- Secret Killer of Names

The Canonisation of Jobs (and other Mac VS PC workflow blather)

a glitched out collage of a Steve Jobs portrait facilitated by Mac only software MONGLOT

“The world lost a genius”, “The world will never be the same”, “He gave me permission to shine”, “iCried” etc… The only thing more nauseating than a public outpouring of grief for a recently deceased celebrity figure you don’t personally know is when that celebrity happens to be a billionaire businessman. (Perhaps a royal death or wedding is worse… since we aren’t all living in Westeros!) Jobs may have been a successful CEO but he didn’t invent all these tools that everyone fawns over… yet in fairness he has never claimed to have invented things he didn’t (like Edison)… more that he has “helped shape a vision” and for that he is surely a clever man. Given the usual statistics that get thrown about concerning Apple’s comparatively low market share in the home computing sector, it was certainly a risky but smart move to move towards tactile computing, making smart phones and portable computers more accessible for more people (and also devices with greater accessibility options). Bravo – lots of money for Apple shareholders and new ideas, new competition, more shite to clog up the landfill. It is sad when someone dies earlier than they might have but jeez people quit the deification. Given that Microsoft basically achieved a similar thing with their Windows operating systems and Office packaging (ripping off other peoples ideas and finding a way to distribute them cheaply thereby encouraging more people to buy them) will you all make the same fuss when Bill Gates shuffles off his mortal coil? A man who basically left with his billions and immediately set his time and money towards environmental causes? Hmmm?

Anyway… I thought I’d make this rant productive by outlining why I use Apple products in a realistic fashion. Not because I care about the abuse I cop from my Windows based brethren, just because it seems like on both sides there is a blindness to the reality of the tool “as a tool”.

When I started doing realtime AV I was using Isadora on an Intel “bare-bones” notebook that was configured as a high-level multimedia machine. It worked OK for sound and wasn’t too bad at pumping out a couple of 640×480 videos at a time but I was increasingly interested in other tools that just weren’t available for Windows XP. Programs like VDMX, Quartz Composer, Metasynth etc… So when I looked at upgrading my first thought was to build a Hackintosh system that would allow me to run both the Win and Mac OS programs. The ability to do this on a desktop seemed to be pretty possible however on a notebook I was looking at having to get a specific high-end system that would cost me nearly $4000. A Macbook Pro ended up being cheaper (though the specs weren’t quite as expensive) and I was assured I would be able to run Mac OS X and XP as well. This turned out to be true. My Macbook Pro is coming up to 3yrs old and doesn’t look like failing. Despite it’s lower hardware specs it runs all visual and audio software many times faster and with less jerkiness than my previous windows laptop or indeed a higher spec desktop computer I patched together from spare parts. However I have found myself uninstalling Windows because of my tendency to start loading games onto it. Not that there aren’t games on OS X but they tend not to work that well. That is no-one’s fault but my own… I obviously can’t be trusted.

So while my ownership of a Macbook Pro was initially predicated on its cross platform capability I have since moved solely over to OS X (with occasional bootcamp installs) because most of the software I need to use is on it and FINDER seems to run a lot faster than EXPLORER. It has nothing to do with the design… it’s a cumbersome hefty beast. For design i’m actually more into the MacMini I bought with Myer vouchers… which functions almost exactly like my last desktop machine, yet can be put in a satchel.

When I first got my Macbook, one of my Linux friends who was always scowly and disparaging about “the cult of Microsoft” actually congratulated me? I’ve never been able to understand why. Apple is way more proprietary than anything Microsoft / PC oriented. It’s not exactly easy to build your own OSX system. But because it runs on UNIX it is immediately better. Hmmm… again what am I using it for? Does it do what I want it to with a minimum of blue screens and freezes… so far it seems like this is the case though there are plenty of spinning beachball moments with software like iTunes and the frankly quite appalling FINDER “Search” feature that seems to bring up EVERYTHING on the HD much of the time I search.

So if i’m not an Apple FanBoi why do I own an iPhone4 and an iPad? That is for another post. Here have a chuckle at Mitchell and Webb selling their souls.

Metasynth and audiovisual composition

As part of my research i’ve been considering Metasynth as an interesting AV composition tool – particularly as it links to the early pioneers of visual music and the work of Iannis Xenakis. You might have heard of Metasynth, the enigmatic OSX only AV synthesiser from this wired article about Richard D. James (Aphex Twin).

Here is the track in question:

That example utilises the image as a filter and is really only a very small part of the rabbit hole / time sink that is Metasynth. My initial impression of it as “Paintshop for Sound” really only applies to the Image Synth section which allows you to paint shapes and colours. When using it with the default waveform synth you get the typical sinusoidal sounds also available on Windows and for free with SPEAR. What is missing from that equation is that the spectral image doubles as a compositional palette which can be applied to other sounds in a variety of ways. Each pixel is a potential note – length on the X-axis representing the duration, height on the Y representing frequency or pitch. They can drive a variety of different waveforms in single and multi wavetable synthesisers. They can also be used to drive samples (more on that later). They can be mapped to particular tuning systems, tuned to specific keys and set to specific scales within the key.

This notational representation can be edited in a similar way to images on Photoshop. Blurred to provide Reverb, scattered for Delay, stretched up and down for various Glissando effects. Volume relates to the brightness of the pixel so contrast defines dynamics. Colour between red, yellow and green define stereo positioning so gradiant filters can be used to create panning effects.

"waterbeat" sample

It is a very niche tool however and while the official tutorials help I do feel like that mastery will only come from years of use. I have found that unofficial tutorials can actually be a better starting point, particularly this one. The ability morph sound-objects into each other is something i’ve been playing with for a decade or so and, “Example 1″ from that tutorial identifies one of the more useful ways MS can interpolate sounds.

The following Metasynth set on my Soundcloud account demonstrates a few different results from using the spectral information from one sample to play another. It goes beyond the basic frequency and amplitude type morphing to include interesting tonal and textural elements that i’ve previous only achieved by chance with granular synthesis.

Bellbowrie Coles returns

You might recall our local shops having a little water problem during the January 2011 floods.

Well 9 months later, the Bellbowrie Coles reopens to the joy of local consumers.

I have to wonder why it took so long and also why we are celebrating it. Stacey and I realised it was more economical to shop online and have it delivered than trek out to Kenmore. I wonder will this change?
Bit of a pointless post I suppose but walking through this morning I thought about how inconvenient the lack of a local shopping centre has been, as well as how we have adapted to the point where now it is just not a big deal.

Awake in Fields of Albion

Another new SKON release on Bandcamp and one that I am extremely proud of and keep returning to. The material was recorded and mixed around two years ago but never really found a place on any of the labels or other albums I’ve produced since then and it has evolved over time to be the epic beast that it is today. Essentially this is the deconstructed guitar album, originally titled “Hermitworks” that i’d been working towards at the time with most of the tracks originating in space drone guitar improvisation. At the time I was experimenting with making the guitar sound unlike a guitar so there are many layers of processed, filtered and morphed guitar sounds building a dense patchwork of fuzz and shimmer. Regular guitar tones and chords chime out of the fuzz however and one of the things i’m most proud about is the level of melody peaking throughout the granular clouds.

My intention in picking up the guitar was to try making some expressive music and after this album I think I learnt how to do it enough to be able to make similarly expressive music electronically. I haven’t laid down my axe for good however. In unleashing this blast from the recent past i’m allowing myself to move forward. I have a lot of exciting ideas and music planned for the not too distant and while i’m preferring the sampler based setup for live performance I still love the very direct way in which the guitar transforms bodily expression into sound.

The guests on this album help pull it in different directions. While Andrew Thomson provides the occasionally solid foundation of mulched drone and found sounds, Briony (Mr Maps) Luttrell’s cello is like the sun peaking through clouds. But lest we get too wistful, Paul Forbes Mitchell (Hetleveiker) uses PD to eviscerate, recombine and reanimate signals heralding a glistening sound-world that might just swallow you whole. My influences at this time were undoubtably stretched between Robert Fripp, Fear Falls Burning and Fennesz, Pimmon so if you like those artists you might like this.

You can check out Awake in Fields of Albion on the player to the right, download for free on bandcamp or pay $13 or more for a physical version with extra tracks. A word of advice: skipping through the tracks is likely to provide a confusing listen as they change often quite dramatically and almost never really end up anywhere near where they start. Give them a chance to take you where they lead.

I Was There

Mr Maps – You Are Here – Promo from Jaymis on Vimeo.

I’ve just been to see a matinee performance by Mr Maps as part of the “Under the Radar” series of the Brisbane Festival. Dubbed “You Are Here” the performance takes place on an upper floor of the Metro Arts building: a place synonymous with underrepresented art being the original home of Small Black Box, the inbetweenspaces crew and various independent theatrical productions.

The band is setup in a semi circle at the edges of the room creating a surround effect that really suits their very taut form of instrumental rock. On entering, the audience is directed that they may find a cushion or move freely throughout the room during the performance, the latter direction being tellingly ignored. Compared to the traditional gig there is a subtlety in this setup not found amid the chink and yabber of drinks and punters. Attention is held as the sound surrounds with little to distract from the performers, so stumbling clumsily around would seemingly draw unwanted attention to oneself.

As the music ebbs and swells we are drawn into a intimate relationship with the performers. We witness the non-verbal communication inherent in what makes bands like this tick… an awareness of space and time that stretches the music like a skin across the audience. In a similar way to how Robin Fox invades the audience space with his lasers, so the frequent eye-balling involves the audience more actively in the dramatic minutae of performance. An awareness of players working together akin to eavesdropping on a band rehearsal further emphasised by ornately stacked milk crates hiding parts of the lighting.

For these performances the band is joined by VJ and CDM blogger Jaymis Loveday who controls the lighting via a low-key audio reactive Macbook / iPad setup. Given the non-traditional setup this requires a different approach to the standard gig. His role is essential for outlining the space, drawing the band members out from the corner and providing dramatic shadow play without neglecting the appropriate dramatic flashes during the musical peaks.

Mr Maps are great at tension / release and this staging serves to emphasise the pin drop dynamics they specialise in. I have to wonder why more bands don’t do this? The pain in the ass of setup and lighting? Or perhaps the intimacy is the problem. There is safety in the proscenium legacy… the us and them of stage bound performance provides a barrier that hides the intricacies in muted but reliable spectacle.

In the normal setting we don’t get to hear the click of Perren’s guitar pedals, the textural rasp of Luttrell’s cello or the subtle shifts of Hicks’ percussion building to tumult. But therein lies the power and potential of this surrounding array.
We are right here with them… feeling and hearing as they do.

I highly recommend you check out this performance and also their awesome release “Wire Empire“.

Two signs that AV is trying very hard to get your attention.

Robin Fox just pointed me in the direction of an interesting site:

The Visual Music Archive is a blog that curates AV material from different generations. I’ve seen a few blogs do it however most just splat up stuff on mediafire links that soon expire whereas this seems like a more official deal and the selections are presented in a considered way.

Also of very much interest are the links on the right-hand side including one that I am very intrigued by:

It’s an online modular course on AV art. So far it appears legitimate… you register and go through a series of modules and are then quizzed on them. Not sure on the value of being quizzed, do I get a Doctor of AV qualification at the end, or just a gold star? But i’m certainly interested in giving it a go and will report back on the angle it takes. My guess from the surface level materials are that it more focused on sparkly projection mappings and blindingly complex flash animations than any deep audiovisual connection but let’s just see shall we.

Finally a little off-topic rant (YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED). Stacey and I watched Limitless on the weekend and feel like we need a soul scrub. It’s a very attractive film, full of imaginative editing, lots of motion graphics… and yet I can’t help but feel like this is a bait and switch. It sets itself up as one fairly attractive thing and then rapidly becomes something repugnant. It’s the more effective Ayn Rand / Atlas Shrugged / Objectivist manifesto film because it sneaks it in with an interesting premise and since I’m a dirty commie anarchist I feel cheated and absolutely have to hate it. Spoilers after the jpgs.

Fight Club for Yuppies! It’s well made that’s for sure, and has a compelling conceit. Say we only use 20% of our brain normally… what if you could unlock the rest of it? What if rather than stammering and stuttering about people and events barely evident through the fog of limited memory, you could take a pill to lift that fog gaining eidetic abilities? What would you do?

Our protagonist writes a book and then decides, he’d rather make heaps of money on the stock-market and go into politics. Because that is the pinnacle of all achievement according to this movie, something to strive for. Our protagonist is not even presenting a new kind of politics… just the same shady capitalist wheeling and dealing that has lead to the absurd deficits currently burdening all of the “free” world. In fact the movie normalises the kind of selfish pursuit of capital by the relative handful in suggesting that the power-brokers are all on this mysterious NZT drug.

Performances are all pretty unobtrusive which helps push the greed is god (not a typo) manifesto. Bradley Cooper sells the high on power junkie like a memorial pin girl scout at a 9/11 anniversary. Just look at his eyes:

Meanwhile DeNiro’s character somnambulates through the movie indicating his drug of choice is a melatonin derivative. How he manages to keep his eyes open long enough to be some kind of Donald Trump big wig is no-ones guess. He doesn’t sell the character [period]

While a strange sentimental part of me is kinda happy when Australian actors get into Hollywood, Abbie Cornish has already sold her ability to shed clothes and look confused as an approximation of “deep” and we get a skeleton character approximating the cliche that women only want you if you are successful. Because like most mainstream movies, success is measured in getting laid and making money. Taking brain-enhancing drugs to achieve this goal is apparently OK, as long as they aren’t poor person drugs, and you can finance your own drug making company to work solely for you tailoring them specifically to your biochemistry.

What would I do? I’d be happy to have the brain-power to finish my PhD, pump out one decent music / video per week, read all my RSS feeds when they are relevant, keep the house clean and still be able to socialise and see all the performances, movies and art that I “totally need to check out”. Harrumph. Fight Club for Yuppies!

Field Recording Workshop#1

notes for my undergraduate workshop

Who am I?

My name is Lloyd Barrett. I have for over a decade composed and improvised sound art and audiovisual works.

A key element to my work is the use and manipulation of field recordings.

Recording location sounds in Newcastle, Australia as part of my Electrofringe 2007 collaboration with Paul Forbes Mitchell.

What is Field Recording?

The term “field recording” was originally used to refer to location ethnomusicology, a combination of anthropology and ethnography that included the recording for preservation of songs and dances from different cultures.

Frances Densmore and Alan Lomax are two noted Ethnomusicologists who respectively brought the recordings of Native Americans and early 19th Century blues and appalachian folk singers to popular attention. Without recordists like them it is unlikely we would be listening to “Rock ‘n Roll” today.

The use of “field recording” in modern parlance is often interchangeable with “phonography” – and refers to the use of microphones to record environmental sounds outside the studio confines.

Some Notable Field Recordists

Chris Watson is a recordist for the BBC Natural History unit as well as a composer and original member of Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio

Hildegarde Westerkamp is a German/Canadian electro-acoustic composer and founding member of the World Forum on Acoustic Ecology.

Aaron Ximm is a field recordist with a highly diverse collection of recordings including some excellent binaural travelogues.

Artists who frequently use field recordings in their work

BJ Nilsen / Hazard manipulates natural recordings into drones and electro-acoustic compositions. He has also worked with Chris Watson.

Lawrence English constructs compositions using field recordings and drones as well as curating work for his Room40 label that often features phonographic works.

Francisco Lopez is prolific in his release of compositions sourced originally from field recordings. He mixes his work live and will often require the audience to wear blindfolds in order that they better concentrate on the aural as opposed to the visual.

Wired Lab Adventure

In 2009 I was invited to The Wired Lab for a workshop with Chris Watson.

Wired Lab Adventure from Secret Killer Of Names on Vimeo.

Chris Watson talking at the Wired Lab 2009

Watson’s – 3 elements

Regardless of whether it is for a composed work for CD or a commissioned piece of foley, Chris Watson prioritises 3 elements for the sonic composition:

1. atmospheres – sounds of a place

2/3 mins
minimal dynamic range
keep at right amplitude for playback (usually very quiet)
good for layering on top of – it is the foundation
move the mics away to get a broader scope
omnidirectional x 2
process of composition starts with placement

2. habitats

for highly located sound – closer to the focus
more direct less reflective
bad for reverberent acoustic environs – better for outdoors
crossed xy or gun mic’s

3. featured sounds

specific moments
signal to ambient noise ratio is important
mobility required
gun good to ensure no handling noise

R. Murray Schafer

Watson’s 3 elements correlate nicely to the taxonomy for analysing acoustic environments outlined by R.Murray Schafer in his influential book “The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World”. This is a key text informing the Acoustic Ecology movement and the World Soundscape Project that included Barry Truax in it’s membership.

3 Components of the Soundscape

Keynote as a musical term refers to the key or tonality of a particular composition. In soundscape studies it refers to a ubiquitous and prevailing sound, usually in the background of the individual’s perception, to which all other sounds in the soundscape are related.
Signals, a term borrowed from communication theory, are foreground sounds, listened to consciously, often encoding certain messages or information.
Soundmarks, analogous to landmarks, are unique sound objects, specific to a certain place.

Listening

To understand the best approach to creating field recordings it is important to listen to some great examples and to the sounds of the environment around you. In both cases you need to find a comfortable safe space, close your eyes, breathe normally and focus on what you hear.

It is good to start with pure field recordings before you move to composed works. Pretty much anything by Chris Watson or Aaron Ximm is recommended as well as the original material from the World Soundscape Project.

How to make a field recording

The best gear can set you back thousands of dollars depending on how accurately you want to capture the environment. I’m listing what I think is of primary importance first.

1. a portable recording device

By portable it needs to have battery power as you will not be plugging into mains. I use a Zoom H4n but you could even consider using an iPhone or similar smart phone that has recording ability. Janek Schaefer posted a voice-activated dictaphone to himself to create the piece ‘Recorded Delivery’

2. microphones

A uni-directional boom or shotgun mic is important for getting the featured sounds or signals. Condensor microphones are more sensitive but require phantom power, though some have battery compartments built in.

An x/y stereo microphone pair can be used for habitat and locational sound. The quality and build of the microphones generally correlate to how sensitive they are and what radius of sound they will pick up.

Using a windscreen will be very important as condensor microphones are sensitive to vibration. For this reason the use of a shotgun attachment or tripod reduce handling noise.

3. headphones

Closed headphones are preferable but the main thing is that you need to be able to monitor sound with high gain from your recorder so that you can identify individual sounds more easily.

4. an interesting environment

Listen to your environment and try to identify keynote / signals / soundmarks or atmospheres / habitats / featured sounds. If this is difficult, you may have picked an environment that is sonically busy and will be a challenge to adequately record.

That’s pretty much it

There are a variety of different types of microphone and different approaches but once you have the basic gear it is up to you to capture and experiment. Don’t forget to copy the sounds from the portable recorder so you can manipulate them later.

In the next installment I will discuss different approaches to using this material you have recorded.

In the meantime if you need more advice check these links:

Beginners Guide to Field Recording

Phonography.org

Donut from another dimension

So I love both Twin Peaks and Donuts… although my taste is very specific… fresh, hot, cinnamon. I have however come across another interesting Donut though i’m not so sure that it will appeal to all of you.

So essentially this is an iPad multi-dimensional phrase looper modelled on an old IBM tape loop. It is explained in some detail here, but for those who want me to paraphrase… look at this…

Sounds are recorded in a linear form and then looped. They can also be stacked. The stacks can be looped through also.

Perhaps simple in theory but very complex in execution. I can’t get it to do more than make grainy fizzing noises at the moment, so i’m not going to suggest it is anywhere near as useful as the “Curtis” granular synth, also by The Strange Agency. But it is certainly nice that developers are using the form and function of the iPad in a way that allows for alternative performance tools.

pay what you like for dry mouth improv

Another album posted on bandcamp. You can play it in the widget to the right. This one is “pay what you like”.

So I’m going to over-complicate things by saying the origin of this work goes back a decade to when Joe and I shared a residence in Toowong. While I was working at The Record Market he was already a major collector of pawn shop vinyl and this would often colour our music making to the point that early Diaspora is quite often just him with a record player and a delay / me on a computer. It was only while hanging out with him a few months ago at his current abode that I realised the current level of his committment. So while he was mixing, sampling, repitch and manipulating vinyl on 4 turntables just for our aural pleasure I proposed that we jam with some of these sounds… ala Demdike Stare who I like despite their output being nothing special.

So we convene a session with me sampling his output to the Microsampler, jamming sounds together and recording the result to a Zoom H4N. This happens over a few sessions so not only do I have sample banks full of different material but sequenced jams to plunder as well. After each session I cull, export, edit, import, chop and represent. So this work has evolved over 4 or 5 jam sessions. I feel that this is ultimately a very satisfying way to produce electroacoustic improv and exploratory music that at very least appeals to me and maybe people who don’t mind the occasional bit of Nurse With Wound.

Hopefully we will be able to successfully reproduce it live aswe now have the technology to fire off complex soundscapes. However we just had a gig at Cafe Jugglers that pretty much started terrible and remained so for most of it’s duration. You know those gigs where you setup… everything is fine… then the room fills up… you start and … feedback! GAH! It makes the stop on a dime collage approach not so possible. SIGH. Still it’s nice to make music that is fun to play again

p.s. I have a few physical copies if anyone wants to trade.

New Words for Old Magick

The title of this post is also the title of my first “official” musical release as “Brainlego” back in the 90s. I choose to recall it as a time when musical experimentation was natural and joyful. We basked in a community that seemed to genuinely appreciate our strange noises. I’m starting to find and feel that joy again, though the community has long since splintered into pockets of activity where the musically active types have increasingly little relevance to my interests or my life (i.e. my kind of art is irrelevant to theirs) My self-doubt and reluctance to be the kind of outgoing pusher of my music that Lawrence (with plenty of respect) outlines in this post has meant that the kind of audience I might have built has long since disappeared. I haven’t even been particularly good at keeping up to date with my Soulseek pals… who provided me my first lot of international interest.

Despite a somewhat evaporated audience I still feel the need to create and my dwindling circle of cronies helped push me to completing “The Drowned City” which has so far made me $40. Not retiring any time soon and to prove i’m so not in it for the money i’ve also been working on some music for the N4rgh1l3 project and returned to collaboration with old friend Joe Musgrove. My motivation is returning. I think this is partly down to finding a comfortable instrument (The Korg Microsampler is very much doing it for me) and a great space to work in (I’ve set up my little office in the happy home with SL!) But also i’m breaking out of the mindset that I have to justify my existence by only ever posting or doing stuff that I can relate to my PhD (and subsequently doing a lot of nothing to avoid that eventuality) I found that mindset has led to me consuming more but producing less (and getting increasingly more anxious about the lack of progress, creating a vicious cycle of procrastination, avoidance, depression, anxiety etc…) Of course I’m lucky to be in the position i’m am in and I need to celebrate and make use of it… not just sigh about how much more work I have to do… how poorly organised and unmotivated I am…

I’ve decided a “a spring clean is in order” I am rebranding this site with my unweildy solo project name Secret Killer Of Names. I will still be a Performing Audiovisualist but I need to remember my origin as a performer is with music / sound art / noise. My initial contention was always that my interests in film and literature should lead me to expand my work in those areas. At the moment however I’m seeing a clear link between gigs where I play music AND video and have a horrible time VS gigs where I just make music and have actual fun. So maybe I need to be a little conscious of not attempting to reinvent the wheel… and not trying desperately to be a performative someone that I am not. My goal is to reclaim ownership of this blog, increase my post count beyond what I “should” be doing and share more across my interests. Though I would never claim to be as interesting or as witty as Ellard… his blog seriously highlights my attempts to communicate in web 2.0 as sheer play-acting. Bare with me… the makeover will happen over the next month or so.

Secret Killer of Names