Using specially designed and custom made hemispherical speakers and a fleet of laptops, Sideband turns each member of its ensemble in to an island of sound, returning a sense of acoustics and space to the normally flat world of electronic music. Ranging from solos and duos to sextets and beyond, Sideband is an evolving project that inspires composers, performers and audience members to reevaluate the role of computers in music.
Sideband’s parent ensemble, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), was formed in 2005 by Dan Trueman (composer, Norwegian fiddler, and computer music hacker) and Perry Cook (computer scientist, electrical engineer, and music hacker) to be a test-lab for a new way of thinking about electronic and ensemble music. PLOrk has performed widely (in Princeton, New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C.), has won a MacArthur Foundation grant, and has worked in collaboration with Zakir Hussain, the American Composers Orchestra, Matmos & So Percussion, and others.
Sideband was conceived out of a desire to explore the PLOrk model of music making in a more sustained fashion, outside the annually changing context of academic classes. Formed in 2008 to premiere a piece with the American Composers Orchestra at Carngie Hall, Sideband is currently made up of a group of long-term members whose skills range from orchestral percussion to installation art, research in machine-learning algorithms, traditional Norwegian folk music, solo performance, electroacoustic music, software design, and scored composition.
Once a band, now a blog... But for how long? The dead shall rise again! Someday. Maybe...
Monday, February 4, 2013
Child of PLOrk: Sideband
PLOrk (Princeton Laptop Orchestra)
VIDEO: Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) – Princeton Engineering:
Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) founders Perry Cook and Dan Trueman, in pre-concert interviews, explain the philosophy behind their laptop instruments and the on-the-fly computer coding that takes place during performances. PLOrk started as a freshman seminar course at Princeton.
"Most of our students don't know that these things are impossible," says Cook, "and therefore they're not." The PLOrkestra director opening this video is Ge Wang, who received his Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton in 2008. Wang is the founder ofStanford's MoPhO, a mobile phone orchestra. Wang and Cook also are cofounders of Smule, an iPhone applications company specializing in sonic media.
PLOrk: Princeton Laptop Orchestra – Free listening, concerts, stats, & pictures at Last.fm:
The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) is a newly established ensemble of computer-based musical meta-instruments. Each instrument consists of a laptop, a multi-channel hemispherical speaker, and a variety of control devices (keyboards, graphics tablets, sensors, etc…). The students who make up the ensemble act as performers, researchers, composers, and software developers. The challenges are many: what kinds of sounds can we create? how can we physically control these sounds? how do we compose with these sounds? There are also social questions with musical and technical ramifications: how do we organize a dozen players in this context? with a conductor? via a wireless network?
"The Telephone Game: Oil/Water/Ether," PLOrk: Princeton Laptop Orchestra:
"The Telephone Game: Oil/Water/Ether," for the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), is an exploration of a real-time collaborative composition local network. All the performers have identical performance/composition programs -- a custom flexible step-sequencer -- that invite play with rhythmic cycles of various lengths and timbres. The real fun starts, however, when the players begin spying on their neighbors, secretly, via the network, and stealing their ideas with the click of the mouse. Unplanned structures begin to emerge, like oil on water, as riffs propagate and evolve, sometimes returning unrecognizable to their creators.
Telephone Game, version 1:
- 5.1 AAC format (20.4mb)
- 5.1 Dolby (48.8mb)
- 5.1 Quicktime (20.4mb)
- 5.1 AIFF (692.2mb)
- Stereo mp3 (20.7mb)
- Stereo AIFF (228.7mb)
Telephone Game, version 2:
- 5.1 AAC format (17.9mb)
- 5.1 Dolby (41.8mb)
- 5.1 Quicktime (13.2mb)
- 5.1 AIFF (592.3mb)
- Stereo mp3 (17.9mb)
- Stereo AIFF (197.4mb)
Wheelharp
Wheelharp from Antiquity Music on Vimeo.
The Wheelharp | Antiquity Music:
The Wheelharp is a groundbreaking keyboard musical instrument that gives the player the ability to orchestrate a full chromatic scale of sixty-one (61) actual bowed strings at one’s own fingertips, almost like having a real chamber string orchestra at hand.
With an exotic profile and stunning rosette appointments, the Wheelharp’s appearance is equally as breathtaking as its audible character. It is available in a Radial Model (curved keyboard) and a Linear Model (traditional straight keyboard), and in several ranges.
It utilizes a patent-pending action and bridge to translate the player’s subtle fingerings into a range of bowing intensities, and comes equipped with a damper system and electronic pickup system, allowing individuals to sculpt astonishingly beautiful and complex sounds. For musicians, composers, and studios that seek to create the natural sound of classical string instruments while avoiding the frequently sterile quality of digital string synthesizers and samples, or for those looking to foray into new sonic territory, the Wheelharp presents a truly exciting opportunity.
The Wheelharp from Atomic Shadow on Vimeo.
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Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Farewell, Snip.it (& thanks!)
So, Snip.it was bought by Yahoo and is being shut down. They've put together a "Hall of Fame" of contributors and I was named as one of the top contributors in the "Politics & World" category...
From an email I received from their Content Director:
I want to personally thank you for all your amazing contributions to the product, both in your snips and in your feedback to us. I’ve been continually impressed by all the interesting, unique content you’ve unearthed, as well as your thoughtful commentary on it. The quality of your contributions made the site an absolute joy to browse.
To honor all of your support and contributions, we’ve included you in our Snip.it Hall of Fame, a place to celebrate our top snippers. We’ve included your Twitter handle, so people can continue to follow your insights.
We've also created a Snip.it Hall of Fame, where we’re honoring some of the top contributors to the Snip.it community. We’ve included their Twitter handles so you can continue to stay connected and follow their insights.
I joined Snip.it while it was still in beta and have posted to it more days than not since then. They’ve been cool, it’s a great service, and their staff has been very supportive. From nearly the beginning, they featured my content, which I was pretty proud of, and I seem to have attracted quite a few followers there.
Supposedly, they will be reinventing themselves with Yahoo. I hope so. They were a great service.
We are thrilled at the opportunity to bring Snip.it's vision to a larger scale at Yahoo!. While we can't share the specifics of what we'll be building, we are excited about the opportunity to take social news to new, exciting heights at Yahoo!. The Yahoo! team is passionate about inspiring and entertaining the world’s daily habits, and certainly sharing news and information is something we all do every day. The vision and energy at the company is contagious, and we’re so excited to be part of all that is to come.
So now, I just need to figure out what to do with the links I’ve saved there. There are a couple ways to download them for future use, and I’ll be taking a look at how to get these back out there, when I have a little time…
I just deleted the Snip It button from my browser. That makes me sad.
Unfortunately, in life, with both the good and the bad, “This, too, shall pass…”
Snip.it: All My Base Belong To You - HTML Links
Snip.it: Democracy In Distress - HTML Links
Snip.it: Favorites
Snip.it: Retrovirus Lab - HTML Links
Snip.it: Rubble - HTML Links
Snip.it: Suburban Eschatology Part Two - HTML Links
Yahoo Is In Talks To Buy A Site We Actually Use, Snip.It
Snip.It is a social site that resembles a mash up of Pinterest's collections and Instapaper's ability to save links for consumption later.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-acquires-snipit-2013-1#ixzz2IoskdMnR
Yahoo Poised to Acquire Content Curation Site Snip.it - Liz Gannes - News - AllThingsD:
Snip.it was founded by Ramy Adeeb, who was formerly a principal at Khosla Ventures, and has funding from Khosla, True Ventures, Charles River Ventures and SV Angel.
Yahoo is paying “mid teens” of millions of dollars for the company, according to a source.
…
Kara Swisher yesterday described Yahoo’s new approach to content:While one might argue that Google is already the Google of content, the plan is to make Yahoo more relevant by tailoring it to the individual and make the site a “trusted destination to get them to where they want to go and keep going back.”
Thus, the thinking goes, while Google is the place people come to search for links, Yahoo then becomes the place users come to find content. That means more partnership deals from third-party sources, with an additional social component layer and synced across a number of devices and platforms, especially video.
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from tag General
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Talenthouse: My Soundgarden 2013 Short List
Murder By Death. Dante's. Portland, Oregon. August 11, 2012.
Band photography is something I've always wanted to get into a bit more, but haven't for various reasons over the years.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, working with film, the lighting issues were just too annoying to deal with. However, these days, digital cameras are just much more light sensitive, and then there is the ability to vary ISO per shot, not per role, so that helps a lot. Also, being able to review the shots on the spot is tremendously helpful in these situations, because I can keep firing away until I know I've captured what I've been aiming for.
This last year, when I started taking cameras around with me pretty much everywhere, it was only natural to start taking some shots at shows, and I have been happy with the results.
I really like playing with the stage lighting, good performers do interesting things, and I can get some of the good, blurry but nice weird effects that I like, giving me a lot to play with in editing.
This last year, time and budget kept me from making it to many shows. Hopefully 2013 will give me plenty of new opportunities to continue developing my technique with live band photography and to build up a more solid portfolio in this area.
Looking for photographers to shoot dates on the tour. Submit your best live photo for the chance to win a photo pass…
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from tag Caustic
Sunday, December 9, 2012
One Day On Earth: 12.12.12… So it begins
Pretty much the same post I threw up in late October about NaNoWriMo 2012.
Between working on this project and finishing the NaNoWriMo novel (I did get over 50,000 words in during November to “win” the event), I won’t be posting much on the blogs until 2013.
I wanted to do something quick and easy for One Day since the more complex idea a friend and I had will be impossible, since I am in Sacramento and not Portland, but things happen and after doing some planning and discovering that there is a theme for this years event, my idea for this year will be pretty complicated to edit.
Of course, I won’t be filming until Wednesday 12.12.12, but before then there is some prep work, and after there is going to be a whole bunch of editing. And a whole bunch of writing on the novel. And a whole bunch of major life stuff.
So the blogs will remain on hold for the time being.
Yes, this is being reposted everywhere…
One Day on Earth - Film on 12.12.12 from One Day on Earth on Vimeo.
One Day On Earth - 11-11-11 - Gresham and Portland, Oregon (720p) from A. F. Litt on Vimeo.