The Joan: Finale. + Groove Machine

Posted on October 26, 2011 by tte

The mountain did not come to Mahomet.

I suspect that I have yet again thrown heart and soul into a bucket too small to hold them. That’s my fault; I look at what ought to happen and work towards that. I then meet with what will happen, somewhat less than the lofty goals I set.

There’s only so much you can present to schools in one hour. There is only so much you can explain about visual music, synthesisers, composition… maybe I didn’t really need to use 86 channels of audio in case there was a question about number 37.

But I also suspect that over the last year I was led to think it was going to be a bigger push. Something about plotting being easier than delivery. There was much plotting but when it came to the last moment I seemed to be carrying the explosives.

There’s a bunch of high school students that are now playing with video and music… who knows how many, but they’re there. Something moved a little.

—

The odd thing about Image Line’s Groove Machine is how much it reminds me of Fruity Loops of about 8 years ago. It’s a drum machine and a few synthesisers wired together – which is pretty much what FL Studio used to emulate. When you run it inside FL Studio it’s like a Russian doll set. Will Groove Machine get an even smaller plug in?

As I grew up on an 808 + 202 + 101, it’s familiar (if a bit rusty) territory. Could be a good way for me to go back to my roots and … nah who am I kidding? I’m utterly spoiled.

Admire fake woodgrain.

They’re not actually the same. GM is a tweakable groovebox much like KORG’s Electribe (of which I have the iPad version). ‘Much like’ here meaning Apple VS Samsung ‘much like’. It’s there for repeated phrases and much real time knob twiddling. FL Studio is happy enough with the twiddling but has never been a successful live instrument – believe me I’ve tried. When FLS can’t manage to render in time bbababababbabababad things will happen. GM seems to have well set limits – it won’t do what it can’t do. The version I tried had problems inside another host – in Live it needed latency raised to accommodate what I guess is the added signal chain. An updated version has since been posted which is said to fix that.

It sounds quite good, as in it does what most people would want. My whole time in 808 land was spent trying to get around what most people wanted. I think that’s the advantage here, you would have to return to old methods of thwarting the intentions of the equipment, the way that people managed to turn the 303 into something other than the worst bass accompaniment box of all time. The issue then is whether you can find that hidden versatility. In the case of the MC202, very much so. In the case of the TB303 I never managed to find much inspiration. Fruity Loops suited me because it was that kind of thing taken to a high art. An Akira sized drum machine.

Is this what people want now? It was all you got in the 80s, I can’t see people going to the trouble of fighting the limitations now. The Electribe is hardware, that makes it a different animal straight away. Groove Machine is either a crutch or a challenge depending on how you respond.

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Not a gift but certainly some kind of bribe is Moog’s new AniMoog. Like RoboCop I’d buy that for a dollar, but that’s faint praise. The “first professional polyphonic synthesizer designed exclusively for the iPad” is just a rompler with 6 zones from a menu of pre-generated wave forms. A little ball thing spins around between these zones and you get wave sequences a la the KORG Wavestation. (Funny how many KORG ideas keep showing up). It sounds good, is pretty, and has fuck all to do with their expensive hardware. I think the authors of Crystal, Alchemy and a few other iPad synthesisers are pretty annoyed right now, or wishing they had that kind of arrogance.

Mind you, compared to the wretched Fairlight App, it’s a harbour cruise in heaven.

No one gives a damn about your PhD

Posted on October 17, 2011 by tte

First of all two notes.

THIS COMING WEEKEND WE PLAY AT THE JOAN SUTHERLAND PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE AND THEN NOT AGAIN! SO BRING YOUR TROUSERS!

Also

Thanks to Image Line for sending me a review copy of Groove Machine. I will write about it next time! All bribes always welcome!

Leaders in science fiction books are either engineers or scientists. The engineers are the ones that can’t get the engines to fire and the scientists are the ones that figure out that the alien mind bug has taken over the ship’s doctor. That’s ‘people doctor’ not ‘scientist doctor’. I thought people doctors were the real doctors but it turns out the scientist doctors are. Worthy as engineers are, you’d want to be the scientist doctor as they were the smart ones that won the day.

All my family are/were people doctors, the scientist doctors were quite exotic and I’d never be so clever. Then I went to university and met a few that mainly tortured rats. I was tutored by a guy that authored a paper ‘Primary Vocalisation of Pain in The Adult Rat’. You had to know just how pain they were in when they screamed, so you could write it down. Got my first degree, a Bachelor of Science. Put it in the filing cabinet, went and did music. Became an engineer.

Engineering, or production, or mule work, whatever you want to call it seemed to make more sense. You operate on a lot of assumptions and rote, every now and then convey some craftsmanship by grabbing a tool and showing just how you did it. I did music until it fell out of favour, then print layout until that turned into advertising and we got a weapons dealer as a client. Worked on a film. What now?

I returned to university, taught some music and thought that was A Good Thing. When I started I was not supposed to touch the equipment, leaving that to ‘support staff’. Drove me nuts and I finally grabbed a knob and twiddled it, which sped everything up immensely. My betters advised me that if I wanted to keep teaching I would have to become a scientist doctor. Me?

By that stage I’d noticed a few things:

People who spend four years on a PhD may as well have been unemployed that whole time for the effect on their job prospects.
Other people look down at a PhD as some self indulgent whimsy, and given some of the topics people choose, maybe they’re right. The only people who give a damn are other people with PhDs.
Seems to be a sure sign that the guy is selling bogus cures or pyramid schemes.
Research seems to be one of (a) doing the shit work for your supervisor or (b) confirming the biases of the institution that was prepared to take you on the government coin.
When you talk about your research everyone runs away.
No one I knew had managed to get on a spaceship, let alone mind bug.

But this was what was required and so damn it, I’d approach the problem like a good engineer. I chose a DCA. There is a paper to write, software to create, an examination to pass. But sometimes it’s hard. The other people seem to have this arcane knowledge, a secret language. They sound very clever and they are very clever mostly about the topics that fit nicely into the kind of things that scientist doctors know about. I am really impressed by the other students, who I think have been the best at their school, then the best at their undergraduate subjects, and now are crossfaded into a doctorate as the step before being a lecturer in Being Critical of Everything.

When I speak it is as if I am trying to pick up toothpicks wearing oven mitts. I try to explain about video retrieval and search mechanisms and video art and the need for music to be involved in the whole process and feel a lot like a sea lion that has managed to balance a ball on my nose but forgotten to blow the comedy horn. I just don’t know why I am included in the same ‘research strength’ where people analyse neoliberal economic policy. Maybe there was a sudden vacancy due to a student going insane.

But then I felt just as stupid when I first went back to university and still won a medal, so miracles may be possible.

I really don’t know if this award has the meaning it once did, and if it’s not that any more maybe we could go about all this a different way. The DCA is a good step as it’s a specifically geared for people that have been doing their art for a while now and just want to convert that into a recognised award. Maybe that’s why the professors don’t seem to take my wild ideas too seriously.

Anyway my supervisor basically confirmed what I already knew: the retrieval software has to get out of the playpen and start producing some damn results. So far it can search a database and pull up some video footage. Woo bloody hoo. Now it needs to animate the connections between the snippets and THAT is going to take more than my tiny grasp of SQL.