Getting my fingers burned
July 28, 2016
Sooner or later, I’m going to have to get back to the ‘ol soldering iron: I have a plan: to reconstruct the PE Minisonic you can see above, that I made while I was in school. I still have some of the boards…
Tech
Here's my screen
July 13, 2016
Show us your screens! Ok, well at last maybe I’m ready. Here’s five minutes or so of me improvising in SuperCollider that’s not as embarrassing as some of my other attempts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhprsv_c27o The code is on GitHub if anyone is madly interested.
First public livecode
April 26, 2016
Last night I stumbled into my first public outing of some livecoding I’ve been working on in SuperCollider. The context was an improvisation night called In Tandem run by Bruce Wallace at the Academy of Music and Sound in Glasgow. I hadn’t intended to play, as I really don’t feel I’m ready yet, but I had my laptop and cables with me, they had a projector, so…! I was jamming along with three other people, on bass, guitar and analog synth. ...
Recursive synthesis
March 24, 2016
I’ve been working for a while with an improvising setup that uses what is sometimes jokingly called ‘recursive synthesis’ – that is, plugging an effect unit back in to itself and experimenting with the no-input feedback sounds. Today I’ve had some success with the next step in developing this system. I’ve written a SuperCollider patch that allows me to gate and pitchshift the feedback sounds, so that I can begin to find a way to play them musically using a keyboard. ...
Patchin' at the Hague
March 18, 2016
I’ve been at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag for the last couple of days, working with a group of academics from all over Europe on the METRIC project – ‘Modernizing European Higher Music Education through Improvisation’. (If anyone can tell me in which language that acronym works, I’d love to know!) While I’m here, I’ve been amusing myself with some work on a simple SuperCollider patch to pitchshift live audio, that I intend to use as part of my own improvisational practice. ...
Live Coding and the Body
July 6, 2014
I’ve just spent a very stimulating weekend, combining an algorave in Brighton with the Live Coding and the Body symposium at Sussex University. A packed weekend: I didn’t keep notes of exactly who and what and when, so this is a rather chaotic reflection! The algorave was in a clubby sort of room above a pub. Code from each performer’s laptop was projected on a black behind them, while some livecoded visuals in IBNIZ were projected on an adjacent wall. ...
Electronics nostalgia
June 24, 2013
Very happy today. Been working on some electronics for the show. For me as a creator, this is a big part of what Why Scotland, Why East Kilbride is about: exploring my nostalgia for teenage evenings spent with a soldering iron, a cup of coffee, and a Hawkwind album. Some pics below: trying to get my SN76477 prototyping station back up and running.
Horn-a-Tron
June 21, 2013
Some of the publicity put out for the show has perhaps been unintentionally slightly misleading! I did have a dream of having a French horn section in the show, but that dream has been realised through… technical means :) Instead of live players, I’ve invented the ‘Horn-a-Tron’. This is a Pd patch which plays back midi horn sounds alongside video clips of sixteen horn players – with thanks to Steve Park for the horn vids. ...
Quartz Composer video sampler for WSWEK
January 27, 2013
Here’s a screenshot of something I’ve been working on today for ‘Why Scotland, Why East Kilbride’: Regular readers of this blog (ahem) will recall that this all started with a piece of music I heard in a dream, for a double rock band plus a big squad of french horns. Well, the double rock band is doable, but the french horns were going to be impractical for the gig. So, I’m building a sort of video sampler. ...
Cheetah MQ8, first go
August 29, 2011
I’ve just got a new toy (tx John!). It’s a Cheetah MQ8 midi sequencer. This is UK made, apparently released sometime in the late 80s as a competitor to the Alesis MMT-8. I’ve only just started to figure it out: pretty crazy trying to do everything with a combination of button presses and a tiny, dim LCD screen! Here’s a two track improvisation, using sounds from my trusty Casio GZ-50M. ...