someone who's doing some things
Music is a huge part of my life so it’s almost certain that this category will have a lot of stuff in it.
I’ve been playing around with this hardware and iOS app for a little while and it’s really good. It works just so well with my Ukulele. I wanted to do some work around creating soundscapes using my Ukulele and iOS effects apps and this has done completely what I needed.
I’ll be putting together some sound samples from this soon, so you’ll be able to hear what I mean.
OMD are playing the Royal Albert Hall next May, and I’ve got tickets. They’re going to play Dazzle Ships and Architecture and Morality too. Dazzle Ships was one of their more experimental albums but actually one of the ones I liked the most. I thought it was a really interesting album and I’ve always enjoyed it.
So I’m looking forward to seeing them live again, but it’s a long time to wait.
I’ve mentioned the Ototo a number of times before, I’m a fan. I really like it. I think that Ototo is a really useful, and a really fun piece of equipment. So it was great to have the Ototo from Dentaku at the SoundLab Play Space. As usual we got it hooked up to a bunch of fruit, which, whilst fun to play with, kind of doesn’t show just how much it can do.
Personally I think that the Ototo excels when used with its interesting range of sensors. Of course, the other thing that you can use the Ototo with is conductive ink. Yep, that works, and works well too. I should post some of the interactions that are possible using the Ototo, and will do soon.
I don’t know what Dentaku have planned for the Ototo, but I do hope it keeps going and moves forward. Anything else would be a shame.
I’ve just bought this old 80’s album on vinyl. I’m pretty sure that at one point I had a cassette of it, mainly for just one track, “Crease in his hat”. It isn’t the best song in the world, not by a long way, but it is a lovely song and I really enjoy it. However, it is almost impossible to find a digital version of this anywhere. Which is why I decided to go for a vinyl copy instead. Sadly it is a little scratched a poppy, but it’ll do. It may improve with cleaning up.
The song is just as I remember, and has exactly the same effect. Which is good, as sometimes when you go back to a track after a long time it isn’t the same, and in fact, the memory can be better than the reality, which can be disappointing. Not so here. It is as I remember it, and it is just as good. At least it is for me anyway.
One of the technologies we had on show at the SoundLab Play Space was Bare Conductive’s Conductive Ink and TouchBoard. We used these to connect to Ableton Live and control a variety of parameters in a set. It took quite a lot of tinkering around to get the pads and the board to work as we wanted, and a lot of time to calibrate the pads to get them sensing and sending MIDI CCs.
Hopefully I’ll be able to release to arduino code for the set we used soon. Hopefully I’ll be able to make some videos too to show how to get it done.
I think that that the TouchBoard is a really cheap and simple way to create effective gestural control via MIDI.
If you’re interested I’ve just updated my page of Barcodas barcodes as I’ve added a couple of new ones. I often wonder if it’s just me that is interested in barcode music. So I checked on twitter to see if this was in fact the case. Aside from my tweets about barcodes I can find almost nothing. Well, nothing at all actually.
That’s a shame really I think.
I noticed that they were playing at the O2 Shepherd’s bush next month and remembered that there was a lot of talk early this year about a new album. In fact, when I went to see them play last they even did a few tracks from the new album. So it got me to thinking about where that album had gone.
I hope it’ll still come out as I was really pleased to hear that they’d decided to go back to making studio albums again. So I hope it doesn’t just disappear.
I went to see the Selector last Friday at the Clapham Grand. It was an awesome gig. I was never a massive fan of their stuff although I liked the singles “On my radio”, and “3 minute here”, but it was great to hear them live. They had so much energy and enthusiasm and the crowd loved every minute of it.
I haven’t rushed out to buy their stuff or anything, but I’m glad I went to the gig and saw them. It was well worth it.
These guys were really tight. They did Dexy’s stuff really well and played an awesome gig. I really enjoyed it. A great night out and a lovely venue too. I’m not sure that I’ve been there before or not.
Anyway, I’d recommend this lot anyday.
I saw Eeek at the Half Moon Putney supporting Never the Bride. They were really really good. I was quite taken by their music, especially the quality of the vocals and the harmonies. In fact, so much so that I bought their CD. Now it’s time to see if their recorded music is as good as their live performance.
I am Ashley Elsdon 