DOWNLOAD IT!

Source of Yellow played Cake Shop last Monday 10/20/08, and again i’ve uploaded a recording of the show for all to partake.

SOY is playing two shows back to back on November 21st and November 22nd. The Nov 21st show is at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn (with Susan Alcorn and Lone Wolf and Cub (Ryan Sawyer)) and the Nov 22nd show is for Aunts The Event Center@ Nostrand and Lafayette Bedstuy, Brooklyn(take G train to Bedford/Nostrand, exit Nostrand/Lafayette).

Enjoy!

Download It!

Source of Yellow played Zebulon last Monday night, and I’ve uploaded the recording of the show for all to hear.

Download

We play Cake Shop this coming Monday, October 20th, along with Nancy Garcia, Heaven People, Electric Jellyfish, and Mtty Konkeror. We go on around 10 or so, and it’ll be a sweet show for sure

I just graduated. Here’s my new band

SOURCE OF YELLOW

Here’s Nancy and me performing at Monkeytown in Brooklyn.

Youtube Link

My penultimate semester at ITP has come to a close, and it was my busiest yet. These pictures show my final products for the Zoraida project: a microphone/vocal processor made out of elephant statues, a machete that maps its movement to sound (via a wireless accelerometer), and two conga drums that control video (xfade, saturation, and awesome color feedback) when played.

These pictures are from the NIME show where the instruments were performed:

And these pics are from the ITP Winter Show where the instruments were subjected to rigorous user testing (and passed with flying colors for the most part).

A speculation about one potential path:

I feel like the future of performance, specifically musical performance, will be increasingly physical, albeit a lightweight physicality that will call for more dexterity and subtlety from the body. From my experience this semester, most artists (particularaly at ITP) exploring the realm of “new interfaces” and most discussions regarding the field focus on creating substantial, legible relationships between user input and sonic output. I imagine that as alternative interfaces and interactivity advance along with technology, there will be greater space and a greater desire for more deliberate and delicate types of interaction.

The urge for one-to-one type relationships will wane, giving way to more free and abstract forms of musical expression via technology. Delicacy does not imply that that these interactions will necessarily not be strenuous or taxing, but delicate in that these interfaces will be so intricate, robust, and accessible that things like skill or virtuosity will once again become an imperative. Interest in alternative device will be less about novelty and more about how well the device is played or sounds.

Technological restraints shackling artists from a purer realization of their alternative musical device (such as cabling or the size of a microcontroller) are diminishing at about the same rate as new artist/tinkerers are becoming involved in the creation of alternative devices (see the rise of circuit bending, for instance, or MAKE! magazine).

Furthermore, performances will hopefully become increasingly multimedia based, as the use of projectors and displays in rock shows has become a standard. The recent interest in 1960’s experiments in synaesthesia testifies to this as well (see last year, with Joshua Lightshow at the Kitchen and the 60’s music thing at the Whitney). The ratio between of Laurie Andersons and dudes playing acoustic guitar at a coffee shops will decrease at the same rate that the ratio of Stelarcs to dudes who’ve hacked their Wii’s will increase.

START
-Nancy: walks on to stage; takes lipstick out of pocket and places in front of herself \
-Sound: silence\
-Visuals: Nothing\
\
-Nancy: removes top off of lipstick, same body position\
-Sound: pre-recorded oscillating synth sound\
-Visuals: nothing\
\
-Nancy: pushes lipstick up\
-Sound: Pause/silence, back into synth
-Visuals: nothing\
\
~ 30secs
\
-Nancy: puts lipstick back in pocket, does not put it on; walks over to open luggage laying on table on stage, contents not visible to audience .\
-Sound: sound clip, ogunwomansound.wav plays (layered over synth sounds)\
-Visuals: nothing\
\
~ 45secs
\
-Nancy: Removes machete from luggage and begins to dance. \
-Sound: movement of machete sonically mapped by max patch.\
-Visuals: Start, Fremez poster, glows/pulsates w/ synth sound or does something where the red spreads slowly over the two people’s faces in the images…\
\
~ 3mins, 15secs
\
-Nancy: Nancy blows whistle, to call in the drums, walks over to podium (in front of stage)\
-Sound: Nick on drums start; backing track starts\
-Visuals: Cuba landscape pics mix with video of La Lupe during first verse (controlled by Nick’s drums w/ jitter patch). [maybe: 4 images (of each female archetype) for 4 sets of "do your hard work" of chorus]\
\
~ 3mins, 45secs
\
-Nancy: Takes lipstick from pocket and puts it on, starts singing lyrics to Campina while at podium, using elephant mic stand.\
-Sound: Backing track continues (prerecorded and timed); Nick continues to play\
-Visuals: same as above\
\
Everything ends at same time, timing based on backing track, nancy’s last words “I’ve been working for the trees;” Nick stops playing when backing track ends.}
~ END 5mins 30secs

Long preview on blip.

The major breakhrough today was getting the machete movements mapped to sound. I did this through rewire, with Max as the master and Ableton Live as the slave. Basically, I took the x,y,z data in from the accelerometer, filtered each stream of data using some javascript functions I wrote, and then used that filtered data to control midi notes which were used to control a synth in ableton live. The sound is not really what I want, but for now at least it’s fluid and fairly well-mapped to movements. Whew.

The patch:

Machete in action:

Click To Play

Also, I ordered aluminum pipe and flanges so i can work on elephant mic stand round 2. I also ordered pre-amps for the drums, which are here now. Here’s some footage of the prototype stand in action. The song being sung is still in the works, and Nancy’s still rehearsing the vocals.

Click To Play

Unfortunately I’ve got to go out of town tomorrow till Sunday the 24th, but all necessary parts will be here when I return.

This week has been pretty good. First off, I got my WiTilt from sparkfun. Following the instructions on the sensor workshop, I had no trouble getting the wiTilt’s data into Terminal. Getting the data into max and parsing it, however, proved not so easy. I could get the data in, but couldn’t get it to send continuously as the messages kept timing out. So then I tried downloading Woon Seung Yeo’s W2O, an app that parses the WiTilt’s data and sends it via OpenSoundControl into Max, but in her example patch she was using a deprecated object for receiving OSC data. I tried using Max’s built-in OSC reciever object, udpreceive, but things wouldn’t talk.

I finally found a patch via the Max/MSP forums that someone had made for the receiving and parsing the WiTilt data. Analyzing it, I realized that I was sending the wrong command (in ascii) to the WiTilt telling it send data. Problem solved. So now I’ve got a patch that takes in the witilt data wonderfully. I attached some oscillators to the incoming x,y,z data from the WiTilt, and the results are below:

Click To Play

Plus, I got the machete I’m going to use with the WiTilt. So one object/instrument is looking very good.

I also received a large elephant I ordered off ebay that is fairly light and i think it’s perfectly drillable for inserting a pot. I also got 20 panasonic WM-61A mics for the elephant after reading about them in “Getting a Bigger Sound” by Bart Hopkin and hearing them used in a live setting on this site.

These mics are really, really small. And there is a hack for the mics that prevents distortion under high sound levels that requires some really intricate soldering. I got one to work, but probably ruined 3 in the process. I’m not sure what to do with these things now. Wiring many of these seems like too much a time consuming task. I’ll probably give it another go though. I really need to put at least two or so on the elephant’s trunk.

I also got 5 or so OPA134 op-amps that I was going to run the mics into max with. They are typically used in DIY headphone amp circuits, but I figured they’d be plenty powerful for my needs. First tests weren’t successful, but I need to sit down and put more time into it.

Next week: Get mics/amps to work and then use them in max. Get hand drum to use with contact mic in max. Be optimistic.