Kelake

Pete Rojas’ article provide a good summary of the “mash-up” or bootleg culture or remixing or whatever the hip term is now. Can’t really say I agree when he talks about how easy it is now to create music except in relation to a life time of learning a musical instrument. We still have a long way to go to allowing ‘every-man’ the opportunity to express themselves in a sophisticated way musically.

While there have been odd pairings, match-ups and remixes for decades now, and club DJs have been doing something similar during live sets, the recent explosion in the number of tracks being created and disseminated is a direct result of the dramatic increase in the power of the average home computer and the widespread use on these computers of new software programs like Acid and ProTools. Home remixing is technically incredibly easy to do, in effect turning the vast world of pop culture into source material for an endless amount of slicing and dicing by desktop producers.
So easy, in fact, that bootlegs constitute the first genre of music that truly fulfills the “anyone can do it” promises originally made by punk and, to lesser extent, electronic music. Even punk rockers had to be able write the most rudimentary of songs. With bootlegs, even that low bar for traditional musicianship and composition is obliterated. Siva Vaidhyanthan, an assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University and the author of “Copyrights and Copywrongs,” believes that what we’re seeing is the result of a democratization of creativity and the demystification of the process of authorship and creativity.
“It’s about demolishing the myth that there has to be a special class of creators, and flattening out the creative curve so we can all contribute to our creative environment,” says Vaidhyanthan.

Read the full article

Courtesy of Engadget comes this bit of news, “Yamaha has come out with an electronic trumpet that lets you avoid having to do the intense cheekwork yourself, like all that buzzing and blowing that the analogue version demands. Instead, you can eiether hum into the mouthpiece and have it convert your mumblings into trumpet-sounding melodies, play using the valves, or just use some combination of the two.” Is this the answer to my dreams? Though purists will shudder with disgust I’m all for any device that eliminates any barrier to the music making process. If this can connect to my Mac via midi and is available outside of Japan than I may just be forced to buy one. Though I suppose it has to happen some day, I just hope it’s not too good. After spending over 20 years trying to play the analogue version, to have a device remove the need for years of practice is well as depressing as it is exciting.
Yamaha’s digital EZ trumpet (MYCOM PC WEB)

Mixtapes and playlists are an essential part of a balanced music lifestyle. I’ve always believed that music is a contextual experience, and the slow, careful creation of a compilation can reveal deep relationships between songs. The relationships can be shallow, like putting Usher’s “Yeah!” next to Nina Sky’s “Move Your Body,” (both are recent dance songs); or deep, like Jurassic 5’s “React” next to Incubus’s “Battlestar Scralatchtica” (both feature talented turntable work by the DJs Cut Chemist and Nu-Mark).
But the real beauty behind the making and the receiving of a compilation tape is far beyond that of the songs itself. A good mixtape facilitates a wonderfully diverse type of communication, where each selected song sings its poetry within the context of a greater meaning.

Creating mix tapes was for me was an even of almost religious proportions. Long before cd’s. Long before mp3’s and the iPod we had the state of the art compact cassette. I remember using an ancient phonograph to play songs I dug and then record them through a condenser microphone to a tape player. Even before that my mother would bring home her real to real and we would splice together our own radio show.
Saturday or Sunday afternoons would be spent creating the ultimate mixes to share with friends. When “ghetto blasters” (what a horrendous term) became the norm creating mix tapes took on even greater importance as you then had the means of sharing your musical tastes on a great sounding portable. My musical listening revolved around mixes.
Somehow sharing a playlist doesn’t have the same impact as receiving a cassette in the mail that contains the efforts of an afternoon in front of the stereo.
The lost art of meaningful mixtapes – Daily Trojan – Lifestyle

“The history of recorded music is a history of creating virtual spaces. Classical CD recording, for example, places you in a prime stalls seat in a nonexistent concert hall, by virtue of the way the instrumental sections are distributed in the stereo field. Much abstract sound art is interested primarily in the structure of the virtual space itself. And then there is Cardiff’s work, which projects a virtual space – the recorded sounds of a walk through Whitechapel – on to the original space from which it was modelled. You experience two realities at once. And you can begin to play this game afterwards, imagining that the apparently random street scenes around you are carefully choreographed and soundtracked to a mysterious design.
This, perhaps, is the primary value of sound art: that it encourages you to pay attention to how you listen, and to experiment with new ways of listening. I’m not going to start sitting down and listening to CDs of traffic and iron-smelting every evening, but perhaps I will take more interest in the uncontrollable sounds around me, rather than blocking them out as unwanted noise. If nothing else, it makes waiting for a bus less boring”
Read article

Found via Veer, “This massive collection of recordings of so-called ‘shortwave numbers stations’ is at once, both eerily beautiful and poignantly cryptic.” You have to listen to these very specific genre of sound creation. Who knew this whole other world existed. Fascinating and excellent material for your next remix project.
Of particular note is the the swedish rhapsody irdial featuring childrens music and voice, and the oriental language irdial where a voice is repeating the same phrase over and over “I am ..[hong kong region] Good bye doctor”.
Check out: Conet Project – Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations [ird059]

“SimpleTEXT is a collaborative audio/visual public performance that relies on audience participation through input from mobile devices such as phones, PDAs or laptops. SimpleTEXT focuses on dynamic input from participants as essential to the overall output. The performance creates a dialogue between participants who submit messages which control the audiovisual output of the installation. These messages are first parsed according to a code that dictates how the music is created, and then rhythmically drive a speech synthesizer and a picture synthesizer in order to create a compelling, collaborative audiovisual performance. SimpleTEXT was originally funded by a commission from Low-FiM, an new media arts organization based in the UK.”
“MOBILITY AND INTERACTION IN PUBLIC SPACE
SimpleTEXT focuses on mobile devices and the web as a bridge between networked interfaces and public space. As mobile devices become more prolific, they also become separated by increased emphasis on individual use. The SimpleTEXT project looks beyond the screen and isolated usage of mobile devices to encourage collaborative use of input devices to both drive the visuals and audio output, inform each participant of each other’s interaction, and allows people to actively participate in the performance while it happens.Our purpose with the performance is to create the possibility of large-scale interaction through anonymous collaboration, with immediate audio and visual feedback. SimpleTEXT encourages users to respond to one another’s ideas and build upon the unexpected chains of ideas that may develop from their input.
SimpleTEXT is a rare example of an interactive piece that works in crowded public spaces such as social and unruly atmospheres where heckling, irony, criticism, and sarcasm are common modes of communication. We are unaware of such a large-scale interactive piece in terms of scale of audience interaction, where the interaction is as tangible, direct, and therefore individually satisfying.”
SimpleTEXT: a mobile phone enabled performance

“AudioBored is a public online audio messaging board that allows for anyone to call in, record a message, and post it to the server. Simply dial the free 1-800 number from the website and record your note. Visitors to the board can click on the sound clips and listen to all the recordings collected. Like an online bulletin board, AudioBored allows for candid opinions, thoughts, ideas, exclamations, etc… to be posted live in a shared online space as recorded audio through a phone interface.
The AudioBored Machine allows people in a physical space to access all the messages left on the AudioBored. It is dynamic and networked, grabbing all call information as new calls are logged into the server. The machine is a physical version of a traditional online bulletin board allowing you to navigate through threads of messages (topics) as well as the messages themselves.”
AudioBored & AudioBored Machine

ID3v2 is a new tagging system that lets you put enriching and relevant information about your audio files within them. In more down to earth terms, ID3v2 is a chunk of data prepended to the binary audio data. Each ID3v2 tag holds one or more smaller chunks of information, called frames. These frames can contain any kind of information and data you could think of such as title, album, performer, website, lyrics, equalizer presets, pictures etc. The block scheme to the right is an example of how the layout of a typical ID3v2 tagged audio file may look like.
One of the design goals were that the ID3v2 should be very flexible and expandable. It is very easy to add new functions to the ID3v2 tag, because, just like in HTML, all parsers will ignore any information they don’t recognize. Since each frame can be 16MB and the entire tag can be 256MB you’ll probably never again be in the same situation as when you tried to write a useful comment in the old ID3 being limited to 30 characters.
Speaking of characters, the ID3v2 supports Unicode so even if you use the Bopomofo character set you’ll be able to write in your native language. You can also include in which language you’re writing so that one file might contain e.g. the same lyrics but in different languages.
Beyond cool.
Read ID3v2 made easy

Audio content on the internet is in chaos. To reign in the chaos, and to capitalize on internet audio file assets, Google will launch an audio search engine or audio file search tool by 2006, but probably sooner.

The Four Ways that Google Audio Search Will Work
First, like current MP3 search engines, you will be able to find MP3’s (and other audio files) based on file names.
Second, the search engine will be able to hunt down semantic web information.
Third, the search engine will allow you to find songs based on the words used in the song.
Finally, the audio search will allow users to find files based on associations between songs.

Read article

I have been looking for a software or development environment for music/sound installation art. In Hsinchu I feel a little isolated without any interactive artists to bring me up to speed. No places for training either. Via MacIntouch I was informed that Symbolic Composer was updated and it sounds pretty wild.
“Symbolic Composer 5.1 3D is a tool for making music with MIDI, providing a programming language for musicians based on Lisp and an expert system for music composition. It includes the MCL Common Lisp interpreter for customizing the system, over 1000 music algorithms, 300 microtonal world-music and theoretical scales, tools to explore using “advanced fractal and chaos mathematics to determine compositional elements,” and much more. The new version adds complete VRML2 support (including documentation and tutorial), making it possible, for example, to compose music based on 3D forms or design 3D spaces based on music.”
I have already purchased an i-cubex system with it’s software editor. For someone who has been extremely midi adverse for years, it’s quite a big leap to immediately understand this system. But it should be worth the effort – the sensors are amazing and the upcoming bluetooth version is something I looking forward to trying. None of this is cheap though and if I lose my current sponsor I will be hard pressed to be able to afford to try it all. The first step is to get it to work with Reason then move onto Visual programming languages like Max/MSP and if time Processing.
This is all part of the project Sme(n)ms with an initial exhibition date of December 1 of this year.
MRAC Publishing – Symbolic Composer

“Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men. For many centuries life went by in silence, or at most in muted tones. The strongest noises which interrupted this silence were not intense or prolonged or varied. If we overlook such exceptional movements as earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, avalanches and waterfalls, nature is silent.
Amidst this dearth of noises, the first sounds that man drew from a pieced reed or streched string were regarded with amazement as new and marvelous things. Primitive races attributed sound to the gods; it was considered sacred and reserved for priests, who used it to enrich the mystery of their rites.
And so was born the concept of sound as a thing in itself, distinct and independent of life, and the result was music, a fantastic world superimposed on the real one, an inviolatable and sacred world. It is easy to understand how such a concept of music resulted inevitable in the hindering of its progress by comparison with the other arts. The Greeks themselves, with their musical theories calculated mathematically by Pythagoras and according to which only a few consonant intervals could be used, limited the field of music considerably, rendering harmony, of which they were unaware, impossible.”
Read: The Art of Noises