Once upon a time Apple made great products, tools on the cutting edge of creativity. Not so much anymore. Today's iPhones are similar to those of yesterday, just faster with
better cameras. The laptops are dummying down and the iPad is slow to
catch up. Since the death of Steve Jobs, Tim Cook's direction Apple has begun to focus primarily on content and short term economic returns. In my opinion Apple's Content branch bullying users into using their streaming services while suppressing user content teeters on violations of antitrust law. I don't expect that this will change anytime soon, people will simply have to stop buying Apple products. The strong arm is exaggerated by iTunes and iCloud being the only authorized way to access and move the files on your phone. The Music app and iBooks on the basis of copyright protections have progressively limited access to files by trapping them in a closed "SandBox" system. It has always been difficult to migrate music off the remote device starting with the old iPods. Once the data was on the device it could not be removed with out a hack. Now Apple is making it impossible to get files onto the music player presumably to force users into using their streaming service. I don't want access to Apple radio or genius playlists curated from
their monolithic Record label buddies. I don't want to listen to their
prescribed commercial swill. If I wanted streaming, I would be paying Spotify to steal from musicians for me. Personally I record my own music. I want to take that music
and listen to it in a playlist while out and about test my files on different sound systems. Yes I want an aux output (headphone jack). Quit fixing things that were not broken. It's not a difficult
concept to grasp.
With the introduction of Files, Apple opened a door to a possible improvement by using iCloud made useful by purchasing a subscription for more space. The file management system should work through USB, its faster more secure... not going to happen. Apple's walled garden is becoming an amusement park. Multitracking music in GarageBand is primarily an invitation to purchase sample packages. Pay for your ticket, ride an ever more uniform and homogenized ride. The proffessional path is buy ProTools and a massive Waves library. Pay your slowly increasing subscription fee to Adobe Creative Cloud and get on with making high end studio quality productions with the prescribed tools, buy your ad space on Facebook so that your creation can be visible in the algorithm. Surely the only conflict arises from trying to beat the system. Individual success has no standing in the profits of the machine. You paid for admission to be creative. By using
the machine, the machine uses you. Downloading a bunch of
stuff not only will clutter things up but it increases the risk of
viruses and and what not. All paths open doors for
malicious code. Piracy isn’t what it used to be. Cracked software is becoming harder to find and so many apps are "free", but is
anything really free? Is anything risk free? Free steals your privacy sold to your ads. Using someone else's software means they own you. Big Companies prey on this. Monoliths of software steal and replicate lines of once
open
source code, compiling giant collections of tools the basic user may never get around to
using. The giant economic model of printing money, selling digital copies at top dollar or worse: Subscriptions. How many minds
contributed to the development of that technology built upon the creativity of the many who have come
before? Ethically shouldn't the creator be
rewarded for making something useful rather than the assimilation snowball of
marketing and gate keeping.
For this and many other reasons, we wish to know the back
doors. We do not wish to be used by the tools. We
seek the SDK. - and its all here:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation
Knowledge can convert a future of app consumerism and generic
AI rearrangement of cookie cut samples into your own profit and
freedom. The new craft advancing technology will be interfacing
multiple systems, utilizing strings of code like brushes in an
illustration app. Knowing is a matter of immersion, and of
having some one walk you through the process. The Open source programming multimedia
and arts community is a small
cult around the world. Hackers, musicians, animators, gamers, they are
those on the other side of the veil.
There is a world of Java shells for hacking the unfamiliar into open connection. Converting the hard storage 8 bit programming of a NES cartridge and Atari game controllers on a 64bit iPhone, MacOS, Windows, Android to GNU/Linux, UNIX, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Xbox, IP addresses, SSL, New neural pathways for porting the information to and from different
devices, comprehending components usage of libraries of code.
Single run functions, objects, arrays, storyboards, library locations, endless variations breaking all the way down to hexadecimal and binary machine code and eventually to electrons flowing through switches, potentiometers, microchips. The jargon itself is intimidating. A quantum physicist might argue that technology eventually becomes spiritual...or not. Soon we will need to interface with robots and automated cars. The future will become ever more modular for those in the know the rest will be consumers changing out devices every two years. The only question is how deep do you want to go into what the foundation is built upon?
The open source environment can be daunting
when considering what to download. To click or not to click. Navigating GitHub, using
Terminal, information overload. The Rabbit hole is endless. countless programming languages, a million flavors of
ice cream. I don’t for see myself building PC chips, but how deep
into the controls do you want to go. Is this a means or an end? Time
and daily effort is required, so much information to acquire, watching online tutorials, reading
documents as the technology keeps moving knowledge from under your feet. I started out wanting a simple looping delay on my phone and end up doing research on how to install a VirtualBox on my laptop to investigate Linux Kernel hacking...WTF. Keep asking: "If only I had this thing I would be able to create properly" if someone makes a reliable instance of that specific tool. What is
it worth? How do I acquire that one single simple tool. A string of code like a hammer. Besides getting around Apple's ridiculous controls, I wanted to make programs from laptop portable through the phone. I want to be able to build them for myself.
My initiation to multimedia programming was MAX/MSP/Jitter heavy. Max allows a
certain level of autonomy and a baseline for coding knowledge. It acts similar to Reactor or modular synths with a visual signal flow. Seeking ways to port Max projects into IOS I found the MobMuPlatform and PDParty which both run PD music files. PD is by Miller Puckett’s simplified and free version of MaxMSP. PD Vanilla is the most basic architecture.
http://puredata.info/
http://www.pd-tutorial.com/english/
Pdparty vs mobmuplat
MobMu by Daniel Iglesia requires you to build your user GUI interface with in the MobMu Editor.
It also appears that MobMu will actually let you you access a folder "On My iPhone"
http://danieliglesia.com/mobmuplat/doc/index.htm
PDParty
http://danomatika.com/code/pdparty/guide
PDParty seems ports the user interface directly from your PD Project.
Both methods utilize Libpd http://libpd.cc/ which allows porting of PD into mobile devices. This is a library you would want to put into your own swift projects if you were to get serious about making your own app. Rather than running your PD projects though a 3rd party app.
https://github.com/libpd/libpd/wiki/Working-with-libpd-in-Xcode
I had some familiarity with Xcode, but knew nothing of the
Swift IOS programming language. I had minimally experimented with object
oriented code with Supercolider, Javascript, C in Cocoa. HTML and CSS
gave some advantage but not much. So practically starting form scratch, I
started going through tutorials like Coding with Chris and The Swift
Guy.
TO BE CONTINUED...
in the meantime
https://thehelloworldprogram.com/
What Musicians Can Teach Us About Employment In A Digital World
It was 1998, the Internet came creeping into our lives like the first tendrils of creamer in a cup of coffee. The first round of CD burners had to be bought separately. They cost almost half as much as the computer itself with a strong possibility of installing an additional port to connect the giant serial cable. It wouldn't be more than 3 or 4 years before every computer came with a CD-R as a standard drive. Around that time Napster snuck in with file sharing technology utilizing MP3 compression. Piracy was no longer about the old tape dub paradigm of buying a cd and making copies for friends. Now you could just go find any new album posted up by someone on the other side of the country.
We had record/video stores back then and the harbinger of doom that would eventually put record stores out of business and loose havoc on the Record industry confronted you in tubes of 10, 50, and 150 CD-Rs on a shelf where top ten albums used to live. The big labels mustered all their collective strength and tried to put up a fight. DART already gave them a portion of the sales of blank media, but they went further suing websites and even consumers using the file sharing and piracy websites. It was way too late though, technology had drifted into Wild West territory. $14.99 could never compete with free.
In those days, Silicon Valley was quickly maneuvering the wild west of cyberspace into real world supremacy. The computer industry simply had more economic clout than the record industry. Freedom of speech warred with intellectual property. There was no game book on how to fight a data storm. When bandwidth started growing and the video industry became threatened by the same fate as the music industry piracy really met a slightly more prepared foe. The danger of malware being downloaded with the desired new movie or album contributed to that portion of the internet becoming a shady red light district. SOPA had its moment but collapsed under scrutiny of totalitarianism. Eventually legal disruption would siphon off the profits into software gatekeepers. One by one technology would beat out established institutions, Netflix would destroy Blockbuster and Spotify and YouTube would become primary means of media distribution. Streaming and On Demand would replace owning and rentals. Uber and Lyft came for the Taxi companies. AirBnB came for the hotel industry. Amazon came for brick and mortar retail. It won't be long before all incomes are effected by this blossoming Technological Revolution, that's the world we live in now.
So how do we survive?
Musicians, even in the glory days were at the bottom of the food chain. The creators of the content so deeply craved were consistently beholding record labels who took as little as 50% of all revenue, after recouped costs for advances on recording, touring and promoting. As now, few rose to the top and made fortunes. The industry funneled investment into "sure shots" leading gradually to more generic than the generic that came before. Quality of creation suffered for economics, taste factored less and less as businessmen discovered the population would consume whatever they doled out. Minimum investment maximum gain.
The Internet at the turn of the millennium held a momentary promise of democratizing the industry, returning power to creators by tearing down the infrastructure between creators and consumers. Little did we know what that meant, but we all made our MySpace pages and bought into the new paradigm. We were the forefront of the "indie" revolution, directly accessing and selling to our fans like never before.
The modern musician cannot consider creating music their sole occupation. The artist needs now be an entrepreneur, a marketing expert, a booking agent, a tour and business manager, a publisher, a lawyer, a graphic designer, a highly connected networker, etc. etc. Oh, and you also need a day job. Fortunately most of this new "workload" can be done from a smart phone. Simultaneously, technology also simplified actual creation, enabling common to achieve standard quality with little or no effort. The market floods, the commodity of music suffers a sort of inflation despite being consumed more than ever before, and the value of the consumable drops dramatically...Yet fortunes are to be made by offering access.
So a shift occured in the nature of the artist. They continue creating, no longer expecting any real recompense in the here and now. However, the greatest tragedy the artist can imagine is going through the struggle and loving effort of creating a masterpiece no one will ever see, and a new niche of visibility middlemen was born. Those offering access to consumers convinced the content creators that sharing everything for free rewards the commodity of exposure (potentially with a someday payout). Every kid with GarageBand is giving away their tracks on ReverbNation while BFA Composers lurk in forums like beggars seeking an unpaid gigs to build a portfolio, and if you wiggle your ears right while touching your nose with your elbow you can get your stuff on internet radio or Spotify. Opportunistic Business Sharks circle picking at the edges. Music libraries accept submissions and take 50% for royalty free placement. Networking gatekeepers commodify connections. Pay to post "seeking", pay to respond. We fall under the spell of "Market through Facebook, build up a following..." Pay for some ads or risk invisibility. Use the tools and platforms and networking sites. Play friendly. Schmooze a little. Email influencers, like their feeds. Get a shout out from a blog. See a bump in new commodity of likes. Pour more hours into the marketing struggle.
Somehow the system, like a great alchemist, turned creativity into a form of consumerism.
If the goal was to make a living doing what we love, how did we end up convinced that doing something else would open the doors to getting rich off of our dreams? It was madness focusing on results instead of process. Putting promotion over the craft, leaning ladders against wrong walls and wondering why results aren't forthcoming. We called the new pursuit branding and identity. It's what the stars were doing. All the Success Blogs said it was imperative to breaking through the noise and being noticed. They sold the desire to be perceived into an outer ideal, rather than leveraging our personal truth, we lost sight of the path. To have all those hours back, to instead perfect something hidden but unmistakably genius.
Time unlocks purpose when faced with giving up childhood idolizations and moving on or choosing to carry our efforts into an uncertain future. Every year that passes you must make a decision to continue. The source of resiliency is passion. The journey is the destination. Everything needed to know could be found in practice. Slowing down through a difficult passage. Persistence to build strength and speed. Coordination and altering approach. Internalizing and assimilating. Learning the rules to break them. Baby steps towards greatness. The practice improves the whole person. The pursuit was a spiritual one, meditations in motion, one step cleaner, faster, stronger, longer. To find joy by disappearing in the effort.
And that is when you get the reward...
So how does all of this relate to a coal miner?
I don't think of coal mining as an emotionally rewarding task. Not particularly good for the environment either. Coal miners are, however, losing their lucrative jobs like musicians did thanks to changing technology. Like musicians they are in need of day jobs. Gainful employment.
I don't think of coal mining as an emotionally rewarding task. Not particularly good for the environment either. Coal miners are, however, losing their lucrative jobs like musicians did thanks to changing technology. Like musicians they are in need of day jobs. Gainful employment.
What followed originally was a diatribe against the failings of late capitalism and a romantic exploration of a utopian future. This derailed into a whole new post. To be read...
Instead I'll conclude with the original design intact. What musicians have to teach us about
employment in a digital age is:
On occasion you may have to do some menial shit you don't want to do in order to finance the life you accept living. It may seem beneath you but if it keeps you fed, with a roof over your head you can survive enough to side hustle a true ambition. Start planting the seeds today and water them every chance you get.
Constantly seek personal improvement with persistence and focus. A siren song of media and marketing seeks to convert your efforts into their profits. Don't fall for it. Pursue your goal diligently. Find interest in the cloud surrounding your path and grow from where you are. Become the best at what you want to be, if you are not that then the propping up will blow down in the first wind. Change is inevitable, the skills of today will become obsolete tomorrow. If you are not climbing you are sliding down hill. A good investor will tell you to diversify... the same goes for skills and talents. Never stop learning.
Constantly seek personal improvement with persistence and focus. A siren song of media and marketing seeks to convert your efforts into their profits. Don't fall for it. Pursue your goal diligently. Find interest in the cloud surrounding your path and grow from where you are. Become the best at what you want to be, if you are not that then the propping up will blow down in the first wind. Change is inevitable, the skills of today will become obsolete tomorrow. If you are not climbing you are sliding down hill. A good investor will tell you to diversify... the same goes for skills and talents. Never stop learning.
Musings On Old Art
Old art and the acquisition of new skills leaves one to wonder whether or not they should go "George Lucas" on old projects and revitalize them or let them go and move on to the next creation, pushing forward once again into uncharted territory. A third option exists which is destroy it and never ever let it be seen. Ever.
The great fear is perpetual turd polishing, that yesterdays little baby was in fact a giant useless piece of shit that needs flushing. The great waste is hoarding work expecting that some day its inherent value will increase like wine in a cask.
One might consider art an exercise to develop self, but if the past is just training for that which is to come then should the fruit of that labor be disposable or hidden like a dirty secret. Art created in a vacuum might serve some cathartic purpose of time passage but will doubtful bring the outcome of self expression the artist needs. Art by its nature demands a sacrificial victim to experience the creation. Its reward center craves the notice of another for the price of sharing. Value allotted to art lies solely with the beholder. Take a look at the works of Basquiat for example: childish, simple, however lauded and applauded, held in high esteem by collectors, highly priced. What is it that sets these works apart? Certainly we are somewhat attracted to the lives of these artists, elevating value with the use of celebrity and hype. Ideally the childish free playing artist presented to the masses will die young leaving the collectors to hype and create inflated value for the now obligation free investment. The value of abstraction will always be questionable, and most of the time a name is all that matters...I digress.
I think I'm presenting a case for outsider music, the schizophrenic on a Casio keyboard. They are found on the street their dedication brings them to the attention of at least a select few who herald it as innovative and original. Its existence goes against everything the mainstream wishes to cram down our collective throats.
This does not serve the evolving artist seeking technical mastery behind creativity. I venture to say that the artist in pursuit of this virtuoso goal will never be able to achieve it because the horizon of quality will always be over the next mountain. It seems such a waste that those early mountains should be lost. Thus reiterating whether or not one should go back to early works to "fix" them with quality and skills acquired in later life.
I seem to be on the fence about this issue because I would rather move on and create something new than spend my time re-examining and repairing my past. Yet I am reluctant to let go even of things that now serve only as embarrassing milestones. Occasionally I think that kid as stupid and naive as he was had some decent ideas. Most of those thoughts were incomplete and crippled from inception. They laid dormant on hard drives for years. Stealing precious gigabytes and waiting to be nurtured from inadequacy into a state of sharability. Growth and life experience leads us away from that place and now as a completely different person it seems pointless to have these immature ideas lingering around and taking up space. By Beiber standards they could have been great, but who is holding them self to Bieber standards. That silliness needs be delivered by a 15-23 year old like the one that wrote it. That silliness needs someone like the grown up I am now make it good. That moment has passed, I am different, the culture is different, and going back to reshape my little gremlin babies seems wrong but necessary if I was to proudly present them to the light of day.
These works I have snuck into being invisibly available to the scrutiny of the public eye. The cost is seeking them, which turns out is a lofty price to pay. I create some new name for an old thing and banish it to exile in some dark corner of the web, mostly to keep them from dying, or at least tell myself I didn't kill them. When these works were made there was no YouTube or Bandcamp, or ReverbNation. MySpace was the start of all that, and even that was late to the party. So the works have served no purpose in exposure. Instead it's me that now needs to shine a light on these blighted creations. I want them to go be their own thing. Their connection to my name leads me to prefer that they fit the personal brand I now seek to maintain, but instead they represent a kid I once was. I love them for that but they exist as reminders that that kid wasn't good enough.
In today's society who we are and what we show are expected to be two separate things. The past that helped arrive somewhere is not so important as where the public eye sees and recognizes our current position.
Ideally that current position would be above the herd so that they might look up in adoration and respect or envy and loathing... As long as they are looking.
The great fault lies in not putting each thing out as it comes. YouTube is littered with kids posting amateur videos, some of these videos launch careers and pave the way to work with talents that compensate and elevate the artists brand allowing their genius to shine down upon the masses. In the new world of "Content Is King", quality may not be as important as it once was. Polished can come across as fake, amateur can come across as genuine.
Perhaps our evolution can be an inspiration to help another start challenging them self. Perhaps improving our old art can help us develop new skills or help us touch back on a commercial sensibility rejected along the way. All I know is if I stop creating, I might as well be dead. The stuff I'm making now I'm pretty happy with. 5 years from now I'll probably feel like it's garbage, and that's ok because that means I'm getting better.
The Cooky Creativity of OddBlossom
Strippers, insects, and zombie dogs mashed in
old time film against a back drop of experimental pop await those brave enough to face garbage dump wonderlands of collected media scrambled and reassembled
under monochrome names like Pop Poubelism.
Drinking on the Job is no good for any performer but sometimes, just sometimes, it works out for the audience.
Armed with the artistic vision and commercial aspirations of Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, Bram Urban set his sights on making a statement on the disposibility of popular music. Fueled by the Outsider Music notion of finding perfection in imperfection OddBlossom achieves the state of songwriting rawness lost in the blasé standards of modern plastic production techniques, Bram Urban's post contemporary sound is born of what the french labeled as " Poubellisme". The junk art aesthetic manifests itself through out his works as Bram Urban destroys multi tracks after early development preventing revision or the endless polishing of trite origins. By releasing the first creation and making a decision not to censor the muse, Bram Urban thins the barriers between Composition and Improvisation. Instead the artist turns to a perpetual reuse of a vast collection of old material, remixing again and again recordings, remixes, previous creations in cycles until out of chaos and assembly a natural shape emerges. Thus Bram Urban serves as the mirror on celebrity and narcissist culture while maintaining a sound that its completely distinctive.
Some time around 2006 an
adventure of growing pains was undertaken and attributed to a childish
alter ego, Bram Urban. OddBlossom became a public archive of audio works discarded in inevitable growth and way past their
expiration date. Eventually explorations
in video led back to old musical exploration and once again the child has room
to play once again.
Cinema City by OddBlossom
2012 album "4 CM Off Reality. "
production by LogicalCurl.
Drinking on the Job is no good for any performer but sometimes, just sometimes, it works out for the audience.
DaRk CiTy DaZe by OddBlossom.
"4 CM Off Reality"
"4 CM Off Reality"
Video Edited from Dance Of Life
by LogicalCurl.
Armed with the artistic vision and commercial aspirations of Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, Bram Urban set his sights on making a statement on the disposibility of popular music. Fueled by the Outsider Music notion of finding perfection in imperfection OddBlossom achieves the state of songwriting rawness lost in the blasé standards of modern plastic production techniques, Bram Urban's post contemporary sound is born of what the french labeled as " Poubellisme". The junk art aesthetic manifests itself through out his works as Bram Urban destroys multi tracks after early development preventing revision or the endless polishing of trite origins. By releasing the first creation and making a decision not to censor the muse, Bram Urban thins the barriers between Composition and Improvisation. Instead the artist turns to a perpetual reuse of a vast collection of old material, remixing again and again recordings, remixes, previous creations in cycles until out of chaos and assembly a natural shape emerges. Thus Bram Urban serves as the mirror on celebrity and narcissist culture while maintaining a sound that its completely distinctive.
Blanton's Greatest Hits!
In the process of overhauling multiple websites for compatibility with Mobile devices, I've spent the last two days, and all my background processing, pooling together samples from my disparate audio projects, making in essence a "Greatest Hits" record. It's a little western(Mesquite Treason), a little technopop(OddBlossom), a little ambient(SynaFleur), A little noisy(Mouth of Ash), a little cutesy(kinda sorta like me). You can listen or download it here. I call it "Nature Of Being."
Autoharp Etude
This flash from the past returns to days of The Flora Studio for a behind the scenes look at the madness behind Etudes In Construction Of Timbre.
A Demonstration of Electro-Acoustic Digital Concréte
More Flashbacks to the Flora studio, this time for a demonstration and documentation of a recent change in the ImprovMachina version who knows what. It is a view of part of my process, program a little, play a little, the only thing missing is the edit a little. So here you get raw and untapped from The Flora Studio circa 2013.
An Art Film To Accompany Cheyenne by Mesquite Treason
Using a telescope and a handycam I've created an abstract documenting of
the Joshua Tree Studio and the stick art I'm building on the side.
This is a Return to Etudes In Construction Of Timbre, The second album Released as Mesquite Treason.
the Joshua Tree Studio and the stick art I'm building on the side.
This is a Return to Etudes In Construction Of Timbre, The second album Released as Mesquite Treason.
Desert Wanderings with Peyote, Windmills, and Lobo
This is a short abstract video cut to a very old track off of my first official album.
"Dream Travel" was originally released as Kyle Blanton Ross in 2009 and has recently fallen under the SynaFleur categorization. The footage was shot on an iPhone shortly after my migration out to the desert. Wait for the ending and you can get up close and personal with the desert's favorite dog, Lobo Borealis.
My New Backyard
Joshua Tree has long been one of my favorite places on earth. I now have the pleasure of calling it home.
Avant-Americana's Native Leanings
Mesquite Treason is my solo side project most closely relating to my collaborative efforts in Tears of the Moosechaser. Beyond searching for Pioneering Techniques in the acoustic world of folk music, this project also plays heavily on my electronic and noise background.
I have drawn from a number of sources, from Scandinavian Folk, Irish folk to Tuvan throat singing, and the pulsing trance world of the Navajo nation distorted by drifting in and out of range as you drive across the Mojave Desert late at night. I have also leaned close to Harry Partch in the construction of my own instruments both acoustic and electronic, though I primarily use the electronics for the manipulation of acoustic sound.
Ride that Raven is so far one of the most commercial pieces I have released under the moniker Mesquite Treason, and I have yet to find it suitable companions to accompany the track on the Album "Shadows Of The Wind". So it currently exists as a stand alone.
I cut the video using archive footage from D.W. Griffith's "Battle of Elderbush Gulch" against footage I shot out by Joshua Tree and Processed using Jitter. In my version though, the natives win.
Whether representative of the whole or not, Ride That Raven Flies as Mesquite Treason's flag for the masses. Enjoy.
I have drawn from a number of sources, from Scandinavian Folk, Irish folk to Tuvan throat singing, and the pulsing trance world of the Navajo nation distorted by drifting in and out of range as you drive across the Mojave Desert late at night. I have also leaned close to Harry Partch in the construction of my own instruments both acoustic and electronic, though I primarily use the electronics for the manipulation of acoustic sound.
Ride that Raven is so far one of the most commercial pieces I have released under the moniker Mesquite Treason, and I have yet to find it suitable companions to accompany the track on the Album "Shadows Of The Wind". So it currently exists as a stand alone.
I cut the video using archive footage from D.W. Griffith's "Battle of Elderbush Gulch" against footage I shot out by Joshua Tree and Processed using Jitter. In my version though, the natives win.
Whether representative of the whole or not, Ride That Raven Flies as Mesquite Treason's flag for the masses. Enjoy.
EQ Suggestions
BY FREQUENCY
50Hz
1. Increase to add more fullness to lowest frequency instruments like foot, toms, and the bass.
2. Reduce to decrease the "boom" of the bass and will increase overtones and the recognition of bass line in the mix. This is most often used on loud bass lines like rock.
100Hz
1. Increase to add a harder bass sound to lowest frequency instruments.
2. Increase to add fullness to guitars, snare.
3. Increase to add warmth to piano and horns.
4. Reduce to remove boom on guitars & increase clarity.
200Hz
1. Increase to add fullness to vocals.
2. Increase to add fullness to snare and guitar ( harder sound ).
3. Reduce to decrease muddiness of vocals or mid-range instruments.
4. Reduce to decrease gong sound of cymbals.
400Hz
1. Increase to add clarity to bass lines especially when speakers are at low volume.
2. Reduce to decrease "cardboard" sound of lower drums (foot and toms).
3. Reduce to decrease ambiance on cymbals.
800Hz
1. Increase for clarity and "punch" of bass.
2. Reduce to remove "cheap" sound of guitars.
1.5KHz
1. Increase for "clarity" and "pluck" of bass.
2. Reduce to remove dullness of guitars.
3KHz
1. Increase for more "pluck" of bass.
2. Increase for more attack of electric / acoustic guitar.
3. Increase for more attack on low piano parts.
4. Increase for more clarity / hardness on voice.
5. Reduce to increase breathy, soft sound on background vocals.
6. Reduce to disguise out-of-tune vocals / guitars.
5KHz
1. Increase for vocal presence.
2. Increase low frequency drum attack ( foot / toms).
3. Increase for more "finger sound" on bass.
4. Increase attack of piano, acoustic guitar and brightness on guitars (especially rock guitars).
5. Reduce to make background parts more distant.
6. Reduce to soften "thin" guitar.
7KHz
1. Increase to add attack on low frequency drums ( more metallic sound ).
2. Increase to add attack to percussion instruments.
3. Increase on dull singer.
4. Increase for more "finger sound" on acoustic bass.
5. Reduce to decrease "s" sound on singers.
6. Increase to add sharpness to synthesizers, rock guitars, acoustic guitar and piano.
10KHz
1. Increase to brighten vocals.
2. Increase for "light brightness" in acoustic guitar and piano.
3. Increase for hardness on cymbals.
4. Reduce to decrease "s" sound on singers.
15KHz
1. Increase to brighten vocals (breath sound).
2. Increase to brighten cymbals, string instruments and flutes.
3. Increase to make sampled synthesizer sound more real.
By Instrument:
Drums
Kick
40 to 60 Hz - Bottom: The tone of the reverberation in the shell, sometimes too rumbly, can be undefined/indeterminate depending on the mic'ing/speakers
60 to 100 Hz - Thump: The "punch you in the chest" range of the kick
100 to 200 Hz - Body: This is the "meat," if you will, of the kick sound
200 to 2,000 Hz - Ring/Hollowness: Wide open bandwidth for ringing and muddy kick sounds. Happy hunting.
2,000 to 4,000 Hz - Beater Attack: This is the range to look for the "thwack" sound of the beater, critical for getting that "basketball bouncing" kick sound.
Snare
200 to 400 Hz - Body/Bottom: The central fundamental of most snares
400 to 800 Hz - Ring: The hollow "ring" in snare tone is oft unwanted but it may give life in the mix
2,000 to 4,000 Hz - Attack: stick on head "crack" often found around 8,000 Hz (Sizzle and Snap). The overtone sound of the snares themselves can be accented or dampened around this point. Gates/Compressors, Comb Filtering? Toms
100 to 300 Hz - Body: Tuning Matters... controls variations between "boom" and "cardboard box"
3,000 to 4,000 Hz - Attack: Crack, stick on the head...
Cymbals
200 to 300 Hz - Clank: Here's where, especially on your hi-hats, the "chink" sound of the cymbal lives.
6,000 Hz and up - Sizzle: This range is where the "tssssssss" part of the cymbals can be brightened up to add some more life and "air" to a cymbal wash, or bleeding from the ears
Synth "Kick"
If someone went to the trouble of synthesizing it, they probably like the way it sounded. Don't mess with it.
Bass
I think of Kick and Bass as one unit dancing with one another. High passing everything else to make these dominate... May be a good idea, maybe not.
40 to 80 Hz - Bottom resonances
80 to 200 Hz - Fundamentals: The primary fundamental of the bass. Right around
180 to 200 Hz is where you can try to cut in on a bass that is too "boomy" to clean it up while preserving fundamentals
200 to 600 Hz - Overtones: These are the upper harmonics of most bass tones, depending on the sound you're interested in. If you're having trouble getting a bass to cut through in a mix, especially a low-end heavy one or one that's getting played back on smaller speakers, this can be where to look
300 to 500 Hz - Wood: Particularly in upright basses, it's that distinctive, woody bark
800 to 1,600k Hz - Bite: The growl and attack of most basses can be either emphasized or toned down around here
2,000 to 5,000 Hz - String noise: Pretty straightforward here, I think
Guitar
Acoustic
120 to 200 Hz - Boom/Body: This is where you'll find most of the explosive low end on a mic'd acoustic that tends to feedback in the live world or be disruptive in the studio. A little bit here adds warmth and fullness on a solo performance, but in a dense band mix, it's probably better to get it out of the way
200 to 400 Hz - Thickness/Wood: Core"body" of most acoustic tones. Too many cuts here, and you're going to lose the life.
2,000 Hz - Definition/Harshness: This double-edged sword band will give the definition to the acoustic tone to hear intricacies in chords and picking, but too much will make it harsh and aggressive
7,000 Hz - Air/Sparkle: A touch, and I mean a touch, of a shelf boost here can help open up an acoustic sound acoustic pickups (piezo) are a wild card. Huge cuts are completely normal. Season to taste.
Electric
Be Gentle that tone is often carefully chosen
80 to 90 Hz and below - Mud: High pass it. Nothing useful down there.
150 to 200 Hz - Thickness: "guts" of a guitar normally come from, but can quickly cloud a mix. Use sparingly, perhaps automate to beef up a solo and tuck it away when everything else comes in.
300 to 1,000 Hz - Life: I call this the "life" of the electric, as many of the things that make an electric sound like an electric live in this range. So attenuating needs to be taken into consideration carefully. Too much though, and you start fighting with your snare and things like that, so take note.
1,000 to 2,000 Hz - Honk: This is where honky and harsh characteristics can usually be smoothed out with a wide cut centered somewhere in this range.
3,000 to 8,000 Hz - Brilliance and Presence: shimmer and mix cut through when boosted. It can be cut to keep a guitar from conflicting with a vocal overtones. Boosts in this range may cause noise from distortion/effects pedals.
Piano
Mic technique is everything: Strings (low, high) hammers, resonator, close, distant... because it covers almost the entire range of perceivable sound you might need to dip it in places to make room for other things. Particularly human voice.
100 to 200 Hz - Boom: This can be a great place to add a little warmth to a solo piano in a studio environment, but more often than not will be the first place to cut some of the girth in a piano in a mix or help reduce feedback potential in a live situation
3,000 Hz and above - Presence: Adding a little "air" here can be great to brighten up a dark piano tone, depending on mic placement. Be careful not to bring out the noise of dampers on strings (particularly in the
3,000 to 5,000 Hz range), as this can quickly become distracting and jarring
If we're dealing with a real electric piano over a sample, things can be very situational as amp, mic'ing, and condition of the instrument itself can play such a huge role
100 to 200 Hz - Boom: As with its acoustic counterpart, the low end can go from lush to overgrown Jurassic underbrush quickly. Particularly with the rich, dense harmonics of something like a Rhodes, cutting "mud" is usually your first order of business
800 to 1,000 Hz - Bark: Managing the "bark" and damper noise can sometimes be an issue, but if things are cutting through too much, odds are it's somewhere in this range
Organ (B3)
good mic placement and drawbar settings. EQ should be applied only as a corrective measure. Look for clashing with the bass (80 to 180 Hz), if it's feeling a "chubby" in the middle or fit with other mid-heavy instruments or guitars, make cuts somewhere between 300 to 500 Hz.
Synths
This tone was a choice… Little more to do but make it fit in the mix.
400 to 600 Hz - Thickness: Many synth sounds can get kind of muddy in this range and mess with the clarity of the sound itself, especially when you start layering multiple synths. Searching somewhere in this range is a good place to start.
1,000 to 2,000 Hz - Cut/Bite: This is where you can usually find the attributes of a synth patch that are going to help it poke through the mix. Cut here to help tuck something back and out of the way, from guitars to vocals.
3,000 to 4,000 Hz - Presence/Clarity: Also like voice and guitar, this range helps add excitement to a sound. possible pain point.
Horns
Saxes
300 to 400 Hz - Honk/Woof: This somewhat depends on what type of sax we're dealing with, soprano to baritone. As we go lower, this point is also going to move lower.
1,000 to 2,000 Hz - Squawk: Again, the type of sax itself may cause this point to float a little more, but you can cut the "parrot on a 'roid-rage bender" tendency of some instruments here.
6,000 Hz - Reed noise: As saxes generate sound from a thin piece of wood vibrating in an air stream, there's a noise that sometimes accompanies this. Right around this point is where to start looking for that vibration.
Brass
100 to 200 Hz - Boom/Mud: particularly trombone, non- compete clause with bass and rhythm section. Getting it out of the way is usually best, as this range will serve little except to cloud most mixes.
4,000 to 10,000 Hz - Brightness: This top end can brighten up a dark horn section. However, trumpets can nearly take someone's head off in this range with a good blat, so managing this band is key here
Vocal
Male voices, though typically lower than female, have more complex overtone structures, meaning that at least equal attention needs to be paid to the high end of a male vocal as a female.
100 Hz and below - Rumble: For most vocals, all you'll find down here is mic-handling noise, stage/floor vibrations, air conditioners, etc. Get rid of it.
200 Hz - Boom: This frequency is usually where you'll find the "head cold" sound. The female voice may run a little higher, but this is the ballpark. Anyone with allergies or sinus issues knows exactly what I'm talking about.
800 to 1,000 Hz - Word Clarity/Nasality: Not enough and intelligibility of some lyrics may be unintelligible, too much and you get the teacher from Peanuts
3,000 Hz- Presence/Excitement: This is right around the point that tends to add some energy, or some "buzz" to a vocal. Not enough, and the vocal may sound deflated, flat, and dull. Too much, and your listener will feel like he or she is getting poked in the ear canal with a chopstick every time the vocalist opens his or her mouth.
4,000 to 8,000 Hz - Sizzle/Sibilants: Typically this is the range a de-esser is handling. If your vocalist sounds like meat hitting a hot pan at the end of any word ending in "s" or a similar sound, this is where to hunt
10,000 Hz and up - Air: Want to "open up" your vocal a little? Apply a light shelf boost around here and that should do it. This is not always necessary, though, and simply adding "air" for the sake of it can make things harsh, brittle, and introduce noise to the sound
Basketball With Animals
Making animations with Dave Quion is one of my most rewarding undertakings. The following has pretty much been our routine since we were Suite mates at CalArts and worked on our first short "Lobster Shmobster" together.
Day 1.
He comes to me with some absurd script and we spend hours in my studio recording voice overs and Improvising around the theme, laughing at our own silliness.
2 Months later.
I get the animatic and seeing the characters shape and form start to lump together a sonic landscape.
8 Months Later.
Receive Dave's meticulous one man hand drawn animations and starting cutting in sound effects. The overall process and collaborative element of our projects together is truly one of the most rewarding working relationships I have.
The fruit of that love and labor has resulted in one of our most polished and sleek shorts to date. "Duckhammer and Beavkid Get Buckets", Is the story of two roommates, a slacker Duck, and an average Beaver. In their Universe all problems are solved with Basketball. In this first Episode Duckhammer Learns how to dunk and Beavkid coerces him into face off against Rhino and Iguana for a futon.
Dave's rendering of 2D into 3D camera moves is particularly of note. We intend to continue this as a web series, or get a deal with one of the networks. If you like it, help spread it around. We are all grassroots here, doing this Independently as a labor of love. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Day 1.
He comes to me with some absurd script and we spend hours in my studio recording voice overs and Improvising around the theme, laughing at our own silliness.
2 Months later.
I get the animatic and seeing the characters shape and form start to lump together a sonic landscape.
8 Months Later.
Receive Dave's meticulous one man hand drawn animations and starting cutting in sound effects. The overall process and collaborative element of our projects together is truly one of the most rewarding working relationships I have.
The fruit of that love and labor has resulted in one of our most polished and sleek shorts to date. "Duckhammer and Beavkid Get Buckets", Is the story of two roommates, a slacker Duck, and an average Beaver. In their Universe all problems are solved with Basketball. In this first Episode Duckhammer Learns how to dunk and Beavkid coerces him into face off against Rhino and Iguana for a futon.
Dave's rendering of 2D into 3D camera moves is particularly of note. We intend to continue this as a web series, or get a deal with one of the networks. If you like it, help spread it around. We are all grassroots here, doing this Independently as a labor of love. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Song of the Open Road - Walt Whitman
82. Song of the Open Road
by Walt Whitman
1
AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)
by Walt Whitman
1
AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)
Mesquite Treason Releases Etudes In Construction Of Timbre
Etudes in Construction of Timbre is a study in layering recordings of
building and experimenting with a series of new instruments, including a
guitar turned cello, aluminum pipes turned chimes and bowed children's
toys and a microtonically tuned Autoharp.
The Bluebird - Charles Bukowski
The Bluebird
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that he's in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess me up?
you want to screw up the works?
you want to blow my book sales in Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him die
and we sleep together like that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man weep, but I don't weep,
do you?
Charles Bukowski
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that he's in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess me up?
you want to screw up the works?
you want to blow my book sales in Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him die
and we sleep together like that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man weep, but I don't weep,
do you?
Charles Bukowski
Tears of the Moosechaser - Pioneering Spirit For the Future of Country Music
Cried the voice in the wilderness.
Tears of the Moosechaser has embraced the Wild West fiber of anarchy in Outlaw Country lost in the days since country turned sterile and cross pollinated it with the chaos propelling 20th Century Classical, Free Jazz and Industrial Music for the last 50 years. They define themselves as Avant-Americana. It is not clear whether they are trying to salvage or obliterate the splinters of country western music, but It is nice to see a group of classically trained musicians knock at the door of something so home grown. It holds no irony that a band like this would form in the west. Los Angeles has been budding for some time now with both alternative country and experimental. TotM holds a cast covering a huge demographic of the US. The primary songwriters Blanton Ross and Antony DiGenarro hail from Texas and Connecticut. Other members of the band bring with them the character of Kentucky, Alaska, California, and Missouri. They also have a token German, Ulrich Krieger who holds some notoriety playing with Lou Reed, and his Metal Machine Music trio.
For Country music with a modern blending old with something forward thinking here are a few videos From their debut album "Songs for a Sinister Woman" to introduce Tears of the Moosechaser
Because of the last 14 years of country artists with bleached or high lit hair playing disney type pop songs, it was only matter of time before the creative youth began to rebel and return to roots. Which means, if you are looking for a better type of country music, the kind that hearkens back to the good old days, modern reproductions of olden style are popping up across the Great States and even being imported from the outside. Less common, however, is the forwarding of the genre especially in radical new ways. In some parallel universe, County evolved naturally from the 60s picking
up along the way a portion of what Coltrane contributed to Free Jazz and dabbling in the forward thinking of the British Invasion groups like Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd's influence on
America's popular rock, eventually allowing rock to step away from
itself and bring something like Radiohead into the mainstream creating something all together new. Country
Western Roots music now offers the intellectual and yet approachable Tears of the Moosechaser.
Tears of the Moosechaser has embraced the Wild West fiber of anarchy in Outlaw Country lost in the days since country turned sterile and cross pollinated it with the chaos propelling 20th Century Classical, Free Jazz and Industrial Music for the last 50 years. They define themselves as Avant-Americana. It is not clear whether they are trying to salvage or obliterate the splinters of country western music, but It is nice to see a group of classically trained musicians knock at the door of something so home grown. It holds no irony that a band like this would form in the west. Los Angeles has been budding for some time now with both alternative country and experimental. TotM holds a cast covering a huge demographic of the US. The primary songwriters Blanton Ross and Antony DiGenarro hail from Texas and Connecticut. Other members of the band bring with them the character of Kentucky, Alaska, California, and Missouri. They also have a token German, Ulrich Krieger who holds some notoriety playing with Lou Reed, and his Metal Machine Music trio.
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for more see:
Orion Variations on Circ5 Glitch
I have been on an all acoustic tangent for the last little while. Partially due to Tears of the Moosechaser and partially due to a failing Macintosh Powerbook G4. The G4 has been replaced by an all new Macbook monster which has meant all new software or at least all those updates I couldn't get because of antiquity of my tools. I usually hold to the idea that tools are just a means to an end and it is the user that creates but I am not going to lie the toys really open up new doors.
So here is a little experiment with Max6 which has completely swallowed MSP and Jitter into one behemoth which after using a while has become quite a delightful change from the old version.
The idea was to create a custom controller using the Circle of Fifths. Of course it was inevitable to build an autopilot to play it with and the first and easiest was random chord and scale variations of the chord playing into perpetuity.
I used an object called urn to hold all the possible keys major and minor (24 total) and output them randomly with out repeating. Using the same object I built a melody engine to play notes of the scale selected. Some kind of autonomous 12 tone cycling music that is not 12 tone at all rather 24 tone. I had to cut out 7th notes because they made the transitions from chord to cord funny about half the time.
Basically all the program outputs is midi information. I connected it to a synth for a sound source like Bladerunner or some other Vangelis 1980s sci-fi movie so thus the name. The bug in the code though is the really interesting part, If Miles Davis says there are no mistakes in music just happy accidents this is definitely no exception. I haven't yet figured out what causes the notes to stick but it is in the MIDI send out to the synthesizer somewhere. Irrelevant to the chord playing or how long the cycle goes on.
Funny thing though was my computers almost aware willingness to play along I have the screen saver set to dictionary(considering myself the occasional wordsmith) and the computer went to sleep while I was filming the patch with my phone. Just after I got up to deal with the glitch. The word it chose was:
INJUNCTION
Happy to have this captured pretty much makes an entire conceptual performance piece out of an experiment.
Whale and Bird Song - The Biological Music of Sea and Air
The social ties of whales are strangely similar to those of a community of humans. Humpback whales continuously migrate thousands of kilometers throughout their life times back and forth, north in the summer for food and ever south towards the equator in the winter where they breed. They accompany their journey by singing elaborate group improvisations that actually seem to be the same songs over and over. The songs are usually 5 to 35 minutes and range from 30 to 4000 hertz. A song contains up to ten themes that are always sung in the same order. A pause that lasts over a minute is considered a cycle. The longest song cycle recorded (by Howard Winn) lasted 21 hours. The Choir of whales with no leader will change phrasing, often staying on a certain phrase for a long time or shortening others. Phrases evolve over time a phenomenon known as song drift which is closely related to language drift discussed in "A Language" by Edward Sapirs. Over time portions of the whale group songs will become completely different, sometimes unrecognizable from their earlier versions. However, the main context often remains the same. It has been observed that the song cycles have start and stop themes for the most complex songs. So why do the whales sing, maybe they just like the sound of it swelling in the water bouncing off under water mountains. Perhaps whales make aesthetic choices. It has been speculated that the chorus of whales sing for the purpose of building bonds between pods of males, but honestly no one knows why they sing the songs. Some think its for mating reasons but no one has observed those particular songs while mating. instead in the tropics during the mating time the whales will sing territorial songs.
This is about as close as I think the songs of whales come to those of birds, which sing to repel males and to attract females. Males sing songs to other males as a competition an alternative to going to physical war over territory or any other resources that could be used to attract mates. The reason that the singing wars work is because signals that are more costly to produce are likely to be "honest". A weaker bird will be outclassed on every front physically and intellectually and instead of chancing injury will just leave. The intimidations of song rivalries can be seen through increases in intensity which take more energy & show the male condition. Overlapping another bird is a very aggressive move. It has been learned from territorial playback and observation that territories brodcasting song stay unoccupied longer.
The other reason birds sing is to attract mates. The number of songs that a bird knows shows the ability of the birds survival because an older bird will live longer and thus be able to learn more songs. Birds that match their neighbors songs are better breeders because we all know "chicks dig the songs they hear over and over again" (thats why Pop Music works) My real interest is in song switching which serves to confuse both birds and human observers. Different birds use song switching differently. Often birds will just sing a going through song where they say "hey I'm a robin, hey I'm a robin, hey I'm a robin" According to the Sarah Collins "vocal fighting and flirting" the song sparrow switches more frequently when aggressive, Redwing Blackbirds and Banded Wrens switch less. In other birds the female is more likely to switch to attract males. It all depends on the default non-aggressive state of each bird.
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