More Earthtones Available
Rumors of my out-of-stock-ness have been somewhat exaggerated. Check
it out. I found some more Earthtones CDs in my basement.
Digital downloads are also available at the iTunes Music Store.
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Posted by stretta at 9:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: music
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Mike Oldfield, Changeling
Mike Oldfield is one of my top musical influences. I've dissected his
work and am naturally curious about the person behind the music. I
read all the articles I could find about him, spanning decades. Taken
together, they present a muddled, conflicting and incomplete picture,
distorted by the prejudices of the journalist and the passage of time
between interviews.
To my surprise, he has written an autobiography. Autobiographies
present a different kind of distortion, but perhaps I'd get some
parallax and fill in some gaps in my understanding. The book was an
import, but totally worth it.
A good deal of the book is dedicated to the road to Tubular Bells, and
justifiably so. I feel I much better understand the circumstances and
influences that led up to that monumental work. He offered some
insight as to where the inspiration for the repetitive opening figure
came from, and explained how he was able to build up a demo of the
piece outside the studio using written block diagrams and a hacked two
track recorder for sound on sound.
Less and less time is devoted to each subsequent album such that by
the end you're lucky if you get one paragraph about each. Granted, a
few of these albums the lesser said, the better, but it was gratifying
to learn that the releases he seemed most proud of (Tubular Bells,
Ommadawn and Amarok) were also my favorites.
Mike is someone who wanted to be a successful musician, but not
famous. He understood recorded-music is a separate art form from
live-music and balked at attempts to translate his recordings to a
live context. He believed, and seems to continue to believe that inner
turmoil is a prerequisite for great art. This leads to a horrendous
trap where one is in love with the demons inside. This is a difficult
power to let go of.
One last bit is this quote I want to stash away for those times when
people suggest that recorded music should be free, and artists make
all their money touring anyway.
"It was a major lesson. You can go on tour and have all these people
cheering, you stay in lovely hotels, then you finally get the bill and
find out you've been working for the last three or four months and
it's actually cost you hundreds of thousands of pounds. It happens
again and again; everybody thinks the artist makes a fortune, but
quite often it is the reverse. It will be the people around the artist
making the money, and in the end, the artist will be left with a
negative bill, a deficit, just from touring."
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Labels: bloggy
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Tenori-On Manual posted
I've gone though the Tenori-On manual, and it seems that my initial
technical speculation of the product was pretty much correct.
From the video demos, the Tenori-On appeared to behave in a variety of
ways. It was unknown how many behaviors are built in to the
instrument, and how editable the behaviors themselves are.
We now know there are six behaviors on the Tenori-On, which are called
modes: score, random, draw, bounce, push and solo. There are 16 layers
of the grid that you are presented with. Switching grids is
accomplished using one of the 10 'off grid' buttons built into the
frame of the device. The different modes are assigned to the layers
for you, and you can not reassign the layers.
Score mode is the step sequencer and primary operational focus. As I
suspected, the layout is modal, with the default mode as Ionian.
Still, you can select chromatic as a scale, if you like. Seven of the
sixteen layers are dedicated to score mode.
The next four layers are dedicated to random mode. Random mode is
another type of sequencer, but with a different interface. The y axis
represents pitch, but the note activity is determined by the order the
pitches were entered. Temporally, the following note is determined by
the distance from one note to the next on the grid. Sounds odd, but in
practice, it is quite intuitive. One interesting wrinkle is once a
pattern is established in random mode, you can rotate the pattern,
thus producing new pitches, in a shape resembling the previous
incarnation.
As the modes become more specialized, fewer layers are allocated. Draw
mode occupies the next two layers. Pitch is represented on the Y axis
and the X axis is, from what I can tell, voices. You can draw a shape,
like a chord, and the Tenori-On will 'repeat at a pre-determined
interval'
Bounce mode is cute - you drop a ball from various highs and each time
they hit the bottom, a pitch is generated. I suspect a lot of notes
could be created using this technique, thus, limiting bounce mode to a
single layer is probably a good idea.
Push mode is a special interface for sustained, evolving sounds. In
fact, certain sounds are designed for this mode, and are pretty much
required to make sense of it. This is the mode that looks like
pulsating radiant circles. Pitch is determined from left to right. It
is unclear to me what, if anything, is determined by the y axis.
Solo mode has pitches arranged on the x axis and the y axis determines
a beat synced rhythmic pattern for as long as as the button is
pressed. The repeat interval is determined by the Y axis. The LEDs
respond with a cascading pattern corresponding to the note data.
It should be noted that there are sixteen 'blocks.' Each block is all
16 layers. You can move to another block like moving from verse to
chorus.
The support for user samples is fairly weak. You can load up to three
samples, each a little less than one second in duration. Samples are
treated as voice patches, so don't expect monome-like mlr
functionality.
There is no mention of USB in the manual, so there isn't any hope for
the Tenori-On as a programmable control surface. Furthermore, the
behavior of the Tenori On software isn't editable. It is what is is.
Now that the behavior of all six modes is known, it isn't unreasonable
to envision a virtual Tenori-On constructed in Max. Plug in a monome
256 and you're there. Without support for OSC, the Tenori-On will
forever be a subset of what is possible with a monome. Buy a Tenori-On
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