I did a quick interview with Mike for Amiga Web, a few questions on retro computing, and a mention of me smashing my Amiga. The memories...

There's also a link to some of my earlier music, in module format.

I keep forgetting, some of my tracker music is actually available here and there in the tubes. I still have all of it stored in my digital vaults. One fine day I should find time to collect and somehow present my pre-2000 music.

"Virtual musicians are already real, and they’re only getting realer."

Wired describes Zenph Sound Innovations, which takes existing recordings of musicians (deceased, for now) and models their 'musical personalities' to create new recordings, apparently to critical acclaim (PDF).

The company has raised $10.7 million in funding to pursue their business plan, and hopes to branch out into, among other things, software that would let musicians jam with virtual versions of famous musicians. This work unites music with the very similar trend going on in the movies — Tron 2.0, for example, will clone the young Jeff Bridges. If this goes on, will the major labels and studios actually need musicians and actors? In the future, it could be harder to make money playing guitar with all of the competition from dead or retired artists."

(Via Slashdot.)

Kometkameratene Behind-The-Music: You can watch episodes directly from NRK or download official torrents. There is also a list of each behind-the-music entry. NEW: You can watch the whole video over at NRK Super.

My work for the Kometkameratene show is over, since production is wrapped up long before the episodes are aired. I think there are maybe 6 or 8 episodes left to be aired during this spring.

For these final episodes, it was not possible to produce a dedicated music video for each episode. So instead we did four independent music gags, disconnected from the episode theme, so the gags could be placed and recycled as needed. I don't know when each gag will be aired, and I'd rather not reveal them prematurely. So I'll wait for Easter, when they all should be available online, and type out the final four songs then. 

There's a hilarious drum battle, an excellent night-club jazz performance, a funny glove dance-and-hunt, and a jaw-droppingly awesome one-take performance by Rampejentene, struggling to get their animal tune right...

The kindness of strangers strikes again. A few weeks back, at an airport, a security girl unasked for pulled me out of the longest security line in the world and helped me just make my flight. Today, again uncalled for, complete strangers saved me. And found each other.

Prepare for an exiting and thrilling love story in the remotest of arctic wilderness, scribed by your daring correspondent.

When I woke up this morning the sun was quite alone in the sky, brimming with life like only an early spring sun can. This could be the last day with snow in my town. I decided; now or never, I am doing "Vidden", a mountain plateau between two local mountains, Ulriken and Fløien. You can access both mountains by cable and funicular from the city centre, and hike or ski between them in a few hours. I've never done this trip on skis, but as you know, I have no fear for anything. What is a mad scientist without daring expeditions, either for dangerous minerals, rare mutated cyborg-butterflies or musical inspiration? I cabled up the tallest one, procured a cup of coffee from the last outpost known to man, and set off into the wilderness, never looking back. 

It was the most perfect day ever. Spotless blue sky, friendly sun, and a vast, quiet white wilderness of solitude and inspiration. I walked with my mind for a few hours, before finally making camp just below the summit of the tallest peak on the route. I enjoyed my soggy knekkebrød with luxuriously sweaty cheese, and sent a glorious picture message to all of my friends stuck in offices. (That's ok, they send me pictures of glorious dinner parties when I'm stuck on a hotel or tour-bus.)

Well, enough loitering and relaxing in the mountains! I packed down my lunch and got ready to set off down the mountains.

Not.

My ski was FAILING. The ski bindings would not hook into place. The boot kept slipping off, any movement, and "thwack" the ski went off and continued on it's own. I kept trying and and trying but no, broken. "This is not happening," I thought. There I was, on top of the world, just having teased all my friends, and my Ski. Did. Not. Work.

I was mad! Eventually I found a way to hold my foot so it would keep the ski in place. But of course it kept slipping off, and I had to walk like a combination of a mad ninja and a delirious cripple and I faceplanted maybe 20 times down the first steep hill.

I was cursing, fuming, scheming and gnarling, and in particular I was planning my evil cruel revenge on everyone in the store who sold me this piece of utter crap ski shit, not to mention the ski producer and everyone ever related to them! I'll crucify every one of them, I'll set up huge terrible crosses of skis, all the way from Ulriken to Fløien, and stick them all up with ski poles through their limbs, and an extra pole with casters where the sun never shines, and I'll smear them all with ski wax so the sun will burn their naked skin and the winter nights will freeze their exposed cells to smithereens and I'll force rotten oranges through their eyes and pour scolding hot cocoa down the....

"Excuse me, are you having trouble with your ski"?

Said a beautiful voice. Three girls was slowly passing me and one of them, Ski Girl, noticed my ski falling off all the time. I was like "umm, yeah, it keeps falling off." 

"There is this really nice and kind ski instructor just ahead of us, he helped us with one of our skis a while back, we could try run after him and get him to wait for you? Maybe he can help you."

Wow, I was like, is this for real? Someone here, can fix my ski? Just like that? I gracefully accepted her angelic offer, and off they went! A couple of minutes later I catched up with all of them, a bunch of fresh guys and sporty girls, and the ski instructor looked at my ski, and deduced there must be ice somewhere inside the binding, and starting breathing hot air into it... and VOILA! After a little while of blowing, the ski worked again! Like new! I CAN WALK ITS A MIRACLE

I was amazed and everyone there was amazed, especially Ski Girl. And he was like, "nah, it's nothing, this is quite normal, I didn't do much", and this is could be right but still he made my day and did it humbly. A kind stranger.

BUT, you see, this is where I'm going, it gets interesting: Because I think Ski Girl actually had a crush on Ski Guy, and he on her, from their previous encounter, and me having a broken ski was FATE giving them another chance to meet. They kept looking at each other with that special look.

He was thinking: "She's so cute!"

She was thinking: "He's so awesome!"

I was thinking: "This is so a movie!"

Crucified ski producer on cross: "Let me down please?"

The rest of the trip was perfect. At the top of the next mountain I looked back, and the crowd was still at the same spot, talking, probably arranging after-ski. I walked on with a smile, imagining Ski Girl and Ski Guy getting married, having kids, living happily ever after, all of them travelling the world fixing ski bindings with their magic breath, the sun was high and I never faceplanted again and even got a free coffee for telling this story at my coffee place.

Oh and I drew a map of my expedition and noted the places of events.

Some notes, observations and reflections around the recently released Ghost Von Frost.

As mentioned in the release post, I was unsure how and with who to release the track. Sometimes I think it runs to cute, but the cuteness is intended to work as a contrast to the somewhat jarring sci-fi parts. Being that Ugress is the most pop-oriented project, that's where it ended up. (I did almost start a new project to release this.)

Musically the track is an interesting experiement in patterns: The main melodic phrase in the body of the track is a repeating theme, while the surrounding harmonic background is being developed. It's kind of geeky structural composition. 

Production wise, the track was prototyped in Renoise, right there in that picture. I stayed in Oslo for a few days doing recordings for Kometkameratene. When traveling, or some spare time any place, I like to noodle around in Renoise with musical ideas and sketches. Here's a screen shot, the music occured to me while I was teaching myself the new pattern matrix editor.

Originally the track was much more 80ies sounding. When I decided to flesh it out, I brought it into Logic, and at first I wanted to continue this eighties sound, make a cold and melancholic synth track, but it didn't quite work. The synthetic voices and repetitive bass synth was enough on their own, so I tried something else, used lots of tiny samples from classical music pizzicatos, and built my own clusters from them to make them bigger. I also built a regular house-ish beat for it. This helped bringing a more organic sound, but also made the track cuter than I originally had envisioned. 

The melodic elements isn't terribly interesting, neither production wise nor musical wise, but as mentioned above I like that they stay in a pattern, while the harmonic background is really what brings the track forward and builds tension. When the main melodic pattern finally starts moving, towards the end, it works as a little payoff. Allthough I don't think the final part after that resolves what the track deserves.

I did much of the track building and mixing while travelling, so it's kind of an on-the-road track. Not sure what that means but that's the way it is. I only did the final balance back home on my speakers.

Finally, I did spend quite some time deciding how to name the song. The work title was "Frost", and I had several variations of barons, ghosts, frost, ladies and choirs but in the end simplified it down to "Ghost Von Frost". I like the single o's and dum-dum-dum of it, and the "Von" should perhaps hint towards which class of ghost we're dealing with here.

Report from todays Signatur workshop at BEK: Six awesome kids with laptops and curious enthusiasm; Reaper realtime remix workshop, pedagotronica win.

I had prepared a set of loops and bits of a remix kit, and some extra material, with the intention of building a little remix of Blue Magnetic Monkey. I've picked up enough of Reaper during the night to kind of know my way around (there are some weird editing paradigms), but mostly I focused on how to pull in various sounds and loops, build it into some kind of song-ish structure and play with effects and properties to find inspiration - kind of playing into a remix.

I made sure to just base everything on just Reaper, no externals, to ensure everyone could copy my edits on the screen, and also continue working on their own.

It took some time to find a common platform of communication, I wasn't sure where to lay the speed of progress and each individual there has different background, but eventually I think we found a way to communicate, and together we actually built a nice start for a good remix.

The second part of the workshop, I focused on turning the laptop into a musical performance instrument; from a very basic but fundamental point. There is a simple sampler included in Reaper, and there is a onscreen MIDI keyboard. So we dropped various percussion and samples into the sampler, and the super talented noise-jazz kids went at it, going bananas on the keys! I tried conducting the madness, and captured some of the madness in Reaper. Good times.

Bek Signatur Samtids Jazz Støy Orchestra by GMM

I had great fun, I hope the kids had good fun too, or at least picked up some inspiration. It was very interesting and challenging to talk about my own process and focus on the essentials, from a pedagogic viewpoint. In particular the live aspect of hammering the laptop keyboard like crazy for noisy samples proved a great success.

Signatur is an electronic media workshop by BEK (Bergen Center for Electronic Arts), aimed at young aspiring media geniuses between 15 and 25. Signatur has a broad focus on sound, video, music, electronics, photo, animation - bits and blobs and everything between.

This Saturday I'm invited to run the workshop, focusing on electronic music: Composition, arrangement and probably also performance. I'm quite sure it will derail, deform and develop into whatever fits the moment but hopefully it will end up as some kind of making, baking and devouring electronic noise and music.

The music and sound part of the workshop has so far been based on Reaper, developed by mad genius Frankel himself, a wise choice. So I'm spending the evening freshening up my Reaper skills. I have dabbled with each major version but never investigated properly.

Looking forward to the workshop, I'll document and grab some pics and hopefully samples too.

Look at that, it is the largest spiral of ice the world has ever seen. I sampled it, without realizing how huge it was.

The Skagerrak, the sea between Norway and Denmark has been unusually cold the last few weeks. The cyclone-like pattern above in the satellite image is an epic slush of ice, slowly pulsating and rotating.

I had no idea, I was spending a few days outside Larvik, right at the top of the spiral, and one day I was going for a hike along the coast at Mølen. To my surprise, from a distance the ocean looked frozen solid, but as I approaced the beach I realized it wasn't stiff, rather a massive, compact glob of slush. It moved, but slowly, pulsing up and down with calm, unrushed waves.

Standing at the beach looking out at the breathing slush of an ocean was surreal, it was like the whole horizon was alive.

I threw a rock into the slush (is it alive?) and with sudden inspirational glee noticed the water was making a wonderful response; the rock itself created an explosive fountain of slush, and when this cloud of slush fragments came back down into itself, a wishy washy slurpy sound was produced.

I whipped out my iPhone, loaded with FiRe, carefully balanced at the edge of the slush, and spent hours throwing rocks and bits of ice into the slush.

Here is an excerpt, this is the raw recording from the iPhone, in stereo (it samples in mono, I just put different sploshes in each channel for a stereo result).

Skagerrak Ice Spiral Samples by GMM

I was not aware of the scope of the ice during sampling, only a few days later I discovered the phenomena. I am very much looking forward to manipulate and modulate those splooshes into something sinister and slurpy, worthy of the worlds largest spiral of ice.

John Nolan makes animatronics, and he must have his workshed in a damp, dark corner at the very bottom of the Uncanny Valley.

Fantastically creepy. There are great photos, but do make sure to check out the animatronic showreel. The movement of the almost-real is the ice on the cake that is a lie.

Thanks Soma Holiday!

I did a tiny little http tweak - journal entries are now listed on the front page, in a subtle manner.

Not perfect yet, but that's all I managed in very short amount of time. I need to run it for some time to see stats.

Kometkameratene Behind-The-Music: You can watch episodes directly from NRK or download official torrents. There is also a list of each behind-the-music entry. NEW: You can watch the whole video over at NRK Super.

For this episode, I can't remember exactly how I came up with the music or what the reference originally was. Only thing I remember, I wanted "sickness" to somehow exist in the sound of the track, not only the lyrics, but not in a bad way, more in a crazy way.

This is a track with a lot of edits and subversions, a typical hammering-it-out through pure persistence. There is a bunch of classical music in there, but I know we broke it pretty much around during preproduction, originally it was in a waltz figure, but at some point we shifted it to 4/4, with some interim versions where we experimented with multiple time signatures, but that didn't really work. Or at least I didn't like how it didn't play well with the beat and flow of the track, even if I realize multiple time signatures would make the track more complex.

I also spent a lot of time on the beats, building a kind of layered break that should both fit the mainly orchestral sound, without overloading anything. 

We wrote the lyrics, with good help from the director. The final piano solo, originally much longer, just kind of happened as I was messing around. For the umptheenth time the "capture last take as recording" key command in Logic saves the day - a keystroke, that magically catches whatever you just did as if record was enabled.

Here's the final production track.

Kometkameratene - Sykdom / Sickness by GMM

Found this via Metafilter, Tonewheels, a historical presentation of optical synthesis, a form of synthesis I find very intriguing. Like the introduction touches upon, there is a certain balance between "scientific" and "supernatural" for this kind of sound generation.

Would be nice with some audio examples, but they aren't hard to find for some of the more popular inventions. Nevertheless a good read, especially when I should really be performing my weekly boring Monday office work...

Last two weeks, very many things have happened. Some for good, some for bad, some I can speak of, some I can't. There has been a lot of unexpectedness, amounts of drama, but also good things coming up. Hopefully the next few weeks will ease down so I can focus on writing new stuff, which is what I long for.

Productionwise I've been working on new material for both Ugress and Shadow Of The Beat. In all of my projects there will always be a certain amount of overlap. Right now I'm working on 5-6 tracks and I'm not sure where any of them will end up. I observe, even if I sit down to write Shadow tracks, I'm really in a Nebular Spool kind of mood so maybe the next Spool isn't too far off. I am nevertheless looking forward to revisit and upgrade older Shadow tracks, preparing them for the upcoming liveshow.

Got myself a new hardware controller, Edirol PCR-300, not sure how satisfied I am with that, wrote a separate journal on it.

I do manage to get some fresh air. After rediscovering skiing, I've got myself a pair, and I try to ski as much as possible before the snow disappears.

A friend of mine brought us up to the Vidden, a mountain plateau available from local Mount Ulriken, a quick trip by cable car from the city. I had no idea there were so vast opportunities for proper skiing right outside my door. We skied down the mountain afterwards and I probably faceplanted twenty times. It was awesome.

Thursday I went to see Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra perform Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. Bartok is one of my favorite 20th century composers, and the Concerto did not disappoint. There's a couple of delicious parts where the whole string sections are going off like crazy with staccatos, it tears in your ears and hairs are spiking in your neck, I don't know why but it just feels incredibly satisfying. The whole piece is kind of built for each group of the orchestra to show off and they certainly did.

There was also a violin concert as part of the program, I'm usually not too fond of those but this one had a good performer in Nikolaj Znaider who drew me in and I very much enjoyed that part too.

Bookwise, I've finished Foundation, my first experience with Asimov (in direct literature), and it wasn't bad. Not sure if I will be continuing the series though, it didn't capture me that much. I suppose that's because political systems and civilization development are the main protagonists, not people. I think I'll check out his robot novels before extending on Foundation.

OK thats it for journal update... Right now it is weekend, I'm off to a pub catching up with an old friend, the snow outside is slowly disappearing in the frontline of spring rain. I wish it would keep for some time so I could play more with my skis but what happens, happens.

There will always be another winther, that's for sure.

I got myself an Edirol PCR-300.

Why

Why not?

Well actually I do have a reason for getting this - at my last live show, the Lemur controller broke down, and I lost a lot of realtime control. I want to have a portable hardware backup with lots of physical options, so if the Lemur breaks down again (it will), I have something to fall back on.

Also even if I never use all the controls in the studio, I like to look at lots of controls. I like having access to potential in front of me, even if I never use it.

The good

The build is good, the size is GREAT!

Tactile wise, the feel of keys, buttons, knobs and faders are good for this price level.

The unit fits perfectly between my keyboard and monitor, it also fits perfectly in my gear flight. Looking forward to give this a spin on the next live show.

The notes on the keyboard are slightly smaller than regular, but I am a tiny person with nimble fingers, so I actually prefer the subsize keyboard, it means comfortable playing and greater reach.

It looks neither too much nor too little, visually and mentally it fits my world just where it should.

Crossfader feels good but not slap-able.

USB powered.

MIDI in and out, can hook up to my Faderfoxes if need be.

The bad

I was surprised that the keyboard starts at F, not at C, there is only 2.5 octaves, not 3 like I thought. My bad for not noticing this in the photos or promotional material, slapped myself when unboxing. I've had something like this before, can't remember what it was, but I'm not a stranger to lower F, and I'm not too fond of it.

Normally this wouldn't be as overly dramatic, but I've kind of got a weird way of doing things in realtime, during production, the lowest octave of a keyboard are set up to be control commands (a dimension of 12 commands with potentially 127 steps each) instead of regular notes. Not a life or death situation loosing parts of this, but not paradise either, could mean a lot of button presses.

Crossfader feels good but not slap-able.

Pitch bend and mod wheel does not display transmit value, but everything else does. Why not PB and MW?

Not universal USB support, needs an installed driver.

The driver install needed to reboot the computer. WTF kind of 1990ies setup is that? What's next Roland, I have to edit config.bat to adjust realtime parameters?

Conclusion

Really like the unit as a physical thing. Fits my fingers and workspace perfectly.

Surprised at lower key is F not C. Would actually prefer 2.00, or 4.00, octaves instead of half-assed 2.60.

I'm going to try it for a couple of weeks, see if this works out. If not I'm getting the 500, even if I think it is too big. That could actually be a win-win, having the 500 for studio work and the 300 for live work. I do dislike all the rigging up and rigging down so this is a viable option.

 

Today I wen't skiing for the first time in decades.

I haven't been skiing since some school trip way back when, even before snowboards. I used to love skiing, both cross-country and downhill. I was intrigued with snowboarding when it hit, and really wanted to get into it, but I prioritized music. When friends travelled to the mountains, I fired up Protracker. When friends got their drivers license, I got a synth. When friends got sensible degrees I got a tiny record deal. When friends bought apartments I started a record label. While friends have been building homes, families, safety, I've been reducing my world to a laptop, a portable studio.

There isn't any right or wrong in this. But I have realized, this choice, sometimes it is the right one, but sometimes it is not. More importantly, maybe it doesn't always have to be a choice. I suppose this is obvious to most balanced people, but not to me. When it comes to many important things, I'm a clueless amoeba, not aware I am riding a one-way missile, jumping excitedly up and down on the guidance controls, messing it all up. I am just amazed at the speed and all the shiny things zipping by. Wohaa, look at THAT! Isn't this WONDERFUL? Then; impact, pain, hard lessons.

Well that's me blabbering, from skis to missiles in a paragraph. I need to get back on the ground. Skiing?

I'm in Oslo, I borrowed a ski set. My good friend and manager Roar knows Marka very well, and took us deep into wonderful terrain, away from the busy tracks, crossing frozen small lakes and through magic, soft and silent woods. We had an excellent trip, a great talk, I got lots of perspective and inspiration.

Here are my observations.

• I still know skiing! I am The Unconquestable Ice Master Of Ski.
• Ski technology has certainly improved, bindings are easy, shoes are comfy, skis are lightweight, not at all the hassle I remembered.
• Underwear does not itch anymore but I still don't like it.
• Skiing must be awesome for listening to music, but:
• My iPhone does not work very well in -15C / 5F, crashed like crazy
• However my Canon G11 works as usual.
• Downhill is awesome, and even more so when I have no idea what's around the next corner, bring it on.
• The slower someone moves, the more friendly they are.
• It was way more fun than I remember.
• I got blisters and complained like a child the last kilometers, and got a waffle.

Pics or stfu.

I'm sending Roar off first to check the, umm, sound of the skis on the ice.

I hope it's thick enough.

No moose for my sunset shot.

Sudden secret magic lake.