Tonewheels is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions.

In this three day workshop from 24-27 October 2009 in Bulgaria, participants built a simple light-to-sound converter and DC motor controller, and then began to experiment with drawing sounds onto transparent “tonewheels”. The workshop ended in a group performance and an invitation to the audience to try out the instruments for themselves.

Supercollider 140 is a free album of Twitter music – audio pieces composed of Twitter-sized snippets of SuperCollider code.

It started as a curious project, when live coding enthusiast and Toplap member Dan Stowell started tweeting tiny snippets of musical code using SuperCollider. Pleasantly surprised by the reaction, and “not wanting this stuff to vanish into the ether” he has recently collated the best pieces into a special download for The Wire’s online readership here.

Many of these pieces are actually generative, so if you re-run the source code (the track titles) you get a new piece of music.

The compositions are self-referentially named, with titles like:

{LocalOut.ar(a=CombN.ar(BPF.ar(LocalIn.ar(2)
*7.5+Saw.ar([32,33],0.2),2**LFNoise0.kr(4/3,4)*
300,0.1).distort,2,2,40));a}.play//#supercollider

Tweet that and put it in your SuperCollider!

You can preview the album below, or download it at the Internet Archive:

Detailed artist biographies for the composers are available at The Wire.

via SuperCollider

If you think this video of Japanese girl group synth band Cosmos is horrible, I feel your pain.

On the other hand, if you think it’s awesome in a sort of David Lynch way, I also feel your pain.

Give it a look and let me know what you think!

via blackisblack

via isopod: Brent talks about the mystery of self-programming synths – the fact that old batteries sometimes lead to synth patches that are actually pretty cool.

A lot of people take an Eno-esque view – that the quirky results can lead to something more interesting than you might program yourself, or at least provide an interesting starting point.

Many TB-303 owners find that they get interesting random sequences, too, when their batteries get old.

Have you ever had this happen with one of your synths? And do you think synths should come with a “Randomize Patch” button?

Giorgio Moroder has a special place in the history of electronic music, because of his genre-inspiring classic track I Feel Love, with Donna Summer and Pete Bellotte.

When Brian Eno first heard I Feel Love, he told David Bowie “This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years,” which it did. The track has been covered by dozens of artists and imitated, either directly or indirectly, by thousands.

Moroder’s version of the original Battlestar Galactica soundtrack, on the other hand, has been lost to obscurity.

Until now:

Give it a listen and let me know what you think!

via TMI

Sorry synth fans, but this Saturday Synth Porn entry is a little less synthy than usual and a little more porn-y.

The image above is from a performance of Technosexual, from Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand’s Mixed Relations.

Mixed Relations consists of a series of performances and workshops that explore the relations between bodies and technology within mixed realities.

If you can handle avant garde lesbian erotic multi-reality performance art, with motion sensors & a Nintendo Wii, see the details below.

Otherwise, here are the kitties and synthesizers.

The project involves two people performing in actual and virtual space. Live audio synthesis is achieved using Puredata to respond to body movements. These movements are detected through various technologies including marker based motion capture, flex sensors, pressure sensors, light sensors, accelerometers and the Nintendo Wii.

The performers’ movements are mirrored into Second Life, which is projected into the physical performance space. Live realtime video is also streamed into the virtual performance space, from cameras that are attached to the performers’ bodies. Scaled projections, scale models in virtual space and the projection of virtual instruments onto actual objects are used to create a mixing of the actual and virtual, blurring the lines between the two.

Technesexual consists of the performers engaging in playful erotic acts in physical and virtual space, while using handmade electronic stethoscopes to play the sound of their heartbeats in both spaces, blurring the lines between the two. The stethoscopes consisted of analog stethoscopes connected to piezo sensors wired to 1/8″ audio jacks.

The perfomance captured above was part of the Trasnocheo performance space curated by Susana Cook as part of the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics 7th Encuentro at Mapa Teatro in Bogota, Colombia.

Little Life

This music video features garden water microorganisms filmed though a 25 Euro-cent web-cam converted into a microscope. The IR, laser, and LED light used to illuminate the film, were powered by solar energy.

The music consists of samples that were converted from stills of the original film material into sounds and then combined freely to fit the content.

Film by Oren Banai and music by Achim Kämper.

via Luftgeschaeft

Kosma’s compositions frequently use radical or bizarre methods of working with music and its relationship to the human body and ask alternately for specific forms of human interaction or endurance.

If this sounds inappropriate for you, you may want to check out the kitty synth video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kosma’s Blow Job explores microphone feedback, controlled by a performer simulation oral sex. This is apparently the two girls, one mic version of the piece.

The in-your-face sexuality of Blow Job provokes reactions, with many people questioning whether it’s music at all, or just sensational performance art or soft-core pornography.

What do you think? Does Kosma’s piece have any merit beyond titillation?

Sunday Synth Jam: Stuck for ideas? Can’t get people to jam with you?

Then you might want to try out ChrisLody’s strange experimental ideas – the cat-controlled synth jam:

The keyboard at the top of the screen (a Yamaha SY-35) is midi’d into the lower keyboard (a Novation KS-5). The KS-5 is programmed with a simple arpeggio patch I created which can be played from the SY-35.

Then I covered the keys of the SY-35 with cat biscuits and let my kitten Daisy loose on it. I was then able to control some aspects of the sound with conrols on the KS-5.

I think she got wise to me about half way through as she stopped standing on the keys.

Damn kitty!

Of course – teach a cat to control your synthesizer and they’ll go on to control your sequencer….and then the world!

Ever feel like smacking your computer around?

Now you’ve got good reason. SmackTop is an open-source utility for Mac laptops (after 2005) which translates the accelerometer (Sudden Motion Sensor) data into MIDI data and audio impulses.

This lets you control your favorite DAW by tilting and smacking your laptop.

This seems like it could be a bad idea for a lot of reasons – but it offers a new, more physical way of interacting with music.

SmackTop has two types of controllers – Tilters and Smackers. Tilters translate the left/right (i) and forward/backward (j) tilt of the laptop into MIDI CC values. Smackers use the change in acceleration (jerk) to trigger a MIDI CC, noteOn and/or audio impulse. The audio impulse is designed to trigger ’sidechain’ effects.

SmackTop was built with Processing and Chuck. It is licensed under GNU GPL 2.0, although the included libraries are subject to their own various GNU or CC licenses.

The track is a plunderphonic sound mashup.

If you’re not familiar with plunderphonics, it leaves behinds the limitations of legal sampling to create works that aren’t defined by our current copyright law.

“This is a sample-based collage,” explains Gel-Sol, “made with over 7 years of collected samples.”

You can preview gel-sol’s adventures beyond the plunderworld below:

If you’re not familiar with plunderphonics, it leaves behinds the limitations of legal sampling to explore works that aren’t defined by our current copyright law. Plunderphonic pieces often contain so many samples that it would be unrealistic to even attempt to clear them.

What sort of diseased mind would conceive of something such as this?

Seattle’s Gel-Sol is producer/musician Andrew Reichel, whose sound spans from ambient soundscapes to complex, rhythmic electronica, creating a dynamic psychedelic universe with heavy emphasis on improvisation.

In 2004, Gel-Sol released the critically-acclaimed Gel-Sol 1104 (aka Music Made For You…And By You, I Mean Me.) on the UK’s cult ambient label Em:t Records.

Gel-Sol’s follow-up album Unifactor continues the tradition of his unique, amorphous sound collages, and was released on Upstairs Recordings (Vancouver) in April 2007. Gel-Sol’s third album IZ, released by Upstairs/Psychonavigation in 2008, is an all-ambient excursion written for his niece, and is a bit of a departure from his previous two efforts.

Andrew is also a member of the electronic group KIDS FOR TOMORROW, an improvisational trio focused on experimental ambient music.

Find out more about Gel-Sol at his site and MySpace page.

GPS Beatmap: Planet as Control Surface.

This video is a demonstration of Face Removal Services‘ Beatmap – a GPS-based music instrument that transforms the face of the planet into an enormous DJ booth.

Yeah – it’s insane and awesome. I want to try this on my next road trip.

Details below!
Beatmap

Looping musical phrases are represented on a map as overlapping circular territories. As the vehicle approaches the center of a circle, the volume increases. In areas of the map where territories overlap the vehicle generates dynamic mixes of the overlapping musical phrases. By exploring a very large map of many overlapping territories the Beatmap creates complex, dynamic mash-ups.

The map can be explored on foot, by plane, boat, train, or automobile. In this footage the map is explored by car on the Bonneville Salt Flats, allowing the user to freely accelerate, swerve, and slam to a stop for optimum musical control of the instrument.

The Beatmap can be positioned anywhere on Earth and expanded or contracted to any size by manipulating a continuous stream of GPS data. The Beatmap can thus be used to create drive-through mash-ups on any surface of any size, from a tennis court to the Atlantic Ocean.

Exploring the Beatmap is like investigating a new city while navigating a DJ’s crate of records. Obscure landmarks begin to gain new significance by their association with unique musical juxtapositions. For instance, a treacherous pothole may invite multiple drive-bys simply because of its proximity to a particularly satisfying polyrhythm. The Beatmap is currently be readied for deployment in locations near and far.

Saturday Synth Porn: Sound of Life (SoL) is a very unusual audio-visual performance by noise performer 23N! that explores the idea of generating noise music from the movements of spermatozoa:

SoL consists in generating sounds and visual dynamically through the tracking of the movement of individual spermatozoa of the semen of the performer observed under a digital microscope. The obtaining of the semen is an intrinsic part of the performance.

Details on the work below.

According to 23N!:

Artist Statement

When spermatozoa are the ones generating sounds, who is the performer ? Are the spermatozoa the performer or are they already a distinct autonomous living entity ?

Sound of Life is trying to address these questions by limiting the interaction between the performer-creator, as the one who gave birth to the spermatozoa, and the spermatozoa to a minimum. Spermatozoa that enter the field of vision of the microscope are all potential performers and the sounds they generate depends mostly on their movements that are not controlled.

While the act of selecting the candidate spermatozoa can be seen as an action of the performer that limits the freedom of the spermatozoa, it is meant to be done in the case of a staged performance. In the case of an installation, random selection or selection of all moving spermatozoa can be easily implemented instead.

By making the act of obtaining the necessary fresh semen a part of the performance, the artistic creation is voluntary confused with the creation of life. The created life, the spermatozoa, becomes an artistic creator, blurring the border between life and art.

The software behind the performance is put together with the usual experimental electronic music culprits, including OSC, PureData, & Wiimote.

Interesting experimental concept or intellectual wankery? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Chariots Of Sagan – Sagan

Sunday Synth Jam: This is Sagan’s cover of Vangelis’ Chariots Of Fire, which was included as an Easter Egg on the DVD of the 2004 release, Unseen Forces.

Sagan was bLevin bLectum, Wobbly, Ryan Junell and J Lesser.

The audio program of “Unseen Forces” will be available on iTunes, Amazon and other online music sites soon enough while the the movie will be released as vignettes on YouTube.

via jlesser

We’ve been easy on you for a week or two with the disturbing electronic music videos, so without further ado, here is cyriak’s Meow Mix, featuring the Cats of Hell.

We’ve been pretty easy with you lately with our music video selections – but this video may have you running for the sanitary eye wash.

Cotton Museum’s Pus Pustules video promo is sort of NSFA (not safe for anywhere/anyone).

It appears to have been filmed in Disgust-o-rama. Appreciation of this video style is probably limited to fans of David Lynch’s Eraserhead. But it’s got a”throbbing cesspool” of electronic sound.

Here’s what those responsible for Pus Pustules have to say for themselves:

“PUS PUSTULES” is one of the most diseased COTTON MUSEUM recordings to date.

Clocking in at 21 minutes on side A, adorned with with a detailed etching of sickly beasts on side B and a five color silk screened album cover designed by Chris Pottinger. Theremin, Synth, and other odd electronic instruments create a bubbling cesspool of rotting sounds that leak from your stereo speakers like a cancerous sludge. Take a trip through a strange world where you can hear these sickly beasts devouring corpses while insects sting their bodies, leaving them covered with infected welts.

Cotton Museum is a solo electronic noise project from visual artist Chris Pottinger that has been performing for the past seven years.

Limited edition of 400 hand numbered copies, black vinyl with thick chipboard album cover.

Yum!

More info at TastySoil.com

“Non-music fuckhead” DJ Steve Porter probably “dicked around on a Macintosh” to come up with this remix of Henry Rollins’ rant against Jungle Trance Hip Hop Fuckin’ Shit Music.

Henry Rollins makes a colorful case against over-produced popular electronic music.

But Steve Porter totally turns Rollins’ rant inside out, turning it into a track ready to be put on a white label and sent to the clubs.

Think we have to chalk this battle up to Porter.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Download (sendspace)

via djsteveporter

“Just thought I would record a patch I made this afternoon on my modular system,” explains Devine. “Bits and pieces running through the H-3000 DS/E Eventide Harmonizer.”

This video captures a performance of Tokyo Lick, by Jeffrey Stolet, using custom software and infrared sensors. The system converts his waving of the hands into complex piano music.

Stolet describes his system as a “new paradigm for virtuoso music performance”.

Details below.

Simple Input, Complex Output: Performance and Data mapping in Tokyo Lick.

Challenges regarding the conceptual design and implementation of human / music instrument interfaces have a rich and nuanced history. Generally, if a musical instrument has thrived it has been due to the fact that the particular instrument could provide the desired musical outcome. Traditional instruments typically display a simple one-to-one relationship in terms of input and output (e.g., one piano key is depressed, one note is sounded). Current technologies release us from the shackles of such one-to-one input-output models and permit to the creation of new types of musical generation. At the University of Oregon we have been involved with projects where musical robots perform music, where eye movement data control sound and video, and where infrared sensing devices control sonic and video events.

In his program, Mr. Stolet will focus on the technology and the human-performance elements in Tokyo Lick, his composition for infrared sensors, custom interactive software, and MIDI piano. He performs Tokyo Lick by moving his hands through two invisible infrared spheres and directing the data derived from those motions to algorithms residing in customized interactive software created in the Max multimedia programming environment.

Tokyo Lick contains no sequences or pre-recorded material. Mr. Stolet will perform every note in real-time. Using a technology he refers to as “algorithm flipping,” he can rapidly change the specific algorithm or algorithms governing the response to the incoming MIDI control data. He actuates the algorithmic changes through pre-composed schedules, musical contexts, or through explicit intervention. Taken together, these techniques provide a conceptual framework for practical input/output mapping (action ? specified outcome) and for control and performance flexibility, while offering a truly new paradigm for virtuoso music performance.

via deviantsynth

Official music video for Acid Symphony Orchestra’s Diamonds Of The Night.

Taken from the forthcoming Acid Symphony Orchestra 12″ on Turbo recordings.

The Acid Symphony Orchestra’s live perfomances feature 10 Roland TB-303 bassline synthesizers, one TR-707 or a TR-808 drum machine and personnel to operate them.

Composer and conductor:

Jori Hulkkonen

The Orchestra:

Juha Matinmäki
Aku “Huoratron” Raski
Kalle Karvanen
Jussi-Pekka “Monoder” Parikka
Janne “Burdock” Puurunen
Tatu “Mr Velcro Fastener” Peltonen
Kimmo “Acid Kings” Oksanen
Pete “Sintetik” Salonen
Tuomas Toivonen
Johannes “TinMan” Auvinen