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The Frank Chu Media Détente

barry — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:31:20 +0000

If you live in San Francisco for any amount of time, you are probably familiar with Frank Chu. I was walking through union square with Jon Phillips and Pete Ippel after the Leonardo LASER event tonight, when we saw Frank standing to the side of a newscaster. We waited expectantly for quite some time to see Frank run out into the camera in the middle of the cast.

As we waited, and the cast started and stopped however, something seemed amiss. Then, they handed Frank the mike, and started taping him as he elaborated on his plight. From talking to the cameramen after, apparently they have worked out a tentative deal…Frank stays out of the newscasts in exchange for getting taped after they are off air. They never make it to air, but it seems there is a very large archive of Frank Chu video sitting on shelves in a great many media outlets around the city.

Surround cinema anyone?

Mills College Signalflow Festival

barry — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:38:20 +0000

Coming up March 12 – 15th is the Mills College Signalflow Festival. This is invariably one of the best new composition, performance, and installation art events of the year. If you have any interest in hearing what the new directions in music are, be sure not to miss it. Plus, its free.

At Mills College

5000 MacArthur Blvd

Oakland, CA 94613

Signal Flow, the annual festival of new works by Mills graduate students, is an opportunity to see the future in the making. Since the 1930s, the Mills College Music Department has been an incubator of many historic firsts in the field. Signal Flow is the place to take a peek at what the future has in store in the fields of electronic, experimental, and visionary music.

Many of the greatest composers of our age have passed through Mills, whether as teachers, as students or both. Some of these names include: Luciano Berio, Darius Milhaud, Dave Brubeck, Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, Laurie Anderson, David Tudor, Luc Ferrari, Alvin Curran, Aaron Rosand, Angela Hewitt, AMM, Leo Smith, Warner Bartschi, Anne Queffélec, Susie Ibarra, Kazue Sawai, Marilyn Crispell, Peggy Seeger, Hazel Dickens, Louis Lortie, Charles Rosen, Amy Denio, Laetitia Sonami, Miya Masaoka, Janice Giteck, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Tetsu Saitoh, Annea Lockwood, Kitundu, Christina Kubisch, Carla Kihlstedt, Amelia Cuni, Neil Rolnick, Nicolas Collins, Louis Goldstein, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, John Bischoff, Les Stuck, and Chris Brown, to name a few.

Featuring everything from acoustic to electro-acoustic, electronic, mixed media, installations and sound design, signal flow is guaranteed to surprise, inspire and impress.

The Mills College Music Department proudly presents its annual offering to the world. Presented throughout Mills’ lush campus, Signal Flow is always a memorable experience.

LoveTechSF – Saturday, Feb 28th

barry — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:16:01 +0000

Moldover, a front line evangelist of “controllerism”, is co-hosting a new series of shows in SF featuring alternate controller wielding music practitioners. Located in historic Hunter’s Point.

Saturday, February 28th
9pm – 2am

10 Komega (LoveTech)
11 Evan Morris (Lost Science/Hexawe/EMP)
12 Nonagon
01 !INCLUDE (NYC, WarperParty.com)

9pm Workshop: Visionary Instruments presents: Six-Strings From The Future
Visuals by MZO and !INCLUDE
Roominant Installation by Komega
Time Machine by Rich DDT
Bar by Mixin’ Vixen
Digital Jam Lounge: bring your technology, plug in and play! (open to all)

@ The Ranch
1433 Van Dyke Ave
San Francisco, CA 94124

$7, All Ages

Museums: Define your goals and then don’t suck

barry — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:02:48 +0000

This advice to museums comes from what may be my new favorite blog: www.museumssuck.com.

The Louvre has Venus. What do you have instead? If you can answer that question confidently and concisely without a lot of stimulating-the-following-target-audiences mission statement hooey — and your answer isn’t on SecondLife, then you may be one the few museums that doesn’t suck.

You’re a museum, right? You’re not an outreach summercamp. You’re not an Imax theatre lobby. You’re not a social networking iPhone app. Be a museum. And try harder not to suck at it.

DIY Ondes Martenot

barry — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:13:07 +0000

The Ondes Martenot is a very early electronic keyboard instrument that was used by many composers, notably Olivier Messiaen (Turangalîla-Symphonie) Edgard Varèse, Darius Milhaud, Giacinto Scelsi, and Pierre Boulez and, ok…fine, Radiohead.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is the third video by Dana Countryman documenting the creating and use of his amazing synth DIY project – an Ondes Martenot.

The Ondes Martenot is a unique musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot and originally very similar in sound to the theremin.

via happymoogman:

In this video, I show the left-hand volume control, and give an overview of the entire system.

At the end, I play “Ave Maria” on the instrument, live in my studio.

More info at http://www.danacountryman.com

Don’t miss the previous two videos, Building An Ondes Martenot & Dana Countryman’s Ondes Martenot Ring Controller Project.

K-Bow and StringPort at NAMM

barry — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 04:41:45 +0000

At Keith McMillen Instruments we recently debuted our two flagship products at the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, CA. We were proud to share a booth with Synful Orchestra, one of the most powerful software synths we know of. The K-Bow, the world’s first stageworthy, wireless, sensor bow for string instruments, and the StringPort, a polyphonic string to USB 2 converter with spectral analysis and synthesizer control, were both on display at our booth with the accompanying software.

We were lucky to have friend, outstanding electronic music composer, and violinist Marielle Jakobsons with us to show off the powerful sonic control the K-Bow provides. Here she is showing off the system to Morton Subotnick. We are excited to think about what peices such as Axolotl would be like with realtime gestural control from the instrument; all of the Subotnick ghost peices are landmarks of eletronic/string composition.

We also had the StringPort on display, and many guitar and other string players dropped by to see how our analysis can control synthesis directly from the instrument. The days of exclusively event based control are over, as are the days of Keyboardists having all the fun; not to mention having to by a hold new instrument to use polyphonic control (cough…DarkFire). Craig Anderton came over to check out our stuff and Keith was around to walk him through the software.

We also had some more friends drop by the booth.

Matt Moldover and Naut Humon.

Don Buchla checking out Synful Orchestra.

Marielle Jakobsons, Wally Scharold, and Bill Wolter.

Here are Miller Puckette and David Zicarelli, two of the fathers of Max/MSP, a visual programming language dear to our hearts; together in one frame.

All in all it was a great show. It was topped off on Saturday night by a set with Richard Devine and Dream Theater Keyboardist Jordan Rudess.

Thanks to everyone that came by! We hope to see you all again next year…

Overlap Max/MSP/Jitter Salon – Feb 4th 2009

barry — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 01:46:46 +0000

Wednesday night Feb 4th, 2009 from 7-9 pm @ Sound Arts Recording Studio 520 Hampshire street, suite #206 SF, CA 94110

We are revitalizing the Overlap Salon series with a new event on Feb 4. I’m taking over the reigns, and we are planning what promises to be a a very worthwhile series for users of Cycling 74’s powerful New Media creation software Max/MSP/Jitter to share their projects, help overcome problems, and learn new patching techniques. Everyone is welcome regardless of previous experience, and we will try to cater to all skill levels.

Our salons will be a mix of presentations and ad-hoc discussion, dependent upon what kinds of patches and issues are brought to the table. I will be discussing preset storage using the pattr system; one of the most powerful and perhaps least understood of Max’s object sets. We’ll cover some tips and tricks for integrating preset communication into your patches as unobtrusively as possible.

At this first event we will try to set some itinerary for what people are interested in discussing at future salons, so try to show up and lend your ideas.

Max/MSP/Jitter patches covered in the Salon will also be shared on Overlap.org following the event. All participants are encouraged to bring your their own laptop, and libations. WIFI provided in case I’m boring.

Show Jan 10th w/ Noah Phillips

barry — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:32:30 +0000

The recording of this set is now available on my music page.

This saturday (Jan. 10) I will be playing a show with Noah Phillips at 1687 Hayes @ Central. Probably around 10PM? With these kinds of things you just don’t know.

You might remember me playing with Noah on the Bus Obscura a while back. We are excited to get to play together again with a bit more space.

Also appearing:

Elise Baldwin (laptop + video)
Aram Shelton (laptop + reeds)
Barry Threw/Noah Phillips (laptop + noah) &
Damon Smith (solo laptop)

Hope to see you there.

24 Hour Drone

barry — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:39:25 +0000

I recently played a live hour long set as part of the 24 Hour Drone, on KJFC. It is available on my music page, for your listening pleasure.

The full program, which includes some fantastic performances, is available at Esophagus.

Rememberance of Things Past

barry — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:43:56 +0000

This weekend TrioMetrik played a show at the Bellingham Electronic Arts Festival (BEAF). A good time was had by all, we made some new friends, and heard some great, and not so great (you know who you are), new electronic music.One of the concert venues at BEAF is the American Museum of Radio and Electricity, which made the trip worth it in itself. We saw, and toggled, some incredible knobs and switches, the likes of which just aren’t made these days. This place has some outstanding, one of a kind, pieces of gear from the dawn of the radio era. (Plus a really great RCA ribbon mic.)

One of the things that really interests me, obviously, is the intersection of music, technology and culture. Our raison d’etre at BEAM Foundation is bridging the gap between instrumental virtuosity, and technological sound and interaction. Musical technology is always at the forefront of a culture’s technological development. This pictures below are from a telegraph machine, developed in France. This being the dawn of the radio communications era, Telegraphy was in its infancy, and most of the workforce was not educated on a typewriter or stenography keyboard. However, there was a large tradition of musical virtuosity in Europe, and the makers of this telegraph leveraged that colloquial knowledge to soften the learning curve on their technology.

As you can see, the machines below have piano keyboards, but these are in fact telegraph machines. This concept resonates. One of our primary philosophies is that traditional musical virtuosity and skill must be drawn upon when utilizing new computer music technologies. Years of technique that the instrumentalist builds can bridge the gap between classical chamber music and new experimental computer music. By creating a hybrid form of the traditional and cutting edge, we can create well performed music that speaks with the tools of this century.

This idea was not lost on those building technologies at the turn of the last century.