musical chair

This project is a fund raiser for the Alachua county elementary schools music and arts programs. They have a face book fan page with some picks of last years chairs and starting to get some from this year as well. I started this with intentions of making the chair look like bronze and putting a patina on it. The first step was to sand it down and put on a layer of molding paste to give the texture of a bronze casting.

Then I applied some bronze paint  This is actually bronze dust in acrylic so it will take a patina just like real bronze.

Long before I heard I was invite too be in this show I had been collecting the electronic "guts" from musical greeting cards.  Mostly birthday cards.  I got several from my Mom as well.  I've been wanting to do something with them ever since and this seemed like the perfect chance the show was even called " musical chairs"  the original idea was to use these old cards and the assorted sounds, some pretty cheesy.  I decided to find the parts and program them with my own electronic music and spoken word.

Programing the chips is done in 2 ways depending on the type of electronics on the board.  Most of the ones I used here have a simple on board mike and a record button. After soldering on the new wire and adding bigger activating buttons I hold down the record switch on the device and play the sounds.  First I had to make the sounds and the program I show here is Sample Wiz for the ipad.  I used spoken word directly into the app and applied fx and used the key board to compose short, 10 second sound bites. I went thru a series of steps and samples before coming to the conclusion that the complex, multi layed, tracks were to overwhelming for the little computers.  They are designed, after all, to sing happy birthday and that's about it.  So I had to simplify my plan and scale back some of the sounds. The range of sound is narrow.  Bass doesn't come thru the tiny speakers and hi treble distorts. The volume is low.  There is another type of board that has a usb plug in and it slides into the usb on the computer and you can down load any .wav file that will fit.  I used 2 of these to make a "stereo" recording of a train coming into a station,  It goes from one side of the chair to the other,  It's 104 seconds long so I didn't include that in the vid. Who has an attention span that long these days?  Maybe I'll make a separate vid of that.  I also used an app called Nanostudio. This is an amazing program. An entire recording studio on your iphone for 20.00. Kids growing up today that will benefit from this auction, will not be able to appreciate what a leap forward this technology has been. They will add their own discoveries to it for the next leap. The innovation is non stop.
Before now you had to use a powerful computer with lots of memory and very complicated programs called Digital Audio Workstations.(daw)  The iso platform has changed music making. It is now possible for anyone to tap into their musical creativity

 In these shots the chair has been patinaed and I'm in the process of attaching the electronics.  The units vary in the way they activate.  The ones that come directly from the greeting cards require the contact to be held down . The ones I bought toggle on and off. I soldered on longer wires and added buttons.  Two of the units are activated by light. The blue rag is to keep that one from constantly going on.  These have a battery life of about 300 pays.  I don't want to waste them on me.

I ended up using 10 working electronics that vary in length from 10 seconds to 104 seconds. You can bid on this chair and 26 others at the fund raiser on March 2 at the Doris Bardon Art Center.
You can hear more of my electronic music at http://www.photogenicmemory.bandcamp.com/  and some of the sketchier stuff at www.soundcloud.com/pdidit

Birdfeeder

I should have taken pictures  > just didn't think of it.  Not much of a journalist I guess.  Any way Grant played a new set of songs that was too short for my taste.  I love his creative, many layered, complex beats and melodies. He is using using Abelson Live on a mac book and controlling it with an Akai apc 40 and adding an additional layer with an old Commodore 65 key board he altered to play notes. Additional variation comes from a joystick.   Unfortunately I don't have any links to his music but here is his facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Birdfeeder/239676252443#!/grantsjohnson

the lab show

Last week end I went to a show at the Laboratory and it was one of the best yet. This one was mostly groups of experimenters as opposed to the solo or duo format of other noise shows there.  One of my favorites was Travis Johnson. He played a box of balloons with his hands and with a bow. He comes up with some of the most creative stuff.

Andrew Chadwick was also good as usual.  He played with Brian Ubanks. Andrew (Ironing) plays a turntable and stacks pieces of records on and lets the needle bump the parts to make a rhythm and rapidly changes the bits as it progress. He often also has random radio or tape playing at the same time. Sat. he finally ripped the needle out the stylus. I don't know how that thing lasted so long.

music notes

Hey, I added a new page to my website.  The site builder has an audio player so I put one up. It much faster than putting it on sound cloud and linking back to here. Plus it's totally private. Only people on my site that can find their way to the link get to listen to the music or talk.   Pretty cool check it out. http://jewelryartstudio.weebly.com/music-notes.html

spin cycle

Well, the show never happened.  Or at least my part in it didn't happen.  I was just not ready.  I didn't get the new electribe in time and I just didn't have time to practice.  I didn't like any of my old kaoss stuff and all the new stuff has been recorded live with no notes so I don't even know how I did the best of it.  Reproducing kaoss stuff live is not so easy since there is no key board it is all by ear and memory.  So anyway I got there with the intent to just jam on the kaoss (ko1 is the official Korg name) but the other person that was supposed to be a solo artist didn't show so it was me  and a heavy metal Opeth band.  I felt totally amature and out of place so I just told her I didn't feel good about going on. As it turned out, no one showed up to watch and all the bands but one canceled. The whole thing kinda fizzled

mo music

Another early morning practice session.. I'm thinking about the show I have coming up next Sat Night at Spin cycle and trying to come up with something new.  Not necessarily different.. It is the kaoss after all.  This is recorded in audacity to get the fades the live performance wont have that unless I come up with a mixer (and figure out how to use it) . But with the ko1 I have to build the layers live , no saved input, so it'll be different.Click on MO MUSIC to listen . It's short and not too painfull

first post New site

Hey,  Just trying to make life simpler,  I know, you're saying " with yet  another blog?"  Well, some people and expressed interest in my weird music so I thought I would put it where there is easy access instead of having to send out emails with links all the time.
Not everyone is one facebook so this is for you. 
Now you can follow and check it for yourselves.  I also wanted a place to put links for other artists and friends the make music and art.
 So as you can see on the left there are already some links. If you have a suggestion please post it here in a comment or send it in an email or post it on my facebook page.  They can be sites or YouTube, face book events  Whatever.  Rock on .  I'll start out with a link to my latest new songs on bandcamp http://www.photogenicmemory.bandcamp.com/
 Keep in touch, and speak up, wadaya  think?