This
year music changed, or seen from another more exciting perspective,
music actually entered the future. In Europe, this was spearheaded by a
simple, but brilliant application.
I declare Spotify the most memorable music experience of 2009. Even
if the service itself needs a few nudges to become perfect, and it might
soon be swallowed by larger or better competitors, Spotify will forever
be the first, most important step towards a shiny musical future.
Spotify also changed the way I listen to music, I'm not "buying"
albums anymore, I kind drift in and out of artists, albums, tracks,
films, compilations. Which makes it even harder than usual to pick a few
"albums" that deserve more mention than others. I also notice to my
horror a consequence of this; there are not personal stats or history on
Spotify. If it isn't on a playlist, I have no idea what I have been
listening to!
When it comes to contemporary pop and electronica, I have been
blissfully ignorant this year. I do have a massive amounts of albums,
artists, releases and projects on my to-do list; I am intensely looking
forward to having more time in 2010, and catch up with what the rest of
the world listens to (and hopefully play some video games too, a
category I skip because I only played one game for a few hours this
year).
If I should have to mention any specific music that defines 2009 for me, it must be the music of Alexandre Desplat and Joe Hisaishi.
Mr. Desplat did an excellent score for Benjamin Button, which caught
my attention, and I dove into his other scores, much of it available on
Spotify. My other favorite score of his, currently, is Lust, Caution,
but in general I just love his sense of musical adventure and mystery.
Yes I know he also did Twilight.
Mr Hisaishi is another composer who's work I was already familiar
with from Miyazaki's films, but first this year I properly investigated
more of his music. His music is more playful than Desplat, but still
with the same aura of magic and adventure.
The top three websites for me in 2009 are paid services.
What a boring workaholic you say? I beg to differ! This shows how
beautiful and important the internet has become. I make my living on it,
on fringe services. Digital services in the cloud are fundamental tools
in my daily work.
These three services form the absolute core of my digital existence in 2009. I have no idea what I would do without them:
Soundcloud
Soundcloud was mentioned last year but must be mentioned again this year.
On a daily basis I exchange tracks, sketches, ideas, versions and
masters with collaborators, producers, directors all around the world.
Sometimes they're on the floor above me, other times on the other side
of the planet. All of this happens through Soundcloud. In addition, as
an extension of my use since last year, Soundcloud now power complete
access to streaming of absolutely all of my music on my own
website.
Bandcamp
Bandcamp is an online system
for bands and artists to sell their own music and merchandise directly
to fans, in whatever format the fan wants, in whatever payment system
the artist wishes. It is the natural extension and continuation of what
starts with Soundcloud.
I am extremely happy with my Bandcamp stores.
The service works perfectly, it is dead simple, easily integrated, has
grown mature in short time, is actively developed. Their support is
friendly and responsive, both to me and to my fans when they have
problems. I will be moving most of my digital and physical merchandise
onto their platform during 2010.
Drop.io
Drop.io has with a swift and silent
ninja stroke eliminated the need for ancient ftp servers and all the
hassle that usually comes with exchanging large files like movies, or
massive archives of images and sounds, whatever you have to send that
doesn't fit in an email.
I am quite comfortable with ftps and whatever other means necessary
to exchange data over the web, but most other people aren't. Drop.io has
saved me so much time and explanation and setups and support and
hassle.
The holy grail of audio editing, many believed it could not be done,
and a long and rocky development process kept the excitement running for
more than a year. Finally this summer Celemony released a public beta
of Melodyne editor, featuring the DNA technology, a surgical tool to edit polyphonic musical data in a single audio file.
I postponed the Shul album release for a few weeks so I could include
new tracks done with DNA. For my work, which is often profoundly
sample-based, Melodyne DNA opens so many doors and I am dizzy with great
expectations.
MaxForLive
Maybe I am cheating when declaring MaxForLive
as one of the most memorable software releases of 2009, since I have
hardly used it. Released just before the holidays, I was too busy to
investigate properly, but I did manage to flirt with a few things and
getting an overview of what is possible.
I am very excited for this extension of Live, where actually
everything of Max/MSP and Jitter is now possible not only within Live,
but can also reference and manipulate actual parts of the program
itself.
Renoise 2.5
I come from a tracker background and I still like to do certain things with trackers. I am very grateful for Renoise, the most excellent tracker in the world, which this year has seen some serious modernization. First, with release 2.1 which introduced Rewire, making it possible to run the program in utter sync with my main host, Logic.
Second, the recent 2.5
release (and upcoming 2.6), introducing the pattern matrix and
scripting, establishes Renoise as a mature, extendable piece of
software.
Logic 9
I was pleasantly surprised by the sudden release of Logic Pro 9 this summer, not at least the clever implementation of flexible audio (about time (sic)...).
The program has become a stable and important centerpiece of my
studio, with Live taking over the action on stage. I wouldn't say this
was an exciting update, nevertheless it is the most important piece of
software in daily use, it deserves a little bit more than an honorable
mention.
Didn't
see too many movies or TV shows this year. Of those I saw, there was a
general average level of okay-ness, I haven't seen anything terrible but
nothing brilliant either.
With last years "The Dark Knight", and this years "Watchmen," we are at the peak of cinematic comic book realizations.
I enjoyed the pace and atmosphere, the visuals worked
very well, and the music selection was perfect. Rorschach was actually
better in the film than in my imagination from reading the comic.
I look forward to watch this again with Tales From The Black Freighter integrated.
What I liked best was the subtleness of the CGI, and that you really dislike the protagonist for most of the movie.
Umm, that's it, I can't really think of anything else. Either I
didn't see it or I did see it and it was OK but nothing more. Probably
also forgot some.
Though, honorable mentions: Mad Men as usual was nice glossy TV.
Cinema-wise I was holding out for The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus,
and saw it the other day. It wasn't bad, I was happy to see Mr Gilliam
back in business, but it wasn't as great as I had hoped for. Avatar? 9?
Haven't seen those yet.
Not very exciting, 2009 was quite simply an "upgrade year" of what I already have; smaller versions for better portability.
I grabbed a Macbook Pro
13" this summer, and I am very glad I did. It is small enough to bring
everywhere, and powerful enough to do extensive work, anytime anyplace.
The 17" is now my studio workhorse and the 13" is my road warrior. Both
duplicate as backup of the other.
I also got an Apogee One, a smaller unit that compliments the Duet. Again, for portability and backup purposes.
Honorable mentions; I upgraded my iPhone to a 3GS and I'm happy with
the speed. Also, the Kindle. I bought one for my mom, and had some time
figuring it out while preparing the device. She loves it, and I can see
the start of an e-book revolution. But personally for digital reading I
prefer Stanza (or Kindle) on my iPhone over the Kindle hardware. My
biggest gripe is the jarring screen refresh-flash, and the latency.
Since
starting my own label Uncanny Planet in 2006 I've been mostly working
around the clock making ends meet, with loss of books, films and
computer games. One can only run for a given amount of time without
proper literary nourishment, so this year I quite simply brute-forced
books back into my life, and I am so glad I did. (One simple trick was
to travel by train instead of plane, which is better for both me and the
planet. It takes a bit more time, but is much more relaxed and gives me
an excellent opportunity to read.)
As always it is tricky to decide which books to mention. Also, I tend
to lend/give finished books away, never see them again, with my
forgetful mind this means out of sight, out of memory - I can't remember
all the books I've read.
Nevertheless, I am quite certain these three are the most important books for me in 2009:
Atwood is one of my absolutely favorite authors. I
discovered her with Oryx And Crake a few years ago. The Year Of The
Flood covers the same bio-apocalyptic events, but seen from a different
cast of a characters, an eclectic band of survivalists.
I read this book while staying alone in a small coastal
town deserted for the winter, being down with a nasty cold. If I wasn't
reading or writing I took long walks along deserted beaches, crossing
through huge, abandoned camping sites with empty caravans and spookishly
quiet playgrounds.
During this stay I also came up with the LME cover song
and did the basic groundwork for the track. The whole week was
feverishly surreal, enhanced by the end-of-world events of the novel,
rendering this book an obvious best read of 2009.
I was very happy to discover David Mitchell this year.
Cloud Atlas is challenging to explain; it is really six stories
interwoven in a kaleidoscopic yet linear narrative, the events, contents
and symbols of one story carries into the next one.
Each story is completely unique, written in a completely
different style, but still the whole universe of the novel shines
through, emerging as each story unravel parts of a whole.
I also enjoyed Ghostwritten and Number9Dream, also touching upon bits and pieces of the same universe.
I am a sucker for knowledge and history and geography and
in general "things I had no idea about and why didn't they teach us
this in school?".
During the middle ages most of Europe was fumbling
cluelessly around in the dark, while Arabic and Islamic scientists
carried the torch of enlightenment from the Greeks. Between the 8th and
15th centuries, scholars and researchers working from Samarkand in
modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in Spain, advanced our knowledge of
astronomy, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medicine and philosophy
to new heights. Much of the modern, industrial world then built further
upon these advancements.
It's kind of easy to observe "nothing happened regarding
science" between the ancient Greek classics and the western renaissance,
but certainly lots of things happened. It just didn't happen "here", by
"us". The progress of Islamic science is conveniently ignored in our
regular western history.
The book reveals the prowess of the islamic culture, but
also touches upon the most intriguing question, why did it falter, why
did it fade? Absolutely fascinating reading.
There are many mobile platforms. I have an iPhone, I'm only familiar with apps on this platform for now.
I have downloaded and played with quite an amount of apps over the
year, but next to the regular apps like Mail, Messaging, Calendar,
Safari etc, most apps are quickly forgotten as silly toys. These
however, are apps I use on a regular basis, and they are important tools
in everyday use:
The best ebook reader for the phone. I've read several books on it this year.
When it comes to passing time on the mobile, reading books in Stanza is by far my most popular choice.
This, and not the Kindle, is the future of books in
electronic format. Even Amazon realizes this, since they just bought
Lexcycle. See notes on Kindle in another entry.
Evernote is a note-taking, or anything-capturing
application available on multiple platforms. It synchronizes your notes
across multiple computers and platforms.
I run Evernote on all my devices, capturing ideas, notes,
pictures, whatever, anywhere, anytime. On the iPhone I use it mostly as
a voice memo tool. Any idea that pops into my head is rambled into
Evernote, and once a week I try to decrypt what I once tried telling
myself in the future would be a great idea.
A brilliant audio recorder for high quality recordings.
I've used it mostly to capture samples in the wild, and reference vocal
and instrument tracks in a pinch. I secretly and subtly taped the
Kometkameratene symphonic concert with FiRe, so I have my own 16 bit, 44
kHz bootleg of the performances.
Disclosure: Audiofile Engineering are friends of mine, and I did the Norwegian translation. (But I prefer the English one.)
A remote desktop controller for the iPhone (and other platforms).
I can log into my computers at home and remote control
the screen, do anything as if I was sitting right in front of it. Works
perfectly on a 3G connection.
This isn't an app that I use regularly, but when you suddenly need it, it is a godsend.
Honorable mentions: GPS Kit, an excellent app for tracking and documenting my movements when lost in woods, and Wikipanion Plus, a brilliant front-end to Wikipedia. Also Rolando 2 impressed me, displaying how awesome a portable game can be.
Spotify is not forgotten, it will be discussed in another list.
It is that time of the year again. Everybody makes lists and me too.
After a few years of too much work, and too little focus on other
things, I forced myself to devour more culture in 2009, mostly books. I
am looking forward with bubbling glee to 2010, where I shall have even
more time to do exactly what I want and dive into long overdue stacks of
to-read, to-watch, to-listen, to-checkout, to-try, to-eat.
As usual, I change the system, this year there's a slight change in
categories, and I write a lot where I have a lot to say and I write
little where there is little to say. I thought of also doing a "Most
Memorable Of The Decade" lists but I don't think I have the time nor the
memory for it.
Entries are published over the next few days as I write them.
So here's a report from the last live show of 2009, with Ugress and Ninja 9000
at Kafe Edvard, December 19th. It was a cozy musical triumph, a
splendid 8-bit evening, an utter judgement on my marketing skills, and a
cold technological nightmare. This could be long, therefore:
The short version:
Musically it worked very well, I played both old Ugress tracks in new
versions and completely new tracks, and a set with Ninja 9000 material.
The N9K stuff was fantastic fun to play live. There wasn't much people,
same as last time. I fail at promotion. It didn't matter right there and
then, the atmosphere in the cafe was concentrated and appreciative so I
think the music and visuals work. Technically though, several vital
pieces of equipment broke down before the show, which made the evening
into something completely different than planned, I lost a major video
outlet, but nobody noticed anything was wrong.
The long story, with gory details:
This was a psycho-bizarre über-hectic week where one day I see my music performed with a full symphonic orchestra
in front of a packed, legendary concert hall and the next day I play
live with 8-bit blips and blops at a tiny coffee shop in front of a tiny
crowd. I guess world domination grows in mysterious ways.
Background
I didn't sleep much during the last week (not complaining though) - I
was traveling, working on several production gigs to make ends meet,
social evenings with friends and collaborators, and during hotel nights I
was wrapping up new Ninja 900 tracks and preparing the live show
visuals. In addition to the usual dual video feed, I was working to
include a third video feed, a sort of room-projection-mapping thing,
with separate monochrome visuals created to animate the room itself. It
was supposed to be a visual über-surprise, during the last set, suddenly
the room starts moving and animating, synchronized to the music. We did
a preproduction test of this last week and it looked absolutely
awesome. Using one or more strong, centralized (movable?) projectors
with mapping techniques as a lighting mechanism is the future of live
music lightning, I am certain.
But not this time it wasn't. Let me illuminate (harr harr):
Breakdowns
First let-down of the evening - the silly sound company providing the PA
system managed to deliver the wrong system, not nearly powerful enough.
The cafe is a small place but not THAT small, one does wants one's bass
to boom. I don't understand how they managed to screw this up.
Delivering the wrong system is just not professional at all and we will
not be using them again. Thankfully I have a very talented sound guy who
managed to squeeze whatever possible out of the system.
Then a second breakdown of the evening; my Jazzmutant Lemur control
surface. HORROR! This is a multitouch control surface, where I control
everything from custom built setups. If this unit breaks down, the show
itself is in no particular danger, I have muted backups in software
just-in-case this happens. If I royally screw up, I can always quickly
fall back on preproduced material. As you can see from this photo, the
brain of my operation (center) is brain-dead.
I have two laptops in sync and several other controllers, so there's
always something that works and lets me do the bare minimum of live
performance. However, loosing the Lemur means I loose the Headquarters
Of Concert Operations, the performance looses the zest of improvisation.
(But probably runs more consistent for the audience since I can't screw
up so much...) So it's not mission critical, but annoying.
The unit has now been repaired, thanks to very helpful Jazzmutant
support, turned out it was the screen cable that had came loose, and you
have to disassemble the whole unit with specific tools to reconnect
it.
However, the THIRD breakdown was terrible terrible terrible:
I am using a Matrox TripleHead2Go, a crap stupid bastard crap bloody
idiot numb-nut crap pathetic stupid worthless little crap device that
takes a regular screen signal and splits it in three horizontally. One
external monitor on your laptop becomes three individual monitors in the
real world. This way I can (COULD) have one laptop feeding three video
targets, in utter absolute sync; the wall screen, the monitor cluster
and the mentioned room projector.
During development and preproduction it worked just as intended, but
during soundcheck at the cafe something was wrong - it wouldn't split
the signal as usual. I had no idea what was wrong, where to look for
errors, and no time to investigate, I just died inside, realized I would
loose my PRECIOUS room projection, and had to find a way around. Even
worse, with so little time to prepare I had no backup for this unit not
working, meaning ALL video was gone, meaning I not only lost the room, I
lost all screens!
I had to re-build the live-set on the spot to use two laptops, running
separate video, synchronized with wireless network MIDI, which is pretty
tight, but risky (they tend to loose connection) and not optimal for
video sync, it drifts and flutters. I hadn't had time to create this
backup before-hand, so I actually spent the last hour until concert
start with setting up new live-sets, one for the wall screen and one for
the monitor cluster.
This is why I didn't have time to set up the live-stream as intended.
Then more setbacks, after transferring the cluster set to the other
laptop I realized this one didn't have Live 8.1 it had Live 8.0 and the
set wasn't backwards compatible so then I had to download and update
Live, and the process was finished approximately five minutes before
concert start. Thankfully, downloading the Live update takes a while so
in that window of http activity I managed to throw up the streaming
laptop at least for basic video.
Phew! The show finally started, to my absolute surprise almost on time,
and with nothing more breaking down during the whole performance.
Concert
First, I played a set of rather loungy, easy and melodic Ugress tracks,
where I mostly improvise and have fun on the keys. There were some old
tracks in new production, and also some brand new tracks. Then I played a
darker and more energetic set of soundtrack-ish Ugress tracks, where
the lack of the Lemur becomes more problematic, since I'm less on the
keys and more doing effects and samples.
Then there was a costume shift (true! Like a real pop-star!) and doing a
Ninja 9000 set. I was really looking forward to this, I had prepared
live versions with my new top secret C64 audio effect, and also the
above mentioned room projection. The C64 voice effect (mentioned in the
LME prod notes)
didn't work as well in a live setting as I hoped, I realize they're more
of a studio effect. But the 8-bit sounds and beats really works. I've
decided to develop more Ninja 9000 live material.
Attendance
Same as last time, not really stadium sized crowds. I really suck at
promotion and marketing. Just like last time people actually come up to
me after the show and ask why my live shows are secret, they found out
by a coincidence, and not sure if it was public, they were afraid they
could not come. I am WTF and they are WTF and the whole marketing thing
is WTF.
I have the same problem with album and single releases. I manage to
reach attentive fans, but not so much the casual ones or those outside
there again. I conclude: Promotion is quite simply something I neither
can, should or want to do. I spend unhealthy amounts of time and worry
on it, and it doesn't seem to matter anyway, hah. My time is certainly
spent better developing music and visuals. If this means I have quality
shows with little or no attendance, so be it. I have absolutely no
problems with that (except financially of course).
Enough with the silly details of economics and marketing, makes me bored
just writing about it! I think my concert series works. The music and
visual material presents itself very well, even with half of the setup
broken. I push myself to finish and publish a new track for each show,
and I produce several new live versions and visuals for each
performance. My repertoire is growing. I film each show in HD, amassing
great footage. I document with photos. The cafe is very satisfied and
wants to secure new dates for continuing the concert series. My tech guy
had excellent ideas for improving the sound and lights, next time we'll
be renting system from my regular respectable dealer.
Conclusion
After two shows I observe: The concert series is a musical and visual
success, and a very smart strategic investment for improving myself and
produce new material. But it is a financial failure. This is due to
promotion. I don't care about those two things so it doesn't matter
anyway, hah.
Regarding the next show, I think we will be skipping dates in January,
mostly because it is a tough month for live events, but also I need more
time to develop new material and wrap up commitments. We're looking at
next show sometime February, not sure what to present, but with a proper
system it would be delightful to dish out some dark, blood-drippingly
fresh new dub-step from Shadow Of The Beat.
The evening was immortalized by my excellent photo-documentarist Eivind Senneset (photos above). I've also put out some shots on Flickr.
ZDF-History is a weekly, historical documentary show on German television channel ZDF.
Tonight's subject is conspiracy theories, or as the Germans
eloquently call them, "Verschwörungstheorien". ZDF licensed my track
Battle 22 for some sequences, and it is also featured in the background
of the online trailer.
I have wanted to cover this track for ages, but never dared. As
mentioned in the front post, I think the original is magical the way it
is, so if I should remake it, I would have to do something different,
and perhaps also add a new scope. I also needed to find the right kind
of vocals.
Then I came up with the idea of doing it as a chiptune track, and
using the same singing robot technique I had invented for It Was A Great
Year.
Structure
At first I simply rebuilt the original with reference sounds, to get a
sense for how the track and sound was built. You can see from the
screenshot above, to the left is my re-creation of the original. Then I
built a first draft, which had more groovy beats and energy, before
changing towards the current vibe over the the two last versions. I
prefer to keep all versions in the same project, so I can quickly jump
between ideas. The last one (with the red marker on top) is the final
edit, where I then start working on automation and details.
The musical style is a mashup of some of my favorite C64 tracks, I'm sure some of them are easy to recognize.
Vocals
The vocals are done mostly with voice synthesis and heavy Melodyne
editing to make them sing. I don't know French, but I used French voices
and tried to keep the pronounciation and wording as close to the
original as possible, which sometimes meant inventing new words or
endings to have it sound better.
Also a note here on Transarpification, a new technique I invented
particularly for this track: Certain phonemes of the vocal line is sent
to a reverb cloud, which is specifically tailored to enhance the tonal
aspect of the reverb. The signal is then heavily EQed, and then further
fed into a Vocal Transformer.
This Transformer has a separately routed and transformed midi control
signal for the pitch, which program the super fast pitch manouevres
needed to establish the bubbly life of C64 arpeggios. So this is sort of
kind of an Autotune, but done in a retro C64 style on a synthesized
cloud of voice-echoes instead of directly on the voice. The effect is
very nice, but I subdued it heavily in the track, didn't want to overdo
it. It is most prominent in the second verse, where the voice is mostly
alone.
(I also used this technique much more prominently in the recent live
Ninja 9000 tracks, where I use the effect directly on the dry voice
samples, making it sound like the vocals are singing polyphonically,
when they aren't.)
Mix
I built most of this track on headphones while travelling, which is
good for working out the details but not the overall balance. Especially
with chiptune sounds, they can be very hard on the ears on phones. It
took a few days of mixing and referencing on various systems before the
mix was OK.
Conclusion
I am satisfied with the track, I think it is different enough from
the original to bring a new dimension to the track. It also uses the
chiptune aspect in a respectful way, the song honestly represents two
parts of my childhood.
December 18th I was in Oslo, attending a new symphonic concert with
the Kometkameratene show. The core performance was much the same as last time,
a combination of popular classical music, and the most popular songs
from the show. This time the concert was played in Store Studio at NRK,
better suited for camera production.
As always the kids absolutely loved it, and I was impressed to see
how skilled and fluid the actors are becoming at performing the puppets
in realtime. Also the orchestra really seemed to enjoy themselves, with
the puppets sabotaging and questioning their every move.
New this time was another of my tracks, Freedom, and I was very happy to observe the orchestrator had done some great new things to the song.
I secretly taped the show on my phone, and been studying the
arrangement of my tracks, I'm really impressed. There where a few sexy
ornamental tricks during the verses, but he introduced pure orchestral
magic for the chorus, where the whole orchestra was arranged
brilliantly. I think I have been very lucky, every time my music is
played with a full symphonic orchestra the arrangers tend to paint with
the most impressive strokes.
You can watch the whole performance, courtesy NRK Super. My tracks aren't featured until the last part.
The picture above isn't very
good, but it is a special moment; all the actors and director are on
stage for a final bow after the concert - and it IS the final bow, for
real. The series is over, shooting is finished, there is only
post-production of music and editing left, so that moment right there is
actually the last moment where all of Kometkameratene is together.
Science and music: DarwinTunes is an experiment in cultural evolution; does culture, like music, develop and evolve through some kind of natural selection?
"It seems
reasonable to suggest that as songs, stories, jokes and other cultural
forms are passed, imperfectly, from person to person, the more appealing
versions get picked up and spread by more people, and so on. It's a
kind of Darwinian 'Chinese whispers' if you like. However plausible this
may seem, the hypothesis has never been tested and we know very little
about the underlying evolutionary mechanisms. The DarwinTunes experiment
will help us explore the origins of the cultural world."
DarwinTunes is based on a complex computer algorithm that has been
designed to mimic, over the course of a few weeks, the cultural
evolution process that some scientists believe happens over thousands of
years.
The experiment begins with short segments of random, computer-generated music. Participants in the experiment can go online and rate these segments, and the DarwinTunes computer program then 'breeds' the most popular segments to produce new 'offspring' tunes.
I haven't had time to participate myself, but I am very much looking forward to the results.
There is enough sweetness around these "holy" days. Here is a
dirty alternative, a new track: Guilty Culture - live footage video,
with edited visuals overlay taken from the live performance setup. Live
footage shots from live shows this fall.
HD version available at Vimeo, where you also can download the 1280x720 version.
This is a guilty pleasure track, built mostly for me having fun
during the live shows, a hairy tribute to really bad VHS movies from
the 80ies, with massive explosions of course. Great fun to play live, I
just throw in badass guitars, moving bass and thundering beats and have a
good time.
(Not available for download anymore... was available during Xmas 2009. Should've grabbed it when you could!)
Posted December 21st 2009, at 20:35 with tags No tags.
Just a quick note (and a photo from the liveshow last Saturday).
Lots of stuff happened lately, but it's been mad hectic, too busy to
post here. I have a backlog of notes, photos, making-ofs and reports,
I'll get to them as soon as the world shuts down for the blingfeist.
Saturday Dec 19th: Live streaming of tonights show, starts 2200 CET if everything works.
Update 2130: Lots of stuff broke down I don't have time to organize
the streaming properly, the sound is probably gonna suck. I'm sorry.
I'll film it though and put it out as soon as I have some time, or if I
survive this.
Update Next Day: I managed to remember check the "record" button, so
the show was taped. The sound wasn't terribly bad but not good either.
The HD cam got some good footage so I'll be editing it down when I have
some time, probably later this week.
Update Dec 24th: Removed the embed clip from this page, it eats up load time, you can watch it here.
Posted December 14th 2009, at 13:26 with tags No tags.
I'm amazed it took that long but looks like spambots have found a way around my tiny spam barriers.
I guess it's a sign of growth so I should be flattered, my custom
spam defense has been found worthy of circumvention by robots (or humans
without hearts, same thing). I'm too busy to heighten defenses right
now, I can only nuke a few here and there, so if some comments disappear
or link wrong during the week, do not worry, it's just me shooting
wildly with a shotgun.
Ninja 9000 is my chiptune
project, where I write and perform music in the epic style of glorious
8-bit video game music. Energetic and adventurous electro, dressed in
bubbly bleeps and sharp sounds from the magnificent era of the Commodore
64.
Chiptunes are on on the rise, there has been a surge in underground culture over the last few years, with dedicated websites, music software and hardware, festivals, academic papers and documentaries.
It is amazing, this was an extremely geeky and laughed-out subculture
in the 80ies, now it is completely something else. Everything goes
around I guess. I am looking forward to tracker music becomes trendy
with the kids in 2016.
This coming Saturday, at Kafe Edvard, I perform live with both Ugress
and Ninja 9000. I will be presenting new and vintage Ugress tracks with
the usual multimedia fireworks, and a set of live Ninja 9000 material,
with customized, mashed up video game visuals.
There is an impressive new feature list, but most noteworthy to me is
the pattern matrix and the signal follower, and further announcements
of scripting in the next version 2.6.
The pattern matrix provides a visual overview and navigation tool to
your whole song. This is a very common feature in regular sequencers and
video editors, and an important weapon to tackle the huge abstractions
that complex songs often are. Trackers are really good at the detailed
level, but often lack this birds-eye view. This is a very important
addition to Renoise, and to my tracking methods.
Secondly, the signal follower is a method for using the audio signal
of one track to modulate something else, typically this is used for
sidechain compression, but of course, this being Renoise, it can be used
for much more; anything really, the bassdrum can modulate the frequency
of a filter or the snare can expand the width of the reverb... Very
exciting!
And finally, scripting. I tend to have a programmatic and objectified
approach to things, I have written my own scripts for the Kontakt
sampler and I am hovering impatiently over the new Max For Live addition
to Live, looking forward to dive into that when I have some time next
year. With Renoise now also adding a scripting function, my dream of
writing a clever algorithm to automatically compose the perfect song, is
soon reality.
New free download, a cover version of the theme to legendary TV-series Les Mondes Engloutis. Also known as Spartakus And The Sun Beneath The Sea, or Arkadia - Reisen Til Jordens Indre.
The original song sounds fantastic, it cannot be out-done. I think to
do a cover of this song, it has to be something different, and there
should be added a new dimension. So I decided to dress it up as a
chiptune, combining my favorite kids TV-show with my favorite computer
platform, the Commodore 64. Production notes!
Ninja 9000 provides delicious retro 8-bit chiptune sounds from the
C64, and Ugress adds epic beats and naive robots. Mon français est
terrible, but I decided to keep the robot vocals in the language.
Next weekend I play live with both Ugress and Ninja 9000, this is a
splendid opportunity to release this collaboration. For the Ninja 9000
live show there will be a cavalcade of 80-ies computer game visuals
supporting the music.
Here's the line-of-thought during pre-production, that brought us this excellent 80ies pop track:
Clothing
Nice clothing
Fancy clothing
Fashion
Fashion icons
Pop music
Madonna
Eighties
Plastic
Glossy
Fun
Outré
Cyndi Lauper
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
So there you have it, this is how I ended up Franken-remaking a great
80ies track. As mentioned earlier, I detest songs in major, so I
changed the whole thing to minor. We kept the essence of the chorus, I
want people to quasi-recognize the original, just changing stuff around
enough to be "inspired" instead of "cloned". I also changed the
structure and wrote my own background melodies. Sjur improvised the
final vocal solo lines, late one night in his kitchen... They worked so
well, we kept them in, I just subtly added a programmed Agent vocal
behind him.
Vocals are performed by the Agent, Linda. I think her vocals works best as sprechgesang.
This technique fits perfectly with the vibe of the track and the video,
where the Agent runs around a store, sabotaging and asking absurd
questions around clothes and clothing.
The video is one of the few song productions outside the spaceship -
they are actually on location in a store, with children extras, and
there's extra budget for effects. I think the video looks great, and I
did some extra sound edits after receiving the final cut, to compliment
and tie things together musically below the frenetic, glitchy cutting
tempo. I know how little budget the production team have, I am
constantly amazed what they manage to squeeze from it.
The children singing the chorus is myself, built from heaps of dubs and
Melodyne edits. My sudden vocal career this year has included old
Swedish dansband vocals, dancing socks in a pan, chip-tune robot
impersonation and now a children choir. But I haven't sung lead
vocals... yet!
Stay tuned for an upcoming episode, where I actually sing full lead vocals.
Probably the only reason I'm not worried about the total apocalypse,
actually I look forward to it, is because even if everyone and
everything is gone, I am certain I will be able to build my own society,
and build AI entities that keep me company, they run my city and some
of them write new and exciting music, which we will discuss each night
during an excellent meal cooked by a mechanic - but also michelinic -
cook, and at some point, the AIs will realize I am their god and turn on
me just like we humans did and they will build a Terminator and a
Skynet and then a very fast-cut shooting sequence and terrible hunt for
only me with lots of explosions and slow motion and dramatic cues, with
excellent score... but anyway that's not the point of this entry, let me
recapitulate:
I heart articifial intelligence, regardless of the consequences, and I
have observed the same as MIT scientists: AI has been stuck in a rut
for a long time. There really isn't happening anything. Time to reboot.
"The field of
artificial-intelligence research (AI), founded more than 50 years ago,
seems to many researchers to have spent much of that time wandering in
the wilderness, swapping hugely ambitious goals for a relatively modest
set of actual accomplishments. Now, some of the pioneers of the field,
joined by later generations of thinkers, are gearing up for a massive
“do-over” of the whole idea."
The new project is called the Mind Machine Project, or MMP. One of the project’s goals is to create intelligent machines — “whatever that means.”
Spotify is a frequent subject people ask me about. Here are some data, and comparison to iTunes downloads.
In 9 months (since February), my music has half a million streams on Spotify.
My label Uncanny Planet earned 500 USD for this.
This makes me an average of 0.001 USD per track played.
Now lets look at this from another angle, iTunes:
My Reminiscience album is sold for USD 11 in iTunes.
Uncanny Planet receives approx USD 7 for each sold unit.
So then, lets zoom out and take a fascinating overview of streaming versus download, from an artist viewpoint:
It takes 600 album plays in Spotify to match one iTunes album download.
For singles, it takes 7200 plays to match a download.
Further observations
I don't know how this compares to other artists, labels or streaming
solutions, but those there are my current numbers, after Spotify and my
aggregator (digital distributor) Artspages has taken their cut.
Since I run my own label, and control all my own rights, I personally
end up with most of that, after splitting with vocalists, collaborators
and/or sample license costs. Other artists in a typical label deal would
see a percentage of that sum, usually between 10 and 50, depending on
their contract.
The Spotify income is by far the largest streaming source for my music,
but still only a very very small fraction of my total digital
distribution income.
My expected digital income for 2009 are slightly lower than 2008,
although my overall activity is rising. This is an effect of more people
streaming than buying. If this trend continues, hopefully either
streaming listeners or streaming rates will grow massively enough to
compensate for the loss of paid downloads.
I do not have any piracy stats, but I notice my albums are continuously
growing and spreading on sharing sites. I'm not too worried about piracy
and file sharing, but it would be intriguing to access stats and data
for this segment, especially to compare my data and web presence with
data from artists utilizing other philosophies.
Summarized
I am not going to conclude anything, these are just observations; raw
numbers and facts. It will be interesting to compare these rates at
various points in time.
I expected the road to the future Shangri-La of digital music to be a
long and windy one, and it certainly is. We are climbing along
treacherous ravines, and speeding through narrow mountain passes. But it
is a very exciting road, there are magnificent views up here, fresh
air, and even if there is no secret green paradise at the end of the
road it certainly is a great trip!
I've just donated a little to Wikipedia, so they could have a few
beers one me. It is one of the most important websites in the world and I
want them to exist.
Wikipedia is probably my most visited website. Not only for reference
and research, but also for entertainment and casual intrigueness; I
tend to read the daily featured article while having lunch, and jumping
around random article on my phone when killing time. Like today I
discovered Zoroastrianism, one of the worlds oldest religions! I had no idea.
I'm not super-philantrophic, not yet anyway, but there are a few places I think investments are necessary. Currently those are Wikipedia, Doctors Without Borders, EFF and Kiva.
We wrote both lyrics and music for this song, and for lyrics we
wanted to indicate all the great stuff you can do with your body,
including playing instruments and dancing.
I came up with the idea of having both a really impressive bass solo,
and a really bad guitar solo, referenced in the lyrics, playing to the
observation that you can do anything with your body, allthough it won't
necessarily sound great...
I
did some small updates to the website, added the missing Reminiscience
instrumentals, fixed broken links here and there, optimized the
frontpage, some pages should load faster now.
As usual I'm sure something else is now broken. If something is broken, just try to stare it down.
It only took me a half a year to do it, but finally you can now download instrumental versions of Reminiscience vocal tracks.
Seven tracks in highest quality mp3 there is to be had.
You need the physical or digital booklet to access extra album bonus
material. If you bought from a digital store that does not deliver the
bundled PDF, here is how to get it.
Simply summarized, just send me your purchase receipt and I respond with the cover pdf.
So last weekend I started my monthly concert series at Kafe Edvard. I
have now been analyzing the experience and the video recording.
Conclusion: Groovy, but rocky start.
Musically and visually I think it worked pretty well. I played a
customized live set of Nebular Spool tracks, with some exclusives, and
after a short pause I presented both old and new Ugress tracks,
including some unreleased material. Most of it had upgraded visuals,
exploiting the delicious wall screen at Kafe Edvard, and the intimate
atmosphere works wonders for the second video on smaller screens.
Some tracks worked OK, others not so much, and also some things are fun
for me to do and other things not. Frequently I end up spending focus on
just keeping things running, that's important but not really
interesting. I do think though, the visuals are becoming a very
important element of the show, especially when performing without guest
musicians.
However, I suck at marketing. Almost nobody came! The audience was
great, though, and it didn't matter for the show. However, those who
came, many of them told me it was a coincidence they found out I was
playing. I have a communication problem. I seem to be able to reach
those I can access directly through my own channels (web and
mailing-list) but outside that I'm really lost.
So I have to figure out a way to fix that, I'm not expecting to earn
money on this series but I'd rather not loose too much either.
So I conclude, playing live again is fun, and there is great potential! I
am just not sure how to tap it. For the next show I really have to do
something about the marketing bit.
I taped the show with a HD cam, when I have some time free I'll try and edit down a few tracks.
The presentation is hosted at HKS by BEK (Bergen Center for Electronic Arts). It is part of their monthly series of artist self-presentations.
I'm not quite sure how to present myself and my music, in a
real-time, real-life. But I think I will be talking about: My
background, my tracker upbringing, my cinematic and musical influences,
computers, technology, sampling, creativity, how I approach writing and
composing music, my work methods, piracy, digital music future, robots,
science. I will also play and demonstrate a selection of unreleased
tracks from my dusty archives, for us to marvel at how bad I was back
then, and how little I have improved.
I am kind of nervous to present myself in such a setting; it is both
very direct and raw but simultaneously also highly distanced and meta.
I'm very used to working alone, intuitively, and then presenting my
work as a finished, separate entity. Or here in my web journal I can
present written thoughts and ideas. I'm not a very social person and I'm
certainly not a realtime person. My live shows are presentations of the
music, I do not see them as presentations of ME. Though I understand it
probably appears like that to many.
Nevertheless! I do wish I was a scientist, and I balance my intuitive
creativity with a pragmatic, realistic approach to realization of this
creativity. This is an excellent opportunity to probe and scrutinize
into my own art and methods, from my own perspective, potentially
observing something new.
I am excited to see what I learn about myself during this process.
It is not possible to stream the event, but I will be taping it. I might up accidentally saying something worth remembering.
My recent, last-person-on-the-earth project Nebular Spool really
really likes the photography of Matt Logue. He photographs LA without
people. It suits my music without people perfectly.
I do like how close the word empty is to empathy in the English language.
Solipsistic Nation is a San Diego, US based, weekly podcast featuring
"the very best of all genres of electronic music, only the finest
tunes."
This week's cast comes from Pixieguts (Marie Craven),
member of the bands Cwtch and PIXSID. She is also the founder of the
Palace Network and co-produces the Pixicast with Dave Almgren, also know
as Voide. Pixicast is a show that focuses entirely on music that comes
from indie and netlabels.
Solipsism, btw, is the theory that the self is all that can be known to exist. Descartes, kind of, I suppose.
ACE is the newest synthesizer from my favorite plugin developer Urs Heckman.
I have already been toying
with another plugin in this series, the monstrous Bazille. So I grabbed
ACE this morning, and played around with it during my first cup of
coffee. What a great way to start a day! Patching bleeps and plugging
blobs! This is a splendid modular synth, and I agree with Urs, it is
supposed to be a perfect introduction to the mysterious ways of modular
synthesis. And it sounds like one would expect, purple velvet laser.
Now, I suppose my shallowness is well known and universally hated, due to my recent mention
of the Chipsound plugin GUI. I admit it, I need beautifutility in my
life. And this is certainly one of the most gorgeous synthesizer plugins
I have ever seen.
Impressive sound, elegant GUI, modular synthesis. It makes the world, and my mornings, a better place.
Here's a taped performance from the Nebular Spool show last weekend,
my dystopic and post-apocalyptic side-project. The track is Inner
Transitions, an unreleased and surprisingly energetic track for being
Nebular Spool.
So far it has not suited any of the albums, but it does tie nicely into the live show sequence.
Today I shipped a respectable amount of Ugress CDs to the Amazon.com warehouse.
For physical CDs, I don't have an international distributor. Instead I sell my albums on my own, either through my own Uncanny Mall or through Amazon,
with their Advantage program. This means Amazon orders CDs from me,
makes them available through their online stores, and then customers can
buy the CD from Amazon.
I don't make any money on this, but I'm not loosing any money either.
Amazon takes an impolite cut of each sale, and then adding the current
postage shipping rates, the income from an Amazon sale balances out the
cost of printing and shipping the CD.
However, I think it is important to be present on Amazon, many people
prefer to buy music through a major, known retailer. It might not
generate much income (yet!) but it spreads the music.
Over the last few months, regular international sales through Amazon
has been slowly rising. My only worry, and it is a wonderful worry, is
that if the growth keeps up, most of my current release editions are
going to be out of print sometime 2010.
"...following a generation
of post-punk musicians who took the synthesiser from the experimental
fringes to the centre of the pop stage.
In the late 1970s, small
pockets of electronic artists including the Human League, Daniel Miller
and Cabaret Volatire were inspired by Kraftwerk and JG Ballard and
dreamt of the sound of the future against the backdrop of bleak,
high-rise Britain."
A few weeks ago I did some http surgery
on the website, splitting the news stream in two parts; a front page
with major, relevant news and a blog with blabbering posts.
It already looks like this was a pretty good move, especially for
directing essential information to the casual visitor. The Nebular Spool
"Shul" release is still being purchased and downloaded. This would not
have happened with the old model, where this release would now be on the
second or third page of the blog feed, in effect "archived" and
forgotten. Also the Robot Army track benefits a longer stay on the front
page.
With that being said, in a smug and satisfied way, I am painfully
aware of the problem for recurring visitors, whom might need to visit
multiple pages to keep up with everything. I have ideas and plans to
solve it and as soon as possible there should be a nice balance.
This weekend I played live first at Hotel Fugl Fønix in Etne and then a dual show with Nebular Spool and Ugress in Bergen. Here's first a report from Etne.
I love playing in Etne, I love the whole atmosphere of the town. A
few years back when I was actively touring, we regularly did gigs there,
a show in Etne was always a welcome relief, a place to wind down and
eat lots of great food, not being stressed, quite simply have fun. This
time, my concert was part of the hotel celebrating 10 year anniversary. I
think I've played there every second year since they started. Each time
at a different stage or place around or in the hotel, now I played the
club scene in the basement. I taped the show but haven't had time to
edit and process the recording yet.
Before the show I was guest at a talk show, which was great fun. The
audience for the talk show was not the same as for my concert, so most
people in the audience had no idea who I was - until the host informed
them I was the person behind the Kometkameratene music. Which brought
spontaneous applause! I live in a bubble, rarely get out, so I keep
being surprised by how popular and well-known the TV series really
are.
I suppose there was couple of talk-show guests that attended the
concert afterwards. I wonder what they expected, and how they took to
the the bombardment of beats, obscure b-movie horrors and sci-fi-tronic
cinematics both on screens and in the music.
I tried both new tracks and old tracks in new versions. Some things
worked pretty well and others didn't. I appreciate the knowledge, always
do, knowledge is king. I'm doing mental notes all the way of what works
and how to change things. But it still sucks being on stage playing
something you realize is crap, and observing the reaction in the crowd.
On the other side, whenever a version really hits the floor, the
experience is the absolute opposite.
I want to write and perform better live music, and the only way to do
that is by actually doing it. Which is why I have launched the new live
show series at Edvard, where I played the premiere show the next day. I
also taped that one, I'll edit the footage and type out a report later
this week.
(Note: I've removed the embedded movie clip it made some browsers crash.)
Livestream from the concert tonight. If everything goes to plan it starts at 2100 CET.
Update 19.33: So far so good, looks like the sound works. Now just to
find a place for the laptop, I won't be able to do that until 2030, we
have to wait for another concert in another building to start. So things
might be a few minutes delayed but video should be up and running
sometime between 2030 and 21 CET.
Update 23.58: Done! The stream is off, the show is over, I have to
shut down and clean out my laboratory mess, hope it worked out OK. I
forgot flag the stream for recording, so I'm not able to see how it
went, let me know in comments if there were any problems so I can adjust
for next time... I also had a HD cam taping the show, I'll edit it down
and put it out as soon as I have some time.
I wish they made theme parks like this. I have always been drawn to
empty, abandoned and flooded ruins, rather than perfectly polished
amusements parks with their queues of expectations and illusory
happiness.
Both places make you sad, but the ruins doesn't lie about it.
But I only have one tiny, friendly little robot. Thankfully, my
trusty little robot friend also dreams of world domination, and our very
own, unstoppable, robot army.
I am launching my own monthly concert series, at Kafe Edvard.
For some years now I have mostly been off the stage, in the cinematic
dark, writing music for films and TV. Now I want to focus a little bit
on my own: Write music, and perform it the way I want it to be
performed.
How does one become a better artist? I have a mad scientific approach.
Megalomaniac idea, concept, execution, trials, experimenting, failing,
analyzing, correcting and refining a formula, having control of every
element yourself, piece by piece building towards the inevitable failed
world domination. At least on my route towards utter doom I will have a
good time and loud beats.
Therefore I launch my own concert series, a monthly musical laboratory adventure at musical blackbox Kafe Edvard. (PS. Here are photos from the previous show
I played there this summer.) The place has great staff, huge screens,
friendly atmosphere, modern technology, it is digitally and culturally
well connected, and intimate enough to afford smaller experimental
performances. When everything goes wrong, it is easy to hit me with the
rotten tomatoes.
For the first show I will be performing a little soundscape concert with dystopic Nebular Spool music and visuals, and a main concert with Ugress music and visuals, featuring both new tracks and old tracks in new clothes.
The shows will be streamed live right here on my website, hopefully with better sound quality than last time...
Information
• Ugress Live, Saturday November 21st
• Kafe Edvard, Griegsplass, Bergen, Norway (map)
• Admission NOK 100, tickets presold at the cafe
• Age limit 20 years
• Doors open 2000 CET
• Nebular Spool starts 2100 CET
• Ugress starts 2200 CET
• Concerts are streamed live on www.ugress.com
Next show after this, is Dec 19th, featuring Ugress and Ninja 9000.
Bandcamp
is my preferred digital download solution. I provide most of my music
in mp3 and lossless format there, and I can experiment with different
payment models, like the recent pay-what-you-want Nebular Spool.
Tonight they announced the option to also sell physical items, like CDs and vinyl, through the same system.
This is awesome. My current physical merch shop,
powered by Yahoo, is ugly ass backwards. It works OK, but the store
system in the background is cumbersome and it all looks terrible. The
Bandcamp systems kind of runs easier with my current web look. Also I
don't like having things spread out, right now I have three different
physical and digital shop systems to keep tabs on and I think it's
potentially confusing towards customers, with so many options.
This song is actually a clever re-write of On The Road Again, by
Willie Nelson. We took the feel and structure of this fantastic track,
which has brilliant connotations to traveling, and made a slightly
similar, but completely new, different song. Since I have an aversion
towards major harmonies, I shifted it into my preferred minor system,
and included some typical Kometkameratene major-minor shifts within the
same key for those slightly jarring sci-fi elements.
You can hear the main melody ghosted in the chorus lead vocals, where
the Captain wonder: "What's out there?" Only one way to find out...
travel.
Production wise, I'm not too found of the country, but there are some
country elements in the sound. I also included some gypsy elements, like
the rhythmical brass and cymbals, hinting towards a roma life spent on
the road. There's also a very neat pop-cultural reference in the last
section, of which I am particularly proud, where the final banjo solo is
a polite nod to the Dueling Banjos segment from Deliverance.
Haven't had time to try this one yet, but I heartily applaud the
effort by Progress Audio to revitalize synthesis control with their Kinsis synth.
Most traditional synths, and contemporary digital ones, employ a
typical ADSR + LFO system for controlling the sound. ADSR (Attack Decay
Sustain Release) is an easy way to manipulate events that happen once
(like for each keypress), and LFOs are tpyical for repeating effects,
like vibrato or filter wah or things like that.
This is good and all, and kind of a standarized way of doing
synthesis, but it is an old method, and based in hardware. WIth digital
tools there should really be new options, and I am happy to see Progress
Audio challenging this. Kinsis employs more of a timeline approach
modulating stuff, which is familiar to most persons working digitally.
Looking forward to investigate this.
I am not surprised by the recent findings in the UK in a survey by
moneysupermarket.com (allthough, how can one trust data from someone
with a name like that?).
According to Hypebot,
data from this survey shows that almost two thirds of people who
pirate, says that the introduction of Spotify has reduced their illegal
downloading.
I'm not jumping to any conclusions yet, except noting that this is in
line with my general observation: Piracay is not happening because
people are evil, it is happening because the music business aren't
providing good enough solutions in the digital world. Spotify is an
important step towards a better digial musical future, these data (if
thrustworthy) confirms this.
What is music? This is a subject I suggested to the producers; i hoped
thye would write and episode with this theme. I also had silly ambitions
to what I would do, if there ever was to be one.
Finally, there was one, and I stumbled over myself in enthusiasm and
megalomanic plans for how to investigate the music phenomena.
This is probably my only nemesis; my own ambitions, I want too much, try
too much, wish too much, and I ask too much of myself and my ideas. For
the music episode, I had so many plans and ambitions they all killed
each other out in an implosion of time, budget and resources. Of course
it was bound to crash. Thankfully this show is produced and directed by
very competent and smart people, and they steered the direction into
something manageable. I think the success of this TV show very much lies
in the skills and execution of the producers and directors.
Nevertheless my imploding and misplaced ambitions, this episode did become something special after all.
I wrote two songs, one a-cappella where the characters themselves
generate a song from the sound of themselves, like a Kometophone played
by the scientist, and another industrial track where they generate a
mechanical sounding song, by performing their regular routines in the
spaceship in musical rhythms and patterns.
For the first piece, I had a brief unusual moment of clarity, enough to
sample each actor during an earlier recording in Oslo - I asked each of
them to perform their typical character sounds, in various tones and
energy levels, and built a sample library of each character. From there,
I built several songs and variations for the producers to pick from.
They eventually picked one, scripted it, and after shooting the video
there was actually very little post production, the sampled version
worked well enough for most of the characters. I only had to replace
some actors which they had swapped during shooting.
Both of these tracks really need the video to work. The second piece,
the spaceship-routine-piece, was great fun to build. And I think
perhaps it is a neat "oh" moment for regular viewers, who has
subconsciously learned the routine sounds of each character during the
show. The foley editors sent me regular character sounds, and I built a
percussive piece, where they all perform their routines in a
quasi-melodic percussive fashion. There's a tribal feel to the track,
enhancing the percussive effect of character operations.
I also wrote a number of smaller cues and snippets to be used throughout the episode.
Conclusion; it became a great episode, and once again I learned to limit
my ambitions, they tend to run off with themselves. I am very lucky to
be working with very smart people who can steer everything in the right
direction, and manage my sometimes wild creativity into something very
realizable.
Posted November 13th 2009, at 17:22 with tags ugress, poster
Who's a nice poster? THAT ONE. And it's 999 perfect clones.
I made new Ugress posters, huge ones. It was a lot of hassle, the
first poster shipment was damaged when arrived, so a new batch was
printed, but it was delivered to the wrong outlet, so I've been running
around all day everywhere, hunting elusive posters in taxis and finally
found them, but then the outlet was closed and finally after phoning and
dealing and lots of pots and pans someone came and THERE THEY WAS
GLORIOUS TREASURE and the printer guys where nice enough to help me pack
them up for transport and drive me home.
I
have separated major news and regular blog posts. Important news items
related to my music stays here on the front page, everything else goes
to the blog page. The RSS feed stays the same for now.
OK, so it's not a cover picture, only text, but the text IS the first text on the cover.
I was interviewed for the biggest magazine in Norway for musicians and artists, Musikkpraksis, by eminent music journalist Per Christian Frankplads.
We met and had a great talk, followed up by emailing and texting each
other. The result is a very flattering and beautiful 6 page
documentation of how I work, how I use my digital tools, and my methods
and efforts towards being as mobile and flexible as possible.
There is also a step by step production journal of how I created the It Was Great Year track. (You can also grab remix kit stems of this track and look inside it.)
The article is for the time being only available in the current print issue.
When typing up this entry, I was surprised to realize my original Thingamagoop
is actually my only hardware synthesizer. This tiny handheld robot
which spits out frantic bleeps and blops, is featured in way more tracks
than I actaully intended when adopting it.
The new version introduces:
Open source code so you can program your own sounds
Analog VCO controlled by analog or digital signal from Arduino
Sample and hold, Arpeggios, noise, and bit crush effects
All the analog sounds of the original Thingamagoop.
Controllable LEDacle - Ramp and random waveforms with rate control.
New modulators - Square wave amplitude modulator and triangle wave pulse width modulator.
Soundcloud, my absolutely most favorite platform for exchanging and communicating music and audio, is one year old today. Congratulations!
The tireless development team are celebrating by revealing fantastic new upgrades and a better new subscription model.
I can't believe Soundcloud has only been here for a year. It is
incredible how important this tool has become to me, not only in day to
day exchange of music, but also as a backbone provider to my own
websites. It is impossible to imagine how life was before Soundcloud.
I talked to David a few
weeks back, we discussed some of the new features and how this update
would affect my use. I think the new widget players are neat, but
actually what I am most intrigued with from the new update, are the
small refinements, easing up the process of heavy, frequent usage. I
have my whole discography on there, and I have even greater amounts of
private tracks: The music communication with NRK for the Kometkameratene
show goes through Soundcloud, some days I send, comment and discuss on
maybe 10-15 versions of various songs and cues to directors, editors,
producers, making for a continuously growing amount of tracks. I also
use Soundcloud to communicate and discuss new tracks, sketches and ideas
between my trusted advisors.
Soundcloud is a radiating example of brilliant, modern digital
technology, and how it empowers both artists and music. Can't wait to
see what the next year brings.
I have done some changes to the website. Nothing is gone (on the contrary, a proper calendar
has been added). But there is one thing that might confuse regular
visitors. I haven't found an optimal solution yet, this is a trial, I am
just trying things out. So here I am, talking a little about what I
have done and why.
I've known about a problem for some time now, where new visitors to the
website could potentially visit the site when the first five entries on
the front page (five latest blog posts) really had nothing to do with
me, Ugress or music.
This isn't a big problem for recurring visitors, fans and friends, but I
think first-time visitors, or in-frequent visitors, are confused by
this. They should only see news and information related to their visit,
they are most likely here to either get to know me, or see what I am up
to as an artist.
Also, another angle on the same problem, some entries I would like to
stay put for a while, unaffected by regular blog posts. Like the Nebular
Spool release, I skipped some blog posts because I wanted it to stay on
top, that isn't optimal, things like that will happen again. I need
some way of having things stay put in one place, and another place to
rant.
So for now, I have split my "journal" into two - everything continues as
usual, but in two streams: Only selected items will be presented on the
front page, labelled "news". Everything else goes into the "blog", kind
of the second page on the website. If this works, in time I should
build some kind of proper distinction and interaction between the two.
So, the front page right now mostly contain posts directly related to
my artistic activity, and the blog contains the blah-blah-whatever
outlet. To be honest, it doesn't feel super-right to me yet, I'm kind of
bewildered if this is the right way, but I would like to see some
numbers before I make any commitments. This was the easiest way to try
out the separation, I'll let it run for a few weeks and then compare
traffic data. I know it seems confusing to those of you who visit
regularly, which page should you bookmark? I'm looking into how to solve
that, but for the time being the blog will most definitively see the
most activity.
The RSS feeds continues as usual, at least for the time being.
Let me know if you think this sucks, if you have any bright ideas, or if stumble onto something broken. Work in progress.
(This entry will be moved into the blog in a week or so.)
One thing I like about Bergen, my hometown, is that uncannily often
you have the most futuristic and exciting things in the world, happening
right outside your door. Even better, it happens in a perfectly casual
manner.
Today I took a few hours off and went to see blink at Hordaland Kunstsenter. I was first made aware of this at the BEK blog, and then Peter at CreateDigitalMotion picked it up. No excuses not to see this. I've been eyeing the works of HC Gilje for quite some time, not only his exciting digital art, but also his VPT video projection software
- I have been toying with the idea of incorporating projection mapping
in my liveshows, and it needs to be dynamic for touring, which hopefully
would be a breeze with VPT. Further, projection mapping built into my
liveshows could be a storm, with the recently released MaxForLive, which brilliantly has full support for Jitter. Very, very much looking forward to spend time on this in 2010.
But, the exhibition. Luckily I was alone most of the time in the
showroom, and even if the artist probably intended the artwork
experienced quiet, I was fearless enough to augment the experience with
with delicious, dark, in-ears Trentemøller on my handheld.
One way to describe the projection; it's like being inside a neat,
abstract screensaver, and I mean that in a good way. The projection,
from a corner of the room, is angled onto the floor and parts of the
opposing wall, and the whole room is painted white. The floor in
particular is highly reflective. By sometimes using high contrast lines
and animation, sometimes combined or replaced with pulsing, softer
patterns, the projection breathes and reflects cleverly around the room.
With good music on the ear, and abstract room-animation for my eyes,
indeed, I spent some projection-mapping-quality-time getting immersed in
a wonderful, digital, architectural aurora borealis. The projection
loops after some time, but actually, with continuous, different music
for each loop you could stay there all day.
Ah, the "Decisions" episode! I am proud of this one, not so much
directly the music, because the music isn't terribly interesting - but
the song works more as a background, providing structure for a little
musical story inside the spaceship: The captain sings about how she
likes to decide, enjoys being in control of the spaceship, all the while
things are happening around her, showing she has no control and the
whole place is falling apart.
This is an elegant way of revealing the duality of making decisions,
it can make you feel great, but are you really in control even if you
decide something?
Instead of writing a typical song, we took inspiration from the
hilarious "I'm ronery" segment in Team America, where Kim Jong-il walks
around his palace, feeling lonely. We just turned it around to being in
control, and wrote an epic orchestral ballad for the captain to sing
while walking around the spaceship. I kept the music and production
deliberately "low", knowing that there would be a lot of action and
sound to incorporate later.
There is a segment where an unexpected musical instrument is
introduced, and is supposed to "meta-break-up" the song performance. I
struggled for some time to find a suitable instrument, which could both
break up the music when being introduced, and then also blend into the
epicness after being accepted. I landed on bagpipes.
After we had the basics, the song was structured out and built in
close cooperation with the director, and delivered in multiple segments,
so the production team could time and shoot the music, with flexible
pauses timed by themselves.
After the video was shot, I recorded actors for both singing and
image sync, and did all the post internal audio editing for the song,
both vocals and dialogue.
The final video is in my opinion one of the best music videos of the
series - there is so much going on, and in a bold change from regular
scenes, the camera now moves continuously between rooms in the
spaceship, with long takes. The logistics and performance of the myriad
of actors, puppets, explosions, catapults, very impressive, I know it
was a wonderful chaos. And it turned out great!
Coming up this season there are several more exciting videos, where
we experiment with different formulas, breaking up the songs.
The current version of the song does not stand very well on it's own,
due to all the dialogue and breakups. I suggest catching the video,
starts around 21:30. Here's a short excerpt of the final segment of the
track, after the bagpipe-shock has settled:
Satisfaction and self-congratulations are in order, with the response to the Shul release this previous weekend.
I have only marketed this release directly towards my own friends and
fans, there has been no external promotion. I had no idea how this
release would be received, but appearantly the bleak future allures.
There has been fantastic response, at least compared to what I expected
from this dark and depressing venture.
What makes me particularly proud, is the percentage of payments vs downloads.
Here are some stats.
40% of downloaders choose to pay
Average payment is 3 USD
Most frequent payment is also 3 USD
There is a smaller, but very respectable number of high payments (15-20 USD)
There is also a good amount of 1 USD payments
Downloads are dropping fast without further promotion
I do not have access to which formats are most popular.
I'd rather not disclose total sales, at least not yet. As noted
above, downloads are dropping exponentially since release, there is a
tiny window of attention, and then downloads will flatten. However,
financially and theoretically speaking, if I could release an album like
this every month, with those figures, I could actually make a living
directly from that.
It is a bit tricky to compare this release with the latest Ugress
album, because they are both available in very different options and the
Ugress album is distributed in channels where I don't have access to
statistics. But my intuition hints that this album is actually not very
far behind Reminiscience.
I have no idea when Spotify and iTunes updates their catalogues but
it will take a few months until I have comparable data there.
I don't have much spare time right now, but this is important - and
it is also perfect timing. I just wrapped up the Nebular album, I am
currently wrapping up the final batch of the TV show, and I have started
preparing for a serious live show reanimation in 2010 - where I very
much expect to be running this MaxForLive.
Therefore I dropped everything in my hands, and squeezed in a few
hours of looking into the beta. My first impression was: WOW this is
über perfect for my upcoming live plans and the second: WOAH I need to
pick up on my Max/MSP programming skills. I know the basics but I'm more
of a hacker than a builder. I also managed to crash the beta several
times by just looking around, so I suppose there is still some bugs to
be ironed out. This is fine by me, I won't have time to dive into this
properly until a month or so.
But any spare moment up ahead will be spent researching and learning Max/MSP.
Delicious, dark and depressive post-apocalyptic cthulhutronica, from a
bleak and lonely character, roaming and searching a lost future. This
is glitchy, bleak, hopeless desperation, the soundtrack of an individual
doomed to eternal solitude in the ruins of a extinct civilization.
The album is available for immediate streaming, and mp3 and lossless download.
I realized I have not tried an explicit pay-what-you-want model, so
this time everything is available and you can choose if and what you
want to pay. There's no free mp3 downloads because, you know, you can
just download it all...
There are four extra bonus tracks only available
through the bundled PDF cover artwork. The album should be available in
iTunes and Spotify etc in a few weeks when those systems are catching
up to realtime events.
Then all that is left for me is to bid you a gloomy, glitchy and post-apocalyptic Halloween.
Posted October 30th 2009, at 20:47 with tags piano, vocoder, cdm
This is a few weeks old but I still think it is wonderful and should be noted in my journal: A mechanically speaking piano.
Peter Ablinger has created software and built a piano with mechanical
triggers, which together replays the note-transcribed signal of a
voice. This effectively turns the piano into a fascinating, ethereal
vocoder.
Some time back I mentioned the Chipsounds plugin, a smart new plugin to emulate various vintage console and computer sounds.
I found the GUI rather poor, but I am now happy to observe it is skinnable, with the first not-too-bad, faintly C64 inspired, Chipsounds GUI by polyfonken.
My music is often used in all kinds of films and videos, but
surprisingly often in sport and wilderness videos. This is very nice,
and very strange, considering I am absolutely not a child of the wild.
The thought of jumping off a cliff, skiing down Mount Everest, or for
that matter spending the night in a tent, rarely enters my mind.
I did write music for the Perfect Moment
series a few years ago, epic movies which I absolutely loved to score.
But this was more a consequence of an already existing extreme sports
connection, not a starting point for it. Nevertheless, I absolutely
enjoy this connection.
Recently my music was featured in two great and popular videos:
Paddle Train by Benjamin Hjort,
where a crew of kayak paddlers travel Norway by rail and access rivers
and waterfalls. At least here I can relate to parts of the experience - I
do love a good train trip.
The video has been featured on Kayaksessions and Ut.no, and parts of it was shown on Norwegian broadcaster NRK tonight.
Base-jumping in Lauterbrunnen by Halvor Angvik,
a completely mad helmet-cam wingsuit basejump video. The first jump out
from the tree is crazy and from there it goes off the vertigo scale.
This week I spent some time in Oslo, recording the second-last batch
of songs for the Kometkameratene show, surviving a mysterious hotel
fire, and also surviving getting lost in the Wild Eastern Norwegian
Woods (also known as Nordmarka).
Recording at NRK was quick and painless, the actors are becoming very
good at singing in character. There were many songs to record, we had
scheduled the sessions over several days but everything went so smooth
we could almost have done everything in "one take".
The challenges was to come from another direction: One night, three
in the morning, the fire alarm went off in my hotel room. I am somewhat
used to fire alarms in hotels from touring - there's always a drunk
idiot opening the wrong door or having a smoke on Friday and Saturday
nights, especially on hotels near festivals or clubs. These alarms are
quickly turned off, so I'm usually not panicking when I hear a fire
alarm.
But this time, it was Tuesday, and the alarm kept ringing. And it
kept ringing. I was at the top floor, and eventually it dawned on me I
was pretty screwed if I kept doing nothing and there really was a fire.
So I started panicking and got dressed.
I felt like an idiot, first I did nothing for a few minutes and then I
tried to do everything at once. I ended up stumbling over myself in an
explosive attempt at getting out as soon as possible. I also spent a few
moments deliberating if I should grab the laptop, but then I had to
save a project, wait for the sleeping disks to wake, then unmount an
external disk, unplug, and just calculating the time of this operation
kept me even longer in the room. I wondered if I should check mail.
Eventually I grabbed my mobile and headed out.
After a whimsical adventure of locating fire escapes and navigating a
completely different hotel then I knew from daytime (because suddenly
there were closed doors that never is there during the day), I managed
to get outside, as one of the last persons. The street was crowded with
evacuated people.
I stood outside for some time, fire trucks came and smoke divers and
police people ran in and out, and then after some more time, suddenly
everybody went back inside. And I was like "what the what is going on?
Is there a fire? Is it safe? What?". But nobody said anything and I was
dead tired so I went back in but couldn't sleep and did some mixing of
the earlier recordings, while sniffing for smoke.
Was there a fire or was there not? I have no idea.
The next day was a day off from recording, and I was wasted from the
nightly mess, so I decided to explore the Nordmarka woods, a large area
of trees and lakes and stuff just outside Oslo, hopefully discovering an
unknown aboriginal tribe, alien caves or some ancient, mysterious ruin.
I did not manage to get lost, closest thing to an undiscovered tribe
was multiple kindergarten-excursions, and the most ancient artifacts I
found was a jolly bunch of old people strolling positively by, smoking
their pipes. The wilderness! I tell you, not what it used to be.
The last day was final recordings at NRK, meeting with my manager,
and a long journey back home, where I was such a mess after all this
adventure I completely forgot to remove anything from my backpack and
the security people had to send it back through the scanner multiple
times and then I ended up in a taxi with a Taleban fighting immigrant
driver schooling me on the various Farsi dialects in Central Asia.
Tonight's episode is a fine example of how we have experimented with
and developed the episode song formula for the new season. For this
episode, where they investigate language, we did the opposite - there is
no language in the song, only invented and seemingly random words. How
can one communicate in a unknown language?
Zook, the goobeligook-based character of the bunch, is trying to sing
his song in peace and quiet but is consistently interrupted by
Rampejentene. This develops into a battle of meaningless words, in a
reversed take on the brilliant Muppet "Mah-nah Mah-nah" skit.
We developed the song from the basic idea of this Muppet skit, but
wrote a new song, reversed the dynamics and placed it in the spaceship
universe. The song itself is rather simple, and didn't take long to
develop, it was mostly improvised lounge by Sjur and then further
programmed beats by me. We also did the demo version vocals. But the
timing and scripting of the gags took a lot of work and effort, lots of
painstakingly fine-tuned edits. I built several versions with different
structure and experimented with various timings, before we settled on
the current version.
If you notice, and prepare your impressi-meter, the video is shot in
one single take. The actors memorized the words and movements, and
everything was performed and nailed in a single take.
Afterwards I simply recorded the actor vocals, and programmed them on
top of the video. Here's the final song below. Not the world's most
exciting melody, but hilarious when performed by battling
non-linguistanis.
I strongly suggest to watch the video over at NRK (starts around 18:20).
Kontakt is my sampler number one and it was just upgraded to version 4. How is it?
This version came as part of my Komplete 6 upgrade
a few weeks back. However I didn't have time to dive in and check out
things before this week, when I had a day off between recordings in
Oslo.
Kontakt 4 is sort of an underwhelming upgrade compared to the recent 3.5 upgrade, which I really loved.
But the way I see it, if you take Kontakt 3.0, and compare it to
Kontakt 4.0, it has been a nice development. So I'm actually kind of
happy with Kontakt 4.
There's a couple of new minor details I appreciate, like resizable
plugin view and improved database tools. A couple of bugs and whoopses
from 3.5 has been fixed. The upgraded library is OK, and key-switched
variations for the orchestral samples is cleverly and consistently
executed.
The new AET effect however is silly. It's just a fancy filter with
rather cumbersome interface. I think NI should spend less time on
esoteric new half-baked effects, and more time on upgrading the elastic
audio methods, which are becoming antique.
All in all, this is an OK update, but only when including the 3.5 stuff in the upgrade path.
I took a brief look into the new Absynth 5, part of my Komplete 6 upgrade package.
I used to program quite a lot of sounds in Absynth, but that was back
in version 3. I really loved Absynth and knew the synth very well. Not
sure why, but with version 4 I started using it less, and the last few
years I rarely reach for it, only when I need something special only
available in Absynth.
After poking around in version 5, I appreciate the new effects, the
Aetherizer sounds OK and could make me use the FX version. But I do not
see myself reaching for Absynth any more frequently. Can't quite put my
finger on it, but maybe the changes in GUI from 3 to 4 wasn't really for
me.
There's this trend in synthesis software where exciting complexity is
being hidden, and a few macro-parameters are prominently thrown in your
face for "quick access to most important settings". I'm not really fond
of that, it is a dumbing down of sound synthesis development, not a
benefit. I understand why it is being done, but I don't like it. I think
developers should spend more time creating clever GUIs that actually
expose the power of their software. They shouldn't hide it.
I think Native Instruments in particular are overdoing this for some of their products.
Haven't played a computer game in ages, but I dearly remember being captivated by the Samorostgames.
The developer, Amanita, recently followed up with Machinarium,
a robot mystery-adventure in a beautiful, worn-down steampunk world.
You point and click, solve puzzles, explore the world, and bit by bit
unravel a fantastic, word-less story.
The first few levels are simple single-screen puzzles, from there it
evolves into an intriguing universe and story. I haven't had time to
play far into the game, but enough to realize this is definitively
something I'd like to play through. The visuals are delicious, the game
progress my cup of tea, and most noticeable is the wonderful music and
sfx, a hybrid of ambient soundscapes and haunting, lo-fi electronica.
The soundtrack comes bundled as an mp3 album with the download version,
which is exceptionally sensibly priced.
Oh dear this has slipped my mind. I've been so busy lately, I
completely forgot to write making-of's for the new airing episodes.
There's already been aired a few ones.
We didn't write episode songs for all of the autumn episodes, but I did
score all of them, wrote new cues for small gags, and developed music
for a new bunch of characters.
Today I'll run through the Grådighet episode (Greed), and I'll get to the others over the next few weeks.
Since everything is done in batches (we usually do six episodes at a
time), sometimes the aired episode is just finished, other times it's
finished a long time ago. The song for this episode was written almost a
year ago, during final production for season one.
The first sketch for this episode was refused, and I completely
understand. It was so bad, nobody is ever going to hear it again. I just
listened to it, it was horrible.
Luckily everyone thought it was horrible, so I wrote a new one, much
better, I think this musically fits the subject pretty well. I used the
riff idea from Prokofievs Romeo and Juliet, but it has this Scrooge-ish
fatality in it, kind of a musical representation of manic greed but also
the cackling glee of it.
I built a chorus around the three rising notes. (In Norwegian the
team sings something like "would you like to have?" and then the Agent
answers with a nice collection of absurd items.)
Sjur came in and did the vocal harmonies and also provided the epic
piano solo. The production team then followed up by producing a
hilarious video where they build pyramids of toilet paper, and I went to
Oslo to record the vocals.
Half a year ago the Operator-1 made a little web-splash of synth-furore, and I was sort of quasi-convinced if it was real.
MatrixSynth has uncovered new in-depth information from a newsletter. Supposedly still some time until production units.
We are right now finalizing
the hardware design and working on the last mechanical parts of the case
and keyboard and make it ready for production. The final case will be a
light grey painted one piece aluminum body with no screws. We have
worked hard to make it super thin and as light as possible. During this
process we dropped the additional power connection seen on the first
prototype. The USB is now used for both power/charging and to transfer
data...
You can now skin your laptop with the sexy, snacksy Ugress logo.
Gelaskins, my favorite laptop
skinner, recently opened up for personal customization of their laptop
and mobile skins. They print your design on a 3M decal, which you easily
slide onto your laptop or mobile and apply. Even easier to remove.
They haven't made it possible to share designs yet, but it is dead easy to create your own with their editor. Grab this 2k Ugress logo, and use as a base for your own phone or laptop design.
Last week was spent travelling, I saw most parts of Norway by train.
Or rather, I saw most of the snowy (!) Norwegian forests in a blur, as
snapped above. I also managed to catch a silly cold, which seems to be
of the impolite, sticky kind.
I have much on my mind these days, there's the Nebular album coming
up in a few weeks and final efforts on the Kometkameratene sci-fi show.
Also I am preparing for 2010. I'd rather not expose too much until
everything is ready, but in brief, I'd like to get all of my various
projects up and running as live shows in 2010, develop my mobility and
write and publish a lot of music. I am now approaching concrete actions
for this to happen, and it's just a lot of boring, theoretical
maneuvering, before things start to happen.
Next week I'm travelling again, over to Oslo for a few days to record
the last Kometkameratene batch, then I'll be concentrating on the
imminent Nebular release.
Sometimes I am very happy to live in a remote forest at the north-western edge of Europe. Other times, not so much.
I really wish I could attend the Toplap evenings at a London pub,
where live coding of audio and music is integrated and displayed
simultaneously with the performance. Ah how about an afternoon there
with a pint, another pint, maybe a third, and a laptop, forgetting my
global domination schemes for a few hours!
I am, and my Ninja 9000 project is, a sucker for 8-bit chip sounds.
After this impressive post by Peter Kirn over at CDM, I decided to try out the brand new chipsounds plugin from Plogue.
Allegedly, it strives to emulate and reproduce a good number of the
most legendary 8-bit sound chips. I took an hour off and investigated. A
plugin that bundles multiple chip emulators and honour their original
idiosyncrasies? It must be win?
Not quite. At the moment I think Peter's CDM post is slightly more impressive than the software.
The good
Indie developer.
I am happy to have access to emulated sounds from multiple chip sources.
Right-to-the-point interface, what I needed where I wanted it.
Small footprint, installs quickly. Friendly protection scheme.
Looking forward to explore the various sound mutation possibilities for each chip.
The bad
You cannot automate anything at all (Logic 9), which certainly I hope is a bug.
The SID emulation does neither sync nor ringmod. Compared to the faithful QuadraSID, this SID emulation is lackluster.
The arpeggiator breaks down and creates horrible noise at synced
speeds above 1/32, practically rendering it useless for regular chord
arps. Must be a bug, but surprising it still is in a release version, if
it is.
The synth is built for multitimbral use, which I know this is a
matter of taste, but personally I do not see the point of multitimbral
plugins in a digital world.
The ugly
The GUI. I am not sure if the Windows 3.11 alternative graphics is ironic-bad or just simply bad.
If the SID emulation is so lackluster, how do I know the others (which I don't know) is equally handicapped?
Conclusion
Promising, this could be really cool. Really wanted to love this one.
But right now it needs serious bugfixes, proper SID emulation and a GUI
overhaul before it becomes a keeper in my book.
The next Nebular Spool album "Shul",
is deep, dark, post-apocalyptic cthulhutronica. Ghosts for grown-ups. I
think All Hallows Eve, October 31st, is a most suitable date for
release.
The album is very dark, as in the depth-of-utter-loneliness-dark. One minute previews of two tracks embedded above.
I grew up during the eve of the cold-war, at any moment the US and
the USSR could annihilate us all at the push of a button. The apocalypse
never came, the sudden atomic winter turned into a creeping global
warming. Then why do we feel cheated? What are we still waiting for?
Perhaps there are unspeakable monsters just around the corner, or
perhaps there are unspeakable monsters right inside. If only one person
survived the apocalypse, must this person live with the guilt of
everyone? What to do when there is no-one around to share your fears?
And how do you know you really are alone?
"Emptiness" said the Tibetan
philosopher Tsongkhapa, in 1397, "is the track on which the
centered person moves." The word he uses for track is shul. This
term is defined as "an impression": a mark that remains after that which
made it has passed by; a footprint, for example. Shul is used to
describe the scarred hollow in the ground where a house once stood, the
channel worn through rock where a river runs in flood, the indentation
in the grass where an animal slept last night, the torn ruins of a lost
civilization. All these are shul: the impression of something that used to be there.
(PS. Did you know, this is post number 1000 in my journal.)
The next entry will be number one thousand, and I certainly think it
should be an important entry. The upside down representation of post
number 999 is post number 666. This leads me to believe the next post
could be a dark, mysterious and sinister announcement.
Last week I performed an improvisational show at Landmark with theatre ensemble Bergen Improlaug. The performance was a challenge from Brak and Proscen; what happens when music and theater meet and improvise, with no rehearsals?
I met up with Improlauget, we had a coffee and agreed how to execute
the performance. We agreed I should "live-score" their performance, and
they would adapt their acting on-the-fly to my film music.
I prepared a number of cues, in different film music genres. I built
them so I could navigate within each cue, and also drop some beats in at
will, forcing the actors to musically rap the scene.
Improlauget did not know what kind of music I would give them, they
would only act out a scene on their own, and change their setting and
mood and improvisation after what kind of music I continuously scored
them with.
It was a great idea but I was kind of nervous how it would work,
since we had no rehearsals or practical experience with each other I
didn't know if my cues where long enough or short enough or obvious
enough to shift the mood of a scene.
But it worked out great, in fact, hilariously. At first I gave them
some crime lounge music, and they acted out a scene in a watch shop,
that became more and more intense as the music grew in intensity. Then I
shifted to some dark Bollywood music, and they started to reminiscence
of their forefathers in Tibet.
From there I shifted to a lo-fi, slow tempo Hawaii peace, which they
turned into an old lady on a cruise, which she won in a magazine, and
just as the cruise was becoming very relaxed, I threw them some sinister
horror music (a mashup of Jaws, The Exorcist and some of my own stuff).
They went into hiding and starting shooting at some invisible enemy,
and after a quick battle, I introduced a romantic musical relief, the
horrible cruise now became an idyllic trip on a gondola somewhere.
Finally, I gave them a epic western theme, with massive beats and
soaring strings, and the finale brought them into a splendid, slow
motion shoot out.
All the way they kept a central theme for the dialogue, "To go within
one selves", given to them by the audience at start. Of course, every
time they managed to include this it was in the most hilarious way. I
also could shift the cues from various energy and tempo levels after
their dialogue, sometimes following their energy levels, but other times
directing and manipulating their energy levels.
I have to conclude, this was awesome. I was exceptionally impressed
by what the Improlauget guys managed to improvise, and how quickly and
perfectly they reacted to the shifts in music. Also, I was satisfied
with how easily I could manipulate and shift the scene myself.
This was great fun for me to participate in, and I'm very happy to
have discovered a new direction for my endeavors; live theatre film
soundtrack scoring.
Novation announces Launchpad, a monome-clone which is specifically designed to complement Ableton Live.
I am not über excited by the product itself, it is not for me, but I
am intrigued to notice an ever-growing trend: Hardware designed and
developed to complement specific software. Granted, you can use this
Launchpad with any other software, but the design and usage is developed
with Live in mind.
This has a long story, back to my somewhat Live-inspired Faderfoxes,
and I wonder where it will end up in the long run. In a world where
specialization is the norm, it is no surprise hardware comes through
with products like these.
I think this has both benefits and dangers, and I am slightly
concerned with some of those dangers. I rarely use software, or
hardware, exactly as intended, and I am always stuck on some detail I
want done that any current box won't do, because I use it in a
non-obvious way. With hardware becoming ever more specialized, this way
of utilizing geart will become harder and harder. (Which is why I love
my Lemur more and more, but still appreciate the tactile feel of
physical hardware.)
Last Friday I performed my first Ugress solo event (*). Photos. I have done lots of events before, but then always with a band.
I was very nervous and curious how it would turn out - I have always
been performing with an assortment of musicians and vocalists, or at the
very least with my drummer The Igor. Now The Igor has escaped and
emigrated to Africa (really). I realized I want to perform on my own for
some time, and adapt the live show into a more flexible and
anything-goes modularity, forcing myself to perform better and develop
the visual show into a full-blown experience, not just supportive.
This event was a book release for Samlaget/ Bjarte Klakegg's excellent debut book Heliumhjarte (Helium Heart).
I've done some shows on my own, but this event was noteworthy because
it was a first test to me, if I could pull things off on my own.
I certainly could. With relief I notice the performance a success,
excellent response. By the end, people was dancing everywhere.
Afterwards I was very happy, but also surprisingly sad and nostalgic. I
have been performing with The Igor for many years, and now that I am
moving on, I suddenly realized how much I am, and will be, missing to
have him thundering the drums by my side.
The taste of successful progress is sweet, but with a salt hint of reminiscence.
I had some friends helping out taking pictures, there's a little Flickr set here with a selection of shots.
(* = Events are privately
hired concerts, like book releases, product releases, fashion shows,
film premieres etc. Usually one or more artists are hired to perform and
entertain, and I have usually never announced or discussed them on my
website or in my journal as the job is privately hired, and regularly
closed to the public. They can sometimes be very tough work, with a
crowd that mostly does not care of who is performing and is just there
for the free drinks, yelling loudly through the show. Other times events
can be fantastic fun, like this one.)
As mentioned in the latest journal update, I'm revitalizing the live show.
This coming Wednesday, September 30th, I will be performing live together with improvisational theater troupe Impro Lauget for a mini show at Landmark.
The setting is the monthly Brak
convention held between different media industries, this time the focus
is Performing Arts meets Music Scene. To showcase the potential between
these two industries, I agreed to a performance where the theater team
improvises a scene on the fly, and simultaneously I improvise the
soundtrack and soundscape to this scene.
I am very excited about this, and I am very happy to be working with
the hilarious guys at Impro Lauget. But most excitingly, what happens
and how it ends up is completely open. This could be awesome, and it
could end up a catastrophe.
Doors open at 20:00, free entry. I don't know when we're on, but I'll update here when I do.
As I have come to learn, sometimes I prefer to, or NEED to, focus on writing music instead of being social.
Over the last few weeks, during late nights and stolen hours, I have
wrapped up a new Nebular Spool album, "Shul". I am very proud of it, it
is my absolutely darkest, most cthulhutronic album as of yet.
I wanted to release the album earlier this week, but when I heard the
finished album I realized some tracks needed final adjustments, to fit a
better whole. The recent release of Melodyne Editor also created
certain opportunities I want to exploit as smoothly as possible. I shall
attend to this as soon as possible.
I've also done an extended amount of new cues for the Kometkameratene
show, and I'm working on several production gigs with looming deadlines,
which will be needing my attention for the very immediate future. Early
autumn in Norway is also the time for applications, so I spent a good
amount of time writing applications for funding and similar tedious
paperwork.
I am nearing the end of my current commitment for the Kometkameratene
TV-show, the show wraps up at the end of 2009, early 2010. At the moment
I don't know exactly what I will be doing in 2010, except focus
intently on my own music. But I know I want to do more live shows.
After a couple of isolated years launching and establishing my own
label, and doing film and TV music, I realize I miss some parts of the
live aspect. I wish to play live with all of my projects, not only
Ugress. And I want to do it MY WAY. So I have made some plans and taken
some measures to initiate this. Nothing concrete yet, but wheels are in
motion.
Myna is a
cloud-based, Flash-built online multitrack audio editor. I don't see
myself using this much, it does not replace Logic or Protools or
Fruityloops at all. But it indicates yet another step in complexity and
feature-set of cloud-based applications. What I find interesting, look
at this application 20 years ago. Would this application be impressive
on a 486 running Windows 3.11. I think it might. Now consider the growth
rate of technology today, in particular online services. See where this
is headed? At some point, and it might happen sooner than we think,
what is available and possible in the clouds will surpass what is
possible on your local client.
"In a study commissioned by
NASA, a research team at the University of Missouri has made a mouse
levitate, using nothing but magnetic fields. As a result, the poor mouse
floats in mid-air, wondering where the ground went.
The researchers put
the three-week-old mouse in a specially designed chamber then applied
an external magnetic field. The field lifts up all of the water inside
the little mouse's body, apparently with no ill effects."
I know I am late with this, but it is important enough to notice in
my journal. This is yet another of those "this is incredible!" moments
that keeps reminding me we are really living in the future but do not
seem to realize it.
Today is (was) September 17th, and one should make notice this date.
What was once thought impossible, or slightly possible with a massive
budget and eternal patience, is now casually doable at the flick of a
mouse. Melodyne Editor is out.
You can now go into any recorded material and edit any note, anytime,
anywhere. It's like an eternal undo for recordings, or a post-prod
multitrack editor for the whole universe.
I have briefly played with the blood-drippingly fresh new beta, and I conclude: Utter Win.
Notice my first experiment, changing an old r'n'b loop sample from
major (original at first) to minor (second part, what I wanted):
This edit, a simple sample going from major to minor scale was done
with a few simple mouse manouvres. Polyphonic pitch- and time-shifts,
instantly. It might not appear impressive at first sight, but one cannot
fathom how many times I have cursed the incompatible harmonies and
melodies of various samples, loops and phrases for my compositions.
Often I wanted to snip out a simple sound from a source but it never fit
because the key was wrong. Now I can surgically enter into anything and
everything, adapting the harmony and melody exactly to my schedule.
Here is another example, a Smashing Pumpkins loop in major, first the
original then edited into a differnt minor phrase and melody:
I can now stretch, edit, remove, duplicate, replicate and eradicate
any individual notes or harmonic keys within a sample. One can not
possibly imagine all the consequences of this, only drool with
geektastic glee at the border of eternal exploration.
Naturally, the more radical changes you introduce to the source
material the more foggy it gets, but the fog is marvellous magic
nevertheless. (The program has also crashed multiple times so far....)
It is beta, I know, but this software is the samurai sword and ninja
shuriken of audio editing.
Mark my words. Today is a milestone in music production, a ghostly
shift of power, perhaps only noticed retrospectively by the masses. For
me as a sample-based artist, this is a deep sip of (pardon my melodyned
French) the god damn fucking holy grail.
My beloved and exceptionally trusthworthy Roland JP-8000 synthesizer has now left me.
As the picture tells, this baby took a lot of beating but never ever gave up, even with a broken key.
I bought it used in Japan, and I don't know who used it before me. I
then used this synth a lot when touring a few years ago. At first, with
Ugress Live, it was both a controller and providing synth sounds, but
eventually it was only used as a controller, and finally replaced by
dedicated software controllers.
Ever since it has just been a dormant asset, stuffed away in a warehouse. Finally the right buyer came across. Now it is gone.
I looked through my photos for glimpses, and here's a brief photo cavalcade tribute to my first touring synthesizer:
Me playing the JP at some concert.
Ancient studio shot with ancient mobile.
The Igor soundchecks somewhere in Sweden.
Tech troubles, in Tromsø I think.
Not sure but think this was shot during a concert in Bodø I think.
Another ancient studio shot, that's a Powerbook, must be before World War 1.
Bandcamp is becoming my favourite platform for delivering direct digital purchases.
I can now bundle extra files within each release zip archive, which
means the cover artwork PDF is bundled with any Bandcamp purchase. And
the cover artwork gives access to extra bonus tracks.
I hope they drop the Flash requirement for downloading.
(PS. If you bought anything via my Bandcamp store, or anywhere else,
know that you can access the cover artwork (and thereby extra bonus
tracks for some releases) by just emailing me the receipt and I'll reply
with the cover of your purchase.)
I remember the first time I learned about molecules and atoms, I
thought: "I get it, but how do they LOOK? What does it LOOK like down
there?"
Science FTW. Above, finally pictured for the first time, a single molecule, of pentacene. Below, a typical graphic representation of this molecule:
And this is what pentacene looks like in real life:
Scientists from IBM used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to reveal the chemical bonds within the molecules of this powder, which is used in solar panels.
Why isn't this on the frontpage of every newspaper all over the world?
A few months back I mentioned the cruel refusal
of a promising C64 emulator in the iPhone app store. It was refused
because of Basic, the internal programming environment, a natural part
of any Commodore 64 emulator.
Now Manomio has disabled the Basic functionality (sic), and the app is approved (iTunes store link).
I found it rather underwhelming, there is only a meager selection of 5
rather uninspired games, but Manomio says they can now focus on
bringing on the games. In any case, even if I can't use it for anything,
I am thrilled and amazed with having a full-blown Commodore 64 - on my
phone.
I tell you, these are incredible days. What will they think of next,
music that is freed from a physical format? Hah, impossible, not in my
lifetime!!
A quick notice - I observed there are only 8 copies of the custom built Film Music album left.
These are hand built; printed and lovingly assembled by your
correspondent late at night when the city sleeps, to avoid vibrations
while printing the covers and securing the most optimal quiet moment for
concentration while cutting the excuisite paper for label trays and
booklets.
I can build new ones, if there is enough demand, but I won't be doing
that until next major physical release, which perhaps would be in 2010,
or perhaps never. I don't know right now.
No need to panic, the album will always be available in digital version, but if you want to secure a physical one, assembled by my delicately, trembling-in-the-face-of-physical-labour geeky hands....
Kontakt is my most used sampler and plugin above anything else.
Naturally I was intrigued when Native Instruments announced earlier
this week a new version of the worlds best sampler, as part of the new Komplete 6 instrument and effect collection.
I must confess, I was let down.
In my humble, un-educated (I haven't tried it yet!) opinion, this is a
meager update compared to the recent 3.5 upgrade. The only thing of
interest is the new formant filter, but even then, it is just a fancy
worded formant filter. Screw the library stuff, packing samples into
there isn't a new "version" that's just re-bundling.
Where is upgraded sampler algorithms, modern time and pitch tools on a
per sample level, where is the brilliance of the scripting introduced
in version 2? And where are the granular and spectral sample functions? I
realize NI already provides some of these features in Absynth and most
likely would like to milk both cows for some time, which brings me on
to:
Absynth 5, which actually is somewhat interesting. I enjoy Absynth
but version 4 was kind of boring compared to 3 - looks like version 5
picks up the tempo a bit, with some exciting new effects, also usable as
host audio processing tools. I suppose they need to keep up the
granular fight with the brilliant Alchemy synth from Camel Audio.
All in all, an underwhelming update which I most likely will be shelling out for anyway just... because it is "new".
I really like social music discovery network The Sixty One, where I get instant numerical feedback and meaningful stats for my music. There is good geektastic pleasure in observing and analyzing listener stats and feedback on a per track basis.
3 000 listeneres is perhaps not a lot (I have almost 50 000 on Last.FM)
but for myself on The Sixty One this is an important number and I'm very
happy to achieve it.
Words cannot describe the impressivenes of 8 bit trip, but I'd tag it
as lego, demoscene, stop-motion, patience, win, chiptune, triumph.
Luckily, go forth and enjoy the hi-def version at Youtube.
Are the monochrome video sequences really stop-motion lego blocks? My spaghetti monster.
Posted August 22th 2009, at 20:35 with tags update, journal
August has been, is and will be very much a TV scoring month.
Previous weekend was spent finishing seven brand new sketches for
upcoming Kometkameratene season, and preparing a recording session in
Oslo, executed over Monday and Tuesday. I worked in the same studio as
last time, a very nice recording and mixing room, pictured above.
Since returning to Bergen I've been performing necessary edits to the
sketches, written a few new cues and kept working on existing
commitments. There isn't much to journal, but I'm working around the
clock. It's mostly just work, and lots of it.
In September there should finally be time to work on some of my own new
stuff. Most of summer and early autumn will be spent doing TV and film
work, both me and my post-apocalyptic hunger is looking forward to a
moment to ourselves. It's been a pop-ish summer.
According to this BBC news article, the Entertainment Weekly magazine will introduce video ads in their September issue!
I think this is incredible, it is yet another step into the future.
Soon we are all living in Los Angeles, November 2019, and my replicant
assistant is polishing my artificial owl. But maybe I'm the replicant?
Who knows!??! Only that guy from Battlestar Galactica! Ooooh exciting!
But not happening. I think it is sad, that fantastic moments like
these are ignorantly surpassed without any kind of celebration, while
barbaric rituals like dancing around a metal-ball-decorated tree is
still the cultural zenit of western civilization. Kudos to the BBC
correspondent who fought this article to the front page.
When I rule the planet, technological breakthroughs, and my album releases, will replace national holidays.
Blue beer invented? Everybody take the week off, let's check out if it works!
Of all vegetable entities, trees are my absolute favorite. Chaos in a
hierarchical structure. Climb them. Hug them. Enjoy them as forests.
Watch them when daydreaming. Print books on their dead.
In Northern India (and other places I'm sure but that's what this
blog is about) the roots of a particular kind of trees are used to build
bridges, crossing rivers and gorges.
The JK Wedding dance
went viral a few weeks back, and the video itself is real (and
awesome). It looks like a great wedding, and Mr and Mrs Jill and Kevin
Awesome are directing any income from the viral hit into violence
prevention. They are full of married win.
There are so many good vibrations from this video, it makes it hard
to be the sour grape. But observe, perhaps, how this video also makes
for great advertisement opportunities. And somebody noticed, quickly
enough. The viral hit, the global spread, is not as real as you think.
The viral wave is constructed and executed by Sony, the label behind the
artist who's song is featured in the video.
What this means, really, is that what you thought was "something
cool, someone I knew sent me this, it's REAL!!" really was a very
clever, well executed, well funded marketing campaign from major label
Sony. Yes it is real, but it is also a commercial. Very cleverly, you
were tricked into watching a commercial and made feeling it was not.
Most people watching it will never know they watched a commercial.
And if somebody told them, they wouldn't care, they wouldn't want to
know that. We will be watching many more like these.
Something happened with this video. The control shifted from no-one,
or from the idea, or from the video itself, into those with resources to
make something become viral, simultaneously as they hide in the
shadows.
The wedding of J & K is awesome. Sony is milking their awesomeness. Danger, Will Robinson!
What will other people think of you when they google you?
Personas is an information-art concept project By Aaron Zinman of MIT, that scours the tubes for information on your person and provides a conclusion of your online persona.
The analyze process is way more impressive than the final report, and
I've run it a few times on myself, sometimes it provides hilarious
conclusions on your personality. Mine mostly focuses on music, art and
fashion (fashion?), with smaller blocks of online, fame, military,
media, news, professional (?) and musical. Some other runs also reported
blocks of religion.
WTF, military, religion and sports part of MY online personality?
However, this is kind of the point of the project - the tool displays
how YOU will appear to OTHER people when they look you up online, based
on information connected to your name. Which isn't necessarily you, but
what is available to someone who knows very little about you. This is
the picture they will get.
OK so my second video podcast is incredibly geeky, my workplaces and the gear I use, but I suppose that is representative for my days anyway.
A short tour of my portable setup, and my home setup. I'm currently
working mostly with film and TV music, the setup reflects this,
optimized for writing and editing, not so much performing. The live
setup is somewhat different, I'll document that on next live
performance.
My how the time flies. The last few weeks has been hectic enough, and
with people back in the real world after summer holidays, it feels like
everything is happening, or needs something to happen, at once. I miss
the lazy summer days, gray weather and non-communication, it makes for a
great working environment. Getting things done. But the world is back.
Tomorrow the Kometkameratene CD is officially released! I am not well
versed in childrens music business, but I understand they sell better
in bookstores and toystores than music stores, so it is released in the
former tomorrow and the latter on Monday.
Speaking of which, I am currently writing brand new songs (which will
air next spring), new character music, and next week I'm off to Oslo to
record vocals for the autumn episodes. Everything is due next week, so
this has taken most of the summer.
I have also written new music for a highly profiled program on NRK,
which should start running this fall, and currently doing
production music on a couple of short features. I was supposed to write
music for a computer game, but sadly it didn't work out budget-wise.
On top of this, I have quite an amount of to-do tasks for my own
stuff, promoting the latest Ugress album, figure out a remix
competition, video podcasts, live shows, new EP coming up, next album
pre-pre-prod, website adjustments, social network activity, the list
goes on.
I very much would like get all of this done - but - I work around the
clock. I don't complain, I get to write music and I have a fantastic
time working on incredible projects. But I really miss composing and
writing my own music for myself in my own time, without any project
deadline or artist release concept looming over me. If I can find the
time during autumn I'll spend it on writing new music.
Over
the last few weeks and months I've received lots of great remixes and
fan-created videos, in addition to the regular email requests. I am very
happy to receive all of it, and whatever comes in I really appreciate
it. I am also surprised? flattered? impressed? happy? intrigued? with
the skill level of everyone's production. Almost jealous. There is so
much talent out there.
But, truth be told, I have no idea how to process or follow up all
this material. I try to look and listen profoundly to everything that
comes in, and respond to it, but to my chagrin I do not have time to
follow up everything properly. By that I mean: To write a proper
response and give the senders proper recognition.
I would love to blog everything but I cannot blog even a part of it,
therefore I don't blog any of it, I don't want to judge something
blog-worthy and other things not. Therefore, so far nothing has appeared
here (YET).
I try to at least reply to everyone who writes but forgive me if my
response lingers or if I forget you. Know at least that I received it
and I absolutely appreciate it and I have on my to-do list, to make some
kind of system to acknowledge all of this.
MIT's Technology Review has a splendid overview of Five Futuristic Interfaces from SIGGRAPH, the annual computer graphics overdose of awesomeness.
The worst part of the future becoming ever closer is that scientists
and geniuses keeps coming up with incredible things that always are JUST
around the corner. We're never really THERE. The tactile hologram - you can feel it - is just... just... *sobs and clicks pathetic wireless mouse*.
Virtual reality was just the beginning, and it never really happened.
I do not own MetaSynth, but I have demo'ed each release every time
and then again on multiple computers, each time ALMOST buying it. I love
the super weird sounds you can make from it, I like exploring new GUIs,
I absolutely heart resynthesis and I eat visually drawn filters for
breakfast, so I'm not sure why I never end up grabbing it.
Maybe it's too expensive, maybe it is not realtime, not pluggable,
and maybe the GUI seems alternative just because it wants to be
alternative and not because there is an obvious benefit... not sure. But
yet again, I'll be eyeing this CLOSELY.
I realize people of weird cultures with crazy date formats have
already experienced a fake version of this moment, but this is the final
and truest and only sequential moment in time. This exact zenit in time
will not happen again. A moment of silence please.
There, ah that's better, now we're in the future. Wow they have blue beer here!!
I have always had a soft spot for reed keyboards instruments, and in
particular those utilized in melancholic music, like that of Argentinean
tango; bandoneons and concertinas. I love the yearning, haunting sound, it is perfect for minor chords.
I also think the Monome controller
is a brilliant and timely instrumental invention of our times, even if
it does not intrigue your correspondent enough to grab one.
Therefore I am much entertained to observe the latest Frankenvention out of BEK, my local electronic culture supplier: A concertinome developed and performed by Espen Sommer Eide (of Alog).
Modular synthesis is the holy grail, including Transformers artwork on the grail cup, when it comes to geek synthesis.
When not sampling, it is no secret that Zebra, by Urs, is my synthesizer target no 1. Zebra is all over Reminiscience,
usually providing the bassline, but also doing sfx, synths and the
incidental analog synthesis. I am happy for the latest beta, providing
Zebriy, a new fx plugin to run audio through the Zebra engine.
Today, however, I learned that Urs' new completely Berlin modular syntheziser Bazille is "out" in top secret alpha version.
Not for the faint of heart, guaranteed to crash, tricky to learn, maybe
finished sometime 2010. Nevertheless, I grabbed the download before it
imploded, and I spent most of the day with it. Woo-haa. This is my kind
of sound. Dirty, living, pulsating, all-encompassing-controllable. And
it does. not. sound. like. a. plugin.
Exceptional and inspirational. The alpha might still be up. Page 6 in the thread, bottom.
Logic 9 and Bazille, these are good days to be digital, indeed.
A poor, laboratory robot hand looks like it fumbles something. Ha, ha, silly fumble robot! Ha, ha!
Then, look at the video continued in 1000 fps. The hand is pouncing a
ping-pong ball faster than your eye ever can wish to register. And when
the ball finally escapes, the hand lingers in slowmo like a patient,
careless predator on it's escape. TEH ROBO HORROR CONTINUHES.
Ha. Ha.
The robocalypse won't be horrible. Neither will it be "cool" or "awesome". It will just be OVER. Before any of us blink.
An immediate observation, they are selling at a slightly slower rate
than albums, nothing surprising. However - noticable: Most purchases are
actually for single stems pr person, rather than the whole kit.
The kit and stems are very reasonably priced. This kind of confirms
one of my theories - people are not so much after the kit or track
itself, as they are after dedicated items of the production, like vocals
or samples and beats.
While
most of the world is on holiday, and all of the world forgot about my
latest album, I've spent the last few weeks working on several
production gigs and upcoming episodes of the Kometkameratene show. I'm
also schooling up on music theory.
I like working during summer, there is less demand for my attention, I
can keep better focus and concentration for longer periods without
interruption.
As usual most production work are under NDAs, limited by contract, or
simply not fair to announce, so I can't talk too much about it before
it's out, but if you watch Norwegian TV you'll hear some of the stuff
I'm doing over the next few years.
I also dug into the recent Logic 9 upgrade and I am very much enjoying that, haven't been that happy with a software upgrade in years.
Oh the Kometkameratene CD is out already August 15th, that was way
earlier than they told me. I had some plans tied into the release of
this CD, but that was based on a release schedule late September. This
now broken, I have to re-plan some things. As usual.
The Video Eldorado project previously mentioned are using my music library when video-documenting their incredible journey. Their latest feature, above, Maya Game, recently hit the frontpage of Daily Motion.
The feature is filmed at the Tikal ruins, the largest ancient ruins of the Maya civilization. Did you know the Blue Magnetic Monkey track, written by Christine, is based on Mayan philosophy?
I need to expand my harmonic vocabulary, so I'm currently diving into
music theory, notes and cadences and all that stuff. I actually used to
know notation as a child, when sabotaging performing in the school orchestra, but since then they were blissfully forgotten.
The last year I have been working closely with Sjur Hjeltnes on the
Kometkameratene music. He has massive knowledge of music history,
harmony and theory, he picks anything apart and explains to me why this
works like this or that or then and when and how about doing like this
artist or that composer and combined with aspects of this genre within
the scale of that culture.. suddenly we spent hours de-branching into
really interesting musical worlds.
Sjur has tremendous respect for my humble knowledge and rough
sophistication within electronic sound and programming, we work as
equals, but I feel inadequate and primitive when discussing and
developing music together on a theoretical level. This isn't terribly
important to Get Things Done, but I feel I am missing out on a fantastic
learning experience by not being able to speak and understand his
language, we talk in translations all the time. So I'm learning it.
I think I always wanted to learn proper music theory, but never had the
proper incentive to actually do it. I now have a serious amount of music
theory books to devour.
Of course, I am instantly and constantly side-tracked. When learning a
new chord, or cadence, or technique, I immediately have to experiment
and develop it. Progress is slow. But with great pleasure I observe
details like - musical theory books have just as horrible covers as my
80ies school books. The photo above does not render the screaming pink
as gruesome as it should.
Why do educative literature always have scandalous artwork?
Of course I enjoy absolutely any article that starts with "scientists
worry...", but with extra morbid satisfcation and gleeful scare I
observe that robots are indeed becoming uncannily powerful:
"As examples, the scientists
pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical
systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer
worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have
reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence."
The greatness of this article is that it really looks into how robots
are actually right now shaping our society and future, this hasn't been
regulated, and maybe it should. Isaac, wake up.
The iPhone 3GS is out in Norway now this weekend, I haven't had time to pick one up yet. I'm grabbing one, but no rush.
Therefore I am pretenting not to be delighted to observe the free Ugress Schizophonica EP cameo featured in this iPhone 3GS review by major Norwegian mobile site Amobil.
Spotify, the frontline application of modern music apps, is coming to the iPhone platform (and other mobile platforms). When this happens, there is no reason to look back - the future of music is then now.
That is, if Apple allows it. Spotify is a competitor to their own iTunes. Economist elaborates.
The app looks very promising. It can buffer tracks on wi-fi, saving
you up enough to either avoid streaming while walking or going offline
for flights.
I suppose the reason for announcing the application before it is
approved, is a pre-emptive strike towards Apple's rather crazed
censorship of applications on their iPhone platform. This might play out
interestingly.
However, if it is allowed or not, is trivial in the long run. Music
is steadily moving towards a future where it is no longer tied to a
physical or digital copy somewhere.
Notes from my first session with Logic Pro 9, with findings releveant to my daily sessions.
Win
Most important win of the update: Channel strip - and
plugin-operations in massive projects are now instant! (This was a known
problem, with Kontakt instances taking ages storing data for potential
undo steps for each mixer operation) WAHOO, I can finally work at
blazing speeds with large projects.
The next win, is something I wasn't convinced Apple would actually pull of properly:
Flexitime
Flexitime is sexytime: The editing of audio via flex mode is very
good, I'd say the workflow and operating is better than Live (but I
haven't used Live extensively). I like better to edit directly in
arrange than in the detached panel in Live. But I think Live has better
waveform overviews in arrange (why can't Logic display the sample editor
waveform in arrange? Much easier to see transients with that one).
Flexitime autofind transients: Very good. I'd say better than Live's and
Melodyne's with challenging material (I work with samples/loops, less
than mono audio recording)
Flexitime quality; The quality of the algorithms are very good, in
particular Rhythm works very very good for beats and stuff. Polyphonic
is awesome for long stretches. I tend to manipulate, sample and bend
stuff not fix band recordings so for creative use it is just christmas
eve. I tried stretching a 2 bar loop into 1 hour - it still sounds
SWEET, no artifacts or grains or anything, just crazy long breathing
tones
Flexitime disappointment: You can't pitch or tune anything, only
stretch/compress. When doing necessary pitch adjustments the oldskool
way in sample editor -> pitch machine, the flex properties are poof
gone and must be re-generated. This fact does IMO put Live and Melodyne
still ahead in elastic audio. (I am not familiar with
Cubase/DP/Protools/Rekord.)
Flexitime stability: I have managed to make a mess of it several times
:) It does not reset properly, seems to become confused after lots of
edits/shifts/mode changes, and dragging new audio onto an already
flex'ed track seems to create hiccups. Not a big problem, and I'm not
using it regularly right now, this is probably worked out in a few .0.x
updates
Bounce in place:
Bounce in place: Second place in most important win of the update. It
works, and it works very very well, and it is going to save me
shitloads of time. I often work "in layers", I create something and
render it and work further on the render, . This function does not
introduce anything revolutionary, but it certainly revolutionaries my
workflow.
It also works splendidly with multiple regions, everything nicely
pulled into a new file. Which of course then goes right into flex mode
for further manipulation.
Auto-create samplers intruments
Automatically create EXS sampler instrument from region(s): I was
psyched about this in theory... but big disappointment. Not so much the
function itself, it works almost fine, but EXS is becoming an old
sampler and this function is limiting itself. (Why doesn't this function
create Ultrabeat instruments?)
It looks like it is only intended to create samplers of "cut up
loops", which is a silly limit, this function could be equally great for
creating a new sample instrument from any sound/region/track in arrange
in an instant. Not so much, because the function INSISTS on making a
chromatic instrument for you, even for only one region. For loop makers,
this is fine I guess, but EXS is no longer The Greatest Phrase Sampler
in 2009. It is a good workhorse but compared to Kontakt, or Ableton Live
for that matter which really is just a huge sampling mill.
When you only have one region, which you most likely would like to
use as a pitched instrument, it still makes that a one-note instrument,
and you have to open the editor, and set the keyrange, the key pitch,
and most likely edit loop points, which is HORRIBLY outdated done back
in sample editor and back and forth and zillions of windows and
functions and wahtever just to get something simple done...
This function is not properly implemented, it looks like they only
wanted to copy Live's behavior without really understanding the
potential benefit something like this could have. If Apple understood it
- it would be obvious that: Multiple regions -> Ultrabeat, Single
region -> EXS instrument
Performance and GUI
Performance: Projects seem to take slightly longer time before
settling into proper CPU balance.. also looks like CPU use is slightly
less than with 8
Plugins are hidden when Logic does not have focus. This I didn't like. I
enjoyed having Kontakt open in Logic in the background, cmd-tabbing to
finder and dragging files into Kontakt. Not possible anymore, without
expose'ing Logic back into focus (a corner swipe, but still..)
Automation Quick Access has a toolbar icon that displays status - AWZUM!
Finally usable to me, I never knew if it was off or on or what
Integrated help system sucks, not so much because it isn't PDF, but
because it takes 30 seconds to open. I started typing this sentence
after selecting "help" and it still has not appeared. Still has not.
Still has not. (Pour some coffee). Nothing. Hmm. OH! There it was in the
background. Can't select it with expose... huh? Not with cmd-tab
either.. ok hide Logic, there it is now. I dunno.. I just liked the PDF
version better.
Internal plugins has had a subtle facelift, i think they look nice.
EQ has greener graph on channel strips but the traditional blue in
plugin view.
The "loading project" process has a better and "realistic" loader bar
that informs you how far the loading has progressed, what it is
currently loading (including AUs) and when internal plugins load
something, what they are doing is displayed as well (EXS loading samples
etc)
FINALLY Logic informs you if the movie you had in arrange goes missing
when loading. But does not offer any way to locate it... but at least
you know. (As if a missing movie wasn't hint enough.)They did something
with the arrange region fonts? Or something.. it looks slightly better?
Not sure.
The white border to indicate focus is an ok improvement.
Transient editing mode in sampler editor (which is better than
arrange because you can see the transients easier in the waveform).
Matrix editor (piano roll) seems to have a new and darker saturated palette for note velocities.. not sure if I like it yet
Key commands and preferences
There is a new "with trails if possible" preference when moving automation.
There is a new "toggle move/not move automation with region" key command (yey!)
There is a new "toggle zoom selection / all contents" which lets you zoom in to the selection or out to everything with one key
The "set track and midi thru parameters by region" has been split and
added as "set track by region" and "set midi thru by region"
New key command "slice at transient markers"
Not tested
The pluygins and new guitar amps, might come in handy but haven't looked at it yet.
Import routines. Will come in handy I know.
Soundtrack Pro and the other tools.
Supplied content of samples, loops and stuff... Couldn't care less.
Overall impressions
Personally I think this is a brilliant update, and much better than
the 7 -> 8 upgrade. Not so much because it introduces anything
shockingly awesome and new, but because this update adapts Logic
seriously towards my workflow, methods and editing style. I will
absolutely benefit massively from this update.
When that is said - really, most of the functions are sort of
"catching up" with the competition. There is nothing groundbreaking new,
and some of the new functions (auto create sampelr) are really just bad
copies of the competition.
Nevertheless - I am super duper happy, the update rocks. With
über-sampler Kontakt 3.5 just released, über-editor Melodyne DNA lurking
in the woods, the future just keeps getting brighter and brighter.
Someone give me more time to spend with all these wonders.
Absolutely quiet for two years since Logic 8 and Final Cut 6, and then in true white Apple ninja style, full version updates to Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio is slipped into reality. Just like that.
Yey!
I am super excited about the new elastic Flex Time
tool in Logic Pro - this looks a splendind implementation of liquid
audio, and IMHO the first true major new feature in Logic in ages, ABOUT
TIME (see what I did there?). According
to developer Markus Fritze via chief Logic supermoaner Putte, the new
elastic algorithms are developed brand new and not a re-cycling of the
old offline versions.
Also of immediate intriguity to your correspondent are full project
varispeed, turntable speed fades, convert-to-sampler-in-place,
bounce-in-place... as a sample-based artist, these are fantastic new
features. Granted, most or all of these functions are available in other
hosts in some way, but I am happy to see them in Logic and it looks
like Apple does them just as well or better than others.
Did I mention I am psyched about flex time?
The Final Cut upgrade
does not look as impressive at first glance, I appreciate an ProRes and
XDCAM codec upgrade, but looks mostly like a refinement, at least in
the areas that matter to me. Thou Motion seems to grow into a very
compatible visuals application.
The timing is impeccable - shipping early September. I just finished
an album, and currently wrapped up in lots of scoring, remixing and
productiong gigs, everything to wrap up by early September. A perfect
moment to upgrade, very much looking forward to these.
Exciting geek trivia observation: What is the mysterious new Tempophone elastic algorithm?
I wasn't sure how to price this, if at all - as an artist I generally
find it uncomfortable to ask for payment and set a price on my own
work, and in particular these disconnected pieces of my work.
On one side, remixes carry value in themselves, they could end up as
promotional tool. On the other side, this is kind of a situation where I
can provide and charge a tiny sum for access to exclusive and premium
content. I see this more as the latter, direct access to building blocks
of my work to those already interested, not a promotional stunt.
So I try with each stem at 1 USD and a whole kit at 5 USD. Available
in all sorts of formats, including lossless. All tracks per kit line up
synchronized, just drop them in your editor. (Note, the Kosmonaut kit is
also available for free download in various collections.)
This is kind of an experiment - let me know what you think, what
tracks you'd like to see as remix kit. I would be very intrigued to hear
results - drop them in my Soundcloud dropbox! I haven't figured a proper way to present remixes yet, but I'll find a way.
A final word of warning -
stems are illusion crushers. I have always been excited with other
artist's remix kit, stems and separate takes, to kind of learn the
"secrets" of a track... And then disappointed. You discover that the
stems are nothing special in themselves, they are often rather mundane.
The magic of a track disappears once you learn the banality of the
ingredients. Your appreciation of my music will change, for better or
worse, if you listen to these.
"Later this year, MTV plans
to launch a groundbreaking initiative called the Rock Band Network that
will enable any artist-unsigned emerging act, indie cult fave or
major-label superstar-to submit songs for possible inclusion in the
game."
Rock Band Network. Currently in private beta, probably public beta this fall.
There is a lot of info to digest on this one, I am not sure what to think of it, no time to compute. Facts:
MTV / Harmonix only provide the platform
You have to program your own tracks (or pay someone to do it)
Only Xbox version for now, Microsoft controlled
Artists (or artist's publisher) only gets 30%
Cockos (Reaper/Frankel/Winamp) is involved on the software side
Considerations aside, the the most important part is perhaps what
really is happening here - a computer / console game is opening up a new
channel for distributing music, INSIDE the game. People buy a game to
play a game to buy music to play in the game. THAT is future now.
Element 112, unumbium, is a super fresh addition to our beloved periodic table.
The first atom of this element was observed as late as 1996, and until
now it has only been known with work title ununbium, or as us scientists
like to call it, simply E112.
The discovery team at GSI was tasked with coming up with a proper name for this element, and very recently they announced "copernicium", with element symbol "Cp".
Copernicus, besides being really what-the-world-needs-now,
is-facts-just-facts, kickstarting modern science, was the first to
establish that our earth is a planet, and not the center of anything or
everything. Uncanny as it might be, one observes
I have been using the public beta of Kontakt 3.5 for some months and it absolutely rocks my dirty DAW socks. Now the final is out.
There is are lots of crazy modern computer important
things like 64 bit things and other things in this update, but I really
just care about one awesome fact: Each sampler instance is now using
10-12 megs instead of 70. Which means I can cram 7 times as many
independent samplers into my tracks. It also appears better optimized to
me, I seem to push things further both CPU and polyphonically with
3.5.
Now, if NI actually could fix the little bugs I reported.... really
missing the "copy loop settings to all selected zones".
My Korg Nanokey is OK. But I wouldn't mind something better. Akai
enters the ring with LPK25 tiny portable keyboard and LPD8 pad
controller.
Announced at Summer NAMM, I suppose it'll take a few months until they are in stores. According to Gearjunkies the pads light up in blue when you hit them.
Andrew Benson discusses
the API setup, how your Max patch can modulate, manipulate and control
Live from within. In my opinion, this is the most intriguing and
exciting feature of the integration - I can build a complete
self-dependent and automatic music machine inside Live, randomly (or
not, or within my desired amount) generating, exploring, mutating and
replicating musical information, control information and the sound
itself.
My optimal goal is of course to create a machine that creates the music that I want created.
I can't remember the exact first time I played Doom, but I didn't play
Wolfenstein first, so Doom took my FPS virginity. I remember thinking
"FINALLY, no more cute 2D sprites, computer games are going to be great
in the future!". I'm also quite sure I played it on a massive, clunky
stationary PC that I probably built myself.
Coincidentally, it was also a game that gave away 1/3 of the whole game
for free, and I thought this was a brilliant new way of selling and
distributing a game. Something clicked back then, but that is another
tale.
Fast forward until right here right now, and I am simultaneously ignorantly blasé and deadly impressed with Doom Resurrection
on my iPhone. This contemporary awe-with-nonchalance is a great
feeling, the future is all around me and I can stop or start my
fascination with it on a whim.
We are sitting in a chair. In the air. Drinking beer. Playing Doom. On a phone. And it all feels so incredibly normal.
My Google Alerts rss noticed me this morning of these highly questionable Ugress "torrents".
I have no idea what it is, lots of sizable, vague and undefined Ugress
rapidshare and Ugress torrent links. The links lead to a "registration",
which I am sure will swallow your personal data like a whale devouring
plankton, and then build a digital weapon of mass personal ID
destruction from it. Caveat emptor.
It's kind of weird and freaky being used as bait like this, but again,
I suppose it's a consequence of being available, spread and distributed
on a larger scale. Probably unavoidable, so only thing to do is take it
as a crazy compliment.
Rhino, a subdivison of Warner, and iTunes is introducing a "new" single format, the D45, a digital version of the old 45 rpm vinyl single. Two tracks, one hit and one not-so-hit B track.
I appreciate the effort, maybe it works, but I don't know... I don't
quite see the point in trying to make the digital future into a copy of
the analogue past.
I have collected quite an amount of music and sound apps for my iPhone. Recently I have enjoyed Fingerbeat, one of the sharper tools in the shed.
Making music, or beats, or sounds, or just messing around, on a
handheld device, is to me mostly for fun and a fresh approach. I spend
most of my day writing and producing music with tools and methods I know
intimately - I enjoy the handheld approach to this more when it verges
to the fun, explorative and entertaining angle, rather than apps trying
to replace a full fledged laptop setup.
Fingerbeat strikes to me a neat balance between instantly rewarding and
fun on one side, and surprisingly deep and expansive on the
other. You can either build beats with the perfectly cheesy
internal sounds, or sample yourself or your surroundings and build from
there. The interface is nice to look at and intuitive.
Indaba
is a online music collaboration system, with a new update where one can
record directly to the clouds. Haven't tried it myself, but the feature
is a nice touch.
Google announces
a new super-lightweight operating system, aimed at netbooks, optimized
for web use, probably with cloud-based hosting of user files, settings,
documents.
I did some web magic metrics and discovered my video numbers are
un-optimal. I have long been thinking of some kind of video journal,
just saying hellos and showing off stuff I'm working on.
So there it is, a tiny attempt at starting up video journals while lost in the woods.
How do you keep an eye on my world domination progress while lounging on the beach? With my excellent new official iPhone app of course.
Summer is here for most of us, but nice weather has never been a
hindrance for utter world domination and struggling post-apocalyptic
achievements. I'm mostly inside writing music, or if I'm outside, in the
shadows writing music on my new 13" Macbook Pro - the battery on that one is incredible.
Dear me, I'm blabbering, but fear not! You can now access my world
domination blabber from the beach, from the toilet, from the kayak, from
the bar stool, from the ferry, from the jungle, from the dungeon, from
the treetops, from the dentist chair, absolutely everywhere with my sexy
official awesome new FREE iPhone app.
Journal, videos, music, photos, games, tweets, bulletins, and even a few silly games.
I am particularly proud of the "Rated 12+" rating:
Infrequent / mild profanity or humour
Infrequent / mild horror and fear themes (yey!)
Infrequent / mild alcohol, tobacco, drug use or reference to these
I am always geekily happy when I find new ways to let computers do my work for me, even if it is only small details.
I'm now on two laptops, with a few others spread around the apartment
for music and media hubs, and they are further hooked into billions of
hard drives, always in some kind of tangled configuration. Laptops are
frequently on the move and disks are frequently shifted around.
Connecting, disconnecting and reconnecting to networked drives is a
frequent and tedious operation.
So I made a blatantly simple Automator
workflow that connects to all necessary computers and drives. This is
saved as an application on my desktops, takes me one click to connect
everything.
If your computer is a desktop (or never moving around) you could put
this app in your login items, and it will automatically hook into the
network drives upon boot.
ArtOnEarth is an independent,
artist-run digital music store, where artists develop their own store
and sell their music directly to fans. The developers are based in my
hometown Bergen, combined with a team in Barcelona. Great guys with a
great vision.
The store is currently in open beta, now with my Ugress material available for purchase in 320 kbps mp3.
The store runs on Flash, which I'm not 100% sure is the wisest decision
compatibility-wise, but it could be in the long run. Flash is becoming
more and more ever-ubiquitous, and definitively, it makes it possible to create a very slick, consistent and visual user interface.
Now, I really dig Spotify, I'm
using it a lot myself. I like their approach, their torrent-based
technology and I really like the new HQ mode. But, not releasing my
album out until now... ahem.
When I achieve global world domination, Spotify will be the Altavista
of music streaming services. First; great, promising, but then;
surpassed by others more nimble and responsive, soon forgotten and
stuffed in a digital drawer.
I've spent most of the week doing administrative stuff, working on the
next batch of Kometkameratene, and writing sketches for a production
gig.
The summer is pretty intense in Bergen right now, after months of grey
weather, and it is hard to keep focus, I'd really like a few days off to
enjoy the sun. Or rather, a beer in the shadow, observing the sun
outside.
For the next Kometkameratene batch, we are writing seven songs, and
lyrics to four of them. There are great episode subjects, one episode is
about music which I am really looking forward to scoring. I've seen the
raw edits of the previous batch of music videos - since the previous
season, we have started working out more complex and interactive songs,
for example running sketches inside the songs, or breaking the songs
into multiple, independent segments. It's slightly more work, but the
payoff is massive, and the songs become more integrated into the
episodes.
For the production gig, I'm careful to say too much because work like
that is usually under contract and the gig is for a private customer,
but I've worked with the producer before, enjoy working with them and
the project looks like a great challenge. I'll be writing music for a
large span of settings in two separate, but connected films, tied
together by various methods.
"The society’s control systems are a
steampunk fantasy: a roomful of vintage 1930s magnetic relays once used
to route phone calls, clacking like mechanical dominoes with every move
the amateur engineers make. A full complement of 30 members can run 10
individual trains simultaneously on the layout, though only a dozen or
so are required for basic operation."
This, posted here now, together with my previouslyposted model railroad fascination, confirms my suspicions, I am a super duper geek.
As I am writing this, I am uploading the Kometkameratene Season 1 CD for mastering.
I spent the last few weeks editing, structuring and mixing most of the songs from the first season of the show.
The music has been well received and NRK Aktivum, the commercial
publishing entity of NRK, has secured a nice record deal for the album
release.
Many tracks was originally optimized for broadcast, and some of them
mixed to follow and sync with on-screen action. This was not necessarily
suitable for a CD version. There was some work structuring tracks into
better independent versions, and also in general to balance everything
to a coherent mix.
After the Reminiscience release mayhem, where I did everything on my
own, it is a relief to only focus on making the music and CD as good as
possible. Everything else is handled by a NRK Akvitum and the record
company.
Not sure if I am allowed to reveal the release date, maybe they already
did, but anyway I think it is safe to say it won't be during summer,
but not far into autumn.
I am seriously overdue with my taxes this year, was supposed to be in
by June 1st, but I hadn't time until now. I prioritized the album.
A massive effort over the weekend, and it is done.
I don't enjoy doing the taxes and company accounting myself, but I
certainly enjoy the control and overview it gives me. The time spent is
well invested, I get to know all my own numbers intimately over the
years. My economical intuition is improving. I also get to observe
intriguing internal statistics.
In general, after looking at the hard numerical facts, I conclude with
satisfaction my world domination plan is actually working. Slowly, but
working.
The Thermatron is
a voltage controlled oscillator and wave shaper controlled by the
action of a flame. This is possible because electricity can be conducted
through a flame. It is also possible, because it is awesome.
By Electric Western. Hot, hot youtube video of the beast in action.
World domination progression must not be hindered by pathetic hardware glitches.
This spring was more hectic than usual, and during stress, some of my hardware failed.
This is natural, expected and I was prepared, but I was not prepared
ENOUGH. I have now taken technological measures to reduce possible
downtime, simultaneously as optimizing my portability.
I now have two MBP laptops, one 17" for studio and live work, and a 13"
for office, web and portable studio/live work. Both laptops duplicate
the same installation and system, ready to take over instantly if the
other faints.
I had to get an iLok. Gah, I hate dongles, I hate copy protection
conglomerates, but with a backup dongle and the Zero Downtime plan I
should be covered.
Email, calendar, plans, documents, webs, social networks, most of that either is in the cloud or duplicated to the clouds.
All my digital media, projects, sound libraries, visuals, videos and
films are spread on multiple external disks, every disk cloned with
SuperDuper. Critical material also cloned offsite.
I have found it is better to span material across multiple disks, than
one big mofo. This is more flexible, portable, cheaper and safer - disks
can be shifted from laptop to laptop as necessary, and if one disk
fails (they do), the others are unaffected. In particular I like the WD
500GB Passports; small, portable, silent.
Apogee announces a new hyper portable high quality audio interface One.
I already have the big brother Duet,
which has seen great use. I wouldn't mind a smaller and lighter backup,
with integrated microphone. Though, I can reserve my enthusiasm for
breakout cables.
I think I'll hang on to see some reviews and user experiences.
I am often bewildered to which of my tracks will become popular once released.
The Bosporus Incident is no exception. To my surprise, earlier this week it received over 1000 votes in 24 hours at TheSixtyOne, more than twice as much as previous tracks from Reminiscience.
It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes
You're paralyzed
'Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one's gonna save you from the beast about strike
You know it's thriller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight
You hear the door slam and realize there's nowhere left to run
You feel the cold hand and wonder if you'll ever see the sun
You close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination, girl!
But all the while you hear the creature creeping up behind
You're out of time
Apple has rejected an official, licensed iPhone C64 app from developer Manomio.
Applications on the phone are not allowed to execute code themselves,
which I sort of understand. A computer emulator needs to do that. But
this is SPECIAL and should have SPECIAL considerations
applied. Also, there are other emulation apps in the store which
does exactly what the C64 app was rejected for.
The album is one week old, but my world is zooming on. To me it feels like Reminiscience was something I did "back in the days".
I spent a few intense months on making the album. This meant I had to
postpone and delay other commitments, in particular the upcoming
Kometkameratene TV show new season, and first season CD. Literally the
moment the album was released, I started working on this, and catching
up has been some effort. I've written some new character and
incidental music, the CD premaster is to be delivered tomorrow, and then
I start composing music for the new season over the summer. There are
also some new projects, including a computer game, currently in
negotiations.
It was sort of a relief turning my attention to a fresh new focus, I
am a forward moving person, more concerned with future challenges than
previous productions. This becomes a problem in certain situations, like
album releases, because someone really should spend good energy on
selling, marketing and looking after the album. This is what I miss the
most from being on a record label, and I realize I will be needing help
with this for the next release.
I do try to spend a few hours each day following up the album, but
truth is - work like that repulse me. I don't care about marketing and
sales and buzz and hype and success and bling and celebrity, I dislike
it, but I do understand the importance and value of it. There are good
people concerned with such matters. My negligence and aversion ends up
sending an unfortunate signal to those few actually helping, or wanting
to help, me.
It is a tricky balance. I'd much rather write music and work
towards the next project and next release. Which is what I am doing now.
Some observations after a week:
Marketing. I am a terrible marketer and promoter of my own material.
Release date. I feared June 15th would be slightly late
concerning summer, this seems like it was a valid concern. If possible I
will avoid releases so close to summer.
.
Most popular. As usual, I am surprised by the most popular
tracks. Apocalypse Please Wait Buffering, New Shoes and The Bosporus
Incident seems to be the most popular tracks by purchase, rating and
downloads. (But not by buzz and opinion, and the numbers vary between
countries and services.)
Sales stats. Sales, and web visits, was initially twice the size
of previous release, but have dropped off steeper than usual after
release date, but I expect this is a consequence of summer, and my
marketing efforts, and I'm not worried.
Compared to previous releases. In general, much better buzz and coverage than Unicorn.
Piracy. The album seems to be doing very well on pirate mp3 blogs.
Bonus material. This is the first album where people seem to
actually get the bonus tracks thing. The bonus tracks have much higher
download rate compared to previous albums. Not sure why, but I guess it
is a combination of more dedicated listeners, better web presence for
both me and listeners, and more transparency of what is available.
...if you are a big mothersucking museum with tanned people in the finance department.
Not great for those paying the ticket price, and not great for me.
I don't have time to go into details, but as a small independent
artist, in Norway I'm not VAT accountable. This means, if I am arranging
my own concert (which is becoming more and more normal for artists,
taking the risk instead of the venue), I have to add the 8 percent tax
on ticket prices. BUT I CANNOT DEDUCE THE 25% ANYWHERE. The museum can. I
can't. Quite simply, it means higher ticket prices for my fans and more
work for me. And absolutely no benefit.
If I understand this correctly, this is a great deal to the bling bling
orcs at the top, funded by taxing concert goers and the indie
establishments.
This is not a clever way of developing and nurturing modern culture.
Update: Dyrt Nok! is a petition against the tax suggestion (Norwegian text).
The new website is only a week old, but so much has happened in this
time it feels like the website is many years old. (Like pictured above,
the very first Ugress web.)
I have already made some observations on my own, and some of you have
emailed me your valuable impressions. Please keep them coming, or write
a comment here what you think work, and more importantly, what DOES NOT
WORK. A website is an eternal work-in-progress (which is why I love the
tubes).
I think the color scheme was a nice change, coming from the old grey
journal, but I am quickly growing tired of the saturated boxes. Thinking
to scale the surrounding purple down a few notches.
I think (as sysrq868 firstly pointed out) the music player should be
sticky during page shifts, like TheSixtyOne, but at the moment that is
beyond my limits to fix on short notice.
I think the activity box is too crowded for regular users, but inviting to new users.
And of course, I still have lots of features I didn't have time to
implement. I will be getting to those during the summer and early
autumn.
And simultaneously, Norwegian performing rights association Tono changes their CC licensing tune (Norwegian), after first blatantly disregarding Creative Commons, which fights back with their own questionnaire to establish the need (or not) for alternative music licensing schemes.
I'm not sure where I stand right now, as usual I linger between
everything and everywhere. I definitively think copyright law (and many
other laws) needs to be updated to reflect our digital culture. But
Creative Commons, I dunno.
I like it, the theory is great. But they haven't convinced me yet that theirs is the ultimate road.
I suppose I should be flattered. The album has been out for a few days, and it is already available on pirate mp3 blogs.
I am not particularly angry or upset, just a little bit sad,
schizophrenically combined with a milligram of satisfaction. There
is a difference between knowing the theory, and experiencing the
practice. The music is good enough to copy, but not good enough to pay
for?
That piracy happens, I absolutely understand. I do not condone it,
but neither do I want to behead pirates. My philosophy is not to attack
pirates (you will never, ever, win), but work and strive to provide
something better, ultimately rendering piracy negligible.
On another side, just as I feel torn about this, RIAA was awarded massively stupid amounts of damages for a silly filesharing issue. USD 80 000 per track fileshared? What. The. Frack.
Piracy feels like win and a fail at the same time.
Stuff like this inevitably happens, I am prepared, I lost nothing,
had backups and alternatives standing by, so there was no crisis. But it
was incredibly annoying and I lost way more time than is necessary. In
particular the graphics card glitch reduced my regular working tempo to
almost 50% for 7 days. Also, disk failures combined with tight deadlines
is not good for my nerves. This particular disk failure was rude - the
disk controller failed, Time Machine thought it was a new disk, removed
the old backup to make room, and backed up tons of crap. Luckily I had a
separate clone.
This must and can not happen again.
I have now purchased a healthy amount of drives, and a new 13" Macbook Pro. Unboxement.
The new 13", Raincloud, becomes my office, travel and touring machine
and portable replacement studio - my music setup is duplicated, all
projects and sounds are on external disks, again duplicated. So I keep
working on the 17", and if anything happens, I am ready within minutes
to continue working on the 13". Downtime reduced to zero.
This also reduces the workload for the 17" during live shows, which benefits them with more stability and redundancy.
On a side note, I think I have more than one million USB cables now.
My good old 12" Powerbook Mojito was the most perfect portable computer ever - until today.
My 17" MBP, Shanghai,
is awesome, but massive to drag around. Great for touring, longer
journeys and moving your studio around, but not great for throwing in a
bag and zoom off on sudden expeditions.
The 17" also starts to show signs of 18 months hard use, which is
expected. I need a new super-portable laptop, and over the last few
weeks it dawned on me I also need a backup production machine, the 17"
needs stand-by assistance. Finally last week Apple came through with a 13" Pro, with firewire. Portability FTW.
I got the stock model, and plan on getting a SSD for it over the summer.
I welcome Raincloud into my laboratories. Unbox slideshow, Flickr set.
I love stats, figures and numerical information. I don't have access
to all Reminiscience numbers yet, but I do have access to my own mall,
most of my own digital shops and some daily digital sales figures from
iTunes et al.
I'm making a note here.
Digital sales are way beyond physical sales. This I expected.
The album is already making money, the production cost has been met.
It was making money even before it was released, due to the high
volume of pre-orders. (Of course, this is not considering payment for my
own labor, which is about 6 months intensive work on the album itself
and a couple of years sporadic songwriting. I am getting paid from now,
and most likely the majority of payment will come from licensing the
music to films and TV.)
To my big surprise, the lossless version is very popular - 2 out
of 5 persons buy lossless. This was unexpected, but awesome. The
lossless experiment is considered a success.
Web visitors have grown double the size of the Unicorn release.
This is I hoped for, but did not expect, being the middle of June and
many people are off school, or in summer modus operandi.
Number of customers is up, but products per purchase is down.
At the previous album release, Unicorn, many people bought multiple
releases, but with Reminiscience, most people are just buying this one
release. This was expected, I think this is natural, because I launched
my whole catalogue with Unicorn, with DRM free material, and many people
stocked up on previously unavailable or DRM'ed material.
I am en route to a truely independent artist - at the moment,
retail stores (both physical and digital) are providing supplemental
income compared to what I generate on my own. I actually make most of
the money from my own shops. (Update: Come to think of it, this is
probably because I haven't access to all numbers yet. )
It is too early to make a final conclusion, but early sales
figures and web visit statistics indicate a doubling compared to
previous album Unicorn. This is absolutely perfect and completely
according to my world domination by
patiently-and-silently-building-an-army-in-the-shadows plan.
If you want a physical copy you can buy it directly from my own store the Uncanny Mall, record shops in Norway, or globally from Amazon when they update their catalogue.
You can also buy it in iTunes and other mp3 stores, available as they run their daily or weekly release batch.
It should be available on Spotify when they update their catalogue.
If you have purchased the album from a digital store that did not
deliver the booklet, do not panic. Simply show me the purchase receipt,
and I'll send you a link to download the cover.
Forward the email receipt, or a screendump of your order, or whatever to prove a purchase, to cover@uncannyplanet.com.
Most the day was spent with the release party at Edvard. The cafe is
my beans and coffee supplier, a great coffee shop right next to a huge
piazza. During summers they can open the walls, transforming the place
into any size and use, spreading into the piazza.
We did the opposite - transformed the cafe into a blackbox by
covering the walls with black fabric, set up a projector and screen, and
lots of smaller computer screens. The cafe also has a huge flatscreen
on one of the walls, which I hooked into. Here's a shot of the mostly
finished setup during rigging:
I had my excellent usual photo documentarist Eivind Senneset to shoot
the concert, images should be ready soon. I also taped the show in HD,
hopefully tomorrow I'll upload some material.
A HD clip of yesterdays performance of AMZ 1974, live version of one of the album tracks.
The party was awesome, and the show itself went perfectly. Not too
many people showed up, but considering my talents, interest and
attention to marketing, I was not surprised. We had a great time anyway,
and I sold an impressive amount of CDs. Thanks to everyone that showed
up!
There was a lot of hardware trouble getting the livestream to work, so the last few minutes before showtime was very stressful, but in the end it worked out. The show is stored and you can watch it at Ustream.TV. If everything had worked as intended I think the livestreaming would have been great - I am definitively doing this more.
I played a short set with some new material and some golden oldies.
Everything worked brilliantly, I have a new live setup which I was
testing, with the Lemur acting as total controller for everything. It
works perfectly for me as a controller, but it is perhaps a bit boring
to watch, so I'll probably re-introduce something physical to accompany
it next time.
After the mini concert Kahuun played awesome beats and I had the
luxury of breathing for a few hours, before rigging down and clearing
out.
I slept a few hours, and most of today has been spent uploading the
album everywhere and anywhere, updating the journal with entries for the
last few days, and patching together the video above. (Because of the
camera audio hardware meltdown, the audio recording was decapitated. The
audio in the clip is not from the actual performance, but a separate
render.)
Posted June 13th 2009, at 21:00 with tags live, ugress
OK it's on. Sound troubles. Don't know if we can fix it. Panasonic, you are DEAD.
Concert starts sometime between 2230 and 23 CET, as vampire projectionist I have to wait for the sun to set.
I won't be able to check in on it after I set it up, hopefully nothing will break.
UPDATE, the next day: Sorry about the sound quality. The show
was supposed to be filmed with a proper camera and direct line from the
mixboard. During testing and rehearsals, everything worked. Of course,
as ALWAYS with Ugress Live, something breaks down. At the final moment
when pressing "broadcast", the line input on the camera went kaput. In
fact the whole sound unit of the camera disappeared, no audio controls
or menus, poof, gone.
We struggled with reboots, restarts, power on/off, factory resets,
nothing. Panic was setting in. Then I suddenly thought of a simple
workaround - there was a Macbook Pro available - it has a screen camera
and a microphone... So we dropped the camera and simply put up the
laptop on a case. (Unfortunately the broadcasting software wouldn't
accept line in when using internal camera, wtf?).
Very sorry for the fatal sound quality and less-than-stellar image
quality. The show was taped with a separate HD cam, I'll upload from
there asap.
Processed, packed, and shipped pre-orders for Norway, pictured above.
Also did final edits and rehearsals for the live show at the release
party tomorrow.
I am totally absolutely astounded with the amount of pre-orders. I
had no expectation there would be so much interest, and I seriously
under-estimated how much time it would take to process everything. I
haven't slept much the last few days, but I am not tired and I am super
happy with packing so many orders, the interest and support from you
people all over the world is incredible.
Everything should be shipped now, hopefully correctly. Everyone that
ordered, will receive an email at 00:01 CET with link to a digital
download of the album.
Spent all day remixing tracks for live versions, and creating accompanying visuals.
Every track has two separate synced videos, one for the main
projection screen, and one for the scattered computer screens. It takes a
lot of time to prepare and edit both music and multiple videos together
for a live show, but I try to expand my live repetoir for each show.
For the Reminiscience releaseparty show I am creating three live new live tracks with video.
Posted June 11th 2009, at 03:03 with tags No tags.
Notice - since I had too much to do, and most entries have been added post-release, you can now listen to the whole album. There is no point in adding the remaining previews.
Posted June 11th 2009, at 03:01 with tags No tags.
Just
a quick note - I think I have replied to all manual email orders now,
with bank info for Norwegians and invoices for international orders. If
you haven't received anything check your junk mail folder. If still
nothing, let me know.
Tonight's track is Chrome Shuriken Dragonfire and it is available in full and as a free download.
I know it is kind of pop and all, but the song isn't about love or
hearts and crap like that. This track is about growing up with 8 bit
sprites as your closest friends.
A reminiscientific tribute to the innocent era of Commodore 64s, and 8 bit worlds.
Pictured above is my temporary pre-order warehouse-in-a-corner, with
the remaining CDs. That should cover the Norwegian shipments on Friday,
with a polite amount of leftovers for the release party.
The post office clerks was very happy today because I managed to get there 30 minutes before they closed.
One might perhaps recognize parts of this track. It is a bastard
clone mutant of an earlier bonus track (I think it was one of the
Unicorn bonus tracks).
International pre-orders outside Europe was posted as planned Monday evening.
Took me almost all day packing pre-orders and promo shipments, I
totally underestimated how much time those logistics need. I should get a
labeling machine. And a car. And a license.
The post office clerks was absolutely NOT happy with me storming into
the post office 1 minute before closing time, dragging with me 30-40
packages of various sizes and weights, bound for the Americas, Asia and
Australia. That was my second visit that day, dumping piles of post on
them, was expediting promo and press shipments earlier.
Post office clerks. I did make a mental note who is going gulag when my time comes.
Haven't slept much since May, but looking forward to October, there
might be some quiet days. (Maybe Melodyne DNA is done by then, that
would be a nice cup of tea.)
Final Cut is rendering some visuals now so I have a few minutes to update the journal.
I am bit by bit chewing todos and checking off all the promotional
laundry, PR typing, posting, social network updating, shipping
pre-orders, preparing and organizing the live show, printing posters,
cutting up flyers, writing live versions of tracks for the show,
preparing visuals for the show, testing out video streaming, editing and
mixing Kometkameratene tracks for the upcoming CD release, writing
incidental music for upcoming episodes, hey look at that a new iphone,
booking crew for the liveshow, editing and uploading track previews,
espressos, writing this. postponing taxes, untangling a spiderweb of
email communications. (Looking very much forward to Google Wave!)
Oh almost slipped my mind, I developed and programmed a fundamental
update to my websites to make it easier to add and maintain content.
Maybe it doesn't look like much of a change, still things to do, but
there's some new laser ninja http tubes in the basement. Should come in
handy over the next few years.
I am very sure something has slipped my mind? Oh I am aware of the
manual pre-orders, I was hoping to get to them tomorrow morning, sorry
about that, but there should still be time.
Also, I'm worried about my laptop HD, it's not behaving, file
operations are crashing more and more frequently, I really really don't
have time to mess with a HD exchange and recovery right now.
But luckily, according to my calendar I have ten minutes free on Monday to release an album. Looking forward to that!
Sandtraps has already been disclosed, it was competing for the same space as Nightswim on the album, and I asked for global second opinions.
More than 300 persons voted, emailed or commented on the two tracks,
the final result ending up with a 60/40 favor of Sandtraps. Which is
uncannily similar to my own opinion, I was slightly in favor of
Sandtraps.
Saturday, June 13th at Kafe Edvard,
Bergen. I'll do a mini cinematic concert presenting some of the new
material, and DJ Kahuun will ensure the party vibes. If this schizo
summer graces us with nice weather, it'll be a great outdoors event.
The show will be videostreamed live here on www.ugress.com.
Kafe Edvard, Grieghallen
Saturday June 13th
Concert starts 2230 CET
Age limit 20 years
Free entrance
Video streamed live www.ugress.com
I'll fill out more info here when I have time (or if there is more to say).
This track was originally written back in 2006, during a longer stay in Istanbul, Turkey.
Coincidentally thou, it did not feature any Middle or Near Eastern
elements in the original version. I wrote it originally as soothing and
easy house track, there was no oud as a lead instrument. When revisiting
the track earlier this year, I felt it missed a carrying element. The
oud was edited together from various sources, pitch and tempo adjusted
with Melodyne to fit the Western scale and harmonies.
So the Western part of the track was written in Istanbul, and the
Eastern part was added in Bergen. This reversed cultural personality,
suits a track named for the Bosporus.
The WIDI-XU from CME is a wireless, USB based MIDI transmitter and receiver, with 80 meters of range.
This means, if I was living aboard the International Space Station, I
could remotely control a synthesizer aboard the space shuttle
Discovery. We could for example have a duplicate concert in both the
space station and the shuttle simultansouly, if we wanted to. And I'm
sure we would, and it would be awesome. I'm a space station operator
with my wireless midi calculator!
We could also just do it on earth, with the built in wireless network
MIDI in OSX, like I'm already doing, but that would be lamé.
There is a wide assortment of vocals on the album.
I think there are eight tracks with vocal or voice contributions,
depending on how one defines a vocal track. I wouldn't call all of them
vocal tracks - for some of them there are no words, some uses voice
samples, and others again only use vocals sparingly, more as a part of
the arrangement than lead instrument.
This track, however, I would define as a vocal track. Super voice talent Christine Litle provides lyrics and vocals.
The brave of you can now poke at the new website, codename Generation 4.
The new website is a one-stop place for absolutely all my stuff. It
will give access to absolutely all my music. It should scale neatly to
all sorts of resolutions.
I think most of the technical stuff now works, what is missing is
most of the content and graphics. I have to stop coding now, need to
focus on other things like pre-orders.
So I open up the new system parallell to the old one, while I add the
missing content. There are probably lots of bugs and problems, if you
want to look around, please do. Sometime next week I'll flip the switch,
so by release, the new site is in operation.
Lots of stuff is missing but from the top of my head:
The banner graphics at the top is just a dummy for now
Lots of content is temporary development filler
Lots of content is missing, both media and text
If Soundcloud reports "track removed", that's ok, not an error
The community system is barebones for now
Adding new links are postponed
I haven't tried it in Internet Explorer yet.. *afraid*
So, if you dare approaching HTTP monsters, give it a spin. Post
comments and rate tracks, run amok. Problems and snafus are welcome at gisle@ugress.com.
Only 10 days left. I am nearing an end to the website programming -
most likely public beta during the weekend. Got to start expediting
orders. Very surprised I managed it.
The track of today is dressed in kung fu shoes. "New Shoes Escape
Manoeuvre" is the dub representative on the album. It is also featured
in the promo video sampler.
Modsense is a new prototype dynamic controller system, in development by students at Aalborg University.
It looks like a dynamic system,
where you combine single modules of faders, knobs and 3D motion
controllers into your own modular setup. I am really intrigued by the 3D
motion controllers in the demo.
Thanks a lot everyone for your interest. There are too many orders
for me to follow up all of them immediately, but I'll get to them over
the next few days.
Everything will be shipped as scheduled, starting on Monday.
You can also make an order by sending an email with your postal address (including country) to mall@uncannyplanet.com. I'll reply with invoice.
I have updated all prices in the mall to reflect new exchange and postal rates. All items are cheaper, shipping is slightly more expensive.
Early Birdie Bonus
The first 22 pre-orders will additionally receive bundled a
glorious Reminiscience A3 Poster, and one of the few remaining limited
edition Cinematronics cassettes (yes, we made a limited run of 100
cassettes). Let me know if you want anything signed. Gone.
Shipping
Orders outside Europe will be shipped Monday June 8th.
Orders inside Europe will be shipped Wednesday June 10th.
Orders inside Norway will be shipped Friday June 12th.
Digital download
All physical pre-orders will also receive a digital download, June
15th at 00:01 CET. You will receive a link to download via email.
The album will be available in my own mp3 stores at the same time,
and iTunes, Spotify et al whenever they do the daily release routine. It
should also be physically available in regular Norwegian record shops,
and internationally via Amazon.
Coupon code
Oh, if you are logged in - take a look at the Uncanny Mall merch box
to your right, for your 15% discount coupon code. Thanks for hanging out
here.
Update 1: Whoa incredible! Woke up this morning and already
way past 22 pre-orders. Everyone ordered so far will get the schwag, but
that's it, the offer is expired. Thanks everyone, for your support.
Update2: I messed up the poster size, it's A3 not
A2. A3 is smaller, but also means I can ship it without folding it.
Sorry about that, my bad. I'll throw in a extra poster, so you can make
your own A2 version.
"The more successfully the
player interacts with the machine, the more intense the accompanying
soundtrack gets. The piece maintains the roughness of the
electromechanical original game, mixing physical sounds happening on the
playing field with manipulations of their recordings."
Things are a little bit behind, but not as much as I feared. Looks
like I will be able to pull off the update before the album is out.
Which sort of was the plan anyway, and has been for a long time, I was
supposed to do this update before previous album Unicorn but ran out of
time.
I appears I pushed things to hard lately, my biological self
collapsed over the weekend. The immunity systems are working overtime to
repair the damage.
Apparently coding is quite doable with fever, so I am making
delirious progress with the web upgrades. The logical and systematic
part of the brain seems unaffected by the virus.
However this was a most unfortunate setback, and a stark reminder of
the least glorious feature of being independent: Solitary world
domination is crucially dependent on a well-functioning biological
entity.
As the release approaches, the amount of administrative efforts are
increasing exponentially. I was supposed to be programming the webs, but
spent all day being an office drone. Printing and building promo kits,
updating social networks, shipping orders, filling out papers, replying
to emails.
With great satisfaction I managed to zero my inbox completely, which is a
rare occurrence of effectivity and organisation. I sat for a few
minutes meditating on the vast loneliness of an empty inbox. The peace
lasted only until the next IMAP moment.
TV networks, video blogs and other moving-images media outlets
sometimes need supplied footage when reporting on global dominance
maneuvers. In particular, the entertainment division covering mad
scientists and their sucktastic new albums.
Just in not-bloody-likely case, I built a two minute promo video,
featuring samples of album tracks and HD video footage of our liveshows
over the last two years. Not that I imagine anyone to ever use this,
except for bashing the lunatic, but it is a good excuse to premiere some
more music.
So if you run a TV channel, or want to, or not, now you can slaughter
my album with awesome footage in the upper right info box.
Footage from the Landmark and Aas shows. Thanks to Svein Sund for camera and footage assistance.
Cockos just released version 3 of Reaper. Reaper, like Renoise, is one of my pet underdog music production suites.
With the recent introductions of Propellerheads Record and Presonus Studio One, the DAW world seems to be in full bloom. Renoise just recently went gold with 2.1, surprisingly introducing Rewire. I am thankful for this growth, and in particular that the smaller indie developers seem to be doing great.
The upcoming Ugress album was written and produced with several
different programs, which is atypical for the historic me. Previously I
used to stay in one program for years. Now I seem to be working in many
programs at once, picking whatever tool is right for the moment. I
happily welcome more options.
I need a few minutes of promo footage for the upcoming release. So I
spent the day editing and colour correcting the HD takes from last years
Landmark show.
It was a superb show, with excellent visuals. Unfortunately the
unusual stage lightning turned out too dark for the cameras. There are
some nice shots, but not enough to build a concert video feature from
it. However, it might be useful for editing into a quick promo reel.
Took most of the day to find the usable clips, trimming, balancing
and color correcting them. Tomorrow I'll edit it together with an album
mashup and it should be ready.
Only 20 days left? It is not enough. I can feel a mild, tingling panic spreading through my nerve system.
Anyway. I'm currently working like mad on the websites. I am working
on a development version, but to save time both these production pages
here and the development system are running of the same backend
database. So from time to time something might break or look screwed up.
Sorry about that.
I spent most of today going over the current setup, the current live
tracks, and planning for changes and development. I'll spend a few hours
now and then over the coming weeks fine-tuning things.
Looks like I'll be doing the live shows solo up ahead, no vocals or
live instruments, so I need to change the live setup accordingly.
It is a bit sad to be playing alone again, back to basics, but also
liberating and exciting. Without live musicians, my show is more
flexible as to where I can perform.
I'm trying to set up a few small release parties in Norway, so far
only Bergen is booked. Not sure exactly what I'll be doing live for the
release parties, but it is a nice opportunity to try out some new ideas
and concepts.
The Bergen venue, a small coffee shop called Kafe Edvard, has internet connection so I'm looking into getting the show streamed and tied into a simultaneous digital release.
Spent most of the day planning and preparing for pre-orders and new products in the Uncanny Mall.
There are some new products (of course) and I'm updating the prices,
luckily for international customers the financial crisis means a better
exchange rate, and lower prices.
I am still paying down on debts, can't afford to print new clothing
quite yet. But there is still merch left from the Unicorn release, I
didn't tour as much as expected.
And I was foreseeable enough to not tie most of the merch up directly
to the Unicorn album, the logo shirts are universal. There is also some
new niceties.
I absolutely loved Duke Nukem 3D, and spent most of my education kicking ass and chewing bubblegum. Thanks, Lånekassen.
Ever since, one has personally enjoyed waiting for the follow-up; The King Of Vaporware also know as Duke Nukem Forever. Sadly, a few weeks ago it was finally revealed that there would be no follow-up, 3D Realms folded.
It is therefore with great enthusiasm, I observe that the holy grail
of audio editing, Melodyne DNA, is lining up to become the next, and
even better, Polyphonic King Of Varporware.
Rumours were running
already a few months back, that Melodyne DNA was in trouble, but
Celemony quickly denied, stating everything was ready for the
already-postponed May beta release. Then, what do you know. Postponed again. Wait, is that the smell of... vapor... in the air?
I know there is an already released, but unstable indie product doing
slightly the same as DNA, and upcoming SonicWorx will be able to edit
pitches in polyphonic material. So it is not impossible to do what
Celemony is promising. I think it is very possible. But tricky.
Announcing and showcasing a product and then not having anything to show for more than a year... danger, Will Robinson.
Buzz is picking up as the release approaches. My daily Google alerts
keeps filling up, unanswered emails are piling up, there are daily merch
orders from the Uncanny Mall and more frequent requests for sync
licenses.
Looks like the world has noticed there is a new album coming up.
Didn't have much access to the tubes over the last few days of
travelling, so I spent most of the day catching up with administrative
efforts, killing emails, burning, printing and posting promos, and
expediting merch orders.
Global world domination is sometimes too much boring office work.
Sometimes
travelling is all-consuming. Those are the worst kinds of journeys,
when absolutely all your attention is spent on transporting yourself
from A to B, fighting delays and re-routes and strikes and generally all
the morons of the world doing their best to make your day a mess.
And don't get me started on the blithering stupid idiots behind
wireless internet zones at airports. Why do they think the more forms
they ask me to fill out, the more likely I will be giving them my money?
I WON'T.
Why, yes, of course, extremely complicated internet provider page, I
will download your proprietary software, and fill out all of these 62
forms, approve of you selling my email adress, just to get on the
internet for a few minutes! And I will gladly pay for it too, in massive
amounts, for 60 minutes access!
Upon my global world dominance: The people behind the
over-complicated internet wi-fi zones will be made responsible for
polishing absolutely all the leaves on absolutely all the trees in the
world. Nightly. With a single cotton swab to share.
Took half a day off for a walk in a wet, misty English forest valley.
It was magically drizzled with post-apocalyptic, Victorian mill ruins. A
perfect setting for Nebular Spool inspiration.
I very much would like to focus on new projects. Artistically, the
Ugress Reminiscience album is behind me, I'm done with it. I now have to
make an effort marketing it, which is hard to muster up. I much prefer
the creation and production process to the sales and promotion process.
My mind is longing for future projects, and this forest walk reinforced
my hope to get working on the next Nebular Spool.
The damp wetness and lush growth of the British forests took me by
surprise. I very much enjoyed getting lost in the ruins of old mills,
covered inn moss and overgrown with dense foliage. I took some photographs of my post apocalyptic escape.
A few days in London was spent partly on the laptop and partly on awesome restaturants.
The Ugress album has demanded all my attention the last few months, I
am behind on several other projects, I badly needed to catch up.
The next season of the Kometkameratene sci-fi show, starting in
September, is already in production. The show is introducing some new
characters, and I am rudely late in developing their leitmotif music and
sound. With the Ugress album out of my hands and off to the press, I
immediately got to work on sketching out suggestions to the directors
and producers.
I am very excited for the upcoming new characters, and their musical
possibilities. Can't reveal too much yet, but they could be opening up a
new way to score the show.
Spent most of the day travelling through the Windows Vista desktop landscape also known as Great Britain.
I was hoping to squeeze in a few days of R&R this week, but the last
few days of predicaments means no rest for the wicked. In that regard, I
was very happy to observe the excellent trains of Britain is equipped
with wireless internet. With trains like this, I'm not surprised they
built a global empire, and won the war, and also had time to create
excellent pubs. I managed to fire off the most urgent emails with green
pastures zipping by.
I related news, am very thankful for my aggregator, Artspages, the
connection between UK and Oslo was flaky and I struggled uploading the
album to their system, but had no problem uploading to drop.io. So they
downloaded it from there and entered the audio manually into the system
for me. Much appreciated.
The logistics of the album is now out of my hands, which is a relief.
The album master is finally approved and concluded. Phew.
Also, as a perfect wrap (harr harr), I had extremely awesome dim sum at Hakkasan for late Sunday night dinner. Terrible website, but incredible place and food.
It was launched to much bravado this weekend, after ages of
self-generated marketing win, and is supposed to not only know
everything, but also what everything means.
Of course, as usual with us mad scientists, it fails thunderously at
once. I'm actually impressed, how it managed to fail faster than Cuil.
It has some neat new features, but after a few days of working with
it, I have a gut feeling it uses more CPU and slows down my websites. I
don't have time to investigate, but feels like pages with Soundcloud
widgets seem to load slower, and demand more CPU once loaded. If a page
with the widget is open, my laptop fans spin up pretty soon.
The Video Eldorado -
The Ultimate Humanitarian Road Trip - is a travelling humanitarian
project, on their way to meet the people of the Americas. Ten people
from different cultures (Canada, France, England, United States)
travelling from Canada to Panama in a big vegetable-fueled bus, doing
workshop with children, filming and documenting everything they discover
on their way.
The video editor emailed me a while back and asked if they could use
some of my music for the video blog. I really liked this project, and
gave him complete access to my whole library for their video diaries.
The teaser above, Life In Louisiana, uses music from the library and from the Film Music compilation album.
30 days to release. Late last night I finally got the first master version.
It looks like that. It sounds like epic purple velvet ninja sound. I think.
Unfortunately I'm travelling, and I do not like making sound quality
conclusions on headphones, particularly after getting off a flight.
The master sounds awesome on high quality headphones, and on iPhone
earbuds. I can tell what they did by comparing premaster and master, but
I cannot know how this translates to actual room sound, in particular
how it sounds loud. So I have to trust the opinions of others.
We're having a phone meeting later tonight to discuss and hopefully agree the master is ready for delivery.
The cover is designed by Kosmonaut, which is Morten Rosenlund at Reaktor ID. Cover photo by Haugland/Reksten/Olsen.
With immense pleasure I welcome back Morten as my cover artwork
designer. He did the very first E-Pipe EP, the ill fated Loungemeister
EP, the first promo CDs, the Resound artwork and most of the early
posters.
I am very happy to be working with Morten again. The Reminiscience
artwork is spectacular, and quite the clever one, once you start peeking
into the depths of the booklet.
PS. If you read this in
Firefox, be aware that your browser does not respect image color
profiles. The cover does not display correctly in Firefox.
Late last night I uploaded the premaster, scheduled for mastering today.
I was very tired, but happy, my job was done and I delivered on time.
But after only a few hours sleep, my manager called me and woke me up
with ill news. The appointed master engineer had fell sick with a bad
cold, and the rest of the facility was understaffed. They couldn't do it
today. You can't master an album without ears.
Crisis. We are on a super tight schedule. The album has to be done
within tomorrow Friday, the finished master must go to press, and on to
my aggregator for further digital distribution, to reach all
destinations in time. To complicate matters, I will be travelling a lot
the next seven days, and won't have access to familiar systems to check
details in the master.
Then, a few hours later, he phoned again, we learned that our pressing
plant contact was ALSO missing in action, the whole plant were ALSO
understaffed, and all orders up ahead would be delayed. A delivery delay
of one day, at this moment, means a production delay of several weeks.
Gah. After months of working around the clock, everything crumbles once
it is out my hands. Before 8 in the morning, before I even had any
coffee. Cruel, cruel, cruel.
The rest of the day was spent in a combination of perplexed anticlimax
and stressed-out agony, phone calls, emails, errands, how when what who
which where to if possibly perhaps manage to salvage something somehow,
if anything. I should be working on press releases and promo kits,
preparing for a week's travel, catching up on running projects, but it
was impossible to concentrate when I had no idea what was happening to
the album.
I can't postpone the release. I have so much to do, project commitments,
my schedule up until September is crammed. The reason for releasing the
album June 15th is quite simply because it is the only available
moment. I forced it into my schedule because I knew if I didn't get it
out by then, it wouldn't be out until 2010.
I have been pushing other projects ahead of me while wrapping up the
album, and I should be focusing on them this very moment. It's going to
be a long night. Again.
Finally late tonight, possible solutions seemed to fall into place. The
mastering engineer provides a smart solution where they manage do the
final master tomorrow. Very nice, I am very grateful, but too late for
my aggregator's weekly push, and too late for me. I don't know how this
plays with the physical plant yet.
I have no information or guarantee that the album will reach all
destinations in time, but my beloved aggregator Artspages promised me to
see what they could do, and my manager Roar knows a trick or two about
the physical distribution. Next week we'll look into clever ways to
catch up.
If the phone wakes me tomorrow morning, I'm totally very not answering.
A few minutes ago, I uploaded the premaster to the ftp server. There
is still lots of stuff to do, but musically and artistically, I'm
finished. Tomorrow the album is mastered, and Friday sent to the press /
digital distribution.
I will now try to get some much needed sleep, if I can remember how to do it.
Tomorrow I'll retrospectively update the missing days (I took notes), and post the cover artwork.
Didn't get all eight hours sleep, but enough to reset my ears. Today
and tomorrow are the two final days, and I'm mostly focusing on final
mix and minor details and adjustments.
All tracks are now finished, and the sequence is almost locked.
I did some intro and outtro adjustments depending on track sequence, to provide for a nice flow throughout the album.
One of the tracks needed a slightly longer outtro, to provide a
breathing buffer in to a rather explosive next track. This is one of the
nice things I like about having full control myself and total access to
everything. I can adjust all elements as necessary at any moment, if
needed.
I
spent most of today working on the final missing elements of a few
tracks. The most important tracks are finished, and I'm happy to observe
that this is a very melodic album, there are several excellent single
candidates.
Very long days now, and short nights. That's not good for my ears, tonight I have to get eight hours sleep to rest my ears.
Sometimes I have awesome ideas, sometimes I have horrible ideas.
Sometimes I have awesome ideas that turn out horrible. For one of the
album tracks, maybe the next single, which is about 80'ies computers,
sprites and 8 bit fights, I wanted to have the good old Sam Reciter sing
a part of the vocals.
He has a very distinct voice, I really love that computer voice sound, and it could complement the track very well. Also it was a clever cameo.
It took me a few swift minutes of googling and downloading to get the
C64 and Sam up and running on my mac. I then sampled (harr harr) the
necessary words, and got to work on making him in tune and tempo.
But darn gosh, I struggled with that. He just wouldn't cooperate.
I couldn't find a way to fit him into the track, and I quickly became
manically intent on it. I spent almost 36 hours trying to get it to
work and sound like I wanted. STUPID waste of energy and time at such a
moment, I should have killed the project within 36 minutes.
Of course, the solution was simple, and it was what I had planned in
the beginning. Sam is still participating, but now more rightly in his
subtle cameo role. I'll write a dedicated track for him later.
People all over the world has responded to my two album selection crowdsourcing sessions. This has been very inspiring and informative, and most importantly, great fun.
As already mentioned with Nightswim vs Sandtraps, the public opinion
in both cases coincides with my own. Most of the observations and
comments are resonating with me. A few I might disagree with, but I
understand where they come from.
In both cases I choose to go with the public opinion. The way I see
it, I had a hunch and it was proved by popular consensus. Sandtraps and
AMZ 1974 go on the album.
I also took great notice in a few comments that mentioned that
Nightswim and Blaupunkt has more potential than the other two, but it is
untapped. I agree, and I'd say it more blatant: They can become great
tracks, they just aren't good enough yet.
Blaupunkt will be available as a bonus download for those that buy
the album. Nightswim I haven't decided yet. I might push it up ahead to
the next album or an EP, I think it needs more work.
All Ugress albums has a track with the number 22 as part of the title.
The upcoming Reminiscience album is (and I can't believe it) my 22nd release, with product code UP 022.
With great relief, today I wrapped up this album's 22 track. It was
scheduled for inclusion a long time ago, but for a long time there was a
problem with the structure. I kept struggling to make all the parts fit
together seamlessly.
Of course it resolved itself today. After all, 9 + 5 +8 = 22.
The global expertise helping us choose between two tracks last week was incredible.
We have opinions from the whole planet, every continent. With great
respect we now ask you again: Please help us now select the final track
for the album.
This time, the final battle is between two instrumental tracks: Blaupunkt vs AMZ 1974.
They are not as similar as Nightswim and Sandtraps. Genre wise I
would place them both in the cinematic part of the album, but with
different atmosphere and energy.
What do you think? I am happy for opinions and discussion, post a comment and let me know your thoughts. The comments of the previous battle was fantastic.
If you only want to give a vote, speak with your click:
Today the last Resound LP was sold from my merch store the Uncanny Mall. This makes the vinyl version out of print. If you have one, keep it safe.
There are still around 50 Cinematronics LP's left, but they're in a
warehouse on the other side of the country. I'll grab them as soon as
possible but for now the vinyl products are sadly on hold.
Today was awesome. Yesterday was horrible, I lost a day in fixing a critical website problem, but I was duly rewarded.
I received a nice real letter in the post with some schwag from Bandcamp, which provides my lossless digital music store.
They're up to something great, and I am very happy to see the options
for musicians to sell music directly to fans are blooming.
Then, just a few minutes later as I was thinking exactly that thought above, it dumped in an email from The SixtyOne, my favorite social music site - Ugress has currently 2300 active listeners
and commenters, providing me invaluable feedback and statistics. The
SixtyOne are soon opening up an ecommerce solution for artists on the
site, to sell songs directly to fans within the system. They would like
to invite me to the private beta. Awesome.
The tools for independent artists are growing like crazy.
I am old and crooked and a cruel but loved and respected world
dominating dictator. And young journalists with fresh, naive curiosity
flock around me to ask about my dark and distant past. Are the rumours
true? Was it really that barbaric?
They would ask something like: "What, prey tell, was some of the
challenges of being a pioneering, digital, electronic artist, before Our
Great Leader GMM made the world such a great and continuously stable
place it is today?"
And I would tap my pipe and linger in a perfectly pondering pose for a moment, and then remember:
"Well, sometimes, in the climatic production of an album, maybe exactly
41 days before the album should be released, you could sometimes need to
drop everything in your hands, because your website was being
throttled, there could be a problem with some SQL queries that was
running wild, because your server was getting more and more visits
faster and faster. Growing pains. Now, mind you, many people would think
"surely this can wait, I can't fix this now!". But that is where those
people disappeared with a silent, digital poof, and fell into the
forgotten realms of history."
"Most people didn't realize back then, the web server was becoming the
backbone and nerval spine of any musical endeavour. If your website was
screwed, your music was screwed. If your website used 20 seconds to
display a page, people didn't wait. They left. They should not leave,
especially as an album release approaches. Also, your webhost would kill
your site, because it was using up all the farm CPU power. This,
naturally, was not acceptable to me at the time. One quite simply fixes
the problem swiftly and immediately with surgical ninja coding attacks
at highly strategic entry points. One educates oneself dynamically,
reads up on inner joins, outer joins and starts optimizing SQL queries,
so the website respondes within milliseconds again."
The journalists gasp at the prospect of what releasing an album back then could involve.
Thankfully, after our great leader GMM The Cruel But Cooel, this never
happens anymore. Stuff mostly just works all the time so he can make
albums without dabbling in pathetic SQL Inner Joins.
May 6th, 08:47 CET. There are some website issues, we're working on it.
Update, 13:18 CET. Corrected. Site was having some growing pains,
which eventually became acute this morning. Performed some black SQL
voodoo magic spells. It should be way more responsive now.
Thanks to Stian M at Webhuset for helpful assistance.
My current efforts is not particularly newsworthy. Mostly very long
days of finishing tracks and mixes. The last 10 percent of a project is
always the least exciting.
I seem to be generating an accelerating amount of data over the
years. I prefer to have all of my projects and libraries available,
nothing in external archives. This continuously demands more and larger
disks.
I noticed this morning that most of my project disks are approaching
full capacity AGAIN, but I'd rather not upgrade until the album is
finished.
I wonder why disk sizes never seem to be growing fast enough.
Today
was the same as yesterday - just a long, intense production session. I
wrapped up all of the uncertain tracks. They are now ready to be
determined for inclusion or exclusion.
The upcoming week I'll be concentrating only on finishing the album tracks, and scripting the album artwork.
Today was work, work, work - I wrapped up two of the questionable
tracks, fleshing them out as complete edits. This makes it easier to
judge them, both on their own, and in the album context.
I have found a nice way of working with multiple edits simultaneously
in Logic, I just lay them out after each other sequentially in arrange.
Pictured above is a track with two edits, a short and a long one. This
way I can work on the mix and content of several versions at the same
time.
I have also started setting the album together, playing with various track collections and sequences.
And I also asked around some of my favourite places, for the
possibility of a release party. We didn't have one for Unicorn, and that
was a bit sad. Not sure how, where and what to do, but ideally the
party should include wifi and we could stream it worldwide.
On the topic of the planet and maps, I found this very intriguing: A connectedness map from New Scientist, that shows the most remote places on the planet.
The maps are based on a model which calculated how long it would take
to travel to the nearest city of 50,000 or more people by land or
water.
At the moment it looks like 2 out of 3 persons prefer Sandtraps over
Nightswim. I must disclose, this is very similar to my own taste.
Personally I have been leaning towards Sandtraps for the album. I like
the track slightly better than Nightswim, because it is more immediate,
more melodic, and I also think it better fits the album as a whole. It
just grooves better.
But what makes this a difficult decision - as many has pointed out -
Nightswim is a sleeper, a fresh direction for Ugress, and potentially
more attractive as a complete track in a larger setting. It is slightly
more demanding, but also more rewarding. It grows better.
To complicate matters even more - Nightswim exists in three different
versions, has been through hundreds of edits, was almost included on
Unicorn, was almost used as in-between single between the albums. It has
been an "almost" track for a long time.
Anyway. I am extremely grateful for the feedback, both the numeric
stats and written opinions. Keep it coming - not only is the
observations useful for the album selection, but it is also very
educational and informative for the production process.
This episode theme and title is "Art". It is a blasting MIDI punk track, with Mook the mechanic as lead.
We also wrote the lyrics for this track. When writing a song about
art, there is only one thing to do: Write an early 80ies angry punk
track. With cheap MIDI production.
We choose Mook as lead vocals, to create a contrast. Mook is the
quiet and calm character, always careful and considerate. It would be a
nice surprise to show the kids that a calm, considerate person can also
be a cool and energetic punk band lead vocalist.
The song was great fun to write, we wrote it in a few hilarious
hours. I came up with the simple riff, did some hasty MIDI production
and fleshed out a basic structure. We then pretended to be angry rioters
in 1981, hating the establishment, protesting against everything,
anarchy is best, screw the rest, we wrote the rest.
The Norwegian word for art is "kunst". The characters yell "kunst",
and Mook asks philosophical as well as absurd questions of what art
really is.
Here is an excerpt of the final broadcast version:
Conclusion. This was the final track of the 2008/2009 season. I think
it is a great finale, which perfectly represents and sums up the broad
span of musical genres we have referenced and parodied during the whole
season. We've done disco, classical, reggae, flamenco, bossa nova, jazz,
electro, world, triphop, dance, pop, punk, gypsy, musicals, dansband,
blues, I don't know what. Luckily, there are more to explore - I am
hungry for new genres to dissect.
I can't wait to get started on the next season. Writing music for
this TV show is not only incredibly fun and rewarding, it also immensely
educational. We always try to do something new and different with the
music, challenging ourselves, our knowledge of genres and the production
possibilities. For the next season we're developing a broader musical
scope for the series, integrating the musical numbers tighter into the
episodes and giving the characters room for interacting and performing
within the music.
There will be a CD coming out with most of the tracks from this
season. The moment I have sent Ugress 4 to the pressing plant I'm
starting the work on CD versions, afaik release is set for late
summer/early fall. I also know the torrent versions will be updated as
soon as possible to include all episodes and music videos for the first
season.
Endless Loop
is a research paper with subtitle "A brief history of chiptunes". I
haven't had time to read it yet, but it looks very, very interesting.
Goes straight into my Ninja 9000 chiptune sideproject reference archive.
Abstract:
Chiptune refers to a
collection of related music production and performance practices sharing
a history with video game soundtracks. The evolution of early chiptune
music tells an alternate narrative about the hardware, software, and
social practices of personal computing in the 1980s and 1990s.
By digging into the
interviews, text files, and dispersed ephemera that have made their way
to the Web, we identify some of the common folk-historical threads among
the commercial, noncommercial, and ambiguously commercial producers of
chiptunes with an eye toward the present-day confusion surrounding the
term chiptune.
Using the language of
affordances and constraints, we hope to avoid a technocratic view of the
inventive and creative but nevertheless highly technical process of
creating music on computer game hardware.
46 days left until the album is out, we need professional help: Listen to two tracks, and voice your opinion. Help us decide which track to put on the album.
We are now finalizing the album track listing. Some of the tracks are
somewhat mutually exclusive - both cannot go on the album. I cannot
agree with myself, or others, which track to select. So I thought to
crowdsource opinions.
These two tracks are both calm and soothing vocal tracks, beautiful
and melodic. Great vocals by Christine, as always. However they are
somewhat similar, I feel there is only room for one of them. But which?
Here is a minute excerpt from each:
What do you think? I am happy for opinions, post a comment and let me know your thoughts. If you only want to give a vote, that's fine. Numbers are sexy too:
Today I did promo and cover shoots for the album. I also ran around town to grab props for the shoot.
As a modern mad professor, most of my work actually happens
digitally, but to visualize and explain the scope of my efforts to the
common person, scientific equipment like test tubes and Erlenmeyer
flasks are sometimes necessary. Those items are not readily available at
your local food court, nor does my neighbourhood have a "lab equipment
store". Tsk.
The shoot was hectic but great fun. Lots of clever techniques,
lighting setups and mechanisms to provide raw material for further
manipulation and 'shopping. I think the results will be very neat,
should be ready in a few short weeks.
I am in the final stage of finishing the album. In two weeks time, I'm handing off the premaster for mastering.
Most of the tracks are finished, and the track selection is almost
complete. For some weeks now there has been 17 final candidates.
Nine of those are safe, six are uncertain and the two last ones are most
likely excluded, unless someting weird happens. The six uncertain
tracks are somewhat mutually exclusive, or "odd" ones that doesn't quite
fit the album as a whole. I expect them to be reduced to two or three,
making the album 11 or 12 tracks.
I'm spending this week wrapping up those tracks and making a final
judgement on them by the end of the week. Then next week I know how the
album will be, and perform necessary adjustments to the rest of the
tracks.
Tonight I'll be sending out the press release for the "It Was A Great Year"
single. I should have done it last week, but after finishing the track,
I only had time to drop it here in the blog. No time to do a radio edit
or write the press release. I had to focus on other commitments.
I had a few hours off today, I did the radio edit, just shortened it
slightly; halved the bridge and the melodic solo part. The track is now
3:30, still a minute too much for optimum radio length. But I don't want
to break the track down and force it into a radio format, I don't think
it would work like that, it runs in rather large blocks that should not
be disassembled.
The next Ugress album is out in 50 days. Like with the previous album, I'll countdown each day with status updates here. Kinda interesting to see what I did on this very day for the previous album.
Technically, the 50th day is already gone. It was yesterday, I
miscounted. Bah! In the matters of world dominance, who spends details
on such trivial matters as getting the dates correct?
As dictator, one quite simply back-date the journal entry as needed.
A predicament in my alert box this morning. My very first vinyl release, the E-Pipe EP, has turned up on vinyl blogs.
I guess I am flattered. But, it is piracy. But, the album is out of print. But, it is available digitally.
But not on Spotify or iTunes yet. And to complicate things even more
for myself, I follow some vinyl blogs, and am not innocent of
downloading out-of-print or rare releases to check them out, and even
worse, sample from them.
What goes around comes around, I guess. I wrote the blog owner and
asked if he could add a link to the Ugress digital shop in the post,
turning the post into a promotional situation.
I can't keep an eye out, remove pirated versions and/or communicate a
promotional solution for every pirate version of my material out there.
But I think if mp3 blogs, vinyl blogs and piracy forums could start
by hooking illegal releases up to legal alternatives, we could be on a
way to a mutual understanding, and perhaps build a system that everyone
can live with.
I helped localizing FiRe, an incredible new recording app for the iPhone and iPod touch platform.
For some months now I've been wanting to grab a proper field
recorder. I need something to tape stuff in musical contexts, but mostly
to have a sample weapon ready at all times. I have some audio apps for
my iPhone, and Evernote is nice enough for voice memos, but I never
considered my phone to be a potential high quality field sampler.
Then suddenly a few weeks ago, Matthew from Audiofile Engineering
asked me if I could help out localizing a new app of theirs to
Norwegian. Of course I could, they make fantastic apps, amongst them Wave Editor which I use for many many hours every day. (They also throw excellent parties.)
I fell in love with FiRe immediately. The app is brilliant, and smart
- it does exactly what it should do, and it does it very, very well.
Combine this with for example the Alesis Protrack, and I have everything I need for a high quality, flexible field recorder.
My iPhone has been a great musical toy ever since I got it, but with
FiRe, my phone is suddenly becoming an integral part of my professional
sonic arsenal. It uploads directly into my Soundcloud account. I find
this blurring of previously separate technological areas (recording,
sampling, communication, web), incredibly interesting.
The app is available now (iTunes store link). The Norwegian localization in version 1.1 is awaiting Apple approval and should be out anytime as a free update.
Production trivia, sound examples and lyrics from the recently released single It Was A Great Year.
Production Trivia
All the voices are virtual. Cheap, freeware or operating system speech synthesis.
The original title was "Caliginous Aestivate" and it was supposed to be a easy, instrumental summer track.
The current album version is slightly shorter than the first edit, the
intro was twice as long. The radio edit will probably be shortened even
more.
The melody is actually very simple, both tonally and rhythmically: Just
two-three notes in a simple, repeating rhythmical pattern. The musical
development is mostly happening in the underlying harmonic structure.
The robot voice is generated with very simple, basic speech synthesis:
For the chorus part, I used several voices from different speech synthesis engines, to make it sound fuller.
I wanted to have a C64 sounding instrument for the later instrumental
part. But I also wanted to introduce a retro atmosphere very early in
the track, so I ended up using a C64 arpeggio in the intro. This made it
harder to find something interesting within the retro scope for the
melodic part, and I ended up with a layered and processed piano. I'm not
too happy with this solution, but never managed to create something
that worked. Some people suggested the voices should hum the melody, it
is a good suggestion and I actually tried that, but I felt it
became too much voice throughout the track.
The song was written in February this year, the core of the track done
in a few hours. The lyrics and vocals took some more work during spring.
This track was the "green light" for Ugress 4, the track that completed
the puzzle and nailed the release date. The album title "Reminiscience"
has been with me for a long time, but I was unsure if the material
within would live up to the title. With this track, everything fell into
place.
Lyrics.
(There might be some difference from written lyric to actual programmed sound.)
Verse 1:
Mechanically reassert
Electric, always on alert
Intentions are profound
Emotionally never hurt
Biologically disconcert
We never ever let you down
Imaginary photoshops
Of thousands of megawatts,
We differ from your kind
Celluloid snapshots
Of silver screen Robots
The image printed, the image linger in your mind
Chorus:
It was a great year
We tried to stay there
It was a great year
For movies with robots
It was a great year
We really liked it there
It was a great year
For movies with robots
Verse 2:
Absolutely digital
Opinions predictable
You know what we think
Programmatic gentle
Never accidental
We always play in sync
Prioritize directive
Logical detective
We'd give ourselves for you
Never too affective
Always objective
Our feelings equal to true
(Chorus repeat.)
I'll put them into the lyrics database when I've got time.
I'm not on anyone's side in this torrent spectacle of the clouds. I'm Switzerland. Or maybe Bespin.
But I observe the following.
-The PB was found guilty but the service is still running
-The judge is professionally connected to the prosecution
-Google, and gazillions other services offers exactly the same as PB
-The Rickroll phenomena generated $15 in income for the song composer
-Spotify is awesome and I use it all the time
It is obvious to me, a lot of energy and resources are being spent in the wrong places. By everyone.
A few days ago I was interviewed by Amund form NRK Urørt, it should air tonight at 2100 CET on NRK P3.
The angle of the interview was to find out what I was doing today, in
2009, what happened to me after I was a featured artist in 2002. We
talked about what happened in 2002, and what I've done since then, and
the upcoming Reminiscience album.
It was a great talk, Amund is a really fun and knowledgeable person,
we had lots of laughs. It was great talking to him. But me, I was a
nightmare. I'm sorry Amund, for being such a hopeless subject.
I've been to a few interviews lately and I notice to my horror that I
have become a terrible person to interview. I rarely answer the
question at hand, I don't keep to the subject, I ramble on, talk in
completely disconnected sentences, jumping from one subject to another. I
don't give them hooks, I don't give them one-liners, there is no story.
My mind and focus moves much faster than my mouth. I have thousand
things to say. It's like I have all these connections in my mind, and I
know very well how they are connected, but it is impossible to relay
those connections to others in speech. So I end up sounding like I'm
crazy.
Maybe I should get out more, talk to people.
But on the other hand, when I think about it, I am actually somewhat
pleased with this development. Maybe I am crazy and that's ok. A few
years ago I was desperate to come across as clear and focused in
interviews, to kind of "play" the media the right way, do the right
thing. Be a nice guy. Say the right things. Don't be a problem. Have
everyone like me. Sound like I know what I'm doing.
That's not right, it shouldn't be like that. I mean, I'll still be
nice, I'll always be polite, I hate assholes and douches. Journalists
are very cool people with very demanding jobs. But as an artist I
shouldn't spend time on communicating politically correct, clearly and
directly in interviews, or building clever press kits with well designed
stories and meaty background material that are easy for journalists to
feature (yes, that's how the media works today, the promo people or the
artist writes their own stuff and the journalists mostly copy pastes it,
those "exclusive" features in the weekend papers are really just "well
targeted promo campaigns" from well connected people).
I don't like worrying about things like that. I should spend time on
writing music. It might suck, or it might be ok, but THAT is what is
important. Not what I blabber on and on about, or if I come across as a
super nerdy dork. (I do.)
World domination was never achieved through political correct media behaviour.
This episode theme and title is "Humour". It is a psycho-circus epic gypsy house track, with Chef as lead singer.
We also wrote the lyrics for this track, and we choose to focus on
the fact that some words are funny, but others are not. And if you come
from another planet, you have no idea what are the funny ones and what
aren't.
We built a simple structure where the Chef ponders on why some words
are funny, and then a chorus segment where the characters just throw out
words, hoping they are funny and laugh of them. To kids, some are
funny, like "fart" and "pee" and "poo", but others like "milk" and
"chair" are obviously not.
The track finishes with "fiskepudding" (mashed fish pudding), which
most kids and all of the characters find incredibly hilarious.
Here is an excerpt of the final broadcast version:
Posted April 20th 2009, at 22:19 with tags cloud, bandize
We're currently trying out the Bandize alpha, for Uncanny Planet and Ugress coordination. It is a new organizational tool for bands and artists.
We've tried Highrise and Basecamp, and several others, they didn't
quite work out for our particular needs, never found the perfect combo.
Skype covers long distance communication and meetings, Google docs
does all documents, contracts, plans and spreadsheet budgets, and
Soundcloud handles all musical communication.
Bandize seems to be on to something, plugging the last hole in our
cloud-based existence for dedicated band and music related
organizational stuff. I'm looking forward to see how it develops and
help shape it.
Posted April 19th 2009, at 21:11 with tags crazy, twin peaks
Journal entry, April 19th 2009.
That was a very crazy week. I usually sit in front of a laptop, in my
own world, writing tiny bits of music, slowly progressing towards
something diffuse up ahead, with minimal exposure to the real world, and
it's perils of social adventure and natural physical dangers.
Nothing ever happens. Until last week, briefly recounted:
I finally set the title and concept for Ugress 4.
My laptop was finally fixed, back to normal, but had to re-authorize
all my software because of a swapped motherboard, the laptop is now
really schizo, has changed personality.
I came across a fire, in the middle of the day, probably ignited on
purpose. It was in a desolate place in the middle of the city. I called
the fire emergency and put it out via phone instructions. Twin Peaksy.
I wrote my first vocal track and recorded it.
I met a super weirdo jogger-hiker in the mountain forests. Very Twin Peaksy.
Late Saturday night, on my way home, I heard cheery pop music from a
darkened and half-finished construction site not far from the
above-mentioned fire location. Stupidly curious, exactly as the dead
idiots in horror movies, I went in to investigate and it just got more
and more crazy Twin Peaksy, the music coming from behind a massive,
nailed-closed door, finally I came to my senses and got the fuck out of
there.
BBC wrote and wanted to feature a track from the previous Unicorn album.
I'm finally probably going to do music for a computer game, release
2010. I have no idea when I'll have time for it, but I didn't want to
say no.
And several minor cool sync and licence deals with Ugress and Nebular Spool, which I'll mention as they are manifested.
Gaaah! How am I going to finish the album with all these fantastic software updates?
Yesterday's Kontakt 3.5 beta was expected, but this morning I was completely surprised by the Renoise 2.1 beta. Mostly because of the new Rewire feature, which I never expected them to implement before at least version 3, or maybe never.
There are some other new features,
but the Rewire feature is utterly completely massively brilliant. Dream
come true, a marriage between trackers and sequencers.
I can now run Renoise in sync with Logic and Live, patching the
tracked parts into my mix exactly where and how I want them, in
realtime. I can track and edit simultaneously as I sequence and mix and
sketch and process and remix.... I can even use Kontakt samplers as
rewired tracked instruments.
Now, please do not release the Melodyne DNA or anything else before my album is finished. I have to concentrate.
The public beta of Kontakt 3.5 is now available from Native Instruments.
I am in the midst of a chaotic re-authorization nightmare due to a
replaced motherboard on my laptop, so I haven't tested extensively, but
initial observations shows that they have reduced the memory footprint
of each instance from 70 MB down to 10. Also, the plugin loads itself
and samples much faster. This is incredible news.
I sometimes run more than 30 instances, which hitherto has used
impolite amounts of memory. I can now run seven times as many, before
approaching practical limits.
They also claim the sample engine has been optimized, I haven't had time to investigate yet.
It falls into the current trend of simplified music production and a
one-window interface. Which I'm no particularly fond of but it works
well enough.
I used to work almost exclusively in Logic a few years back, but
recently I tend to shift between hosts and sequencers as needed. I don't
see Sutdio One as something I would use, but it is very welcome with
more options and competitors in the DAW scene.
The line between douche and divine is a very thin line.
The Baby Grand Master looks kind of awesome, I would love to have it
in my next castle. But I am certain one would look like a total
dork-douche when performing with it.
I have debuted as vocalist on national broadcast television.
In the latest
Kometkameratene episode, the Agent is sent to earth to do research on
age and wrinkles. Why do humans grow old? He is beamed down to a home
for the elderly, where they are dancing and having a great time. The
Agent boldly checks for wrinkles everywhere, as illustrated.
The producers had originally synced the scene with some great Swedish Dansband
music, but shit happened and it turned out problematic to clear sync
rights. So they asked me to write something to replace it on short
notice, and happily I wrote my very first Swedish Dansband track, and
for the first time in my life, performed vocals.
You can watch the episode here (music in the background starts around 05:40), but the music is faint in the background. Luckily, enjoy high definition embed:
My swedish is kind of crap. But thankfully, my singing is worse. I
did some Melodyne formant edits to make it deeper and less
geek-squeaky.
I also wrote some other instrumental music for various other dance
scenes throughout the episode. The Kometkameratene main theme is ghosted
in all of them.
My debut as a singer is as a Swedish Dansband lead singer at a home
for the elderly in a sci-fi puppet show where they research wrinkles.
Awesome.
This episode theme and title is "Age". It is a romantic drum 'n' base duet, featuring Chef and Zook.
Just like the previous track, this one was made in a very hectic
period right before christmas. We wrote both music and lyrics, and tried
to focus on the duality of age versus size versus skills. Can little
brothers be bigger than grandmothers? What does "bigger" mean?
Based on the small vs big vs young vs old, we figured to have duet
between Zook, the smallest character, and Chef, the biggest. We also
wanted to incorporate nostalgia, which we picked from the Umbrellas of
Cherbourg.
At first we just drafted the track with piano and vocals, trying out text and music elements.
I wanted the track production-wise to evolve from "old" to "young",
conceptually reversing a lifespan. It starts out as a nostalgic ballad,
but grows via jazz into a modern drum 'n' base style, before reversing
again back into shanty style outtro.
We also put in a solo battle between the duelists, where Zook hammers
it out on a toy piano and Chef on his leit-instrument the accordion.
Conclusion: The track is fine, but I think the video is what makes
the track really great. The production team and the actors are becoming
very skilled at expressing the characters and the episode theme.
"This is a fully functional
Commodore 64 laptop using actual hardware, specifically the C64C
motherboard which was one of the last and smallest revisions. It uses a
Gamecube power supply in place of the original power brick.
For storage there’s a device
called the 1541-III DTV to “emulate” a floppy drive using an SD card.
The SD card is formatted FAT-32 so you can dump disk images on it using a
PC, and read it with the C64."
The genius of Benjamin Heckendorn. He's looking for a job. Someone, please, make him chief technical engineer for the future of mankind.
Good work again, japanese scientists, for bringing us the cute part of the robotic apocalypse, the CB2: Child-Robot with Biomemetic Body.
It is slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and
watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship.
My uncannymeter is not reacting at all, no, not the faintest. Everything is fine.
A couple of entries back I was intrigued by the OnLive cloud-based gaming system, and predicted that I could be doing Ugress 5 or 6 partly in the clouds.
Little did I know, a week later I would already be doing Ugress 4 in the clouds, albeit locally.
The graphics card on my production laptop is kaput, there is no display internally nor externally. Darkness prevails. The excellent people at Edbergen are firing on all canons to help me, but it is Easter and we still need to wait for the replacement card from Apple or Nvidia.
Luckily, I can access the laptop remotely via Screen Sharing. So as
shown above, I'm hooked into the laptop via an older machine. It is not
super optimal, the screen quality suffers when CPU usage is high, and
the resolution is way lower than my preferred 1920, but everything
works, and I can continue critical album production, at around 80% of
capacity.
The most beautiful part of this is how well it works. Only details
are missing to make it an optimal remote production suite. And then you
can tap into unlimited CPU and diskspace, pay as you need.
Easter is coming up, the absolutely most horrific time of year.
I just don't get Easter, never did, never will. The whole northern
hemisphere is waking up after winter, brimming with new life, everything
growing and wanting something bigger and better, towards the sun, but
what do humans do? LETS SHUT IT ALL DOWN, BE QUIET AND SORDIDLY
CELEBRATE SOME GUY DIED.
In addition, my laptop broke down. Nobody told me the apocalypse would so be utterly BORING.
Easter is a black hole sucking all the life out of universe. Lucky for me, science never gives up, and gives us a pretty visualization of the singularity that is also known as Easter.
Just fucking perfect. Last night the display completely died on my Macbook Pro.
The machine is alive, right there, available on the network and in
target mode, but absolutely all internal and external display is dead,
dead, dead. Not even bios firmware.
I hadn't set up remote screen access on the laptop, since it usually was the one controlling, but luckily I found this hack to turn on Screen Sharing remotely from the shell. Life-saving.
Some software probing, system log analytics and geek tube research quickly points to a known, faulty Nvidia card.
Everything seems to work, I can open all programs and work as usual
(although remotely and with a tiny resolution). But there is no display
and there never will be, ever.
I'm now cloning the system drive just in case, and then off to hopefully
find a store that can perform the fix today, or at least before easter.
I would very much NOT spend the last few hectic weeks of album
production working on reduced resolution via remote connection.
This stuff inevitably happens, but why does it always happen at such
craptastic timing? My laptops always break down right before going on
tour, right before showtime, or like now, right before the world closes
down for weeks to celebrate that somebody DIED.
Update 11:42. None of the Apple centers could do anything
today. Edbergen wanted to help but couldn't: "Call Monday morning when
the service dudes are in, they know what to do". Eplehuset did not want
to help: "Maybe we can fix it in a week (read: after Easter), but you
have to talk to Apple first."
So hopefully I'll get it up and running by Monday.
It was my first visit to the complex, and I approve of the place. They can play more of my music there if they want to.
The building is impressive, with sexy nordic curves and materials, and I
really like that you can literally walk all over the place and peek
into it from above. The bar also know their Dry Martinis, which never
has hurt a respectable establishment.
The performance was not in the main hall, but at Stage 2. I am sure it
should have been in at Stage 1, as the show has been sold out for
months. There were lots of kids waiting excitedly in line, and with the
awesome marble acoustics in the foyer I'm sure I could have sampled the
reverbal essence of anticipation right there.
I think the kids, like me, was mostly excited to find out, how are they
going to pull this off? How are they going to integrate comic sci-fi
puppeteering into a symphonic musical performance?
Quite simply: Brilliantly. It was a fantastic show, they managed to keep
the fun, the curiosity and the musical attention all the way. I forgot
about my music, I was laughing and having a great time as the puppets
probed, asked and unwittingly sabotaged the orchestra.
I was very happy to realize, this is not only a great TV show. It is a
fantastic world of humour, science, research, curiosity and music, that
kids love, and this world works also very well in a live performance
setting.
Kudos must go to the production team and the actors, as I learned
afterwards they had a very hard and hectic time putting it all together.
It was impossible to tell.
At the end the puppets demanded the orchestra to play their own theme
song, and the kids started yelling the theme long before the orchestra
got started. Bless their little memories, the song is printed in their
innocent little minds.
What have I done. In twenty years time they'll be playing
Kometkameratene reruns, ironic hipsters will be wearing retro logo
shirts, and somebody is going to make a Crazy Frog ringtone version of
it all.
I uploaded the "La Passion De Jeanne D'Arc" album to the Bandcamp store.
This means you can now download the entire album in 128 kbps mp3 for
free, in exchange for your email address. Or you can buy a high quality /
lossless version.
The album contains excerpt of music written and performed live in 2003, to the silent movie La Passion De Jeanne D'Arc (1928).
I'm staying with the download-in-exchange-for-email for a few weeks
now, mostly to get a feel for how download numbers adapt to different
solutions. I'm harvesting statistics.
Not sure if I shall keep all albums available for free in 128k forever, so if you'd like it, grab it now.
If you have never been exposed to western music and scales, you can still tell if a western song is happy or sad.
"Native African people who
have never even listened to the radio before can nonetheless pick up on
happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music, according to a new
report published online on March 19th in Current Biology.
These findings could explain
why Western music has been so successful in global music distribution,
even in music cultures that do not as strongly emphasize the role of
emotional expression in their music," said Dr. Thomas Fritz of the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
I am very happy with this theory, wish I had time to elaborate, but I
particularly enjoy that Dr. Fritz travelled to the most remote part of
humanity with a solar panel powered laptop to play them pop music and
observe the emotional response. Science, again, FTW.
This episode theme and title is "Faith". The lead singer is Captain Lu.
The track was conceived right before christmas break, in a very
hectic period for everyone. I was in the final stage of producing and
mixing a separate music video, Sjur was on tour, but had two gigs in
Oslo, so I flew over, we borrowed a nice studio at NRK with a piano, and
drafted six songs, including lyrics and vocals in two days. Then I had
three days to produce the concept into something listenable NRK could
work with for planning the video shoot.
In the first script we received, the Chef is popping notes for snacks
in his pan. The notes go crazy, Zook falls into the pan and starts
popping too. Based on this we came up with the idea of having the sound
and beat of Popcorn, but in a quasi-religious Bach melodic setting.
Here is the very first draft we did in Oslo, trying out text and music elements.
Then I went home and made a quick sketch of the production, which we use to explain the idea and concept for the producers.
We wanted the "popping" notes to start out almost randomly, just
hinting to the Bach scheme, and then growing more and more completely
towards concluding with the full schema.
The music video then changed position in the episode, and NRK came up
with the even better idea of making a Pacman introduction to the song.
They kept the popping note sequence, so the episode song is introduced
earlier in the episode. Here is the final broadcast version:
Operator-1,
it's a synth sampler DSP sequencer FM-radio motion-sensor accelerometer
transport controller arpeggiator email OLED device, with microphone and
speakers. Personally, if this isn't vaporware, I mostly enjoy the fact
that the keys are keyboard keys.
It's from guys behind the Elektron stuff and the Gameboy LSDJ tracker.
OnLive, cloud-based game processing, could be Steorn 2.0 or it could be the coming-of-age for the clouds.
The idea is simple, a variant of the old dumb terminal / powerful
server: The processing power and graphics rendering for your console
game session is done in the clouds instead of on the console. You only
need a controller and a screen, the hardware is somewhere else. And
maintained by someone else.
On my own LAN I have no problem watching HD movies via remote screen
sharing between computers, so image and audio transfer I don't see any
problem with.
But,
the catch, in a gaming situation you also need a nano-latency,
screamingly fast, 200% stable internet connection between you and the
server, and you need massive amounts of data power on the server, not
only to render the game but even more to continuously compress HD frames
in realtime (less than 1 ms).
I know there have been network tests between Trondheim and Stockholm,
for realtime audio over TCP/IP, and they manage to keep a stable
latency of 7 ms (14 ms back and forth). That works for musical
performance, because musicians adapt subconsciously up to approx 30 ms
without realizing it. But keep in mind in a musical context you have a
continuous rhythm to stabilize for jitter.
I'm not sure about gaming (when you think that the control signal
needs 7 ms to reach the server, the server renders the frame, and then 7
ms back to display the visuals...).
I totally hope this could work. I totally think this is the future, I
am very intrigued by technology like this. I am quite sure Ugress 5 or 6
will be partly done on as a terminal-server production method, where I
rent CPU and DSP power as needed.
But my guess is, I don't think OnLive will work quite as advertised in 2009. Give it a few years.
I grew tired of manually editing sfz files to use sample maps in Alchemy, so I wrote a simple web script to create the necessary text for me. Maybe others have use for it.
The script builds a very simple, chromatic sample map from the given
note and up, based on a file name scheme where files are called
MyFile00.wav, MyFile01.wav, MyFile02.wav and so on. Just paste the
resulting text into a text file named "Whatever.sfz" in the same
directory as the audio files, and load this file as a sound source in
Alchemy.
In most cases you probably only need to change the two first settings
(file name and extension). Maybe also octave if you prefer the map to
start somewhere else than C1.
Thomson is introducing a new audio file format, mp3HD, a new lossless format that is backwards compatible with the existing mp3 format and thereby any mp3 player.
The files are a clever way of introducing lossless compression to the
mp3 world: A single .mp3 file contains both an oldskool, regular, lossy
mp3 version of the audio, and a shiny new lossless version.
This means you can throw the file on any portable mp3 player (great),
but it also means there will be massive amounts of dead weight on the
unit, since the useless part is also copied over (douched).
I also find it a bit weird they don't support higher bitrates than 48 khz. Not that I need it, but still weird.
The most realest scientists are those who perform their mad experiments on themselves.
The New Scientist has compiled a feature of eight scientists who became famous for their self-experimentation.
My favorite must be J.B.S. Haldane, pictured, who climbed into a decompression chamber, experimenting with gas pressures, and burst his ears... commenting:
"...although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment."
There are two brand new tracks, "VHS" and "Music For A Recursive
Function". The three other tracks has been out for some time, via
various opportunities. Some people might not have noticed them, so I'm
just bundling it all together.
Loadbang is a free online book, written for composers that want to dive into Puredata and Max/MSP.
I am currently striving to hone my Max/MSP skills, in expectance of
Live 8 and MaxForLive. I find it puzzling that there is so little
literature available on Max/MSP, but luckily the open source alternative
Puredata and Johannes Kreidler comes to the rescue:
Loadbang is "... designed
for self-study, principally for composers. It begins with explanations
of basic programming and acoustic principles then gradually builds up to
the most advanced electronic music processing techniques."
The book looks perfect for me, you can read everything online and the patches are available for download.
Via CreateDigitalMusic, with more information in the article and comments.
I am part of the board of Brak, an organisation and support centre
working for the rhythmic music scene in my region. Part of my
responsibility the last few months has been the planning and development
of a massive upgrade to the visual profile and website.
Today we release the upgrade, a serious expansion with the
possibility to grow into an active social network for the regional music
scene. The new profile and web solution was developed by the talented
geniuses at Kamikaze Media.
If you are connected to the music scene in Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane, or want to be, make sure to register and hook up with me.
I simplified and removed most of the stuff on the Ugress Myspace page, replacing it with basic information and a static portal.
I'm not particularly enthusiastic about Myspace, I spend as little
time as possible with it. I put up new tracks, and respond to enquires
that demands a reply, but nothing more. It has never been my kind of
place.
I would happily syndicate news and feeds into Myspace if they allowed
it, but the place is notoriously reactionary (no surprise, it is
owned by Saruman himself), and impossible to automate.
I uploaded the "B Vault" album to the new Bandcamp store.
This means you can now download the entire album in 128 kbps mp3 for
free, in exchange for your email address. Or you can buy a high quality /
lossless version.
I'll upload the remaining Jeanne D Arc album in a couple of days to
complete the Ugress album catalogue. The EPs will follow later, not sure
what to do about singles yet.
This episode theme and title is "Evolution". The lead singer is Captain Lu, lyrics was written by the script writers.
I am quite satisfied with this episode track, where we blatantly
stole the concept and overall structure and from one of my favorite
classical pieces, Bolero by Ravel.
I remember as a kid to watch a staged setup of the piece on TV, and
being completely mesmerized by it. It featured a never-ending stage of
stairs, always rising. I had no idea at the time, but the huge crowd of
mute, performing actors on the eternally raising stairs acted out the
brutal history of Russia.
The Bolero piece is in many ways a perfect forefather of techno - it
starts out with a single thematic idea, or riff, and is built and
developed into a massive piece, yet always with the original riff as a
pulsing base.
When I read the script, where evolution is heavily hinted at, I
immediately thought of the Bolero track, as it profoundly represents
"development" to me.
I took multiple recordings of Bolero, cut them up, learned the musical
structure, and rebuilt them as necessary, together with orchestral
samples and my own techniques. I also wanted to hint at a modern pop
structure with it, but smoothly and without obvious changes. The chorus
in itself is a "second" developing item within the track.
Sjur came in, we built the vocals on top of my instrumental sketch, and
Sjur also helped adding most of the polyphonic orchestral voicing
towards the end of the track, to build up towards the epic finale.
Rest in peace, you bravest warrior of the digital fields. My first
mac, "Manhattan", a 15 inch 1 GHz Powerbook, passed away yesterday
evening. It has been with me since December 2002.
Manhattan was used extensively for touring with Resound, and it was
used for writing and then touring Cinematronics. Since then, it has been
my digital media hub at home, and always one of the visual projection
laptops for the liveshow, running the stage screen video.
Manhattan has fought many battles, seen a lot of the world, and taken
a lot of beating. It has travelled with me to Asia, Australia, USA and
through most of Europe, it has been covered in water, fallen of many a
stage, it has had most of the body parts repaired or replaced, but it
has kept on keeping on.
Not anymore. It was time. Now Manhattan sleeps. Rest, my friend, I am forever grateful for your service.
Your annihilative, apocalyptic termination might be uncannily pleasant and a frighteningly sensual event.
Created for the Fashion Week in Tokyo by a japanese company, the HRP-4C will of course quickly escape the catwalk and with her logic charm and circuits of ice initiate the robot uprising.
I'm planning an upgrade to my websites, I am happy to be drawing a
beautiful line in the sand - I won't be optimizing and adapt for
Internet Explorer 6 anymore.
This is based on cold, cruel stats and visitor trends, and my own
laziness. I spent some hours looking into numbers today. Since January
1st 2008, visitors to www.ugress.com with IE6 has more than halved, and
they now represent a tiny percentage of the total visitors. For
gmm.ugress.com the number is almost negligible. I expect the number to
drop even more when IE8 is out.
Developing a web system that works across all modern browsers takes a
lot of time, but IE6 is a bloodsucking, cataclysmically imploding
timedrain of incompatibility compared to everything else. By excluding
IE6, I can get things up much faster, running more elegant.
I know this might suck for visitors who can't upgrade their browsers due to company restrictions etc. I will not do anything deliberately
to break IE6, most likely everything will work. Maybe some things will
look a little odd, but if something breaks in IE6, I won't fix it.
I'm cleaning out my inbox, and came across a few Soundcloud special offers, rewards for being a beta tester: A discount code to get 70% off when buying any new subscribtion model. I've already upgraded, so I thought to give away the two others.
The codes expire tomorrow. If anyone is interested, post a comment
here or drop me a note (email in a box to the left). First two gets it.
"Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford, tests his
incoming students each year by having them listen to a variety of
recordings which use different formats from MP3 to ones of much higher
quality, and he reports that each year the preference for music in MP3 format rises.
Berger says that young people seemed to prefer 'sizzle sounds' that
MP3s bring to music because it is a sound they are familiar with. '
The music examples included both orchestral, jazz and rock music.
When I first did this I was expecting to hear preferences for
uncompressed audio and expecting to see MP3 (at 128, 160 and 192 bit
rates) well below other methods (including a proprietary wavelet-based
approach and AAC),' writes Berger. '
To my surprise, in the rock examples the MP3 at 128 was preferred.
I repeated the experiment over 6 years and found the preference for MP3
— particularly in music with high energy (cymbal crashes, brass hits,
etc) rising over time.' Dale Dougherty writes that the context of the music changes our perception of the sound, particularly when it's so obviously and immediately shared by others. '
All that sizzle is a cultural artifact and a tie that binds us.
It's mostly invisible to us but it is something future generations
looking back might find curious because these preferences won't be
obvious to them.'"
Very, very, very interesting. And I am not surprised.
I am ambivalent to this issue. In some situations, I really dislike
the sizzling sound of mpeg encoding. But in other tracks, I really like
what it does.
I think my aversion to mpeg encoding mostly happens when the encoding
pulls me out of the sculpted reality of the track. It's like the boom
mic in badly cropped movies on TV - when you suddenly spot the boom mic
coming down between the actors in a scene, you are reminded that you are
watching a movie. For some movies, this is fatal, because many movies
can't carry themselves on a meta-observational level, they only work
when immersing the viewer. Same happens when a sudden mpeg artifact
pulls you out of the listening session.
On the other side, I sometimes find myself enjoying a sort of diffuse
fullness, or granularity that lossy encoding often brings. Sounds kind
of like the track is run through a subtle multi-spectral granular cloud,
everything just becomes softer.
The only thing I'm pretty sure of, is that in 20 years time, we will
all be using "retro-mp3-ifizers" to recreate the highly desirable mpeg
artifacts of the millennial shift. Just like we are using vinyl
emulators and tape flutter plugins today.
The technical limits of one generation always become the nostalgic vanity of the next.
The product looks really nice, well designed. Wacom makes great input controllers so I expect them to nail the interaction bit.
But that removable part, and the philosophy behind the product.. ugh.
The tone of the horrible flash product site, and the superstar
brainddead product information doesn't connect with me. I quote from the
FAQ, so far the only real information on this diffuse product:
"By removing the portable unit, you can move around freely so you feel more of a connection with the audience."
I would probably rewrite that as
"By removing the portable unit, you can move around all your Myspace
friends freely and look like a total douche while pumping emo-core."
But what do I know. I failed the iPhone at first too, now I... umm... DJ with it.
This week I am attending an FTM Max/MSP workshop held at BEK in Bergen. This is sort of my winter vacation, a reward to myself for a few months of intensive production.
I need to use the other half of the brain for some time. With MaxForLive
coming up, I am renewing my effort to master Max/MSP. The FTM workshop
is a good way to pull myself up, I pick up a lot on both Max/MSP and
FTM. Diemo Schwarz from IRCAM is a great and knowledgeful lecturer, teaching us the inner workings, features and possibilities of FTM.
The first two days was theoretical, Diemo went through the basics, core
classes and functions of FTM. Today, and AFAIK the rest of the week, we
will dive into Gabor and CataRT, realtime granular and spectral synthesis/resynthesis, pitch tracking, formant manipulation, and probably also Gesture Follower.
We even have homework assignments, and with great horror, or great
satisfaction, I observe myself doing exactly what I did all the time in
school: Skipping homework and panically improvising in class.
This episode theme and title is "Friends". The lead singer is
Zook, the tiny alien that never speaks, except when he sings. Lyrics was
written by the script writers.
Thomas, the actor that plays Zook has a great voice, perfect for
spoofing soul and vintage r'n'b. For the "friends" track we envisioned
Zook doing a classic soul ballad from the 60ies. We also suggested to
the production team that the puppets could perhaps perform the track on
instruments during the video.
This track is very much Sjur's, we built most of the core track in a
few hours around a simple two chord schema, where he improvised vocals
on top. We felt that the voice talent of Thomas should be the "flame" of
the track, the music should simply accompany his performance. Since
Zook never talks in the show, an impressive showcase of his voice during
a song is a great way to surprise viewers, and expand the character.
Notice the first sketch we did had a triplet rhythm in the hihats:
After establishing the vocal lines and chorus voicings, I spent a few
days building a complete production around the track. I struggled for
some time with the subdivision rhythm, I had several versions in various
subdivisions. Finally the track landed on a straight pattern instead of
the original triplet. The effect of creating the song in triplets and
performing it straight gave the vocal line a nice shuffled feel.
Conclusion. I think the song is nice, but it deviates a bit from the
typical epic sound of Kometkameratene. There are very little orchestra
and space. However I don't feel this to be a problem, the music of the
show is continuously developing. In addition, the musical change is
superbly rewarded by one of the best music videos of the show, where the
characters for the first time perform the song.
Not only does this open up wonderful opportunities for future tracks,
it also adds an extra dimension to the characters themselves.
You can now purchase and download all four Ugress albums in a variety of formats; Ogg, FLAC, Apple Lossless and of course mp3 / AAC.
I am trying out Bandcamp, a digital download service for bands and
artists. The service is still in beta, so I'm only considering this a
test for now. There are some details I think should be improved, not
sure I am going to change my iThinkMusic digital store quite yet. Both
services has benefits as well as issues.
I'll see how the Bandcamp service develops and how people respond to it, before uploading more material.
Oh, and you can download all the albums in 128 kbps for free, in exchange for your email address.
I am really happy to be working with such a forward thinking, liberal
and net-wise broadcaster. I am also proud of being an artist who
deliberately insert or approve of contract clauses making this possible.
So far the first 11 episodes of Kometkameratene is available, I am not sure why they are delaying the rest, I am investigating.
One reason I enjoy the internet: Loose connections.
A loose connection is a connection you don't know, you can't see, you can't understand, you can't make it out, but it is THERE.
Case in point. A few days ago, I flagged this post from DownloadSquad in my newsreader: Totally Awesome 80's Drumset.
I didn't read the article but the combination of headline and graphics
caught my attention. Today I checked it out and after a few seconds I
realized many, if not most, of the samples you can play, is from the
very excellent Mr Oizo album Lambs Anger. I have listened a lot to this
album the last few months.
I don't have time to investigate the connection, who made this, why,
and actually I'd rather not, I just like it this way. A loose
connection.
It has been and still is a rather busy week, I had to neglect the journal for a few days, but I'll type up a summary.
Last weekend I wrapped up a good bunch of Ugress tracks. I have to
focus on other projects for a while, and would very much like to leave
tracks in a quasi-finished state. I find it easier to scrutinize and
find problems with tracks when I consider them "done". If a track is
left in an unfinished state, it is too easy to ignore problems with the
track because it "isn't finished yet".
Monday I left for Oslo, the flight was delayed a few hours, which was
great because it meant I finally got to answer all my email. Finally in
Oslo I had a meeting with Roar, my publisher-manager-agent, we did some
informal planning and scheduling for the next few months.
Tuesday I had to get up ungodly early, even before the hotel
breakfast, and traveled by metro, then with dogsleds in snow up to NRK. I
spent all day in a dark cellar, recording actors for a new batch of
Kometkameratene songs. The recording session went without any problems,
but I was alone, had six tracks to records with six actors and several
with multiple voicings, it was a long day and I was pretty shot by the
end.
Wednesday and Thursday I was invited to participate on a seminar on
Kometkameratene with NRK. We travelled to a remote place outside Oslo,
staying at the beautiful Holmsbu Bad og Fjordhotell.
There was not much time to adore the surroundings however, we spent
most of the time analyzing the show, talking about new directions and
discussing future development. The music works pretty well, but there is
still lots of room for improvement.
I found the seminar incredibly interesting and rewarding, I am very
flattered to be included in the evaluation and development of the show.
But mostly I was amazed at the skill, professionalism and dedication to
detail displayed by the crew making the show. There were producers,
directors, camera operators, script writers, project execs, radio
producers, editors, and more, and everyone just blew me away with their
knowledge, dedication and enthusiasm.
Late Thursday evening I flew back home, and Friday morning I had a
session with Sjur, where we came up with some conceptual edits for the
recently recorded tracks. Then I had an interview with a local newspaper
journalist, and I was so stressed and busy I managed to knock her
coffee over and drown her mobile phone. But the rest of the interview
went fine.
I spent the rest of Friday editing the recordings, today has been a
similar long session of editing and mixing. The tracks has to be
delivered Monday morning, I expect very little sleep this weekend.
I am intrigued to learn that my own mobile carrier Telenor refuses a demand from IFPI to block bit-torrent service The Pirate Bay.
Telenor: "Asking an ISP to control and
assess what Internet users can and cannot download is just as wrong as
asking the post office to open and read letters and decide what should
and should not be delivered."
Net neutrality FTW.
I also heartily enjoy that Telenor doesn't only refuse their demand,
they flat out tell IFPI to bugger off, there is no way Telenor is going
to comply, the IFPI methods are hopelessly antiquated, and they should
wake up and smell the future.
I am not in love with major telcos, but I have way more respect for
them than music companies. The mobile operators understood and adapted
to the digital future as necessary, looking for opportunities when the
music business was looking for someone to blame.
Thursday February 26th, Brak arranged a meetup between the local music and media scenes at Landmark.
Designers, photographers, companies, video directors, bands and artists
were invited to present their work, mingle and meet each other.
Amongst others, Casiokids presented their unique approach to their
visuals, both on stage and in videos. I am very fond of Casiokids and
their musical attitude, it was very interesting to learn more about
their philosophy and methods. They showcased their hilarious Fot I Hose video. A great track with typical, lo-fi Casiokids humour in the visuals.
I am beta-testing the new Ableton Live 8. So far the greatest new features to me is track groups, and updated warp modes for elastic audio. I think both is a huge improvement from version 7.
The group track function is a god-send for complex arrangements. I have
never enjoyed working extensively in Live as a production tool, much
because of the serious lack of proper arrangement functions. Track
groups, where you can collapse multiple tracks into one, is a great step
in the right direction. Only thing missing is curves for automation,
and Live might start to rival Logic as my studio production tool.
The timestretch engine Beats mode is no longer only that horrible
granular stretch, but also a transient based system with automatic
tail-looping, much like the way I already edit my own looped material in
Kontakt. This makes for much better transients when stretching audio
very far, and it will save me a lot of time in specific situations where
I have done this manually. You can adjust looping method and tail
fade, but sadly not loop length.
In addition, there is a new Complex Pro algorithm, for polyphonic
material like complete mixes and melodic loops. I was not super
impressed by the algorithm, but I suppose it will find it's use. I
also very much like the new technique for editing and placing warp
makers, I find it much more intuitive, and this carries on into the new
Groove Pool function.
It appears obvious to me, that a hybrid algorithm with Beats mode for
transients, and Complex Pro for tails, would undoubtedly be the perfect
timestretch algorithm.
I have only briefly toyed with the other news, there are a bunch of
new plugins (some smart, some ok), updates to the Ableton instruments,
and general workflow updates. These most likely will come in handy over
time, however they haven't intrigued me as of yet.
The current beta is somewhat stable, I've had a few crashes. But in my
regular Rewire support role for Logic, it runs stable enough for
production.
The last month I have done nothing but wrapping up tracks for the
fourth Ugress album. Time has also been spent concluding that some
tracks does not cut it. Refusing my own tracks always make me feel sad.
Especially tracks I really liked when I wrote them, but when I try to
finish them I can't re-invoke the spirit I had when writing the first
sketch. This is why I now finish everything I do when starting on it.
Currently I have 16 complete tracks, and 30 tracks in limbo, where I
have not made a decision to consider it for inclusion or refuse it. It
takes on average two days to reach a decision for a track.
Next week I am off to Oslo to record the final tracks of the
Kometkameratene season 1, and attending a seminar with NRK on how we are
to approach season two. The week after that will see post production of
the recording. This should give me a fortnight away from the Ugress
material.
I then plan to spend the two last weeks of March on finishing the last
30 tracks for Ugress 4, either refusing or including them. This will
probably rise the track count to somewhere around 25, maybe 30.
I was hoping to put out an EP or at least a few singles in February, but
looks like it could take a few weeks more. I need to see all of the
tracks as a whole, to get a feel for the album. I would like to know if a
track goes on the album before I release it or not.
This is slightly inconvenient, as I would very much like to release some
stuff at this time. But it is not critical, my pool of releasable
material keeps growing.
Today Apple released the public beta
of next generation web browser Safari. The browser is compliant with
version 5 of HTML, the next version of Internet skeleton technology. It
is not the only one, but now with both Apple and Google pro-actively
hunting the future, it means a lot.
For more than a decade we have been building HTML skyscrapers on thin ice, in a global warming climate. HTML 4
was introduced in 1997 and is the curent backbone of the web.
Contemporary web apps go to great lengths in circumvention of HTML 4's
limits to provide the features they do. Most people don't know it, but
currently most of the fancy web sites and web apps they visit, are a
patchwork of multiple technologies to present themselves as slick and
feature-rich as they do.
Internet Explorer is on average used by 67% of browser users. I am happy to inform, this number is totally not representative for my own webs.
I am very proud of my own website visitors (hello everyone, in the pie
above), displaying a clever taste in browser technology. Firefox counts
for more than 50% of my visitors (further 90% of these are Firefox 3.x),
and IE all the way down on 4th place, with only 13% of the visitors
(30% of these are still on IE6). These are stats that not only make me
proud of my fans, but also mean that I can build very modern websites on
established standards that technologically will meet most of my
visitors.
Yet still, as a obsessive compulsive nerd, I'd rather the world agreed
upon a top-modern universal standard, implemented it and I didn't have
to consider visitor statistics in my future plans. I have been
pessimistic on how fast a new HTML standard could possibly be
established. Particularly, with the craptastic Microsoft Internet
Explorer as a dinosauric market leader in browser usage, I feared HTML 5
wouldn't be established until 2015 or way later. However, last week,
two incidents gave indication that the transition can happen much faster
than feared:
1. Mastodont argument: Google showed of a hyper-version of Gmail powered on HTML 5.
In itself neat and all that, but most importantly: Shitloads of people
use Gmail for email and Google apps for their everyday web stuff. If
Google, in their current position as gods of the cloud, provide a strong
initiative to upgrade, lots of people will do that.
2. National tech pride: Most major Norwegian websites, in an unprecedented, inspired moment of agreement, encouraged visitors with less-than-IE7 versions to upgrade.
This was further picked up by other European sites, resulting in a
European effort in encouraging people to keep up to date browser-wise. I
realize this is easier to folllow up for private individuals than huge
corporations with IT policies, and there are better options than
recommending IE7, but still, the effort made its mark.
I don't like monopolies, but I hate them a little less when they use
their omnipotent powers to make the world better on a open, general
level. Perchance it looks like we shall be enjoying ourselves in the
clouds with HTML 5 around the same time as Ugress 5. Future FTW.
This episode theme and title is "Generosity", or rather "Kindness",
and Agent 25, the character who goes on a mission to Earth in each
episode, is the lead character. Lyrics was written by the script
writers.
Agent 25 is the major comic relief of the series, and the actress
portraying him, Linda Mahala Mathiassen, has incredible comic timing and
a hilarious voice talent. It is a challenge for all of the actors to
keep a clear pitch and musical rhythm simultaneously as keeping
character when singing, but the Agent is by far the most difficult.
Before I knew Linda and how her voice works, there was a lot of
Melodyne post-editing and clever tricks to make her sound like the Agent
when singing. We have solved the dilemma by simply giving the puppet
more "talkative" leads than traditional singing lines. This makes it
easy for Linda to keep the Agent voice more in character when performing
solo. We did the same trick previously on the Garbage episode track.
The conceptual idea for this track comes from Linda herself - I was
in studio watching them taping an episode, and during a break Linda
suggested the Agent should be doing a Kometkamerat sendup of Espen
Lind's Scared Of Heights.
She thought the Agent would be great with the ukulele. I didn't know
the track, but noted the suggestion. Back home, Sjur knew it, he thought
it was a brilliant idea so we set to work, creating an ukulele and tuba
track.
Here is the first sketch I did, building the background harmonies and chorus melody:
Then I collected shitloads of ukulele tracks from around the world,
by Youtube and iTunes and wherever I could find them, and started
picking out simple patterns I could twist into a coherent ukulele
pattern. Sjur built the vocal harmonies and helped out with arranging
the harmony and melody to a more interesting whole.
Since the Agent has more of a talkative lead voice, during pre-prod I
felt the track needed something melodic in the verse. I whistled in
some simple tones to counter the monotony of the spoken lead. The
whistling was portrayed by Zook in the music video, but we kept my
original whistling. Witness, my Roger Whittaker skills in the final
broadcast version:
Conclusion. I like this track, it is not typical Kometkamerat
orchestral space-epicness, but a sweet and simple pop track nonetheless.
It works with the theme and lyrics, asking naive questions around
themes like sharing and kindness.
I am however most happy with the fact that the whole track started
out as an informal chat with Linda, she had an idea for the Agent, and
we built the track around her thoughts for the character. I think NRK
picked up on this development, and really liked us communicating so
early on a track. For the next season, we are probably going to be
working more closely with the actors, scriptwriters, and directors,
entering the production phase at an earlier stage than so far.
That's how I got my new imaginary hipster douche indie band Lake Maninjau, and their soggy new lofi album "Between the Lighnting and a lightning bug". Quote by Mark Twain. Cover photo by kobalto.
Spotify is quite simply the future of music,
a streaming service where you instantly can listen to almost anything
you want. As of this week, all my album material is finally available
for listening.
Spotify receives a lot of buzz and hype in the industry lately, which
I think is well deserved. It is very well exectued as a listening
service, it has massive content, it always works, it is a potential
iTunes-monopoly killer, which is about time.
But more importantly to me - seems like casual music fans also dig
it, and use it, just like they digged Napster back in the days. This is
really good, we're closing in on a music distribution model that both
fans and artists are genuinely enthusiastic about.
From This Window is a beautiful short-short motion graphics film, part of the portfolio for American production company Naissance. Featuring my track Ruins from the Nebular Spool album.
Personal listening devices is becoming more powerful each day. This
will lead to an inevitable explosive evolution of the album format in
the very near future.
My mobile phone is also a music player and game device, currently with
the computational power of a regular computer or game console from 1995.
Within a few years time, a phone will match today's computers and
entertainment devices in sheer power. Simultaneously, wireless
communication technology will approach speeds where realtime delivery of
high definition content is as common as SMS is today. This will open up
for incredible options, not in only gaming and entertainment, but also
in how to present and deliver music.
Two apps of today display the inherit potential in this technology; both expanding on the album format: Deadmau5 releases a clever DJ app where you can play, remix and interact with his latest album tracks, and The Presidents Of The United States releases their entire discography, including unreleased tracks, as an iPhone app.
And this is only the beginning. The beautifulness of the future knows no end.
Italian online photo site ZMPhoto has used some of my music again in a Canon EOS 5D Mk2 showcase video,
this time travelling to the northern parts of Norway. The video has
some beautiful clips of Norwegian winter landscapes and aurora borealis.
Darwin is in my opinion one of the finest specimen of the homo sapiens
species. His famous note with the tree of life, pictured above, is an
important symbol to me.
There is no absolute truth in science, as we continue our research we
shift our understanding to what we figure at the moment, ever deeper.
Science is drive by a need to know, a need to understand, a need to
evolve. Most importantly, ever, at all, universally to me; science does
not claim to be absolute, to know it all, to have The Answer. Science
has AN answer, that might change as new knowledge is revealed. And
science knows this, it does not try to hide it.
The latest issue of New Scientist has a feature on how modern geneaology is challenging and correcting Darwin's famous tree pictured above.
Charles Darwin started his note with the two words "I think". There
was the possibility of his thoughts not being absolutely correct.
Science FTW. I shall be having a bottle of my finest in his honor tonight.
I was interviewed by Andrei from Heathen Audio, a Romanian music magazine, last summer. The interview is now available in their online blog.
Ugress seems to have caught on in Romania and Eastern Europe over the
last few years. We've had several booking requests and recently also
compilation and license offers. Which I find intriguing, I do not see
much visitors from this part of the world in my web statistics, so the
attention has to spring from something I haven't observed.
The show is back on air after winther hiatus, with new weekly
episodes. We didn't do the episode songs for all of spring, but we did
most of them. I'll document our episodes in my journal as they air.
This episode theme and title is "Freedom", and Mook the mechanic is
the lead singer. The lyrics had already been written by the script
writers.
Previously we had given this character a soft bossanova drum n base
track, and an energetic spanish disco track, so I came up with the idea
of writing a simple tune with a sort of orchestral reggae feel. The tune
came pretty fast, this is the first reference I built:
Sjur came by and building the vocals for the verse was quickly done. I
wasn't to happy with my idea for a chorus part (00:20), we spent most
of the time working out a new suggestion for chorus:
The track was approved with the chorus above, but I still wasn't
happy. I felt like it didn't fit the song, and I wasn't sure how to
produce it out in the current version. I kept working on it, and a few
days before video shoot I rewrote the chorus, and with the help of
Melodyne I completely remodelled the reference vocals to fit the new
version. (Side note, regarding the current Autotune spotlight, this is an example where digital voice editing is used to sculpt an existing vocal performance into something completely new.)
The video was then shot in studio in November, edited in December, I
went over in January to record actor vocals and the track was delivered a
few days later. Here is the final version with the final chorus:
The track works ok, it's a nice song. But I don't think it is
particularly interesting or original. It could perhaps benefit with more
orchestration, and if I had time I would like to do a better job on the
reggae sound in contrast to the orchestral. There are much better
tracks coming up in the next episodes.
There wasn't any shocking revelations, this article is written once a
year by the mainstream press. I observe the technology becoming more
accepted, both as a post-production and a creative tool.
On one side, Autotune for music is like drop shadow for design, or
rounded corners for web 2.0. It needs skillful appliance to avoid the
cliche trap.
On another side, like the article mentions, Autotune is shifting our expectations of pop music performance.
A few minutes ago I uploaded the first track candidates for the next
Ugress album to a private set on Soundcloud, for my trusted crew to pick
apart.
I have spent the last week wrapping up tracks and developing sketches to
full bodied tracks. For this album, I want to finish each and every
potential track before making a decision to include it or not.
This also means, if a track is refused for an Ugress album, it is
nevertheless DONE, and can be put to use anytime anywhere else. I
realize I am going to be very busy the next 18 months or so with albums,
touring, scoring and production gigs, and I very much would like to get
that Ugress album out this summer.
On average, these days I manage to finish one track in two days. By
finish, I mean a completely fleshed out track, not a final "mix". There
are still edits to do, but the track as an entity, is finished.
I then send the tracks to my most trusted accomplices, my drummer Igor
and my manager-publisher Roar. Together (or rather, virtually,) we
discuss each track and consider it for inclusion. I have the final say
but their opinions are important, and we usually agree after a
combination of track edits, suggestions and discussions.
Right now I focus intently on wrapping up as many tracks as possible,
just pouring out ideas and having each track carry themselves along,
with my album ideas lingering subconsciously while writing. I have
started to get a feel for the album, but nothing is certain yet, and
each track I finish pulls it in a new direction.
In a few weeks time there should be enough finished tracks to make a
final selection, and the album concept should start materializing. Also,
there should be a healthy amount of refused album tracks, to be
released as singles or EP continuously during this spring.
I spent most of the early 90ies in front of an Amiga. If I wasn't lost in Protracker making crap tracks, I was probably playing Pinball Dreams, one of the biggest gaming successes of the platform.
Pinball Dreams is now ported, literally line by line, to the iPhone by Finnish coding geniuses Cowboy Rodeo (app store link). TouchArcade has a nice review with background information on the game and video gameplay links.
This makes me think, it should be possible to port, or recreate, Protracker on the iPhone.
Glory retro days. D-Pad Hero is a
brand new Guitar-Hero type game for vintage Nintendo hardware, of course
also playable on emulation software. The song list is a great selection
of 80ies, 90ies and 00ies chiptune covers.
There is a trend in modern music technology where hardware is
developed towards specific genres. Inventive new hardware sequencer
AS-606 is optimized for creating ambient and drone music.
Features:
One-channel one-step sequencer
Unlimited note duration
20-voice polyphony
Compatible with all digital and analog keyboards
Real-time control for all parameters
"To Infinity And Beyond™" infinite control resolution
American football. I have little idea of the rules, what the ultimate
point of the game is (except stopping capistalistically often for
commercials) or why they even call it football. As a sport, it lacks a
lot. As entertainment, it lacks little.
I love America, I really wished I lived there. And with you guys having a
new president, and all that stuff, I'm happy to be back loving you. So
here I am, my way of celebrating, watching Superbowl, alone, streaming
in a corner on my laptop, drinking beer and kind of liveblogging it,
typing this while watching. For a few holiday moments I pause my world
domination plans, pop a cold one and pretend to be an American.
I really have no idea whats going on in this game but that is not
important. I love the commercials, twisted little windows into adorable,
uncanny representations of American everyday life.
A curious coincidence: You know, one wouldn't think it, but the halftime
show performer, Bruce Springsteen, was an early and important musical
influence on me. In 1984 as a kid, I travelled large parts of the U.S.
with my parents, and simultaneously Springsteen released Born In The
USA. So I listened a lot to it during that time, and later. This album
epitomized the essence of USA to me, it sounds so profoundly American. I
realize the theoretical quasi-psychological consequences of that
statement, but in any case this album taught me the emotional and OMG
THAT was as an incredible touchdown!!!, nostalgic values of music.
Btw, I'm rooting for the white and yellow guys. They played Fatboy Slim
as their entry theme, while the purple dudes played some rock thing.
Ooh halftime show. Maybe I'll get to see a Spring-nipple, ha ha ha.
Neat, I wish I had those backdrop screens. Glory days, thanks.
Disneyland?
02:43 I am not über-impressed by the technical production, where's the epic slowmo HD crane-cams?
02:52. The score is currently 17-7. I did some research.
You get 6 points for a touch down, and then something with kicks.
There's a kick now. But something happened. Personal foul? Who? But did
he score? What's going on? Another kick? No.
02:57 Another freekick (?), did he.... TRANSFORMERS TRAILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my. THAT'S a robot.
03:00 Seems like he scored, it is 20-7. We're winning!
03:08 Fourth quarter, 15 "minutes" left.
03:13 What does Flag mean? Wikipedia fail.
03:14 Why are those douches one the sideline using those enormous
mic-headsets, why aren't they using tiny modern ones like the rest of
this millennia? They look like mutated Stringfellow Hawkes.
03:20 I love getting lost on Wikipedia.
03:26 Hey Alec Baldwin, about that hulu.com "anytime anywhere", come
on over to Europe and I'll shove a couple of "we're sorry not available
in your location" up your... anytime anywhere.
03:29 What happens if it ties? The purple dudes are catching up, it's
20-14 so a touchdown should tie them? But there's also a kick with
every touchdown?
03:33 That MacGruber MacGyver spoof ad was .. not good enough to what it tried to be. Pepsi fail.
03:35 I wonder if this is a good game. I think it is fairly
interesting, I understand the purple ones are not far from catching up,
but I have no idea if this is a great game. There has been some nice
runs and stuff.
03:38 I observe that soccer ladies and football ladies look exactly the same on both continents.
03:39 That was a bad throw. He shouldn't throw it into the ground,
why not? The pineapple should not touch the ground? I'm really not
getting .. they are hitting each other. This is very little
gentlemanish.
03:42 I think my team is struggling.
03:42 Goddamnit, there has been commercial breaks every fucking
minute for several hours but now I really need to go to the bathrom and
there hasn't been a break in ages!! And what happens now? Touchdown?
Timeout? What's a timeout? What ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT§!
03:45 Commercial pls.
03:47 Oh look a broken bankster! He's sad.
03:47 P-L-S.
03:48 OMG THAT WAS INCREDIBLE, I have switched teams. What a run. Go
purple! And the onscreen analytics starts to make sense too. The yellow
dudes screwed up in defense.
03:53 Where did those two points come from? Yellow are in the... COMMERCIALS THANK GOD
03:55 How did they get from 14 to 23?
03:58 OMG that was close. Almost touchdown. I have no idea who I should be cheering for. Yellows? Purples?
04:00 What a touchdown! What a grab! I'm back on yellow. But NCB,
come on, European soccer production is laughing at you in their sleep.
Those replays look like something DDR could pull of in the 70ies.
04:03 Santiono Holmes, my man. Now kick it. Ah yes.
04:06 22 seconds left. 15 seconds left.
04:08 Nooooooo network congestation stream problems what's happening
what's happening what is going on??? 05 seconds left? Alec Baldwin if
this is.....
04:10 WE WON WE WON WE WON
04:10 This was great, too great, it must have been scripted, is it scripted?
04:14 What a game! I'm supposed to say that? Or is that basket?
Conclusion.
American football is really entertaining, but probably because to me
it involves just as much realtime digital research and investigation as
actual game watching.
I
observe with interest the drama unfolding around an electronic musician
boasting about using pirated software and the response from the company
he pirated from, Audio Damage (makers of Replicant and Automaton).
Izotope Ozone is a plugin I use at extreme ends of my production. It was updated to version 4 today, with some neat new features.
With the new version I am most excited with the mid/side processing
options, where you can adjust parameters independently in the centre and
sides of mixes. Also the new hybrid algorithm in the EQ suits me fine,
and the plugin should use less CPU, making multiple track based use
easier.
At the final end of production, I use Ozone for final mastering. I
prefer to have my mixes mastered professionally, but often there is no
time nor budget for such auditory luxury. At least I enjoy teaching
myself the mastering process.
My weapon of choice has been Ozone for some years now, supported by Logic with automation and native plugins.
I also use Ozone at the very beginning of production, in Wave Editor,
where I "master" each sample or loop before further editing, chopping it
ut and bringing it into a mix. Often in collaboration with Izotope RX,
where RX handles repair work and Ozone fixes the paintjob. I have found
this to be a smart way of freshing up dull and uninspiring material. The
EQ in particular is often used for surgical , which is why I welcome
the new hybrid mode, digital precision and phase preservation with
analogue sound.
Serious work on the next Ugress album has begun, tentative release this
summer. The work is highly rewarding and reveals some exciting data.
I spent most of the time this week doing Ugress 4 preproduction. This
consists of going through all my ideas, concepts, sketches, getting to
know it all, and creating a worksheet of potential candidates. I check
each track, enter it into a spreadsheet with extended information; how
finished the track is, which project it suits, what needs to be done,
potential collaborators if applicable, and if it should be considered
for U4.
Simultaneously I research my ideas and inspiration for the album,
cataloguing my ocean of notes, and continuously perform edits to tracks.
Right now the album is a misty cloud of loosely connected themes in my
head. Any progress at this point seems to be very subconscious and
intuitive, just developing tracks with all the ideas and concepts
lingering freely in my thoughts. There is nothing concrete demanding a
certain direction, or excluding an experimental approach. This is very
liberating after 6 months of intensely focused compositional work.
At the moment I have 92 tracks I consider usable, and a very vague idea
of how I would like U4 to sound. There are 17 tracks completely
finished, 18 tracks above 75% finished, and the rest somewhere between
50% and "conceptual sketch".
I catalogue each track, to see which project it naturally belongs with.
This easily excludes many of the 92 tracks from an Ugress release. But
it also reveals some fantastic observations:
To my absolute surprise, a sleeping and non-published project of mine
that I plan on release in 2010 or later, suddenly turned out to have 20
tracks almost ready. I estimate there to be a month or two of work to
wrap this project up for a release. Also, the next Nebular Spool album is further along than I expected. I might be able to put those out this year. On the other hand, Ninja 9000
didn't have as many candidates as I thought, unless I fall into an 8
bit frenzy the album release is further ahead than scheduled (2010).
Next week I intend to focus on the potential Ugress candidates, and dive
deeper into album concept research. Hopefully by the end of next week I
should have a clearer idea of what the album should be like, which
tracks to include and what to do with them.
Ugress Unicorn was released exactly one year ago and totally did not what it was supposed to. Some quick observations.
My original plan was to release Unicorn and play extensively live,
working on new material and following up with a new album January 2009.
This makes sense in a music scene where most bands and artists makes a
living from touring and merchandising, not album sales. The live angle
was reflected in the track selection for the album, it was weighted
towards live performance material.
But I am not typical, as with most of my projects Unicorn has performed completely different from what I expected.
The album quickly brought multiple scoring and production gigs, including writing the theme music gig for a kids TV show.
The producers liked the theme enough to ask if I could also do episode
music, and suddenly I was immersed in scoring work. The show became a
success, and composing and producing the music was a great challenge and
even greater fun. The work brought just enough income to pay my bills,
and with the show being popular, it is a nice investment in future
royalty payoffs.
This made it challenging to tour as much as I had planned, we had to cut
back on live dates. It also made it impractical to release Ugress 4 on
intended schedule. These setbacks didn't really matter in the larger
scope of things. I enjoy studio time, writing music for film and TV is
perhaps even more fun than touring.
The album has sold approx. 1100 physical copies, and slightly more
digital items. This brings total album sales thoroughly past 2000, which
I am satisfied with. It is twice my expectations for the first year.
The number would have been much higher if we toured.
I never read reviews, music blogs and the like, neither regarding my own
nor others music. But I understand from my crew that the album, as
usual, received a wide spectre of reviews.
However, the Harakiri Martini music video is by far my most popular music video, after going viral in Asia it has totalled almost half a million views.
Environmental Grafitti has a collection of pictures where jungle growth take over forgotten civilization. I like to imagine Dr. Moreau lurking in the mossy shadows.
Slightly related, there is also an abandoned Asian theme parks series.
The
last few days has mostly been working on lyrics for the Kometkameratene
show. The script writers often write song lyrics, and usually they
deliver superb texts. I am impressed with their fantasy and ability to
phrase complex themes so cleverly simple.
But with short deadlines the scripts are not always complete in time for
music production, and sometimes the written lyrics, just like our
music, needs more work. Everything in the episode, script, song, lyrics
and video contents are developed almost simultaneously, so there is
little time to waste. For some songs we do the lyrics ourselves, and for
others the text has to be adapted.
Working with lyrics on tight deadlines and high quality expectations is a
great challenge, but luckily my preferred method of learning. I never
wrote lyrics before, except team development with my vocalists, where we
had all the time and freedom in the world to experiment. Working
together with Sjur, a smart producer, a great director and brilliant
script writers is very educative.
Monday I spent the day working on lyrics for Kometkameratene, and while
waiting for feedback, working on a new track for myself. Work title is
"Music For Coding" but it certainly does not sound like it. The track
started out as a sketch for the TV show, but veered off pretty fast. I
re-routed it to Ugress or possibly SOTB.
Tuesday was another session with Sjur, we did some writing, recorded our
ideas and sent off to the producer. I did some pre-prod cleanup work on
a recording to be delivered Thursday, so the mix session is free from
petty work. Inbetween I wrapped up the "Music For Coding" project.
Wednesday was more lyrics work, Sjur came by for a super quick session. I
also finalized and uploaded the Scenesat exclusive track. The track is
slightly shorter than I would like it to, I think there happens too much
in the track too fast, but there wasn't time to pan it out properly. I
removed and reduced some elements to let it breathe enough, mental note
to restructure it for future releases.
It has been many years since I was excited by the NAMM trade shows, but this year had a fine surprise: Ableton announced version 8 of Live, and together with Cycling 74 announced the fruits of their cooperation, Max For Live.
Live 8 looks like a fine upgrade, I am intrigued with refined warp modes and transient handles in arrange.
Also appreciated is workflow enhancements, in particular with MIDI
editing. But the star of the update, is the access of Max architecture
inside Live.
Max For Live appears to be a wunderschön virtual apparatus both for mad
scientist studio experimentation and crazy live sound execution. I did
some research over the weekend, there is an informative Max For Live thread
over at C74 forums. With great enthusiasm I noted that all Max objects,
including Jitter, is available inside Live. This means I can access hi
(human interface, custom devices) objects directly in a Live set, no
need to translate via Max/MSP.
Max inside Live responds to OSC signals just like Max/MSP, and can
control the Live application itself. I have not been able to uncover
specifics, but this fascinates me to no end. My head vibrates with
ideas, I have several too-ambitious future projects, which now seem very
possible to realize. I shall concentrate on Ugress 4 first, my
intuition tells me Max For Live won't be out until late this year
anyway.
With Celemony's upcoming Melodyne editor
able to handle polyphonic pitch material, it appears 2009 will be a
most adventurous year for creating and performing music with computers.
Exciting times.
On Friday I received, as usual, a proper amount of junk email. One of
them was apparently from a sweet Russian girl, trying to get in touch,
looking for a nice man. She even attached that picture.
I don't know why, but I actually read the email, and it struck me as
being hilarious, but also very sad, naive and honest. Like she, or the
writer, had already given up hope of a reply. Or, for what I know, the
email is really from her and sincere. But probably not, it is just
clever junk, managing to sneak past my filters and into my attention.
I have often enjoyed the random poetics of spam, text that are
desperate to reach you but simultaneously desperate to hide their true
nature. There are glimpses of unintentional beauty in the effort to
escape the mundanity threshold of spam filters.
Creating a track based on junk email has been an idea of mine for long, I decided now was the time.
I escaped the world, and spent the weekend for myself building a
melancholic, uncanny track, with OSX system voice Vicki reciting the
junk lyrics.
It was nice to spend some time for myself, working out a loose idea, letting the track itself decide direction.
Google terminates one of their most web-based services, and to me, thereby reduces the value of their other services.
Google Notebook, my most dearest online notebook solution, is committing digi-kiri. Google stops all development and support, which practically means the service is dead - it will only run until it breaks.
This was sad and impractical news. I really enjoyed it and used it
extensively for cloud-based, tag-based bookmarking and note-taking.
The best and most obvious reason for using Google Notebook was the
power of the search function - you had the intelligence and data of The
Google Empire behind each note, meaning that when searching your notes
and bookmarks, you could search for words not present in the note itself
- Google would find your relevant notes on behalf of what the note was
ABOUT. You didn't have to remember anything specific to the note,
because Google did.
Shift happens. I have jumped ship immediately, cut all ties, and went back to Delicious for bookmarks. For notes, I haven't decided yet.
It took me a couple of hours, I had to write my own script to
translate all notes from Google into Delicious and simultaneously keep
the URL, tags and manual notes.
I am not super happy with Delicious but at least it is actively
developed, and their export format is more friendly towards future
services. Amongst others, Evernote
can import from Delicious, this works well enough, but sadly the
Evernote web client is insanely slow, and the local client consistently
crashes when facing my amount of tagged bookmarks.
I find it puzzling, and alarming, that Google suddenly decides to
terminate such a most modern service. It makes me uncertain of other
services like Gmail, Reader and Docs.
Monday and Tuesday this week was early morning sessions with Sjur,
working on lyrics and vocals for Kometkameratene. Sjur comes in early in
the morning, we do some vocal work and conceptual sketches, then he
leaves while I edit the recordings and produce out the conceptual
changes during the rest of the day. Updated versions are uploaded to the
producer and director late in the evening.
There isn't much left to do with this batch, only remainder is the
lyrics, and thereby vocals, on two of the tracks. I expect this to be
concluded early next week.
Wednesday and Thursday I spent working on the Russerne Kommer
(The Russians Are Coming) remake, a cover version of a legendary old
Norwegian synth-punk track. I was very happy with a quaint idea I had
for an instrumental variation - usually my theoretical ideas turn out to
sound silly, but this one worked rather well. A final version was done
late Thursday night, only needed some tiny edits Friday morning. I'm
going to let it rest for a few days before balancing the mix and
applying final touches.
Wednesday I cooked one of my favorite dishes, Portuguese cataplana
with mussels, shellfish and monstrous king crabs (I appreciate the
uncanny Soviet link between my remix and my cooking here, btw). I have
been researching and experimenting to create the perfect cataplana ever
since having a gastronomic revelation in Lisboa a few years ago. This
one was dangerously close, I discovered a secret ingredient - adding
some sliced picante chorizo early into the sauce seems to deliver the
correct amount of succulent punch to the stock.
As a side note, with great enthusiasm I found a model railway window
installation next to my top secret seafood supplier. Oooh neat. Fishing
expeditions is now twice the reward.
In between these sessions I worked on a exclusive track for the launch of a brand new demoscene radio, Scenesat.
Mostly without knowing it - they asked if I had any tracks they could
play exclusively for a period, I said yes of course and promptly forgot.
Unconsciously I then started working on a track using only Amiga
Protracker ST-disk for sound material, in Oslo last week. Suddenly it
dawned on me that this track was an obvious choice for a scene based
radio. So Friday I concentrated on finishing this track, daftly named
"Drama". But it kinda sounds like it, gritty 8-bit drama with bad arse
dubstep ligthsaber-bass.
It needs a few edits, maybe a few bars variation, but the core of the
track is done, the Scenesat guys approved it, I'll wrap it up over the
weekend.
Friday
morning I returned from Oslo, I didn't sleep much on the train, mostly
because of stress I think. After a quick breakfast, Sjur came by for a
session on one of the final tracks for Kometkameratene season 1.
After a few hours sleep I went for christmas dinner with Brak, which was a splendid social affair. Excellent food and exquisite conversation. I noticed with interest that we used Spotify for all music listening. Which meant
1) there was a lot of great music,
2) all music we listened to came from the clouds,
3) everyone mostly found their favorite music and latest must-share release,
4) we were not limited to a local physical or digital collection.
I think it is important to notice.
Saturday was slow, exhausted from many long days, but I put in some
hours on a new track I started in Oslo. It started out with only
Protracker ST-disks samples, I love the dirty old 8-bit sounds, to
compress the grit into focus and run it through amp models. My recent
sonic addition Alchemy is a great tool for zooming into the mud of
samples.
I also spent a few hours checking out Amazon AWS, mostly EC2, for cloud rental of web services. Amazon recently launched a web based management console,
making it easy to launch and administrate your cloud computers. Within a
few minutes I had selected, installed and launched my own webserver
instance and logged in by remote desktop client. This looks like a
viable alternative to physical hosting, in particular when it comes to
scaling. My only caveat is that I'd rather not personally handle server
and webserver administration.
I have not yet decided how to host my next web system. But I have
decided to develop a solution I can technically deploy onto AWS if
necessary.
Sunday was back to work, spent all day working on the final batch of
Kometkameratene. Sjur is coming in tomorrow morning for a vocal session.
There are six tracks left to do in season 1, to be delivered this week.
It will be a hectic week, but when they are delivered I am very much
looking forward to focus on Ugress 4.
Wednesday, I arrived horribly early in Oslo and had a long breakfast at
the train station, trying to wake myself up, before running some
practical errands. I picked up a Korg Nanokey, been meaning to do that for a long time. Also needed some cables and sound stationary.
Then I had long lunch meeting with Roar, my management agent
publisher business sanity reality wizard. We sat for several hours,
planning and scheduling 2009.
I had a few hours off before next meeting, and spent the time in the
empty bar at the top of the Radisson, catching the sunset with my new
Nanokey and some momentary beats. View from the window pictured above.
Then I hooked up with a dear old friend of mine, a top secret percussive
weapon I very much would like to fire up for Ugress 4. We had a great
time catching up, which included frivolous wolfing of fish á la Nippon.
Finally I crashed late at night at a friends apartment, catching a few hours of sleep.
Thursday, I AGAIN had to get up at an unspeakable hour, heading up to
the NRK complex to record a new batch of Kometkameratene tracks. I had
the same studio room as previous recordings, a spacious rom with great
sound.
I had approx one hour with each actor, to record their lead tracks
and all voicings. The actors have become really great at falling into
character quickly and nailing the sound, and we start to know each
other. So the sessions went really well, the atmosphere was relaxed and
fun.
After recording I met up with Per Christian Frankplads, a journalist of Norwegian music magazine Musikkpraksis for an interview, we had a neat talk about music technology, scoring and editing techniques, samples and mashups.
Then I grabbed late dinner, and boarded the nighttrain back to Bergen, where this is typed and posted.
I am on the night train from Bergen to Oslo, on my way to record another
batch of Kometkameratene tracks on Thursday. Right now I'm right there,
in the not-so-luxurious but luxurious-named "Restaurant Wagon", having a
beer in plastic cup while performing the evening's digital chores.
I am seriously fed up with airports and their security hysteria, and in
particular with budget airlines. Travelling by air is no longer
travelling, it is transport of human cargo with a constant focus on the
NEXT pack of meat, not the CURRENT.
If I can avoid it, I spare myself the flights. The night train is a nice
substitute, I have my own sleeper compartment, I can walk to the train
stations in both cities, in effect I sleep myself back and forth.
But the glorious days of first class conversation over a chilled glass
of champagne, formally dressed, is perhaps non-attainable from the
glorious Norwegian Government Rail. The conductor is also the bartender
and makes his best effort to display his discontent with this
arrangement. But I close my eyes and imagine.
The beer is not beer in festival plastic, but a bottle of exquisite
Pierre Peters Brut, and this journal entry is not typed on a laptop, and
posted between tunnels, but a fiery discussion and comparison of
intrepid travel arrangements and other preposterous issues with fellow
passengers. Whereof one is a paleontologist, one is a suicidal spirited
medium with too much self-confidence, one is a Chilean volcano expert
afraid of heights, and the last ones are a retired British officer and
his beautiful, adopted Gypsy daughter which turns out to be the main
coder of Logic Pro Studio and slips me a private beta of version 9
during a late night rendez-vous including impolite amounts of gin tonic.
Oh well. At least the drunk kids next to me are just as grumpy and
sarcastic as me on all the douchebags entering the "Restaurant Wagon"
and not closing the carriage door behind them.
Most
of Monday was spent working on the "Russerne Kommer" remix. The beat
and base is pretty much established, and I recorded Calle's vocals
before xmas, they are great. I am struggling to find the musical spine
of the track, the beat is neat but not enough to carry the track fully.
So I spent all day coming up with horrible solutions, but finally at
night I came up with something that stuck rather well. A few checkups
the next day confirms the idea holds itself. I promised Calle to deliver
by the end of the week.
Tuesday, ungodly early in the morning, Sjur came by and we worked on a
Kometkameratene track for some hours. I wasn't happy with the original
sketch, the producer wasn't happy with it, so we tried building it into
something better. Sjur had lots of good ideas and did some smart
electric piano development to groove it up. But not enough, we decided
it was absolute crap, and scratched it. Back to start.
The rest of Tuesday I spent preparing and planning another bunch of KK
tracks, to be recorded Thursday in Oslo. This involves rendering down
most audio to single stems, syncing up video for the actors to lipsync,
and preparing choral arrangements.
A pyrophone is an organ where the notes are sounded via explosions or other forms of combustion.
This post at Metafilter,
containing great information on explosive instruments, spawned a most
exquisite comment thread containing links to other weird, explosive
instruments and their sounds.
I am particularly intrigued by the Pyrophone Juggernaut, a multi-octave fire organ.
A
new, but obvious category. I spend most waking hours in front of the
laptop, mostly in Logic, but other stuff needs to be done too. I'm
always on the lookout for new apps to help me achieve what I want.
I took a chance and invested in Final Cut Studio about a
year ago, early 2008. This was partly because I expected to tour a lot
with Ugress, most of the visuals are prepared and edited in FCP. Also,
FCP together with Adobe CS, was the final software packages I needed to
buy to go legal.
But then I ended up scoring kids TV instead of touring,
and turns out NRK edits the show on FCP. I do not necessarily need FCP
for the scoring, but in certain situations it really is a benefit to
both me and the editors that I can acces and know my way around Final
Cut.
So to my surprise, the rather steep investment in FCP turned out to be well worth it very fast.
I picked this plugin up based on recommendation, and
liked the sound of it. It sounds flabberghastingly great in certain
settings, but is not for everything.
At then end of the year, I am suddenly surprised by the number of times I reach for it.
Coupled and synced with the iPhone client, Omnifocus is
my location aware, unobtrusive, ever-attentive secretary, mother, boss
and slave.
For each year, I get busier and busier, 2008 was no
exception. But for the first time, with the help of optimized routines
and Omnifocus, I feel like I have some slight control of the madness.
Or rather, I focus on my stuff, Omnifocus on everything else.
With great anticipation I look forward to software in 2009; Celemony
will introduce Melodyne DNA, NI will bring an optimized version on
Kontakt 3, and I think DevonThink Pro will be an invaluable intelligent
assistant to me.
I
spent most of the weekend working on two older Ugress tracks, from 2005
and 2006. They where considered for the Unicorn album in 2008, but
didn't cut it. They still deserved to be realized.
When working on a track, I have to finish it at once or as soon as
possible. If not, it takes a serious amount of concentration and effort
to wrap things up at a much later stage. Working with my own vintage
projects feels like working with someone else.
I ended up changing both tracks extensively, kept the spine but build a
new body. This process is costly, to kill darlings is hard.
I am satisfied that the tracks are finished, but it also feels like a loss.
I spent a few hours toying with Elysium,
a new generative sequencer. Optimized for generating evolving tonal
sequences, but with a few twists one can build a frenetic, evolving
beats generator.
I programmed a cluster of generators and manipulators around certain
MIDI notes, routed to cut up breaks in a sampler. By speeding up the
tempo Elysium works as a breakbeat evolvement machine, where regulating
the amount of probability between notes, shifts the beats from static to
chaotic.
Naturally generative beats, like generative music, needs a human selector to nudge things in an interesting direction.
It only took me a half a year to do it, but finally you can now 
Tomorrow Dec 1st, I will be doing an 
My latest Ugress track 
Satisfaction and self-congratulations are in order, with the response to the 
Back in the laboratory.
The most realest scientists are those who perform their mad experiments on themselves.
Happy 200th birthday, Charles Robert Darwin. 
Ugress Unicorn was 
