Minimalism

I have long been interested in the work of what academics call the minimalists (Steve Reich, Phillip Glass being the two obvious examples). I never fully understood how it was that they could compose such brilliantly complex pieces. Also never truly understood why it was called minimalism.

All that changed one day when I stumbled across this video. That started me on a series of pieces. The latest of which starts as a simple canon.

A simple 4 bar melody in C minor across 4 different keyboard-y sounds. That MIDI data is simultaneously feed to other tracks with other sounds that I bring in, adjust and arpeggiate.

Enjoy.

The Project

In the late eighties our band, Two Infant Children, recorded our works on an 8-track 1/4" deck (Fostex Model 80). For years, I wondered what those old recordings sounded like. Now I have a chance to find out. My band-mate Ralph managed to dig the Fostex gear and a few reels of tape out of a closet it's all been living in for the last 20 years.

I'm transferring the tapes to an old G3 running ProTools (the 8 tracks going into a Digi001). From there it'll go a faster machine running Logic where the archeology will really begin.

Of course, while doing the initial transfer, I couldn't help but have a listen...

My first impression was that perhaps memories should stay memories...

Stay tuned.

Better Late Than Never

Ever bought a CD (or downloaded a bunch of tracks) and never really
listened to them. Or perhaps you didn't like them at first? And then
just move on relegating that music so the unheard/skipped part of your
music collection...

Today, my iTunes "Party Shuffle" shuffled onto "Part Two" by the Pat
Metheny Group (from The Way Up release). I was busy working and
paid no attention when it came on but somewhere in the middle (it's a
20 minute opus) it just grabbed me. Hard. This is great! wtf?!?
What is it?

To my amazement (and shame) it's a CD I bought in February '06. So
for over 2 years, I've been ignoring this album. Stunning. Better
late than never, I guess.

Seems sad that people slave over their music and even their ardent
fans don't pay attention.

So a challenge for you. In your music player, order your music
collection by the Last Played date, with the never played at the top.
Press play and be amazed.

All I want for Christmas is a New iPod Feature

My adult professional life has been spent involved in making computer
software in one form or another. Back in the '90s I ran into a little
program that played mp2 files. Not mp3 but mp2. A little more
digging yielded program that would convert CD data into an mp2 file.

At the time, this was mind blowing. A song as a file on a disk?
Little did I know.

I've always had a substantial music collection so I busily set about
writing scripts to convert my CDs to mp2 files. The encoder was crazy
slow. It would take about 20 minutes per song. So my scripts ran
multiple encoders on various idle cpus in the office. Eventually, I
(and my colleagues) had built a collection of about 16GB. Peanuts by
today's standards but we did this on disk that was priced at more than
a dollar per MB.

Now the mp2 player was not like what we have now. It was a command
line thing that just played a single file. Which meant I had to write
a program that would allow the user to play music from our collection.

I set out to write the simplest thing that did what I wanted. It
would have a pause/play button, next, previous. It would play tracks
in a random order. It would not repeat. That was the first version.
Basically a very oversized shuffle (a file server, my workstation and
some networking gear). (For the language geeks, I did this GUI in
dtksh which was essentially ksh with hooks to the Xt toolkit)

Now listening to your collection in shuffle mode is fine but
occasionally something comes on from the middle of a great album work
like, say, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. You didn't know it
until that moment but you want to listen to the whole album. So I
added a button called "This Album".

Clicking "This Album" would stop shuffling and play the album from
start to finish and then resume shuffling at the song after the one
that caused you to hit the button in the first place. The
next/previous buttons now moved through the tracks of that release.

Fast forward a decade or more and I have that much music and more on
my iPod which normally lives in my car and plays in shuffle mode. I
am stunned to think that in all that time nobody else has had this
idea. Why do I need to risk a car crash when I decide that I want to
listen to all of Radiohead's OK Computer, just because Let Down just
came on planting the idea...

There are those asking today if the album is dead. Perhaps "This
Album" might help.

My Brand New Monitors

w00t! I finally got real monitors.

This week I finally took the plunge and bought myself some real studio
monitors. To this point, I have been mixing on a collection of
headphones with an occasional mix check in my car. Sort of funny
because what I've spent on various headphones would have bought some
pretty nice monitors.

Suspense killing you? Well ultimately I decided on the Samson Rubicon R5a.

Picking monitors is hard. Really hard. In the modern age of on-line
shopping, a decent store with a big selection for you to listen to a
bunch in a decent acoustic environment is a hard thing to find. The
economics probably don't support a store "doing it right". So I've
been going really slow. Reading reviews in magazines (Computer Music,
Future Music and Sound on Sound being my faves); dropping into stores
and having a listen to something; getting confused; repeat. I've had
occasion to visit a Guitar Centre in San Jose and they have an OK
selection and you can listen to a bunch... of course, unless you
bring music with you that you know well you'll soon be confused. I
likened the process to choosing a wine. Within a price range, most
are good but each has its own character... Lucky for me, I live in
Canada and making an impulse buy in California was not in the cards.

My first criteria was price. My mental limit was $500CAN. I got to
hear some really nice Dynaudio monitors that were more than double
that and I just ruled them out. Many people rave about Genelecs, I
never even tried for reasons of price. Maybe I'm wrong, whatever.

For that price range, I could have got some M-Audio BX8a's.
Initially, I was lured by bigger speakers. I read somewhere that
unless I had a big room, they'd likely overpower the room. Knowing
what I know now, I'm glad I went small.

But I went to hear them in several places and each time they sounded
different... Basically, the acoustics of the store you're in play a
huge role in your perception. Distressing for sure. Eventually I
decided that I couldn't really trust the store experience and I should
just make a decision. I'd probably learn to love whatever I chose.

Now, presumably the guys writing for the magazines know at least a
little bit more than me and until I know enough to thumb my nose at
them, I might as well look at what they like. The Rubicon's have been
Future Music's Editors' Choice for a while so I thought seriously
about them. I found a place in the city where I could hear them.
They sounded awesome. Not hugely better than any other speaker but
"just right". Now here's the part I feel guilty about... I bought
them from another store that was closer to home cause was too lazy to
drive into the city (carrying a monitor box on transit is not my idea
of fun). The reason I feel guilty is that the store in the city did
everything right. The store I bought at is staffed by lovely people
but their economics just don't support a wall o' speakers for
customers to sample from.

So finally I have real monitors. What's it like?

One word. Awesome.

But I have some observations.

First. They're loud. They go to eleven but I'm running them at one.
I'm so glad I didn't get 8 inch units. My room isn't very large and
turns out it doesn't take very many watts to make 80dB SPL in such a
space.

Second. I put my old computer speakers, which weren't completely
terrible on top of the monitors. That raises them off my desk by about
13-14 inches. Wow what a difference! You might save yourself a ton
of money just by raising your crap speakers up off your desk to ear
level (form an equilateral triangle with your head at one corner).
What this tells me is that I really really really need speaker stands
for the Rubicons.

Third. The low bandwidth (128) mp3s in my collection sound like ass on
the new speakers. Up to now I've been suspicious of the various
claims that mp3s (and all things digital) suck. You've heard it too.
Well, they are right. It's just you need to invest in some decent
playback equipment (and a quiet room) to hear the difference. But
little by little we've been sold increasingly inferior audio gear.
And we've been buying it. I am not an audiophile. And I'm definitely
not a snob about this stuff. But it's possible that I'll become
one...

This last point actually creates several problems. One is disk space.
Now I'm thinking that I want everything in lossless formats. Who can
afford the disk space. My music collection is something like 9500
tracks (small by some standards, I know) weighing in at some 60-70GB.
Multiply by 10 (approx) for a lossless format. So now I need a
terabyte iPod? Pretty sure that el Jobso isn't working on one of
those...

The other problem is how to think about my own mixes. I've
re-listened to some of my previous mixes with the Rubicons and my
feelings are, well, mixed. Some stand up but alarmingly others suck
large donkey balls. They were good enough through my iPod headphones
and in the car. Now I gotta redo them. Is it worth the trouble?
Paraphrasing McCain, I'll get back to you on that.

All this after just two days...