Monday, August 30, 2010
Yamaha SU700
Picked one up on CL last Wed. Had to play around with it to get it to work, but it's up and running now. Yea 8-bit.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Bleep, Bloop, and Tape Loops : a brief overview of electronic sound manipulation in Avant Garde and Musique Concrète
upon finding out I listened to Sonic Youth a neighbor of mine let me borrow a Pere Ubu box set.
"If you like avant garde,"
but what was avant garde?
Noise? Tangents? Music people like because nobody else gets? Weird music for the sake of being weird? Were Sonic Youth and Pere Ubu even avant garde? I eventually tested the waters by buying an LP on Nonesuch, but my confusion grew. avant garde seemed more like the bits of music that emphasized the movements of actors and dancers, but there were no actors and dancers for me - just a cryptic illustration of the composition. music best suited for films or something.
intellectual masturbation. people geting off believing they "got" something that was never really there. self-congratulatory. pompous. art for the sake of art.
After hearing Tangerine Dream's Rubycon and Brian Eno - Another Green World I became obsessed with ambient music, and forgot about avant garde.
That was thirteen years ago.
"If you like avant garde,"
but what was avant garde?
Noise? Tangents? Music people like because nobody else gets? Weird music for the sake of being weird? Were Sonic Youth and Pere Ubu even avant garde? I eventually tested the waters by buying an LP on Nonesuch, but my confusion grew. avant garde seemed more like the bits of music that emphasized the movements of actors and dancers, but there were no actors and dancers for me - just a cryptic illustration of the composition. music best suited for films or something.
intellectual masturbation. people geting off believing they "got" something that was never really there. self-congratulatory. pompous. art for the sake of art.
After hearing Tangerine Dream's Rubycon and Brian Eno - Another Green World I became obsessed with ambient music, and forgot about avant garde.
That was thirteen years ago.
In 2009 I found a $4 LP in the sound effects section called Voice of the Computer. The music reminded me of Walter Carlos - Sonic Seasonings, but Computer Suite from Little Boy predated the Carlos LP by several years.
after re-watching the BBC Four documentary The Alchemists of Sound, my interest was renewed. two things occured to me. 1.) I haven't been listening to any electronic music pre-1969 2.) how the synthesizer would have appealed to the school of avant garde
I checked out The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center to get an idea of what was going on with synthesizers in 1964.
The Mark II synthesizer and collage of found sounds makes these compositions a bit more interesting than the use of "conventional" instruments. If the Mark II was replaced with such instruments, you would have an LP quite similar to the one I bought 13 years ago.
I now think of avant garde as experimentation - theories exemplified by the composition. [like the shepard tone in the The Little Boy]. It's not necessarily about writing music to make good music - the recording is the "actualization" of theory. In the case of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, theories are used to write the compositions, and the Mark II "realizes" it. Some of it fits within my old generalization...
...and some does not.
it pays to be open minded.
after re-watching the BBC Four documentary The Alchemists of Sound, my interest was renewed. two things occured to me. 1.) I haven't been listening to any electronic music pre-1969 2.) how the synthesizer would have appealed to the school of avant garde
I checked out The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center to get an idea of what was going on with synthesizers in 1964.
The Mark II synthesizer and collage of found sounds makes these compositions a bit more interesting than the use of "conventional" instruments. If the Mark II was replaced with such instruments, you would have an LP quite similar to the one I bought 13 years ago.
I now think of avant garde as experimentation - theories exemplified by the composition. [like the shepard tone in the The Little Boy]. It's not necessarily about writing music to make good music - the recording is the "actualization" of theory. In the case of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, theories are used to write the compositions, and the Mark II "realizes" it. Some of it fits within my old generalization...
...and some does not.
it pays to be open minded.
Friday, June 25, 2010
part three - Unfinished Business - Out Of My Hands
Two summers ago I was working three jobs - deli clerk, at a dry cleaners, and landscaping every Thursday.
It was a bitch, and ironically enough, the landscaping was the easiest due to the lack of customer interaction.
One day, instead of mowing lawns I helped my boss re-tile his bathroom and set up his stereo system in his new house. He lived about 30-40 minutes outside the city proper, so since I was in the area, I decided to rip out a page of the phonebook and find a record store. There were three options, two of which were Salvo and Goodwill. When that far from the city, neither place is usually the best place to look, so I hit up a CD shop with my favorite shit - $1 12" singles. Ever since my boy scored a copy of Symbols & Instruments - Moods on KMS I wanted to hit it up again.
I got there, got down to business sifting and sorting, selected 40 records [how much i got payed]. Out of those 40, I knew what 1 was, and that was a Kano record. The other 39 were from a private collection bought out from the store that belonged to the resident dj at a gay nightclub that shut down several years ago. I was trying to score some Patrick Crowley or Sylvester.... some high NRG shit. whatever.
I got home, and listened to all 40. I was pretty dissapointed that out of all those records, only 4 of them were good finds. I loaded the remaining 36 into the "dump off for store credit" pile, and added the 4 keepers to the "ambiguis dance/pop singles stack".
Two years later I came across those 4 records again.
Xena - On The Upside, Kano - I'm Ready, Kool Rock Steady - Power Move, and Unfinished Business - Out Of My Hands.
Initially I was pretty excited when I found it, not because I knew what it was, but because I recogonized Frankie Knuckles. Two things really lowered my spirits -1.) I was thrown off by the 1987 release date and started to think it was some form of repress, and 2.) I was listening to a lot of disco [mostly italian at the time] and I knew this was an OMNI song, so again I figured I just got something to the extent of a repress. You know how those labels do...canadian/french/german/us represses of disco records....anyways.
I thought it was a good tune, butI had no idea it was such a sought after 12". [3 wants to every owned copy according to Discogs]
Made me think...
Digging in the dollar bin isn't about trophies. Digging makes me appreciate the records use. Records should be used for playing out tunes, for exposure to new music - should be used for it's drum break, for their weird noises.
Instead, a drum break seems to be another means of tallying collectability.
Record collecting threatens my ability to get a copy to use. Take drum breaks for example. I'm positive records like Lee Dorsey - Get Out My Life Woman,The Winstons - Amen Brother, any JB record, Funky Penguin etc. were common recordsColour Him Father, the flipside to the Amen, was topped the Billboards.then about 20 years later people begin to sample them.
40 years pass, and tune that toped the charts in the begining is hard to find. 3 generations of people were after it -when it was new and two that are still after it. there's not a single person my age that hasn't heard those drums in NWA or Cypress Hill.
On the other hand, having 3-4 copies of a certain 45" really doesn't help my argument, but sometimes that's how many copies it takes to find a clean one.
getting back to Unfinished Business...
I'm putting it up for auction in hopes that somebody will use it accordingly.
Just some mid-afternoon/evening musings.
Gonna dip - try and get into somethin' on this friday night.
It was a bitch, and ironically enough, the landscaping was the easiest due to the lack of customer interaction.
One day, instead of mowing lawns I helped my boss re-tile his bathroom and set up his stereo system in his new house. He lived about 30-40 minutes outside the city proper, so since I was in the area, I decided to rip out a page of the phonebook and find a record store. There were three options, two of which were Salvo and Goodwill. When that far from the city, neither place is usually the best place to look, so I hit up a CD shop with my favorite shit - $1 12" singles. Ever since my boy scored a copy of Symbols & Instruments - Moods on KMS I wanted to hit it up again.
I got there, got down to business sifting and sorting, selected 40 records [how much i got payed]. Out of those 40, I knew what 1 was, and that was a Kano record. The other 39 were from a private collection bought out from the store that belonged to the resident dj at a gay nightclub that shut down several years ago. I was trying to score some Patrick Crowley or Sylvester.... some high NRG shit. whatever.
I got home, and listened to all 40. I was pretty dissapointed that out of all those records, only 4 of them were good finds. I loaded the remaining 36 into the "dump off for store credit" pile, and added the 4 keepers to the "ambiguis dance/pop singles stack".
Two years later I came across those 4 records again.
Xena - On The Upside, Kano - I'm Ready, Kool Rock Steady - Power Move, and Unfinished Business - Out Of My Hands.
Initially I was pretty excited when I found it, not because I knew what it was, but because I recogonized Frankie Knuckles. Two things really lowered my spirits -1.) I was thrown off by the 1987 release date and started to think it was some form of repress, and 2.) I was listening to a lot of disco [mostly italian at the time] and I knew this was an OMNI song, so again I figured I just got something to the extent of a repress. You know how those labels do...canadian/french/german/us represses of disco records....anyways.
I thought it was a good tune, butI had no idea it was such a sought after 12". [3 wants to every owned copy according to Discogs]
Made me think...
Digging in the dollar bin isn't about trophies. Digging makes me appreciate the records use. Records should be used for playing out tunes, for exposure to new music - should be used for it's drum break, for their weird noises.
Instead, a drum break seems to be another means of tallying collectability.
Record collecting threatens my ability to get a copy to use. Take drum breaks for example. I'm positive records like Lee Dorsey - Get Out My Life Woman,The Winstons - Amen Brother, any JB record, Funky Penguin etc. were common recordsColour Him Father, the flipside to the Amen, was topped the Billboards.then about 20 years later people begin to sample them.
40 years pass, and tune that toped the charts in the begining is hard to find. 3 generations of people were after it -when it was new and two that are still after it. there's not a single person my age that hasn't heard those drums in NWA or Cypress Hill.
On the other hand, having 3-4 copies of a certain 45" really doesn't help my argument, but sometimes that's how many copies it takes to find a clean one.
getting back to Unfinished Business...
I'm putting it up for auction in hopes that somebody will use it accordingly.
Just some mid-afternoon/evening musings.
Gonna dip - try and get into somethin' on this friday night.
part two - Long Time I Don't Smoke No Herb
Again, the record spot, 12" maxi singles.Spliff Group / Blue Boy - I Am A Rasta Man / Long Time I Don't Smoke No Herb - B&B Records
Arr. & Prod. by: Barrington Birthwaite
Side one. not interesting.
Side 2 is different
I'm sure it's not hard for you to figure out what a song called Long Time I No Smoke No Herb is about. hittin' up the "cutta man" to sell him good sensimilla,he don't smoke no bullshit, good sensi allows him to meditate fuller on Jah, herb is the healing of the nation, smoke in the morning, smoke in the evening, and how he loves Jah plusrandom tape edits [kung-fu sounds, organs, guitars, blips, voice]that echo the fuck out.
This was the first dub record I ever bought, and also the first time I noticed tight little tape edits in, simiar to what would become so popular in electro dubs and bonus beats in the 80's.
I'm no expert when it comes to dub. This record was a pleasant suprise though.
part 1 - Gravity Pirates
yunno, I told myself I wouldn't make my blog into another one of thoes "let's talk about records" blogs.
oh well.
Gravity Pirates - This Way To The Cargo Cult - Survival Records
Found this one at my record spot, in the 12" singles section [my favorite place in this world].
The Gravity Pirates were an Australian Post-Punk I'd that sound somewhere between Joy Division and The Cure maybe?, I've had a hard time tracking down much information concerning this band. Fortunately, the best source of information happened to come in the form of a bio sheet inserted into the EP. The band was formerly known as VDU or the VDU's, or the V.D. Youse [it's a bit confusing here], and according to this sheet Expossure Of My Senses was released on Thirsty Ear in the USA, "scream oz 2". I don't know what that means...but I do like tape warbled vocals.
It's a pretty good EP - I'll be a bit sad if I have to let it go.
Oh....the name Gravity Pirates comes from Flash Gordon comics.
oh well.
Gravity Pirates - This Way To The Cargo Cult - Survival Records
Found this one at my record spot, in the 12" singles section [my favorite place in this world].
The Gravity Pirates were an Australian Post-Punk I'd that sound somewhere between Joy Division and The Cure maybe?, I've had a hard time tracking down much information concerning this band. Fortunately, the best source of information happened to come in the form of a bio sheet inserted into the EP. The band was formerly known as VDU or the VDU's, or the V.D. Youse [it's a bit confusing here], and according to this sheet Expossure Of My Senses was released on Thirsty Ear in the USA, "scream oz 2". I don't know what that means...but I do like tape warbled vocals.
It's a pretty good EP - I'll be a bit sad if I have to let it go.
Oh....the name Gravity Pirates comes from Flash Gordon comics.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
nothing important happened today.
maan. lets see... a day or two after my last post, bought a Mackie 24x8x2 console on damn near a whim, just after picking up a lovely Korg DW-8000 from a local ebay auction. five goddamn hours in a car getting there, 35 minutes with hitchikers, three hours in Iowa searching for a record store and Red Lobster to celebrate, five hours back. Thirteen hours in a car with my ex, no drama.
got back, had less than 4 hours to sleep and pack for a festival, then worked five 12 hour godddamn shifts in a fucking row on no more than 4 hours of sleep each night. the trick is to get "so high you might die". too blowed to have a panic attack -so high you can't find shit to talk about except funnel cakes and twangin' sticks. then somebody throws on Ministry - N.W.O and you suddenly realize drum and bass sounds suspiciously like some shit you're embarrassed to admit you listened to back in high school, and you're faded something astronomical, yet still you don't care. It was actually a pretty great weekend. I've gotta devise a way to find the women I meet on shift after I get off of work, which is my only regret.
Aight. fast forward past the weekend, find out I won an S5000 and MPD32 with the money I got from selling the MPC [forgot to mention that], then, finally, after 8 long years, I got my copy of Love - Out Here LP with a jackpot of dollar techno records and $1 dollar new age records.
spent the last of what I can afford on studio monitors, racking, stands, etc. it took every cent made since the beginning of this year, but i did it, and i don't regret it.
bye.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
just calling to say hi.
planet-e.net is back.
busy with rediscovery.
listening to:
Wladimir M - Sex And Lies.
itunes, beatport, amazon, juno.
more soon.
busy with rediscovery.
listening to:
Wladimir M - Sex And Lies.
itunes, beatport, amazon, juno.
more soon.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
saying goodbye and unfun.
nobody has spent so much time with me as this machine has.
finally got around to the .wav's I recorded of the micron. I really should have taken more time recording, but I had roughly ten hours and was already a bit drunk. should have used some MIDI implementation. but it was fun.
time for work work work....
finally got around to the .wav's I recorded of the micron. I really should have taken more time recording, but I had roughly ten hours and was already a bit drunk. should have used some MIDI implementation. but it was fun.
time for work work work....
Monday, April 26, 2010
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