Toxic Dwarf Upcoming Gigs
I’ve just confirmed that i’ll be playing at Symmetry Festival in July and also Waveform Festival in September. Symmetry Festival is 2nd and 3rd of July in Strumpshaw, Norfolk. Earlybird tickets are only £35 and after that £45…. bargain prices i’m sure you’ll agree. Buy tickets from www.symmetryfestival.co.uk. Waveform is 10th – 12th September, location: TBA (90minutes from London) tickets availble from www.waveformfestival.com. I’m putting together a whole new set of music for these events, so I won’t be uploading any new stuff till after the festivals, so that everything I play will be new and improved additions to the Toxic collection!
Crazy instrument
A friend recently recommended i watch some of this guy’s video’s. I did and it instantly reminded me of some of the animations i have posted recently, exept this is no animation….. this is the real deal! Amazing stuff from ‘Felix’s Machine’s’ Many more videos on youtube so get watching them!!!
Drum Machine
I found this animation years ago, and had completely forgotten about it till my friend posted a link to it on facebook. This is fantastic and everybody should watch it.
Cymatics 2
Following on from my previous post about the science of seeing sound, Julio d’Escrivan has bought this video to my attention. Well worth a watch.
The Zeusaphone
More odd instruments in todays post. Tesla coils have always been visually very impressive, they are not usually noted for their musical application. But they can be used as instruments demonstrated at this website
and in this video
Soundflower – audio sampling from avi files
Having been engrossed in the tv series ‘Fringe’ for some time, i have repeatedly heard quotes and sounds which i wanted to sample and use in my music. Having downloaded the programme as avi files i was unsure about how to extract or rip the audio content i wanted. I finally found a very handy program called ‘Soundflower’
http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/
Soundflower is a Mac OS X (10.2 and later) system extension that allows applications to pass audio to other applications. Soundflower is easy to use, it simply presents itself as an audio device, allowing any audio application to send and receive audio with no other support needed. Soundflower is free, open-source, and runs on Mac Intel and PPC computers
I use VLC to play my avi files and send the audio out through the soundflower audio device (channels 1 and 2), now i can load Logic and create an audio channel and use it to record the audio stream directly. (you’ll need to open preferences and go to ‘audio > devices > core audio’ where you can specify the input device as ‘soundflower 16ch’. When creating the audio track specify channels 1 and 2 as the input) The ‘R’ button needs to be highlighted in red for the avi sound to be audible, and when you want to record simply click the record button in the transport bar. Voila high quality samples galore!!!
There are other programs that can do this more easily such as Audio Hijack, but unlike soundflower you have to pay for them. Programs like audio hijack and soundflower can be used to solve the problems that arise when using dj software such as Traktor DJ on a laptop with only one output. With only one output you cannot monitor your mix in headphones, so using the programs mentioned above you can split the audio into two channels and route one of them to a set of usb headphones.
Electronically Modified Didgeridoo
My brother found this link recently and forwarded it to me. I thought you guys would want to see this too!!
Blurb.com
Calling all Laptop Musicianship students!!! As you all know we need to compile our blogs offline, for external moderators to mark. I have found a quick easy way to do this. Free software from www.blurb.com accesses your blog, downloads the posts and formats it as a book, which can then be exported as a pdf (which we can then burn to disc and hand in). However, it does create a watermark on the PDF which i have been unable to remove, i have emailed Julio to see if this would be an acceptable format for submission and he says this is fine. I highly recommend using it. If you have posted videos or links you may need to edit the pdf to remove any excess html code and simply write the link.
(Click on the image below to get a clearer view of how the watermark looks)
End of semester (nearly!!)
So we are headed towards the end of semester, and the end of our laptop musicianship module. I’m really impressed with what i have learnt in this module, making me think in new ways about how i write my music and teaching the basics of music theory. Although i still have a lot to learn about the theory, i feel much more confident about my approach to music. The module has surpassed all my expectations, leaving me eager to produce more work that i can perform live. Although the workload (and my work commitments!!) have left me with little time to embark on personal projects, i think this is a good thing, taking time out from the way i usually work on my music and trying new things. Hopefully when i do get chance to sit and write my own pieces i will have learnt ways to create more intricate, inspiring and technical track, pushing my music further down the path of creativity. I have really enjoyed using iXi quarks, but felt frustrated by some of the rather limited parameters you are able to specify (lack of ability to tempo sync predators and soundscratcher for example). However, the ‘freestyle’ aspect of it is great, granting me the ability to create pieces ‘on the fly’, either as part of a group, or as a solo project. I have also been using it to create sounds, which once recorded, i can then import into Logic and incorporate into other tracks. Supercollider has taken me by surprise, when looking at sections of code, and videos of live coding, in the first week of the module, i have to admit i was sure i would seriously struggle. I have picked it up much more easily than i suspected, feeling that i have come such a long way with it in small period of time. I love it, from simply sending MIDI information to synthesising sounds purely within Supercollider it seems so versatile (as long as you understand the keys,classes and syntax). And we are only scratching the surface, i can tell there is so much more this great program can do… but one step at a time eh!!
Free Synth
As i’m always up for free software, but i’d rather not download cracked or patched illegal copies, i’m always on the look out for freeware. Heres a nice sounding synth (just play with the presets to hear what it can do). I especially like the ‘breed’ button that seems to allow you to take the settings from two presets and ‘morph’ them together taking some settings from one, and others from the second, randomly picking settings on each ‘breed’.
Check it out, it’s completely free easy to install and it’s legal. (I actually found it through posts on the Logic Pro user forum
http://www.logicprohelp.com/index.php)
Get this (and other effects plugins) from:
http://www.greenoak.com/vst.html
2nd Ensemble performance critique
The Donuts (Previously group 5)
This group have improved their piece greatly, choosing sounds that work together in a more coherent way.
The intro is very nice, especially the glitch effect from the vocal sample and the group were listening very well to each other, giving each player space to perform their part without cluttering up the soundspace.
The Chavs (Previously group 2)
This groups piece seemed much more structured than before, again picking more suited sounds, The whole piece was less cluttered,more melodic and more atmospheric. The process seemed more streamlined than their previous performance
No_name (Previously group 3)
As with the two groups mentioned above, selection of sound was much improved, the atmospheric content and the dynamics of the sounds were very good. They have improved on giving each other space to be heard and their process was much more obvious, building up in a more structure manner
Dos Pendejos (Previously group 4)
Even with two missing members of this ensemble i felt it was a vast improvement from the previous performance. Excellent contrasting and complementary sounds and (sound)spatial awareness. Loss of the repetitive drum loop has done wonders for the overall effect.
Good work everybody, all groups have improved in similar ways, but retaining their own themes and ideas.
Our Group (The Andrew Kinsey Experiment: Where/Who is Andrew Kinsey?)
I feel our piece has improved also, previously we had a start and end, but the middle was pure improvisation. We have added more stucture to the middle, while retaining the improvisation section. Once started, we improvise for a minute or so, then I trigger a new sample, which signals that we all change instruments, having picked sounds that are not too radically different to our starting instruments. We then improvise again, mainly using our new sounds, but adding small bits of the original sounds also. After a minute or so, Andy triggers a sound which indicates that we should start silencing our parts to bring the piece to an end.
Maybe we could add more structure, interlinking the separate elements as triggers for more complex ideas. More work needed!!!!
Hobnox Audio tool
Leading on from a post by Andy Buclaw about the tone matrix,( http://andyinwriting.wordpress.com/ ) i followed a link on the page he mentioned and found this cool site for easy music creation. The idea is that you can load up different modules (tone matrix, bass synth, phaser, delay etc) and graphically connect them together and use them to create music. (screenshot shown below)
It is a lot of fun. I have had a little play around and guarantee you i will be playing with it alot more. Follow this link and start having some fun. : HobNox Audiotool
My previous work.
People have been asking what kind of music i write, well here’s an example of some of my favourite of my previous tracks. More recent tracks are available to stream at www.myspace.com/toxicdwarf (Scroll down and on the left should be some embbeded players for my RealWorldRemixed tracks aswell)
Eve of War (Jeff Wayne – War of the Worlds) – Toxic Remould. Inspired by Isoa Tomita (You have to check out his version of Holst’s ‘The Planets’) i simply used MIDI data to add my own twist to this classic.
Tides Of Mind (a piece i wrote a while ago using Propellorheads Reason)
Fungdungle (a piece i wrote a while ago using Propellorheads Reason)
Tenori-On
Yet another cool musical gadget that i would like… but can’t afford.
More info at www.tenori-on.co.uk
My favourite music videos.
Here’s the video for one of my favourite artists (and my favourite of his tracks) Aphex Twin ‘Come to Daddy’.
And here is SquarePusher ‘Come on my Selector’
(Both videos by Chris Cunningham , you really should check out more of Chris’ work!!!)
More Bizarre Intrument animation
Another in the series of bizarre instrument animation. The video previously blogged was from the same animation company ‘Animusic’. These guys are really good at what they do. More info at www.animusic.com
Bizarre instrument (animated)
Although the blurb for this video states that is an actual real instrument, it’s pretty damn obvious that it is CGI. Still, nice tune and nice idea.
Ummm… where to start??????
For a long while i have been unsure as to what direction to take my life in. I left school in 1998 and went straight into work, training as an Architectural Technician, because thats what my parents and teachers told me i would be good at. At the time it seemed like a good idea, keep the folks happy, make the teachers proud! For a while it was okay, i enjoyed learning draughtsmanship and getting to survey and draw some great historical buildings, although eventually i realised it wasn’t what i wanted to do. To cut a long (and boring) story short after several jobs, courses of study, periods of unemployment and homelessness i ended up realising that for a lot of this period of time i had been doing something i really enjoyed, something i loved and would always love….. making music.. Okay so i only started on playstation Music 2000 (don’t laugh…… alright go on then!), then progressed to Propellorheads Reason (which to be fair still felt a bit like a computer game than a serious program) and then Cubase SX. But creating this music was what i really wanted to do, to do something really personal and creative.
Having been composing electronic music for about 7 years, and having taught myself the basics of several sequencing programs, i had been finding myself getting to the limits of my self taught abilities. Now having started the first week at ARU, studying Creative Music Technology i can see so many more doors opening up, so many more tricks, tools and processes to use and master. The few lectures i have had have been very inspiring, from watching videos of live ‘Super Collider’ programming to starting to learn the basics of musical notation. These are making me realise the full potential of what i had been previously trying to do. Opening my mind to these concepts (all of them new to me) is giving me an increased passion for the creation of Music. I have always loved creating tracks in Reason and more recently in Cubase SX, but i have felt limited in my technical knowledge and also my understanding of musical theory. I know when something i am writing sounds good (to me at least!!) and have always composed by experimenting, listening, amending, listening again, tweeking and adjusting to gain the feeling i’m looking for. This course is going to give me the knowledge and experience look at this process in a different light, to be able to understand what it is i am doing, rather than pure experimenting i hope to be able to have the understanding to convey my creative ideas in a much more structured manner, to be able to produce music more confidently and also to be able to create and improvise in a live setting (something i have never done before, but am eager to do)
I am really buzzing about this course, my friends must be getting sick of me coming home chatting my day at Uni (and it’s only the 2nd day), but it really is opening my eyes, and leading along a path i should have started on years ago. So here i am studying a subject i love, maybe one day i’ll be writing scores for films or computer games, creating new performance technology or touring the world performing to thousands of people. One thing i do know is this, i’ll never stop writing, never give up the freedom that this element of creativity has given me.
In case your interested in checking out some of my more recent projects go to www.myspace.com/toxicdwarf
