Planet Nerd’s Dan Walmsley talks to experimental composer David Shea about the history of the Doctor Who music and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
The MemoryMoog went out of tune, the same for the ARP; we had very little time to set up everything. I tried quickly the Moog Liberation (the portable keyboard) and it had a constant vibrato that I couldn’t stop. We tried everything and eventually Patrick succeeded to make it usable.
I decided to go on stage with a maximum of energy and ready to cope with anything and….. everything happened!
First of all the Egg chair did not turn properly, the arpegiator of the MemoryMoog was blocked, the ARP was out of tune and I had to retune each of its oscillators live, one AKS had no sound, I had to switch the power off and on to make it work, I had to re-pitch the flute sound constantly all along Oxy 2, the DigiSequencer was blocked and I had to reload the sequence for Variation 2 and play something else in the meantime, the percussive sequence on Oxy 5 was hard to start and the Eminent went crazy on Oxy 13 during the encore..
But I felt Claude, Francis and Dominique really on the case full time and the audience totally with me from the beginning and it gave me the necessary energy to rage against the machines!
The Moog Liberation solo with its strange sound was probably one of the most inspired I’ve played since the beginning of the tour and the concert one of the most spectacular since the beginning as well.
The result was that the audience went really crazy screaming and doing the Ola at the end - we got the most animated standing ovation. ¡Viva Madrid…!
Spectrasonics announced today the beginning of their 10-week "Omnisphere Preview Remix Contest" where registered virtual instrument users can create music using special loops that Spectrasonics has created from the eagerly anticipated Omnisphere Power Synth. Three winners will be chosen in July to receive a free copy of Omnisphere when it is released on September 15, 2008. Omnisphere Preview Video #5 is also now available. The contest soundset of 45 new loops were created using only Omnisphere and demonstrate a little 'taste' of some of the unique sounds and rhythmic capabilities of the new virtual instrument. The contest soundset is a free download and is available in Stylus RMX,REX2 and WAV file formats. All Spectrasonics registered users can download the soundset, enter the contest and submit their tracks at the contest web page
MIDI Navigator, below, is a Mac OS X MIDI driver for the 3dconnexion Space Navigator, right.
Usage is simple: download the application, launch it and select SpaceNavigator in your favorite MIDI application as input device.
MIDI Navigator can send relative and absolute CC commands. You can adjust the CC number, mode and sensitivity for each of the six degrees of freedom.
Rui Gato has created a demo video of this in action.
Requires Mac OS X 10.4 and a 3dconnexion Space Navigator.
Michael S. Schneider, author of A Beginner’s Guide To Constructing The Universe, has published an interesting analysis of the Amen Break (probably the most important sample ever). In his analysis, the Amen Break may be popular because of the way the Golden Ratio is found it the break’s timing: Having looked at the geometry of the Golden Ratio a great deal, and its expressions in worldwide art, I have a decent sense of its place along a line. The Amen Break had that feel. For a quick check I used homemade Golden Ratio calipers to examine the peaks. Indeed, peaks pop up at Golden Ratio intervals, as do smaller peaks within them, reminsicent of the fractal structures in nature. For more exact visual analysis I examined the wave image in my computer, in which I have a palatte of geometric forms and proportions for quickly identifying an object’s ratios. Sure enough, Golden Ratio relationships were indicated among the different peaks. Am I seeing things? You decide. But the appearance of the Golden Ratio may help explain its popularity. The major wave peaks of the Amen Break, and many of its smaller ones, seem reasonably close to being an expression of the fractal nature of the wonderful Golden Ratio. I wonder what it would sound like if it was more precisely proportioned to the ideal, but I also know that slight differences are what make it human and alive. What do you think? Is the Golden Ration behind the popularity of the Amen Break, or is this a bunch of intellectual wankery? This fascinating, brilliant 20-minute video narrates the history of the "Amen Break," a six-second drum sample from the b-side of a chart-topping single from 1969. This sample was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music -- a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures. Nate Harrison's 2004 video is a meditation on the ownership of culture, the nature of art and creativity, and the history of a remarkable music clip.
