Ableton’s Robert Henke (Monolake) discusses Max For Live and his history with Max.

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Henke is one of the original architects of Ableton Live and now acts as part of the specification team, determining the direction for the future of Live.

via cycling74com

Imaginary Landscapes is a profile of visionary composer, artist and producer Brian Eno. It brings into focus Eno’s seemingly disparate work in sound, vision and light, and explores his music in visual terms, based on landscapes and images that have shaped his life as an artist.

Current.tv’s interview with Thievery Corporation goes from Washington, DC’s monuments and into the DJ duo’s custom studio, nightclub and restaurant.

Thievery Corporation’s Rob Garza and Eric Hilton show off the school tour version of DC – the White House, the Treasury Department, and the Washington Monument – calling it a “Disneyworld set for people to feel good about.” They also flash back to Operation Ceasefire, an event they DJ’d on the National Mall at the beginning of the Iraq War, which was quickly followed by an IRS audit of the band. But still, they’ve stuck close to home instead of moving to more traditional centers for music and entertainment.

via Current

This is a deep interview with a deep guy – Ray Kurzweil – about some deep ideas.

In the early 80’s, Kurzweil developed the Kurzweil K250 digital synthesizer, which developed into one of the most influential digital synthesis platforms.

Kurzweil sold his music business in 1990 and in recent years has focused his attention on artificial intelligence, transhumanism and the technological singularity.

Some of his ideas for the future seem far out. But if you watch this video, you’ll hear Kurweil’s thoughts on exponential technological development and how it creates change that is difficult for our linear minds to predict.

Fantastic stuff – bookmark it and give it a listen when you have a chance.

via ComputerHistory:

[Recorded July 13 2009] Ray Kurzweil is a 21st century polymath. He is a scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, author, visionary and futurist. As a scientist and inventor he has pioneered work in optical character recognition (OCR), speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. As an entrepreneur, Kurzweil has founded businesses in the fields of OCR, music synthesis, speech recognition, reading technology, virtual reality and financial investment. He is the author of numerous books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), the technological singularity and futurism. The Kurzweilian version of the future is the inevitable merger of humans and intelligent machines.In this discussion with Computer History Museum Senior Curator Dag Spicer, Kurzweil shares his vision of how technology will re-shape the human body (and culture generally) into one that incorporates advanced technologies into a new type of post-human organism. Kurzweil sees this transformation occurring over the next 20 to 50 years and beginning with the integration of electronic-based systems into the human body. Some decades after that, a further transformation occurs–one based on nanotechnology—which incorporates the manipulation and construction of interfaces and complex systems based on atomic-level structures that merge with and control specific bodily functions and attack its problems (i.e. cancer). Some of the philosophical implications of Kurzweils vision are also discussed.

In this short interview, prior to a performance with Ferry Corsten, BT explains why he’s not a DJ, discusses his influences and talks about some of the crazy stuff he did with electronics when he was a kid.

via ferrycorstenofficial

For LiFT Studios Broadcast 023, Haig Armen talks with Dasz Garncarz, a synth & interface designer, about the challenges of interaction design and his work on the Nord Modular G2 synthesizer.

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This is part 2 of Mitchell Sigman’s interview with analog synthesis legend Tom Oberheim about the new Oberheim SEM (Synthesizer Expander Module) analog synth module.

See this previous post for part 1 of the Tom Oberheim interview.

The new SEM is available via audioMIDI.com.

Brian Eno has had a career as producer, musician, sonic innovator and experimental artist that spans four decades.

He’s produced, arguably, the most important recordings by U2, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Robert Fripp, Devo and others. He also pioneered the genre of “ambient music.” More recently, Eno’s helped create “sonic-art” app Bloom and the video game Spore.

Eno sat down with Minnesota Public Radio’s Steve Seel to discuss the recording studio as canvas, the idea of discovery and risk in music making, as well as his recent reunion with longtime collaborator David Byrne. The interview includes a discussion of Eno’s forays into “generative music,” his concept of composer as gardener, and his ongoing interest in the idea of surrender in music.

In this AudioMIDI.com interview, electronic music pioneer Tom Oberheim discusses his new Oberheim SEM synthesizer.

Sonic State scored a very nice interview with Eigenlab’s John Henry Lambert, creator of the radical new Eigenharp electronic instrument.

See part II below – it’s great stuff.

In the interview, Dolby shares some fantastic stories, like this one:

I remember word going around that the UK branch of the Musician’s Union was going to vote on a motion to ban synthesizers. A friend of mine from a band called Landscape told me this, and said we had to get some people down there because they were actually going to put it to the vote. The motion that was on the table was that synthesizers would be banned altogether, because they were taking work away from musicians. So ten of us went down there, one row of about 30, 40 people, and the rest of the people were like, out of work flugelhorn players, people who occasionally did West End musicals, and they were all half asleep. Each of the ten of us in turn got up and spoke very passionately and very articulately about how we felt it was progress and it was a good thing, and ultimately would lead to more work for musicians. Then it went to the vote and it got voted in! The British Musician’s Union had banned synthesizers! I think it was only afterwards that the executive manager of the Musician’s Union realised how impossible it would be to implement, so it was sort of swept under the carpet and we never heard about it again.

Moog Music has published a nice interview with Chris Kilmore, of Incubus.

In the interview, Kilmore discusses how he uses his Moog gear:

When I first moved to LA in October of ‘95, I met a friend named Danny. He was the boyfriend of a girl I knew and was in LA to attend Cal Arts film school. We hit it off because we were both into music and film. I had just graduated from the George Washington University with a radio/tv/film degree. I moved to LA to get into foley work or some kind of film related job.

used to go up to Danny’s place in Valencia. It was like E.T. meets blacksploitation. I wish I had a pic of his place. It was black lights, lava lamps, b-rated film posters, zodiac signs, Star Wars sheets and Parliament records… oh and Minimoogs!!! It was like the ultimate clash of pop cultures.

I would bring my decks and samplers, and we’d just sit around and dissect funk records looking for cool samples. We would smoke a lot of weed, and he would go off about Bernie Worrell and his sounds. And in no time we’d have the Minimoog hooked up to the decks. It was sci-fi heaven after that.

I was into the sounds we were making. We would sample ourselves, make our own songs (some better than others) and have a lot of fun just experimenting with the sounds. I spent a lot of time on his Minimoog. It definitely was like learning a new language. I had no clue what I was doing, sometimes I would turn the thing on and couldn’t get any sound out of it (what I now know wasn’t only my problem). I eventually figured it out and started making my own scratch records that were heavily Moog influenced. Those records played a big part in my early years with Incubus.

See the full interview at the Moog site.

In a Trouser Press interview from 1982, Brian Eno shared his thoughts on composing:

Brian Eno On Composing

I’m always starting pieces of work. It’s the only thing I do, really; these pieces don’t go anywhere. For some reason, one of them will touch something in me. I never understand why at the time. As soon as I’ve got that, I recognize it as being the seed for something. There follows a period of looking at it in different ways, putting things with it, seeing how it reacts with other things – as you might do with a chemical.

The breakthrough stage is when I suddenly get a strong sense of mood or place. It’s like a fetal idea at the time. I have to surround it with things that will nourish it, if you like; that’s when I start thinking about psychoacoustics and electronics. Then craft enters into it.

Craft has to be dropped at a certain point. You’ve gotten somewhere and you have to decide what you want to do there. The sense of place becomes a seed for the sense of what happens in that place. There’s another way of working which is quite different. I sit down and think, If I connected this to this, and I set this up this way so that this happens to that, something might happen. That’s the technological way of working: imagining a novel technological situation. If you understand those technologies to a certain extent, you have reason to believe a particular novel format might give you something.

I was working in a studio in Canada recently. They had a Fender Rhodes piano there, a standard studio instrument I almost always ignore. I thought, I’ll use that for a change. How can I use this to do something surprising? I looked around and found an old amplifier with a rattly speaker. I took the speaker and sat it on the sustain pedal of a grand piano so the strings were all open. The sound from the Fender Rhodes would make the piano resonate in sympathy with it. Then I set up a microphone with a long plastic tube on it, one of those tubes you spin to get a note. The tube resonates at that frequency, so it was selective. (I did this with my engineer, Daniel Lanois, who always helps me very much.) I sat down and checked out various notes on the Rhodes. One note – just one note – made the whole system come to life. It made the speaker shake with a beautiful purring sound, like a huge foghorn. The piano was ringing away, and the pick-up through the tube particularly resonated around that frequency and all the harmonics.

This was a case of having a technological idea and then seeing if anything could be made of it. It would have stopped there if that sound hadn’t appeared. The avant-garde technique would be to go ahead with it anyway, because the process is supposed to be interesting in itself. I don’t go for that. I think if something doesn’t jolt your senses, forget it. It’s got to be seductive.

Of course, when I got that sound, I was back in the seed position of the other way of working. It immediately suggested a direction I still haven’t resolved. I didn’t find anything more interesting than just the sound on its own. Everything I put on covered up parts of the sound.

FXpansion joins Marshall Jefferson, the Godfather of House, at Olympic Studios, London while working on the Kid British debut album.

The fun starts about 1:24 into the video as he talks about how he got started in music.

Marshall gives us an insight into the Chicago House movement and discusses his views on the current Dance Music scene as well as offering some choice tips on BFD and GURU.

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via FXpansion:

This interview with Goldie is part of a series created by the Red Bull Music Academy.

Goldie
Metalheadz, London, UK

Description:

Yes, yes, James Bond. Yes, yes, EastEnders. Screen fame to the side for one minute please, because this is Goldie we’re talking about. Goldie whose 1992 Terminator introduced time-stretching and galvanized the ranks of UK producers at a time where only a handful of dedicated rave junkies like the bleep kings of Sheffield or renegade outfits like Shut Up And Dance and 4Hero were building their own tunes. The one-time graffer was designer and A&R for Reinforced Records whilst releasing speaker-shaking standards like Killa Muffin and Dark Rider as Rufige Cru. By 1994 he was well in his stride, spearheading major junglist talent on his Metalheadz label and fronting one of the best clubs of that decade, the Metalheadz Sunday Sessions at The Bass Clef, in London’s then-derelict Old Street ends. Goldie was the face of jungle, presiding over its golden period and he’s still at it: 2008 he followed Andy Weatherall with the latest of Harmless Record’s Watch The Ride compilations. All the junglists say big up, big up!

This interview with electronic music pioneer Don Buchla is part of a series created by the Red Bull Music Academy.

Don Buchla
Buchla & Associates, San Francisco, USA

Description:

You all know about the Moog. But what about Don Buchla, the Californian synthesizer designer who’s Buchla Series 100 was released mere months after Dr. Moog’s first synth?

His electronic music equipment company, Buchla & Associates, were commissioned by avant garde composers Morton Subotnik and Ramon Sender to create something they could use in live performance – and since then he’s been creating and designing a whole range of unusual electro-acoustic instruments and deeply desirable modular synths. That includes the intriguing Marimba Lumina, the classic 1970 200 Series Electric Music Box or indeed the hot little analogue cutie, 1972s Music Easel. Buchla’s sonic toys combine a colorful aesthetic with supernatural sonic abilities. Genius alert!

This interview with techno music pioneer Derrick May is part of a series created by the Red Bull Music Academy.

Derrick May
Transmat, Detroit, USA

Description:

To be a living legend is not an easy game to play. Derrick May plays that quite well though for 20 years plus. As one third of the infamous Belleville Three (Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson being the other parties) he created a beast named techno that longed for a beauty called soul. Strings Of Life being the quintessential track of that genre, May is responsible for an armada of similar tunes that all mix and mingle with industrial melancholy and romantic futurism. Unparalleled and universally valid… It Is What It Is.

This is an excerpt from the documentary Totally Wired, featuring the analogue genius Ken Macbeth, of Macbeth Studio Systems.

Ken talks about what inspires him, his vision for the M5 synthesiser, and making noise.

Set in Edinburgh, Scotland.

lasvegasweekly caught up with Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland of The Crystal Method as they made a tour stop in their hometown.

This is an interview with Sasha and John Digweed, produced for the South West Four Festival:

To coincide with their only joint UK festival performance this summer we are very pleased to bring you Sasha & John Digweeds first joint video interview in many years!

Usually shying away from video interviews we were lucky enough to catch this legendary duo on a recent trip to London. As both DJs are veterans to South West Four and as they are rarely are interviewed together, we are absolutely chuffed to be able to bring you this exclusive as the duo discuss their first joint UK festival performance together in two years, life on the road, their individual projects and more.

via LockNLoadEvents