Eighty-Six

One of the MIDI controllers that I use and find myself coming back to regularly is the Korg PadKontrol. It’s a really nice piece of gear - 16 pads with a nice feel and good sensitivity, an XY pad that can be very handy and 2 knobs. The pads themselves are backlit so that they light up when hit or when assigned to output a CC. Unfortunately out of the box the lights can’t be set up to reflect what is going on in a software application such as Ableton Live (for example if assigned to launch clips, which ones are currently playing), and the unit can’t be updated via firmware as it is burned into the unit. I did hear talk of creating a custom patch in a modular environment (such as Max/MSP) to get round this, but I couldn’t find anything that worked (please correct me if I missed anything!).

Anyway, I wanted to write a post that initially shows what I use it for, as well as some links to some very interesting videos and articles.

I’m using the PadKontrol with Ableton Live, which as you can probably guess from the name is really suited to live performance. For continuity and to avoid load times, I have all tracks loaded into one big Live set (see screenshot above). This is a method that many people use, and I would recommend it. Currently, for my band, I have the pads set up to trigger different sections (on what are called scenes in Live) of each track (think verse, chorus etc.) with each track on a unique sceneset (there are 16 available scenes on the unit). I’ve also got certain pads that are always mapped to stutter and effect the audio on the Master channel. This is a method that works well, but i’d like to improve or even totally change it to be even easier. It’s fine right now, because the band is still rehearsing and we’re working out our set, but as things get more complex I can evisage a revamp.

The PadKontrol is also really good for production, especially for percussive elements of course. The Flam and Roll functions (altered via the XY pad) can give a much more human feel as well. You can also use it to play things like soft-synths or as a means of general control of something like Ableton Live (launching clips or as a pseudo control surface - see below).

Here are some links to some helpful and interesting articles and videos on the unit…

MackieCONTROL - This is one of those posts on the Ableton forum that is immediately useful. It details how you can set up a scene on your PadKontrol to act as a pseudo-control-surface in Live, so that you can set up pads that move around the software, trigger scenes and clips, undo, scrub etc. Really useful if you’re like me, and you want to minimise the amount of time spent looking at your laptop screen in a live situation.

YouTube videos from Stray411 - YouTube user Stray411 has a whole load of great videos in relation to the PadKontrol. This one is a good place to start with a general look at the capabilities of the unit. Be sure to check out his other videos, as he has released his Ableton templates and PadKontrol scenes which give much greater control.

I’m currently using Guitar Rig 2 (Software Edition) to process sounds mainly from my electric bass and upright electric bass (NS Wav4), but also with my guitar. I can’t really play the guitar (because i’m crap) and I’m not very good with the upright electric bass yet (because I just bought it), so for these I utilise the fantastic modulation racks of GR2 to create some pretty odd sounds.

This week, Native Instruments announced Guitar Rig 3 which is to be released October 1st. New features include four new amp models and six new effects (which brings the total to 12 and 44, respectively), as well as better integration and workflow when using it in a live performance environment, including the “Live View” which shows only the most important info and tweakable parameters.

However, i’m not as excited about this update as I was hoping I would be. Version 2 is already a pretty impressive beast for both studio production and live sound, and the new features don’t really excite me. There are still some annoying bugs, such as not being able to change the MIDI mappings (i’m using a Behringer FCB1010 MIDI foot pedal) when GR2 is used as a plugin in a host (which is where I always use it!). “Simplified controller assignment” is promised in this upgrade, but it seems to be based solely around the Rig Kontrol foot pedal. Maybe my initial impression of the new features will be changed once I try the demo?

I’ve created a group on Facebook called the Bath Electronic Music Collective. The reason I chose Facebook at this stage is because it seems like a fairly easy and pain-free way of initially starting something like this, as well as the amount of people that use it and check it regularly.

I hope that it can be a way of organising events such as electronic gigs and spontaneous jams (laptop or sans-laptop), as a way of sharing ideas, tips and technical wisdom, and of unifying all the people in the area who work professionally in audio or just dabble as a hobby, or even those interested in starting. It’s not just open to people from Bath either. Anybody in the Bath, Bristol and surrounding towns and areas are welcome.

Initially I’d just like to see how many people would be interested in something like this, so feel free to join and invite anybody you think would be interested.

I wanted to share a couple of exciting new or recent albums that could fall under the category of ‘glitchy’.

The first is by Rena Jones, entitled Driftwood. A cello player by trade, she’s released some great remixes that combine electronic soundscapes and glitchy elements with cello, violin etc. There really wasn’t any question that her new album was going to hit the mark.

The other is the new EdIT album called Certified Air Raid Material. This is one that i’ve been looking forward to for a long time, and although his sound has changed somewhat from the 2004 downtempo classic of Crying Over Pros For No Reason, it still has that undeniable EdIT sound. It’ll be available digitally from the 18th September.

This is one of the videos I created as part of my degree (Creative Music Technology). It’s basically lots and lots of long-exposure still images taken with my Nikon D70 Digital SLR camera. The colour was achieved by manually setting off a flash with coloured gels placed over it. In the second half of the video the streaks of light were achieved by moving a torch pointing at the camera. As you’ve probably guessed it took ages - 3 sessions in fact, so i’m very thankful to my brother (who appears in the video) for jumping around like a weirdo whilst having bright lights flashed in his face. Hello glaucoma.

Link: Jumping Off Point Video on YouTube.

Whilst I wait for my films to be developed from my Holga camera (see earlier posts), I thought i’d try and replicate some of the characteristics that will hopefully be present in those images, and which are the desirable results of using Lomographic cameras. These include high-contrast colours, over-saturation, light-leaks and double-exposures. Using Photoshop I have managed to get some pretty decent results in Photoshop CS2, and you can see these below.

High-contrast, over-saturated colours

First and foremost in trying to replicate lomographic images are the rich and vibrant colours. I managed to get good results by simply going into the Channels tab, selecting red and pushing the contrast to a high value (30 to 50 works well). Then repeating this on the green channel.
In the above example, you can also see an effect known as vignetting, whereby the corners of the image seem to roll off into darkness. Normally this is a very undesirable result in photography, but is a typical characteristic of the Holga camera (especially since it uses square format 6×6 film). This is very easy to achieve in Photoshop CS2, simply by using the Lens Correction filter, which has a vignetting section. This I presume is normally used to fix vignetting, but can also be used to create it.

Light Leaks
Because the Holga is a cheap toy camera, there are weak points on the body of the device where light can get in. This is why you may see a Holga with electrical tape sealing any edges. However, if light does get in it can produce some desirable results - usually red over-exposed marks at the edges of the frame. I found it to be fairly easy to replicate this in Photoshop aswell, by creating new layers, creating a selection using the Lasso tool, filling that selection with red, and then setting the layer blend mode to Linear Dodge. I then used the Gaussian Blur filter (with fairly high settings) to create a fading result (but try to draw the main shape of the pseudo-light-leak when using the Lasso tool).

Double-exposures
Most cameras only let you take one shot before you have to wind the film on. But due to the lo-fi nature of the Holga, you can take as many shots as you like (but be wary that too many may just result in an over-exposed mess). I’ve found 2 to be a good number. Of course, it’s also very easy to produce a similar result in Photoshop, by using multiple layers and adjusting layer blending modes (Overlay seems to work the best), as this example shows.

One evening last week we spent a few hours recording drums at Real World in the Millside studio, assisted by Peter Gabriel’s engineer Dickie Chappell. We were supposed to use the rehearsal room next door to set up the drums in a separate environment, but a band turned up as they had booked a session. Thankfully they let us get a few takes for half an hour or so. We then moved the drumkit and all the mics into the actual studio and continued recording. Here’s a montage of images of Jon playing drums during the session…

Primarily we used the session to record the drums for our first track release, which doesn’t have a name at the moment. However, we also recorded drums for many other work-in-progress tracks as at least a guide to their final arrangement. We may end up using many of the takes as is or chop them up a bit and use them that way. Jon did very well, especially under a bit of pressure during the first few takes.

Both my lomographic cameras arrived on Wednesday - the Holga (pictured in the previous post) and the Coloursplash (pictured left). I got them the day after the shipping email arrived in my inbox - next-day from Austria is not bad! I’m going to use both of them to generate images for my Multimedia module project as part of my course. I’m hoping to get some unusual shots with over-saturated colours, high-contrast and interesting use of flash - particularly with the Coloursplash but also with the Holga (which is an updated model that also has a flash with different colour options).

Hopefully this will give me some interesting options when it comes to building my Flash environment for the module, and will also serve as a contrast to the pristine quality of the digital images created by my Nikon D70 DSLR for the video half of the final project.

Whilst not directly relevant to live electronic music, I thought i’d write about Lomography - a movement of shoot-from-the-hip photography that often results in high-contrast and over-saturated colours that can look amazing. I suppose you could relate this directly with the techniques of using third-party plugins in digital audio to reproduce the analogue warmth of vintage studio gear.

I’ve ordered a Holga (pictured, a classic ‘toy’ camera that uses medium format, but can be adapted to use standard 35mm) and a Coloursplash (a standard 35mm camera, that has an adjustable flash wheel, so you can choose the colour of the flash).

I’m hoping they’ll arrive within the next few weeks, in time for me to try them out in Scotland over Easter. I could also use them to give me some decent images to utilise as a header for this blog, or as a means of getting some unusual shots of gigs.

Check out the official Lomography society website.

In no particular order, here are my personal top five albums of the last five years…

A. Fingathing - And The Big Red Nebula Band (2004)
The work of two chaps - one on turntables and the other on upright bass. You could really hear this basic description of their line-up on previous albums (which were still great), but this offering shows a step up in songwriting and production resulting in a funky, trippy album that holds cohesion due to the outer space theme.

B. EdIT - Crying Over Pros For No Reason (2004)
A downtempo glitch-hop classic released on the Planet Mu label. The level of detail that is heard throughout this record is mesmerising. Very glitchy, but with a very strong melodic and harmonic grounding.

C. Ellen Allien & Apparat - Orchestra Of Bubbles (2006)
A fantastic German duo team up to produce an album of sublime melody and well considered structure and encompassing a wide range of styles - electronica, techno, downtempo.

D. Tipper - The Seamless Unspeakable Something (2006)
Can always be relied upon to produce work using a stunning skill in sound design. You can hear the confidence in his techniques of composition in this his follow-up to the equally brilliant Tip Hop.

E. Telefon Tel Aviv - Map Of What Is Effortless (2004)
Fantastic display of melodic and harmonic prowess, with subtle but omniscient use of glitch production.

I realised as I was writing this list that I had too many albums to choose from! So here are some very notable mentions:

Jaga Jazzist - What We Must (2005) : Scandinavian jazz/electronica 10-piece band drop this scorcher.
Jazzanova - In Between (2002) : German 6-piece who are prolific remixers. Described as a house, hip-hop and jazz fusion record.
Amon Tobin - Chaos Theory (2005) : Released as the official soundtrack to the game Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, but deserves to be recognised as an album in its own right. One of the best game soundtracks i’ve heard none-the-less.