden connect 3 0 1 0;
#P hidden connect 11 0 1 0;
#P fasten 8 0 1 0 280 253 27 253 27 59 65 59;
#P hidden connect 1 3 21 0;
#P hidden connect 21 0 22 0;
#P hidden connect 14 0 3 0;
#P hidden fasten 1 2 7 0 91 95 250 95 250 51 279 51;
#P hidden connect 7 0 6 0;
#P hidden connect 5 0 6 0;
#P connect 6 0 10 0;
#P connect 10 0 8 0;
#P hidden connect 9 0 8 1;
#P hidden connect 4 0 5 0;
#P hidden fasten 2 0 4 0 57 15 357 15;
#P pop;

—-

You’ll notice a second window that allows you to just grab a fader or dial and see what messages correspond to that action (and a handy menu that’s populated when you load the plug-in that will actually show you the parameter, too). If you’re so inclined, you can always add some objects and connect the audio, etc. This was really all I needed.

So after quite a bit of twiddling and listening and typing, I think I’ve got a good first draft of what the VST version of the Moog Modular V rack looks like if you’re running a Max patch and talking to by sending parameter number – value messages to a vst~ object that contains the Moog (of course, the value is always in the range 0-1.0 as a floating point number). There are a few things I’ve got questions about (and this is a work in progress), but you can upload a PDF file that contains the table I produced after all this study here.

Here are a couple of general comments that may not be clear for the first-time vst~ object message-sending cryptoanalogista:

  • One of the cool features of the Moog Modular V is that the hex-nut modulation input jacks also work as knobs that let you set the amount of modulation from any source. Happily, every single hex-nut jack/knob in the rack is parameterized.
  • Not everything is controllable. If you’re accustomed to pluggo’s tendency to have every single switch and toggle be a controllable VST parameter, you’ll find that’s not the case. Things like rotary octave switches or filter select switches aren’t parameterized. There are also some cases in which sequencer settings aren’t addressable.
  • I’m still trying to figure this one out (the Arturia customer support people seem pretty cool), but it would appear that using the Driver oscillators (i.e. the “master” oscillators for each group of three”) actually sends the same message to all three parameters of each oscillator rather than being a single parameter source or control… at least I think so. This means that you can address each of the three oscillators individually. At least it looks that way at this point.

Geek Note 1: the parameters are numbered differently between the “instrument” and the “effect” versions of the Moog Modular V. While the abbreviations are the same, their ordering is not.

Now that I’ve got a better sense of the VST implementation of the plug-in, I can take my Max/MSP patches that generate algorithmic outputs, scale the outputs to the 0-1.0 range, append a parameter number, ship `em off to a vst~ plug-in hosting a Moog Modular V synth, and let `er rip.

Geek Note 2: You can find a nice set of “starter” building blocks for constructing sequencer and processing abstractions/thingies Darwin Grosse (he of Creativesynth fame) made here. Just look for the QuickStart stuff.

Saying nice things about other companies’ software (one of a series)

One of the reasons that virtual synthesis is attractive is that the arrival of the auction/speculator’s market such as eBay has effectively put all kinds of interesting things I remember from my childhood beyond the reach of anyone other than the beneficiaries of a Bush tax cut. Sadly, this category of unaffordable objects includes many synthesizers. One interesting exception to this rule is my friend Justin Bennett, whose brother reportedly rescued a Synthi AKS from a UK rubbish bin for him; the rest of us have–until recently–had to watch from afar, our noses pressed to the glass.

I suppose that it’s also true that, like many people, I have a tendency to acquire instruments now that I couldn’t afford back in my youth. And, I suppose, a tendency to make noises that I would (should?) have made back then (Relax-it’s only a passing phase).

While I love my little Mellotron virtual instrument right down to the clunk at the end of its samples, I’d have to say that the new update that Arturia has released for their Moog Modular V instrument is the black hole that my spare minutes are going to be orbiting and disappearing into for the near future. Version 2 of the Moog Modular V has actually pried me loose from the MODE plug-ins-and that’s no mean feat. I can simultaneously indulge my nostalgic fantasies in affordable comfort, and make some new noises.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave in Peru or somewhere equally remote to the critical press, you already know that the thing sounds great. Unless you’ve some kind of fetish for the physical act of knob twiddling or ornamental knots composed of patch cords, you can just close your eyes and imagine that tall brown rack with the black panels, radiating heat as you listen.

The new upgrade (which is free to all 1.0 owners. Let us raise a glass to our friends in la belle France, shall we?) has some thoughtful eye candy/configuration stuff (a scrollable view and the ability to choose from a selection of modules for a given rack location in some places, which lets you actually reconfigure the Moog to fit your own preferences ( you can never have too many Sample and Hold units, I always say) and has tweaked the CPU usage, I think that the cool new stuff is what they’ve added:

  • a nice, FAT unison mode
  • the ability to input and process external audio
  • a couple of modules I really missed in the original unit (an envelope follower and a sample and hold unit)
  • some new stuff Arturia added (a ring modulator and a formant filter)
  • and last but certainly not least, two emulations of old Moog stuff I’d only heard about (their 12-stage phaser and the Bode Frequency Shifter, which is very cool) and certainly never horsed around with in the flesh.

And all those nice new knobs, when instantiated in a vst~ object in my MSP patches, can be freely twiddled by all manner of Max algorithms quite nicely, thank you. For me, connecting what Max kicks out–especially now that we can make use of LISP and the procedural possibilities of rtcmix or Java/javascript–to the way the Moog Modular V sounds is the best of both worlds.

After mulling and consideration and weighing, we point elsewhere

I know I am supposed to be writing stuff that derives from my own unparalleled insight and wide experience (SFX: whatever it takes), but it would be ungenerous to be faced with something as interesting as this list of secret job tricks that professionals know and you don’t and not be impressed.

I got a similar thrill from this as from finding out years ago about the secret language of the Emergency Room from an acquaintance. No, I don’t mean this kind of stuff, which we can all get from watching too many ER reruns with George Clooney and Anthony Edwards (who makes an appearance a positively hallucinatory indie film that I have returned to again and again with pleasure), but this kind of thing. Someday I’ll find out that none of that stuff is true, but the last person in the profession I asked did recognize a couple of ‘em.

Attn: sea world fans: do NOT read this. I’m not kidding.

It would take a long time to explain how I found this googling stuff related to the late, great Douglas Adams, but boy, was I surprised. I really, really don’t want to spoil this, except to say that it apparently seemed like a good idea at the time (it’s a good-sized quicktime file, but um… worth all 11 MB of it.)

Jitter inna Pyongyang stylee

I know I should have a bad case of Olympic Fever, but not even the Bjork and DJ Tiesto opener could move me–I truly must have a heart of stone. In the absence of such odd olympic events as pistol duelling, tug-o-war, or pigeon shooting from the games’ salad days, I’m drawn back to the North Korean specials from the History Channel I taped a couple of nights ago while eating our Muscat and peaches (note to readers: probably, it’s best to go with 4-6 hours on the marinade).

In particular, I was positively stupefied by the Arirang Festival, with its low or appropriate-tech Jitter patches. Being the sort of person who just loves a tutorial, I said aloud to myself, `I wonder what the patch for that stuff looks like. I wanna see some video!’ and got-a-googlin’. Alas and alack! All I could find were tantalizing still pictures like these and this batch, which look like they were actually taken by someone sitting in the bleachers.

But persistence pays off, if not in the way I expected. Are you tired of actually reading Jitter tutorials and manual pages? Well, here’s how it’s really done if you’re not an effete and decadent Capitalist wimp (and have several hundred thousand friends at your beck and call). And I also found someplace that would apparently sell me a DVD copy or something. Hmmmm….

Not wanting to say something about Marcel

On the way back from our family duties, I asked J. if she minded terribly if we stopped off in Philadelphia. No, it wasn’t the desire to have an authentic Philly Cheese Steak (although they’re quite good. There’s an interesting south Philly variation that includes onions and a tomato-based sauce that’s also pretty wonderful) I wanted to visit the Philadelpha Museum of Art in order to fulfill a long-standing wish-visit their Marcel Duchamp collection and see what are, for me, Duchamp’s two greatest works: the Large Glass and Etants Donnes: 1. La Chute D’eau 2. Le Gaz D’eclairage….If you’re an audio person rather than a museum geek, then the best way to explain this might be to compare the urge to go and actually hear The Well-Tuned Piano with the act of acquiring a documentation of it. Happily, this was just a side trip rather than a major world-spanning pilgrimage, and J. was her usual generous self, so we went.

Of course, I’d seen the pictures for years, and even gone to see Richard Hamilton’s (unbroken) copy of the Large Glass at the Tate Modern in London. But it’s not the same.

I hate to dig up that hoary old Walter Benjamin essay on Art in the Age of Reproduction, but having the world mediated to you by images or recordings rather than experiences does make things problematic: some works of art, in real life, seem like obscene jokes about scale, while some works seem to positively ache to be larger than their physical selves.

The Duchamp pieces had a kind of fragility about them as physical objects that surprised me as I stood before them. And they were silent. Yeah, I know-that sounds stupid, doesn’t it?

The Large glass is a thing made of delicate materials (glass, dust, thread) that show their age. Something shattered into a zillion pieces and then painstakingly reassembled in a big metal frame. The painted studies for portions of the piece that surrounded it in the gallery seemed infinitely more substantial than their final definitively unfinished product. Add to that the idea that its iconography is supposed to be about some kind of Mystery Play about desire viewed through a fanciful set of physical technologies, and you’ve sort of got a picture of how it looked to me. I found myself thinking of the ways in which all the new media tools patiently awaiting us on our laptops might create things that would, in their own ways, be similarly ephemeral (and similarly frozen by the conventions of their own time). I kept looking at the wiggly handpainted Rube Goldberg diagrams and imagining how they sounded then, and how they would sound now, with the mechanisms gone all rusty and finicky.

Etants Donnes was a different kind of surprise: a big door in a semidarkened room with two little eyeholes. This link sort of describes what you actually see looking through the peephole. It’s a singularly eerie thing, staring through those two eyeholes at what looked to me like a dead body holding a flickering gas lamp aloft in a department store diorama. I think that the age of the materials and their state probably reminded me more of something out of a crime scene investigation than I expected. Since Duchamp worked on the thing in secret for years, you’ve really got nothing to go on except for what you see. But I found myself thinking about sound while staring through the peepholes. There simply isn’t any way to see any more of the work (the nude woman’s face, for example)–it’s the closest visual experience I can think of to the absolute tyranny of audio placement for a listener (the couple in front of me in line spent several minutes stooping and straining to catch a glimpse of her face). Of course, it was silent, too-but I kept imagining what it should sound like. The sound of insects and faraway water? The sounds of traffic or ambient noise from my side of the door?

Of course, the world’s got plenty of noise, Duchampwise–music by and about him, and some words from Marcel himself. This should give me me a little space in which to contemplate my personal hidden noise for myself.

While that’s all I wanted to say about stuff I saw on my vacation, I’d be seriously remiss if I didn’t mention to any brave soul willing to read this far the absolute coolest link in this whole article: If you click here you’ll find a complete animated webset of Duchamp’s rotoreliefs–his foray into mass-produced kinetic art.

Heaven in a small bowl

I am a total sucker for nearly any sort of risotto. With the exception of something that requires, say, Lobsters and Champagne and probably takes a million years to make, J. and I are pretty game. So this little Nigella Lawson piece in the New York Times about summer comfort food caught our eye.

But the really silly bit of it is that what caught our eye was the dessert: peaches in Muscat wine. I’m generally not a big dessert wine guy (give me a good Eau de Vie any day. I got a bottle of this from J. for my birthday. It’s probably the smoothest Framboise I have ever had. Yummy.), but this was simplicity itself: a bunch of sliced peaches covered with a very modest bottle of Muscat and allowed to marinate for a couple of hours, then served chilled. According to Ms. Lawson, one normally uses sugared red wine in Italy. I can’t comment on that, but the fresh peaches and Muscat were positively heavenly au naturel, despite Ms. L’s comments about dousing `em with vanilla ice cream or whipped heavy cream or dunking cookies in the muscat.

The only difficult bit of this involved having to have a glass of Muscat earlier in the evening to finish off the bottle, and the fact that this particular dessert might not have been the best accompaniment to the documentaries on North Korea that were running on the History Channel (it’s “Tyrant’s Week.” I am not making this up.).

Oh, right-the final difficult bit involved summoning the courage to NOT finish the whole batch so that we could see how soaking the peaches a full 24 hours would work. Somehow, we have managed.

Copyright © 2012 Cycling '74.