tetramorph

The Nerves

2011-12-06T16:19:00.001-06:00

Here is a new favorite band: The Nerves.

The version you remember:

The original:

The version you remember:

Jack Lee of the Nerves wrote it. The Nerves have a great punk version. You can get it on the iTunes set list, but I could not find it on youtube. Here is a Jack Lee solo version:

Apparently Jack Lee, the guitarist of the Nerves, also wrote Blondie's "Will anything happen," another favorite track of mine:

The Nerves. Jack Lee. Rad.

Why does it seem to take me so long to make these discoveries?

two new tracks

2010-12-21T16:36:00.000-06:00

Here are two more tracks I'd been holding on to for far too long. Mixed, bounced, shared.

The first one is about, well, I'm sure you can imagine. Any dysfunctional systems in your life?

Figured Out by Tetramorph

The second one was just pure fun. It took me a long time to let go of it, because I was afraid it was too "silly" and not "serious" enough. Enough of that.

Rock 'n' Roll Festival (of Love) by Tetramorph

Hope you enjoy them! Please let me know what you think. Thanks for the support. Peace.

Incompatible new track

2010-12-20T10:42:00.000-06:00

I finally finished and uploaded a new track to Soundcloud. I am really happy with it. It is pure pop, but that is what I am enjoying creating these days. Two things about it:

One: I named it "Incompatible," because it came from doodling around with "incompatible audio units" in Logic and a scare window kept popping up, reminding me of the fact. As it grew, I realized it was about an important new relationship in my life, so I ran with it.

Two: I am singing almost entirely in falsetto. In a dialogue with Stretta about a year ago, he gently commented on the quality of my singing voice by commenting on his own ability to control his voice better when in falsetto. Hint hint. Got it. And it is true. To sing pop, you just can't fudge, you've got to hit the note dead on. And I still don't; but at least in falsetto I can fake it a little bit better. I also like, in a Brian Eno kind of way, the way in which the falsetto allows me to distance myself from my work, take on a persona, so to speak. And, heck, I just like the sound of falsetto in pop. Okay, so there is my apologia pro falsetto mia.

Incompatible by Tetramorph

Please let me know what you think. Thanks for following, and thanks for the encouragement. Peace

solovox, my love

2010-08-10T23:16:00.001-05:00

My great aunt has loved and played music all her life. Her instruments are keyboards: pianos, organs, accordions, and the Solovox. Growing up, I remember many a rendition of the Tenessee Waltz in the music room of her great big old house. Great uncle on the violin, Aunt on the piano. Every now and then the cool electronic whistle of the Solovox would come humming out of that piano cabinet. When I first saw and heard my Aunt's Solovox it was already 30 plus years old and sounded great. Well, they just don't make 'em like they used to.

In the 90's my Aunt bought one of those new-fangled midi-pianos. No need for the Solovox. But she is a smart one, and she kept it.

I visited my Aunt last month. I went looking for something in one of her closets. There was her Solovox! In storage! Sometimes considered the "first synthesizer" (there are many artifacts that could qualify), pure tube power! I had to take it out. My Aunt knows my love for music (although she has no love for the kind of music I like). She insisted that I take it home. Well, here it is:

Above is the underside of the keyboard unit. The keyboard is designed to be mounted underneath the keyboard of a grand piano. That long metal rod is the on-off and volume lever. It is designed to be operated by one's knee for dynamic control. RAD.

Here is a shot of the top of the keyboard unit shown, not as it ought to be, but placed on my grandmother's old coffee table.

The next picture is of the sound cabinet. This would be mounted within the piano's sounding board. Can you imagine someone being willing to do this to a piano?

The final picture is of the other side of the sound cabinet. Here you see the tubes in action. The thing still works (basically). And the tubes emit their yellow glow that says: you are now playing with electricity.

The two units are hooked up to one another by a (very proprietary) multi-pronged interface cord. Just so unbelievably rad. I can't wait to take it in to my local music shop and see what they can do with it. Even if they only clean it up and getting it in working order, that would be pretty cool. But I hope they could find a way to hack me into the (I believe five) formant filters on this thing!

Now, where to keep it I have no clue, but I am so happy to have this thing! It is both an amazing and historical piece of electronic musical equipment and a reminder of my cool great Aunt!

But what does it sound like? I am glad you asked. Here I am noodling around (top note priority):

After recording it with a friend, we started dropping different channel strip settings from logic on it. So I decided to turn it into a little electronica / techno / house track (still can't tell the differences between all those unbelievably specific sub-genres - does every artist / band just have its own sub-genre now? Doesn't that defeat the point? I digress).

Vox Soli by Tetramorph

Thanks for listening. More tracks to come. I keep brooding over them. They will hatch soon.

Thanks for following. Peace.

down to the wire

2010-07-23T16:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, so why didn't anybody ever tell me about Wire? I'm sure I had heard of them or read about them in other contexts but no one ever said to me: all the people that you like to listen to, listen to Wire and Wire is rad so you have to stop and give them a listen now.

So, apparently, Wire is the most under-recognized serious influence on punk, post-punk and new wave that I currently have finally found out about.

I am exploring their work and enjoying it. What I love about Wire is what I love about so much post-punk and early new wave: no fear of recording a short pop-song with both wild guitars and heavy and obvious synthesizer use.

I love Eno (like any synthesist should) -- but I love his early solo rock stuff as much as his ambient. I love a good synth-based song every now and then: but who ever said that being a synthesist meant that you had to be obsessed with music primarily driven by the synthesizer. I am not aware of there being any bass-rock out there. Or ambient bass music. (I know it is not a very good analogy, but just give this one to me, okay?)

I saw a documentary recently where the Edge talked about being the kind of guitarist who understood his role as being accompaniment to a pop-singer. I remember reading an interview of Nick Rhodes once where he talked about not being interested in novelty sounds, synth-solos, and bringing the synth to the fore of the music. He saw himself as created background atmospheres with strings, etc., and rhythmic interest through sequences and arpeggios. So the order is: singer, then guitar, then synth. I must admit that I am an odd kind of (amateur) synthesist: I basically like pop and rock music that is unafraid of bold and obvious synthesis but that still privileges rock's first two main instruments up front: the voice and the guitar.

Having finally figured this out about myself and becoming able to name it has allowed me to realize that it is hard to do the kind of synthesis and synthesizer accompaniment I really enjoy most listening to and contributing to because a.) modern DAWs hand you the capacity to make synth-rock on a platinum platter and b.) I do not actually have a band around me and I am what I would call BARELY proficient on the guitar. That being said, when I recently added an electric guitar to my project studio I was happy to discover how much easier it was to record a line-in distorted and/or heavily effected electric guitar and sound okay than trying to microphone record a nice take of acoustic guitar.

Oh, well. My bare proficiency at the guitar is a limitation that gives structure to my creativity. Besides, isn't barely proficient guitar what (post) punk music was and is all about anyway?

With that said, I have about three unfinished tracks that I am still working on but too self-conscious to share. I should have at least one of these up on Soundcloud and discussed here before summer is out.

Thanks for following. Peace.

the end of the book

2010-06-02T13:48:00.001-05:00

I've been reading a lot of stuff about how "print media" is at an end. I understand the points that folks are making about this from a technological and practical point of view - and I experience this transition to the electronic, myself, to a certain degree. But to this bibliophile who also reads his local paper every morning with his family at breakfast, I must say, it is a kind of sad prospect to me. It is a little odd to be a web logger who prefers to read (and edit) things on paper. Computers are still a tool to me, rather than a means of reading.

If a book is just a means of dispensing, storing and looking up information, then goodbye to it. If a book is work of art in itself, then, as with all forms of art, I think it would be truly sad to see it go. So my title is a play on words. Perhaps print media is over. But it may not mean the end of the book (as in its discontinuation) if we take time to take a look at the end of the book (what a book's telos is).

The Book of Kells is what "book" is meant to be.

The Book of Kells is not "print media." If print media must go the way of the Dodo, then I suppose I will survive it. But an illuminated manuscript is a work of art - and not printed.

In the west, ancient Christian art developed into stained glass windows on the one hand, and illuminated manuscripts, like the Book of Kells, on the other. Books are a Christian art-form. The book was invented as a means to preserve, teach, process (liturgically) and proclaim the Christian scriptures. Every literate culture has some means of preserving its writing. The codex predated Christianity in the ancient Mediterranean world. And codices are book-like in form. But the thing we call a book, when the word "book" is used to refer to a kind of material artifact that is paper or vellum bound between covers, is Christian. Its end is tied up in liturgical goals. A book is supposed to be beautiful in the same way that a church is supposed to be beautiful, and the robes of the altar party are supposed to be beautiful. Books are a liturgical art form: their end and goal is the glorification of the ultimate reality that Christians seek. The book as a means of glorifying utlimate reality thereby makes a statement as to the nature of that reality. So we shouldn't be surprised that books came out of a religious culture that claimed that God was "logos," word, narrative, story, reason, argument, logic, itself.

I am reminded of another project going on right now, the St. John's Bible:

I like and dislike the St. John's Bible. I dig the idea of not simply imitating ancient illuminated manuscripts but rather trying to bring illumination forward into the 21st century. But in this particular case it is often only the idea that I like. The actual execution of it (and you can here it in the word-choice of the illuminator himself in the video embedded, above) comes across as too romantic and self-involving on the part of the illuminator. Does "21st Century" mean inserting the modern, impermeable, individuated and consumerist "self" into the illumination? I don't mean to sound too critical, the St. John's Bible is lovely. And the illuminator amazing. But one of the key parts of ancient illumination in the west, as with iconography in the east, was the spiritual principle of humility as anonymity. As an art form, iconography and illumination are about the expression of something transcendent to the cosmos itself - they are not about the expression of the "self," or the individual artist (except, of course, paradoxically as a microcosm of the cosmos itself). Oh wells.

This whole post was inspired by a viewing of The Secret of Kells, which is a truly remarkable movie:

It is, for a movie, an example of the kind of art that I always hope that any form of art can aspire to: I wish there were more books like the Book of Kells, and more animated movies like the Secret of Kells. It is scintillating. The scenes where the main character is walking alone in the woods are amazing: the light shining through the moving trees above is rendered as patterns appearing within the form of the character himself who is rendered as kind-of semi-transparent. Amazing. The whole thing is so visually overwhelming that by half way through I just gave up trying to notice it all and I just let it wash over me. On top of all that, the movie celebrates the book as a religious art-form. At one point, the main character battles a supernatural enemy through his skills as an illuminator. I could go on and on but I won't. Needless to say, I will have to give this film multiple viewings.

Finally, I think that the print industry will survive, but I imagine that to do so it may have to go "specialty," that is to say, printing stuff that takes advantage of the art-form of the book and that which is art-like in print itself. To sell books, they will have to be more than information storage and retrival. They will have to be beautiful. They will have to be things that you wouldn't want on a computer screen. When I think about that, I think of Taschen, check them out. They produce books with rich images, like that below, that you wish you could see on a beautiful clay paper page, rather than on my web log:

Thanks for following. Peace

missing tintinn

2010-03-28T19:05:00.000-05:00

Check out this great use of the monome app tintinnabulome:

tintinnabulome "STEPS" from Gattobus on Vimeo.

Tintinn (for short) grew from the work of Stretta, Occular and others in the monome community from an idea I threw out there. I love the app and I've done a couple of tracks with it myself (specifically, an initial meditation, "Winter Sun Setting," and an attempt at a collaboration with NK-E).

I am looking forward to getting back, after the busiest semester of my life finally ends (yes, busier than my dissertation defense semester - or at least the same).

Peace

guitar edition

2010-02-28T20:58:00.004-06:00

The latest addition to my project studio is my new Fender Squier Bullet, antique white.

In the midst of a tenure review, a chronic sinus infection, teaching, advising, meetings, ecclesiastical orderings, being a father to two toddlers: I have been able to rock out, and that has, in part, kept me going.

I had enough money to get a simple electric guitar and I am so happy. I have been sampling every channel strip setting in Logic endlessly. It is nice when it sounds like you have a wailing stack right next to you but it is just your computer and some headphones.

I've even been working on some tracks that now actually sound like rock music. Dance punk is on the way.

I'm still here, I've still eked out some time for creativity. Nothing could be busy than this semester. I'll be hanging out with folks at the SXSW monome meet up this Spring Break. And I will be sharing sounds and tracks.

Thanks for following, and thanks for the support.

Seraphic hymn

2010-01-01T21:42:00.020-06:00

I worked on the following track on new year's afternoon:

This is an attempt to render a musical setting for the Eucharistic Prayer (the "canon of the mass" if Roman, the "anaphora," if Eastern), in this case, prayer "B" of the current American Prayer Book.

(For those not familiar with the Eucharistic Prayer: it is the oldest and most unique Christian prayer. It is the prayer at the Christian liturgy whereby the congregation, through the voice of the presider, offers themselves sacrificially in the sacramental elements of bread and wine, and whereby Christians believe that the sacramental elements are made the body and blood of Christ.)

It is my first attempt at full-fledged sacred music. Here is what I was trying to achieve:

Something simple enough (even "minimalist," even "sacred minimalist") that a real congregation could memorize it and do it from "folk-memory," without need for written music or even words if they come to the Divine Service frequently enough
Something that allowed the clear word of the prayer to be heard and shared in by all while also, in a quasi-Eastern style, having over-lapping voices simultaneously singing, a kind of music of the spheres where the harmony is so simple that the words are not obscured but enhanced
Even though going quasi-Eastern, I wanted it to sound like Western chant and not simply be an Eastern-envy kind of thing

That said, the track is just a sketch. All the voices are mine, multitracked. I recorded it on my lap top with its own internal microphone, so, nothing fancy. I sing both sides of the opening dialogue (I had no one with me to be the "congregation"). The "ah" that I sing is really supposed to indicate a "drone-tone" hummed, closed-mouthed, by the entire congregation. The entire "congregation" then joins together in singing the Sanctus et Benedictus.

After the Sanctus et Benedictus, the other voice that enters would be the deacon (or, if the deacon can't chant, a cantor), in a single voice, continuing to chant the main tenor melody line of "holy, holy, holy," over and over again until the memorial acclamation. All join in singing the memorial acclamation (in the case of prayer B "We remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection; and we await his coming in glory"). After the memorial acclamation, the deacon then chants, to the same melody, "maranatha," aramaic for "come, Lord."

At the doxology, the deacon then simply joins the congregation in the drone-tone. Then the entire congregation sings the Great Amen in a three-fold form.

It is all my own voice, of course, so my voice cracks. I make noises as I move around. I don't have an Altar-Book with me, so I don't have the written music version of the chant. So the priestly chant is actually done from my own "folk-memory," and, for those of you familiar with it, you will notice where I goof up. I also chant the part of the prayer after the preface and up to the doxology to a simple collect tone.

I decided not to try to make it perfect, but to leave these mistakes in, in order to allow it to show how a real, living congregation might actually enact such a prayer, rather than trying to make it sound like some perfect, studio choir with no blood in its veins.

A brief aside: a question for Logic users: as I continued to add more vocal tracks, I started getting some real latency issues: even when other tracks were off, not monitored, and when there were no audio regions on those tracks. (You will notice that this causes me to chant more slowly towards the end: I keep hearing myself delayed in the headphones, and this slows down my chanting -- which should be fast and vivacious.) By the time I got to the Great Amen, I was also getting lots of glitchy artifacts. But when I bounced it, they seemed to disappear, more or less. What was going on? What could I have done to have prevented that? I would like to be able to do more of these kinds of liturgical sketches in the future.

Finally: what do you all think? Have I achieved my goals? Is it too ______? I invite constructive criticism and comments. My hope, as always, is that this can be a real meditation, and something working towards a truly minimalist and contemplative liturgical act.

Thanks for the encouragement. Peace

the epic and the pop song

2009-12-19T13:30:00.016-06:00

There is a statue of King Geser in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia. It is really quite impressive in person, I might add.

King Geser was a legendary, well, that is to say, epic, in the literal sense, King of medieval Tibet. His epic has spread wherever Tibetan style tantric Buddhism has spread - including what is now the Buryat Republic of the Russian Federation.

Check out the Wikipedia entry on Geser. There are something like 140 living Geser epic singers. They know the entire epic by heart, with only the expected regional variations. It is an oral tradition. Some of the singers are "illiterate." It is one of the only living epic traditions in the world today - the way the Iliad and the Odyssey would once have been living oral traditions in ancient Greece.

Then there is pop music. We have no living epic in our modern western culture like King Geser. I used to think about this in a negative way. Something like: pop songs are a dime a dozen. Pop songs are trite, meaningless. How many pop songs does the world need? When I would set down to write one, I would ask myself: does the world really need my poor amateur pop song added to it?

I now think this kind of thinking is all wrong. The famous structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss said that modern western art music ("classical" music) has filled in the vacuum left by the evacuation of myth under the conditions of modernity. I think there is a depth to this insight that I fundamentally agree with and that is too huge for a blog post. But I think that there is an analog here: the endless generation of pop songs on the same template but with a near limitless number of finite instances fills for us in the modern west the pre-modern art of epic singing in the same way that art music fills for us under modernity our lack of pre-modern myth.

How do those epic singers remember all of it? They have a form, a template. They have an over-arching narrative. They have tones and sound structures within their folk-music theory. And from this they generate the epic over and over again. The almost infinite form gives birth, over and over again, to new finite instances.

And isn't this what we do when we make a pop song? Four instruments: rhythm, bass, treble, and melody. A few basic chords. One basic structure: intro-v-ch-v-ch-bridge-break-v-ch-coda. And we have a narrative: a story to tell. Even if we are trying to obscure it by being "alternative."

So, when I ask myself: does the world need one more pop song? Does the world need me to fill it with my silly attempt to craft another ditty? The answer is now more subtle. No, the world does not necessarily need my pop song. But I need to do it, because this is how I share in the epic.

Thanks for following. Peace

Days and Nights: New Track

2009-11-24T11:43:00.008-06:00

In my last post I indicated that I was away in Siberia. Well, we've been back about a month now, and in that time I have been able to cobble together my first shareable pop song.

It is inspired by the 10 extra days in Siberia we were not expecting to have to stay that we did. We waited for our new daughter - and were away from our little son at home. The song reflects the heartbreak and resolution that we had that got us through.

Lead female vox is my dear wife. Horrible male lead vox at bridge is yours truly. It does not sound cheesy to me, because my heart was poured out into this. However, I don't need to share this stuff with the world if it is not worth sharing. Please gently let me know if I should just stick with electronica and ambient, or if I should just try harder next time. If you like it, but have some advice, please share that too!

Days and Nights by Tetramorph

This month marks a year since I received my monome 64 and since I began sharing my creative avocation via this web log. I have so much to be thankful for. More posts to come!

Thanks for following, and thanks for the encouragement. Peace.

siberian outpost

2009-10-03T03:18:00.008-05:00

I am away from my project studio. I am away from my laptop. No synthesizers. No midi. I had to travel light. We are gaining a new member of our family in the midst of Siberia. So my familial duties have drawn me away from my avocation for a time.

I know that, however, upon my return, I will enjoy making sounds and laying down a few tracks to share. These kinds of adventures are always inspiring.

Above please enjoy a photo of the most popular Soviet Analog Synthesizer of the 1980s: the Formanta Polivoks. Peace.

analog poly

2009-09-11T20:55:00.022-05:00

As the school year begins I find myself caught up in the swirl of activities that force my vocation front and center. My avocation takes the periphery. Yes, that is right, my beautiful and seemingly endless sabbatical is over. But, God willing, my avocation is not to disappear along with it.

I have been snatching time for music and alternating between two joyful tasks in learning mode: Firstly, I have been studying this great book about chord progressions and building pop songs from chords called The Song Writing Sourcebook (Rikky Rooksby). Most of my study of theory has been from "official" art music sources, or on the fly from folks that understood the pop stuff. When it came to pop, it was usually just about memorizing standard progressions. What is great about this book is that it analyzes the why behind pop chord progressions. And it helped me with my art theory as well. Why didn't they tell me that the harmonic minor scale isn't really a scale at all but is really about collecting the right notes together to allow the dominant (V) chord to be major in what would otherwise be a minor key? Now I get it.

But the other half of my avocational time has been spent navigating alien territories in the form of my new Alesis Andromeda A6. Sorry, the name is so cool, I just have to write it all out, at least the first time. Progress plot: unlike the analog poly's of the 1980s, the Andromeda combines lots of knobs and switches (in the form of encoders, rather than actual potentiometers, sadly) with the same kind of digital interface that many synths of the late 80's and 1990's. That digital interface forces you to "menu-dive." There is no way of knowing from the position of things on the surface what may actually be lurking deep in the depths underneath. So although it is a genuine analog poly, it does not have the genuine interface of an analog poly.

Let me be clear. I am not complaining. A month or so ago I was complaining ("why, oh why hadn't I bought the Poly Evolver! "). I kept imaging the kind of poly synth I was really looking for. I realized it was basically my Prophet 600 with a bit more modulation routing, an extra LFO, an extra envelope and maybe some overdrive in the VCA. But as my mind wandered I realized something: I have that synth, it is my new beautiful A6 that I keep ignoring. So, I realized, rather than whining, I ought to shut up and actually get to work. Time for some serious menu diving.

So I signed up for the A6 forum. I asked the folks there how the heck I could tell the difference between the pre-wired modulation routings and all the multitude of software derived modes via menu-diving. They kindly and politely told me one thing: stop whining and build your own blank patch. The process of zeroing everything out (and they did mean everything) would, itself, teach me all the modulation routings while at the same time provide me with my own tailored start-up patch for building my own.

Well, of course, they were absolutely right, and I am so glad for the kindly forum advice I received. I've become familiar with this strict machine, and am beginning to take some joy in programming it. There are things that are still a mystery to me, of course. But I have much more of a handle on the device. It turns out I am not an idiot. It turns out I actually do have some basic talent and knack at analog synthesis. I am looking forward to future posts where I can show off some of my own A6 patches. Right now I am just having fun making my FM-ed oscillators scream in all their metallic glory. Which leads me to the final reflections of this post and check-in.

With my complaining days behind me, I have begun more rationally to reflect upon what it was that led me to that initial and unnecessary despair at programming my A6 in the first place. And I hinted at it above. It is genuinely analog, that is to say, at least in terms of its VCOs, VCFs and VCAs, which is good enough for me. But its user interface is not genuine analog poly. That is why I included a picture of the patch-chart for a p600 patch, above. Look at its beautiful simplicity. What you see is what you get. No secrets under the hood. If a knob is turned one way you know that it is really turning and churning the electricity (although, sadly, it is true that there is pixilation with regards to the p600 because of the way in which the pots had to be digitally mapped in order for its patch memory to work).

So, two reflections. First, part of the beauty of the analog poly was just exactly the way in which in limited your choices. It was the pre-patched and pre-made-choices, at least in part, that gave each analog poly its distinctive voice, tone, feel. You are forced to work with what you have got. And the limited canvas forces creativity. Standing before my A6, I realize that sometimes I am stunned by the possibilities. The way I get around that now is by building, in my mind, the analog poly I want to pretend that I am working with. I set those "hard-wired" parameters in the menus then I work within my artificially derived limitations. So, again, don't get me wrong. I love my A6. I am delighted that I get to build my own imagined limitations. All I am saying is that the user interface itself forces me to loose the humble familiarity that I feel when I start playing around with my p600.

Frankly, I just don't know how the modular-kings do it. Jealous? Yes, of course. But, paradoxically, content. Besides, comparing the analog poly to a modular just isn't fair. Did the analog poly evolve, technologically, from the modulars before it? Yes, of course. But I am beginning to see them as really different electronic musical tools. Some synth histories tell the story as though the development of the analog poly was like a great fall from glory and grace, or like the decline of the Roman Empire. But the story doesn't have to be told that way. When I think of the lush tones that come out of a Crumar Performer, it just can't be compared with, say, a screaming lead out of a Moog. It's apples and oranges. And I like both. But I lean towards oranges. And what if the move from modular to poly is like the decline of Rome; and what if that decline is a good thing. You know, like it is actually sometimes nice to throw off the oppression of imperialism.

The analog poly inspired its own kind of music, especially in the realm of pop. It is what defined the early 1980s. No analog poly, no Prince, no Duran Duran, no Peter Gabriel. They could not have made those arrangements, even with a string of modulars acting polyphonically. The poly is its own kind of synth.

But where my mind is wandering next is towards what exactly it is about analog that drove me to give up my powerful Korg Wavestation? Why is analog "better" than digital in this regard? I don't mean in some audiophilic kind of way. I mean metaphysically. I think it is about the difference between analogy and univocity, between participation and representation. But, alas, it is late, I am tired, and such ruminations really deserve their own post. So that's all I've got for now. Thanks for following, and thanks for the support. Peace

behold, concertinome

2009-08-04T13:35:00.005-05:00

You've just got to see and hear this to believe it.

Okay, so I am not usually into "monome + X = fun" as a formula, because it seems to me to violate the basic thrust of the monome aesthetic: minimal design. Just do a search for the various guitar-monome hybrids out there. But I make an exception here because, well, I don't know, I just found it really beautiful and moving. I like this bizaar interaction of folk instrument with postmodern controller. Enjoy, and comment. Peace

collaborative meditation

2009-07-27T20:16:00.003-05:00

I month or so ago I was contacted by NK-E via Soundcloud with the idea of doing a collaborate track together. He provided an ambient found-sound style "seed" track and I provided this meditation in tintinnabulation back to him:

Nke Collaboration 2009 by Tetramorph

He agreed that I could go ahead and share it, even though we are not yet done with our collaboration. I am looking forward to what it will become. Working with NK-E has been great fun. Please do check out his blog, SUBNOTO::INDICO and his other spaces.

Thanks for following, and thanks for the support. Peace

of alchemy and analog synthesists

2009-06-29T16:08:00.017-05:00

Ahh, for those good old days when synths were big, bulky and mysterious.

I was born in 1974, but I musically identify most with the stuff that was going on right around that time, say, 1972 through about 1984. The rise of the analog (as opposed to the purely modular) synth through the rise and fall of the analog poly. When digital comes in, I just loose interest. Eno can have his DX7 - he is the only one I can think of who pulls anything interesting out of it. Sure, at the time the digitals came out, I was just getting into synthesis and, as with any industry driven by technology, I was swept up into the turn to digital and that is what compelled me to buy my Wavestation in 1993 with a small inheritance I received. I don't regret it. But I also don't miss it. I am happily learning my Andromeda instead. I am grateful for the return to analogue in this first decade of the twenty first century. It feels a bit like coming home.

As a little kid in the age of new wave I remember listening to music and already being able to single out that strange instrument with a keyboard on it that I knew wasn't a piano - or even like my old great aunt's organ. Finally, I heard the word - synthesizer - and that it was about electricity - and it was instant love.

I remember the way that Gary Numan's "Cars" or Tom Petty's "You Got Lucky" would make me feel. I won't say other-worldly. It definitely had to do with our own world - in fact, very deeply and primally so. I won't say "technological" either. It was more like alchemy, like mad science. I guess that is why Thomas Dolby (steam punk for sure) is a hero to me, while Vince Clarke (who is certainly a great synthesist and programer - no argument here, but he) just doesn't do anything for me.

I've said here before that I don't like synth pop. Yet - and here I am letting the cat out of the bag - I love Duran Duran; and Nick Rhodes is, well, a big synth-hero to me. (Excuse: I was a kid and I did not understand or even know about the weird teenage girl cult-following. That stuff still makes me feel queasy.) What is going on here? I have been grappling with this seeming inconsistency. I think the thing to me is: does the use of the synthesizer make you feel like a robot, a guy with a fetish for the synthetic - or does it make you feel like a sorcerer - like a conjuror. (Sometimes robot is good, so long as you have a sense of humor about it, like Kraftwerk or Devo.)

So this is a post of respect to a few of the synthesists that were certainly involved in pop music (other than everybody's dead-obvious Brian Eno - he isn't a hero, he is a god - for crying outloud; he isn't a synthesist - he is an alchemist of recording technology, and that is enough said for now), but not necessarily in "techno" that is to say, pop enamored with technology. Rather, to me, they used technology alchemically to conjure experiences for their listeners.

I begin with Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran. His first synth: an EDP WASP. Followed by the Crumar Performer string synthesizer (one of the early very limited poly synths). He would later use the Prophet 5 and both the Jupiter 8 and 4. He did pick up a Fairlight CMI, but has continued using analog: he currently uses the Andromeda A6 (yeay!). Okay, so their videos are notoriously more like little surreal movies - which means no synth shots. I picked something from their reunion a couple of years ago so that you could actually see the man at work:

Going back to some straightforward punk new wave, I love listening to Blondie's Jimmy Destri with his old school synthesis backed up with his organ and rhodes piano - hey, he had to get polyphony somehow! Alchemy? I don't know, but it sure is fun, and he is a pioneer:

On the other side of the pond we had Japan, confused by krautrock, too early to be new romantic, to late to be glam. They missed the boat in terms of becoming pop idols. Duran Duran took that for them. But they were probably the better for it. Richard Barbieri has had a great career not worrying about staying popular (like it seems to me that Duran Duran has tried to do to a certain degree). So here is some early Japan. Check out Barbieri's Oberheim and modular (can anybody identify what kind it is at around 2:48?):

Here is somebody's video art to a more recent track by Barbieri showing his developed synthesizer style. Ignore the vid, enjoy the music:

_______

For the handful of folks out there following my web log: I am sorry I have been away for a while. I have had a month full of life changing events that took all week to deal with, either leading up to or coming down from said events. Family changes, vocational work, ecclesiastical affairs. When things like these come along, my avocation suffers. I look forward to the next two months of summer. I hope to share some productivity. I was very productive at the end of may, but what I produced was children's music for my boy! I shared that, more appropriately, on our family blog. Anyway, thanks for your patience and thanks for following. Peace.

A6 meets monome and prophet

2009-05-22T19:53:00.008-05:00

While spending some time managing my learning curve this afternoon I managed to actually squeeze out something productive, musical and fun! "Does A.I. Dream of Monomial Sheep?":

Does A.I. Dream of Monomial Sheep? by Tetramorph

While learning to code in my own patterns in polygomé I got the monophonic bass grove going on the Andromeda (A6). I love the interference pattern created by playing polygomé polyphonically with a monophonic patch. The A6's ribbon controller gives me the lovely filter sweeps.

Then I set up Ultrabeat in Logic and got that going with boiingg. Fun! Polyrhythms for those with no percussion training whatsoever! After I had recorded both of these tracks (A6 bass, boiingg drums) I realized that (á la map~map) they sounded pretty good played simultaneously, so I just left them at that.

Then I played with some bell sounds on my Prophet (p600). Panned them hard left. Then I dug up an old lead sound I programmed on my p600 about 16 years ago that served me well then, and it serves me well now, towards the end of the track, panned hard right.

Okay, so, anyone with tips out there on how to make electronic dance music more interesting? I don't know what to do when the old fashioned verse / chorus structure isn't there. And also on my mixing, arranging and "mastering" (placed, quite deliberately, in scare quotes). Did I over-compress it? Over-anything else? Etc.?

I would welcome any constructive criticism (especially from those of you out there on Soundcloud). Thanks for following, and thanks for the support. Peace

some monome semiotics

2009-05-17T21:32:00.004-05:00

islandis recently shared a paper on the monome phenomenon that he wrote for a semiotics class he is taking at Duke:

http://islandis.livejournal.com/17680.html

It has garnered a little (but not enough, in my opinion) conversation on the monome forum.

The monome device is an odd kind of sign system. Even a honeycomb pattern would give more of a musical sense of scale-pattern. A grid is so deliberately open ended. In classical semiotic terms, is it the symbol, the reference or the referent? When you decouple that grid, which is which? Are the buttons the references, the LEDs the symbols and the application output the symbol? How do they all overlap?

Hmm. Nothing quite like monome meditative joy. Thanks for following. Peace.

progress plot

2009-05-08T13:49:00.005-05:00

Life has a way of getting in the way of living sometimes. Having time for my avocation is certainly something I want to prioritize - if for nothing else than my own sanity. There is, however, something to the word "avocation" that indicates that it must hold only a relative place of importance in one's scheme of things.

Good things have been happening vocationally recently. Lots of good creativity. That is, of course, the point of a sabbatical. And I am happy about it. And big things have been happening in my life as well. Lots of family joys and sorrows all at once.

That being said, avocational productivity is down these days while learning, thankfully, plods on. The Andromeda is massive. I will try to just get a sine wave out of the thing and, as warned, I have to sort through menus and manuals to figure out why I hear overtones! The filter is still whining - why? Haven't I turned down all the resonance? Okay - Where is the modulation routing to the resonance? Etc, etc. Oh, well. I still love it!

The Andromeda and the Prophet sound great together. I will have to record a sample and share soon. Something about analog with analog. You just can't beat it. I even love it when they are slightly out of tune with one another. I am also loving the Prophet ever more as I have an analog beast to compare it to. The P600 is lovely in her simplicity.

I think I will commit to a week of production before the summer is out. I want to do the whole "make an album in a day" thing, but, instead, turn it into a week. I'm going to go for about six songs. Pop music is what I am hearing in my head these days. Really cheesy, dance-y, disco-y kind of stuff. So, a pop song a day? It should be fun. I have a tentative name for the album: "cliché." That should free me from lofty expectations. Until then, thanks for the encouragement.

manifesting the architectonic

2009-04-27T20:05:00.032-05:00

I while ago Stretta put up this great talk given by a music professor, Karl Paulnack at the Boston Conservatory. I highly recommend it. In it, among other wonderful things, he says this:

. . . the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.

Now I love this statement and find it so true. But I worry about the the way that a distinction between "inner" and "outer," could imply a kind of interiority or subjectivism that would have been foreign to the ancient mind. Paulnack never mentions it, and I am sure that he would not intend it, but such an interior "self," is much more a product of post-Cartesian Romanticism with a dash of Psychoanalysis than it is of the Greeks who understood the relationship of music to astronomy. I love the way Paulnack captures so well our experience of music. I also want to emphasize the way that music overcomes barriers between people - especially those false ones created by ideologies of interiority and subjectivity.

So, yes to "pieces inside our hearts," when "heart" is construed as synecdoche for the psychosomatic unity of the human body and soul. But not so much if "heart" here is misread as something "touchy feely" - you know what I mean.

The key distinction is not so much between the "inner" and the "outer," when such a distinction is conceived in terms of a romantic interior life of a "true self." In order to avoid that connotation I would rather talk in terms of the more simple distinction between "visible" and "invisible," or between the "physical" and the "psychic," "noetic," or notional. But "notional," not in the sense of "that's just a notion," but in the thicker sense of something just as real, if not more real than the physical, that is the name for what is not physical about creation. So I guess I mean here the Christian theological distinction between the heavens and earth, taken in their theologically richest sense.

Astronomy is not an "external" to a music that is "internal." Astronomy just is the music of the visible heavens - the music of the spheres. Music is not so much the astronomy of things interior - and therefore merely subjective and private - within our souls. Music is rather the universal, "astronomically big," astronomy of the hidden, invisible and greater part of created reality: the invisible (but more real) heavens. Music puts us directly in touch with the architectonic structures of the cosmos that the visible heavens merely physically manifest.

So often, after Romanticism, creativity is construed in very private terms. This puts a lot of pressure on the artist to "prove" him or herself. The ancients of course, knew that this great flow of stuff didn't come from some place interior within ourselves. (Check out this other post on Stretta's blog where he embeds a video of the author Elizabeth Gilbert giving her own account of the ancient sense of genius and the creative "daemon.") Creativity, rather, is the manifestation of how we as human beings can sometimes get swept up into these architectonic and cosmic realities - realities far bigger than us - and come out on the other side and say: look, I made this. Or, rather: look what came into being through the way that I participated in things greater than I.

I think that is why I love the monome device as a tool for creating music: the decoupled grid seems to me to be this electronically beautiful mimesis of how in music in general greater patterns manifest within small constraints. The LED patterns keep going, even after you loose touch. Good music always has these moments wherein you get this little glimpse of the vastness that is being made manifest - all of which cannot be immediately made present at once - the grid would burst, our hearts too.

Making the distinction primarily between the visible and the invisible, rather than the physical and the so-called interior also takes the pressure off of the individual artist to produce (good stuff), and allows for the mystical to come back into the experience of creativity - and especially (at least speaking for myself) of creating music.

Near the end of his article he says the following to his new music students:

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Man, I find that so amazingly well written, and inspiring. When we think of the role of creating music in terms of a distinction between the visible and the invisible parts of creation, rather than between an outwardly (and shared) physical world and a private interior life, I find it to be even more profound. In music, we cross the barriers between ourselves. The real ones, like my body isn't your body. That doesn't change but if anyone has ever been a part of a successful music ensemble you have known of moments when your body and other people's bodies were "one" in every sense that matters. But, thankfully, music also tears down the false barriers that we create to protect or to congratulate ourselves.

You know, like "I am so creative and unique" together with its ever implicit "so maybe you aren't." Or the self-deprecating inverse: "O, man, he is so creative and unique" with the ever following, "I only wish I could do that - be that cool - etc."

Or how about that whole romantic "nobody can really understand me" thing. No, no one will ever really understand you. And so what? Why should they? No one can even really understand themselves. But when we share music, we all share, together, in the great big Reality that none of us ever understands - but that we grasp at - and never alone, but with one another, with the music we give as gifts to one another.

So here is a big "thank you" to all of you out there that I have met in the "blogosphere" that have helped me see glimpses of the great-big-Real because of the music you have so freely and generously shared. I am so grateful to have my own "appropriate-to-who-I-am" sized role as well.

Thanks for following and thanks for the support. Peace

intergalactic arrival

2009-04-20T13:31:00.014-05:00

Knobs, knobs, knobs. Joy, joy, joy. Knobs, knobs, knobs.

I got a phone call on Easter Monday. The guy at the music store said that the Easter Bunny brought me a surprise earlier than expected. Cool. An alien arrival from Andromeda (perhaps a strain?).

So I've had a week full of personal and professional busyness with little time to get to know this alien thing. I am happy to have found that I actually have enough experience with subtractive synthesis that I am not entirely lost. And I've done enough digital that I am not entirely inept with regards to all the inevitable menu searching that I still must use (ugh!) to program this alien. (And seeing as how I am not Brian Eno) I did take the time to read the (rather confusingly written) manual cover to cover. Still, how the heck do I just get some LFO to the filter cut-off?! . . . But it is fantastic!

So I'm not used to having two (real, analog) filters. Here is a (bit too long) little sample of me noodling with both filters' cut-off, resonance and the envelope modifying their cut-off.

Filter 1 is inverse BP, filter 2 is in parallel with filter 1, about evenly mixed. I know it is a little bit cheesy sci-fi of me, but I love that kind of Frankenstein synthesizer stuff! Add some world beat rhythm bed, a nice frenetic guitar line, some tricked out recording of somebody preaching madly (and about ten times as much talent/skill) and I'm heading for a track in the Eno/Byrne style!

Next: what is better than an Alesis Andromeda A6? An Alesis Andromeda A6 triggered by some cool monome application. I'll have to think about that one. Peace

Paschal Joy

2009-04-11T15:30:00.010-05:00

Happy Easter!

I find Daedelus' video, "LA Nocturn," to be about new life and a new way of seeing things. So what better monome way to send wishes for a joyful celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord?

Daedelus is one of the pillars of the monome community. In fact, I think he was the first person to purchase a monome device from its creator (tehn), making him, therefore, the second user of the monome device in the world. He has become, really, a monome "virtuoso." He is well known for his "arm flinging" technique which makes sense (the application he uses triggers upon release, rather than pressing of the buttons; his "flinging" ensures proper timing) and is also just cool to watch. It shows his excitement and gets you into the music as well. But he also has great videos, so check those out too.

Easter peace

Plotting the learning curve

2009-03-30T17:38:00.020-05:00

Lots of web logs out there "document the creative process." That is fantastic. I follow those kinds of web logs and I attempt to maintain that kind of web logging here. But what I have come to discover is that I need also to accept the kind of learning curve that I've got to deal with in terms of my creative avocations. So I've got to document not just my creative process but also my slide down the various learning curves that I've got to manage.

Last January, inspired by another web-logger's (Stretta's) year-end-review, I published my own "production principles." With as much as I have to learn, they seem a bit comical to me now. So this post is kind of a response to my own previous post. I need not only principles guiding my creative process, but some way to make sense of managing my steep learning curve and keeping a balance between actually producing something and all the study time I need in my project studio (for musical and sonic pursuits) and with the artists who guide my study of iconography and sacred architecture. They say that half the journey is getting there. I am the type that wants to be there already. So I quickly and easily get impatient with myself or discouraged by the sheer amount of in-depth and arcane knowledge possible for (and sometimes demanded by) the creative avocations I have come to pursue.

I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the shear volume of area that my interests cover. In terms of my sonic and musical pursuits:

programming, which includes
synthesis,
use of the multitude of applications for the monome device
sequencing in general and
drum-patterning in particular
musical composition (be that ambient or "pop")
sound capture and
use of my digital audio workstation ("DAW," e.g., Logic)
possibly needing to learn another DAW (i.e., Live when it comes out combined with MAX/msp)
possibly learning to program monome applications (with the bundled MAX)
guitar (again)?

In terms of sacred images and architecture:

their history
their theology
their multiple styles
drawing technique
painting technique

The above bullet points cover vast tracts of learning territory. Then there is learning how to share the products of one's creativity after one has finally learned enough actually to produce something worth sharing!

web publishing through one's web log
"sharing" through (sane use of) forums
"sharing" files through social networks (Vimeo, Soundcloud)

Some of these have a steeper learning curve than others. Some I recall well from my high school garage-band days. Some, like the iconography and architecture, are really quite new to me. Some I feel comfortable with at this point (e.g., managing my web log), others I feel intimidated by (e.g., the vulnerability I feel when sharing my amateur tracks on Soundcloud).

So, for perspective's sake, I'll do a little review. I recently looked back over receipts with regard to purchases for my project studio. It has helped me form a timeline of acquisition directly proportional to a timeline of my learning curve.

I hadn't broken out my synthesizers and fired them up for, say, about four years until last January of 2008. I was playing them through a crappy four-channel radio shack mixer into an old borrowed guitar amp.

Last March (2008), two months after I finally turned my synthesizers back on, I bought a real mixer, monitors, my Korg Kaoss Pad, and all the stuff to connect the power, the audio and the MIDI to one another and into my computer. I still didn't have a DAW other than the free Garageband that came with my apple and the "Live Lite" that came as trial software with my M-Audio Audiophile.

Finally, in May (2008) I bought Logic Express. The last time I tried to mix my computer with my synthesizers was back in 1993 when I bought Opcode's Vision. I tried to run it on my little Mac Classic II and it just crashed every time. It was about that time that I started dedicating all my energy to my vocation and left music to just the listening category. So, as of this post, I've only been learning DAW technology for about 10 months. In my old garage band I certainly sequenced using my awesome MMT8, but I didn't also have to serve as my own producer, engineer, mixer, master-er, and "publisher." When I write these things down, they give me perspective. I guess I feel like I've been learning pretty well so far!

I finally picked up a decent quality home studio microphone in October (2008). So that launched me into the need to learn something about audible sound capture (as opposed to simple "line-in" from my synthesizers). It was also about that time that the glorious email from monome.org came letting me know that my "device" was "ready" for order. And that is when things avocational really started to change for me.

I received my monome 64 in November (2008). So I have only been working on learning how to integrate its nearly mind-boggling capabilities into my (still only hypothetical) "work flow" for about five months. Wow. That is good for me to read. I guess as of right now I've decided that I am right on track with my learning curve!

My monome device and the amazing monome community was what initially inspired me to go crazy and start up this web log. I am glad that I did. It has been fun and I have enjoyed the interactions, inspirations and communications that it has allowed me to be a part of. It is far more fun pursuing an avocation with others who share a common interest and are supportive.

I am so thankful and joyful to be back in the world of creativity, especially that of sound and music. More plotting of my learning curve to come. Thanks for reading, and thanks for all the encouragement I have received along the way. So here is to more learning - and the gift of more, inspired creativity I have come to know that I can expect. Peace

monome introduction

2009-03-23T19:05:00.004-05:00

Here is a wonderful video on Vimeo by sam_square introducing the monome device:

How great! I am so happy this video now exists. I can refer many questions I receive straight to this. That "tehn" to whom the music is attributed at the closing credits is none other than Brian Crabtree who is the inventor and co-owner of the company. Special thanks to sam_square and the monome community. Peace

Winter sun setting

2009-03-15T21:45:00.006-05:00

Violet Crown Heights, Austin, Texas, evening in early March, year of our Lord 2009.

The slide show is in at just over four minutes. I am a little disappointed with the sound quality on Vimeo. Lots of glitches. I also uploaded the longer version of the song, at just over six minutes, onto Soundcloud.

Winter Sun Setting by Tetramorph

I wanted to do an ambient piece. But I didn't really know where to go. This sunset was so amazing I just tried to capture it with our little digital camera. Each picture got fuzzier, but, in the end, I think it adds to the ambient mood. It's practically impressionistic by the end. So I found my inspiration: make a slideshow, and then make an ambient track to accompany it.

I wanted to see if I could make something meditative using a simple video editor like iMovie along with an ambient track I composed. I am not entirely happy with the attack on the noise level in the tone I synthesized for the track. But, my hope was to get a kind of "wind rustling through branches sound." And it comes close.

I used the ES-1 softsynth plug-in that comes with Logic Express. Triangle wave with noise as the sub-oscillator. A little bit of drive, a touch of resonance. Simple envelope, routed to FM the cut-off. Gate release envelope on the amp. Lots of reverb, lots of delay set at 1/2 note sync. Master track with an EQ and a compressor. Only one midi track to mix down. I think I like this ambient music thing!

The monome application is Stretta's tintinnabulome. Truly an amazing app. I am proud to be associated with it!

I could have changed many things. But the main point is that I am not being a perfectionist. The meditation is done, and shared. Please let me know what you think. Thanks for following, and thanks for the encouragement. Peace

less (control) more (expression)

2009-03-06T11:19:00.027-06:00

Sometimes, at least for me, the less complex my synthesizer controller is, the more actual musical expression I wind up finding. I think this is just another way in which the minimalist maxim, "less is more," manifests in my own creativity.

That is where my little Korg nanokey comes in. I picked this up as soon as it came out in order to have a cheap, packable and easily portable MIDI controller.

Lots of folks are complaining about this little thing already, but that is because, in my humble guess, they have set up false expectations for themselves. They look at this tiny cheap little plastic thing and say "small keyboard controller," instead of, more accurately, saying "alternative controller." This thing only vaguely resembles a piano, organ or "synth" keyboard. And although it supports velocity sensitivity, it is more like the felt-like pad of the WASP than a keyboard of any caliber. When you set aside the notion that you are playing a keyboard and instead say, "this is a tiny, portable, velocity sensitive alternative controller," then you can let go and have a lot of fun with this little interface.

I love monome devices just exactly because they are not keyboards. They do not support velocity or aftertouch - and that is something good about them. The limit keeps their use sane. Instead, for example, the sixty four supports "tilt," and the 40h has its own kind of accelerometer. By sensing the relative position of the unit to the horizon, one can achieve interesting and even beautiful expression by "mapping" things like note duration, relative volume and tone to the position that one is holding the device. This allows a totally different kind of interface that nevertheless allows for expression. But for me, the kind of expression it allows "maps" better to the kind of instrument a synthesizer is - electronic.

What I mean is that a synthesizer is already an "alternative" instrument when compared to previous, traditional, non-electronic instruments. To expect an old traditional interface, like a piano or organ keyboard, to make sense in conjunction with an electronic instrument just doesn't always make sense. The first synthesizers were almost entirely triggered by analog sequencers: so nobody "played" them "live," or expected that kind of "expression." When Moog added a keyboard to it and marketed it, many "purists" complained. Now, most folks can't imagine a "synthesizer" as anything other than a "keyboard," and for those not interested in synthesis, the terms are often used (sadly) equivocally.

So folks have come up with some unbelievably cool ways to interface with a synth that allows far more expressive control. But one of the things I often like about the synthesizer is the way in which it often provides a far more limited dynamic horizon - like an organ where one must directly add more stops or just turn up the pump to get more volume and tone. You can't play an organ like a drum - or even like a piano. And that is okay. An organ is still quite expressive. When I play a synth, sometime I don't want velocity sensitivity - I find it distracting. I can't play it like a drum either - you can't hit an oscillator with a stick. I like my Prophet because the expression often comes in the way that I set up the envelope and trigger it with the keyboard, rather than through setting a velocity value to some parameter.

So when I first used the nanokey, I found myself not content to leave it on the table surface in front of me. I picked it up and rested it on my left forearm so that I could bring it to up to my right hand as I played the keys. Because it really feels nothing like a traditional keyboard, I find myself not falling into the typical (over-used and, to me, now disappointing) patterns in which my hands habitually fall on a regular keyboard. What can I say? It was fun. I was "jammin'."

This post is, in a small way, a response to a series of posts by Stretta - a professional musician - who has been commenting on the problems of getting synthesizers to be as expressive as traditional, non-electronic instruments. I love following his blog, and often find myself agreeing with his opinions on things.

Well, Stretta is absolutely right. Synthesizers are capable of real expression and musicality. For someone with truly developed musical talent and skills, more expressive control of synthesizers is imperative. But it set me off, comparing my own meager "skills" to that of a professional musician again, and I started to worry and fret and . . . you get the picture. So, upon further reflection, I realized that I actually like how relatively "unexpressive" a synth can be. The limit doesn't kill expression. It just provides boundaries within which, at least someone with my level of talent and skill, can find meaningful expression. The limitation frees me to be more expressive than when I feel lost in a sea of possibility.

I am not being Pollyanna here because, in my sane moments, free from regret that I majored in philosophy instead of music, I am happy that real, skilled, trained musicians can handle the kind of subtleties that "more expressive control" gives them. And I love listening to, enjoying, and being inspired by the results of such good musicians. I am also happy that there is a musical and aesthetic philosophy out there - minimalism - that lets me, on the other hand, express myself unapologetically: less control gives me, in this case, more expression.

Now, back to my sixty four and nano! Thanks for reading and thanks for the encouragement.

minimalist ambient punk

2009-02-24T15:00:00.031-06:00

Okay, so I got to asking myself recently: what does ambient music and punk (new wave) have in common that I keep listening to them and drawing enjoyment and inspiration from them both? Other than the fact that Brian Eno was there at the birthing of both of them, midwife to one, father to the other.

Let me provide some examples to make this clear. How is it that I can thoroughly enjoy listening (and watching) something like this:

Miraflores Locks from stretta on Vimeo.

And then turn around and also thoroughly enjoy listening (and watching) something like this.

(BTW: The Ting Tings and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are my current fave punk / new wave bands. The YYYs are a bit dark and/or 'inappropriate' at times. But, nevertheless they have this ebullience that I am talking about below and that I find really attractive.)

Eno once said about his shift from rock music to ambient music that rock and roll was essentially an adolescent kind of music. He had grown out of it, so to speak. He was ready to do something more adult, mature, beautiful. I basically want to agree with this. And all that I dislike about a rock song, when I dislike a rock song, can usually be summed up by saying something along the lines of "O my, that is just so adolescent." I am not in high school anymore. Thank God. And I never want to go back.

For all this I find the joy I take in these seemingly disparate forms of music to actually be quite similar in the end, if not in their respective means. What I mean is that dance/pop punk (new wave) and ambient music are both, for me, about the positive release of positive energy. And by positive energy I do not mean "happy happy." I just mean that the emotion is real, authentic, and builds up, rather than tears away at, reality. In the end, with either genera, I wind up feeling happy and relaxed. But with one, that state comes through a kind of ebullient and energetic release of energy (new wave), the other through a more relaxed meditation.

Okay, brief aside: why do I keep calling this stuff "punk" and putting "new wave" in parentheses. Well, I would just call this stuff straightforwardly "New Wave," but when you say that people start thinking that you are talking about something that includes, mainly, groups like Human League or Naked Eyes instead of something that originally was wide enough to encompass groups like Tom Petty's Heartbreakers or the Pretenders, as well as, of course, the Talking Heads, Ramones and Blondie. By New Wave I do not mean "synth pop" (which usually bugs me: "so adolescent"). So when I talk to folks about what rock I like, rather than explain the shared but divergent history of Punk and New Wave, proper, I just say: I like fun, non-political punk music. Good enough.

Now, back to my commentary: So, in the end, I feel as though I have encountered and released positive energy when I engage these two kinds of music. And, as different as they seem in means, I see some similarities. They both adhere to a kind of minimalist philosophy of music. They both latch on to simplicity and accessibility. Ambient may use modes, but they are tonal. New Wave punk may use distortion, but we can all sing along with the chorus when it comes back round. New Wave and Punk both call for a return to a more simple, "any body can do this and have fun" philosophy of Rock music. Ambient music calls for quieting down, slowing down, and listening to the beauty in the tonality of what surrounds us.

They both adhere to a kind of DIY philosophy: anybody can pick up a guitar and slam out some fun punk; anybody can do some field recordings and send it through an effects processor. Eno is always glorying in the "fact" (questionable) that he is "not really a musician." Hmph. I sure wish I were as good of a "not real musician" as Eno! Well, anyway, we get the point.

I keep coming back to ambient music, and keep trying to create my own, because of its adult, mature, honest simplicity. If rock music is "three chords, a red guitar and the truth," then ambient music is (I just made this up, tell me what you think, or give me your better version): "three modes a colorful formant and a sense of beauty."

When I turn to new wave and punk, I don't find myself attracted (anymore) to the aggression in some of it, nor the overtly anarchist politics of others. I avoid that stuff now. That is the stuff that reminds me of all that I remember hating about being a teenager. I keep coming back to the new wave and punk stuff that is fun, almost "pre-adolescent:" an ebullience for life that says "dance," "jump up and down," release this energy, have fun, and help others feel good too.

It is, however, hard, as a guy with a "hobby" project studio to make dance punk at home. I guess I better buy a pickup for my acoustic guitar! Next, I think I need to post about why I dig the minimalist aesthetic, whether in rock or in other electronic forms of music, like ambient music.

Here is the question I'll have to ask myself: am I a minimalist out of some kind of legitimate philosophical position? or just because I lack virtuoso musical skills and I'm just Pollyanna?! Thanks for reading, and thanks for the support.

meditative knot tying

2009-02-23T20:25:00.005-06:00

As we are coming up on Lent here, I felt like sharing this little video I came across the other day.

So here is some respect to the folks at Trinity Cathedral who really put a lot of energy into their media and communications. I know that the music is a little on the cheese side of "ambient" or meditative music. But, if we leave snobbery aside, it is not a bad piece as a setting for the meditative practice of tying knots.

Here is a whole lot of respect out there to this deep Eastern Christian tradition. Prayer ropes, knot tying, and the "Jesus Prayer" ("O, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner," said with one breath, both on the inhalation and exhalation), are all a part of the Hesychastic tradition of mysticism that is so essential to the Eastern way, and often so foreign to Western Christians.

In this web log, I meditate (among other things) upon how human creativity participates in the divine act of creation itself; and I share the creative things that other people, or, in this case, other traditions do, that inspire me. Hope you find it inspirational as well.

Blessed Lent.

My first icon

2009-02-16T17:08:00.012-06:00

Last Summer (2008) I took an iconography class with Austin-local iconographer Irene Pérez-Omar. It was an amazing experience. I finally took it back to her, long after it had fully dried, in order for her to put on the final sealing coat of linseed oil. Now that it is finished, I've taken this totally non-professional photo to post on my avocational web log. And I am introducing a new "locus," on my web log for such projects: "ikon."

I think, in some ways, "writing" this icon was more difficult than writing my dissertation. I love re-engaging a folk-art tradition in my post-modern condition. I love the spiritual depth of meaning in each line and layer. I love that an icon is highlighted, and never shaded - the iconographer always works his or her way out of darkness into the light. I love how working on an icon reflects one's spiritual journey - and the troubles you have in writing your icon reflect your own spiritual state. Needless to say, I learned a lot about myself. As I meditate on this icon, I continue to learn more.

There is no signature. Iconographers do not "sign" their work, they "channel" it: both in the sense of passing down a tradition bigger than they are, but also in the sense that the icon enables contact with the transcendent realities it images. Stretta recently embedded a video where a famous author reminds us of the ancient conception of creativity as something only enabled by the divine, by something that transcends merely quotidian human existence. Iconography, as a liturgical art, is, to me, the key example of divinely inspired creativity. It is "sub-creation," under the Creator: to whom be glory.

I plan further posts in this web log locus with regards to why I took iconography, future hopes and projects, and some of the theology and philosophy behind it. Please let me know what you think.

Thanks for following, and thanks for the encouragement.

Meditations in tintinnabulation

2009-02-05T22:51:00.011-06:00

meditation in tintinnabulation from Tetramorph on Vimeo.

Back in November (2008) I wrote some words of respect about Arvo Pärt and his compositional technique of "tintinnabulation." At the conclusion of that post I proposed a possible application for the monome that would be based directly upon that technique. I started a discussion about it in the monome community forum. Stretta responded and put together "tintinnabulome" in max/msp - without even having his monome with him. So this post is also a brief word of respect to Stretta: Thanks for all that you give so freely of your own creativity.

Now, as you may recall, occular gave us a beautiful Christmas carol last season with Stretta's realization of my brainstorm.

Since then dadek has done a couple of really beautiful meditations with tintinnabulome:

tin one by dadek

And also:

tin two by dadek

I find these truly beautiful. So I worked on my own tintinnabular meditation, some results of which are found in the video embedded at the top of the post. Although not as beautiful as dadek's, I am happy with it, and with the joy I had in producing it. Never mind that my dog is barking at the end. We can't all have meditative experiences at the same time, I suppose!

I hope it is meditative for you as well. Please share with me what you think. Thanks for reading, and thanks for the encouragement.

DIY monome case

2009-02-04T23:32:00.005-06:00

pillow | monome | case from Tetramorph on Vimeo.

Okay, so here is how I carry my monome about town: in my satchel / brief case wrapped in an old pillow case. Fancy, I know. That is about the extent of my DIY capabilities.

I thought this slideshow would be a fun little gift to the monome community. There has been some recent activity in the monome community regarding how to store or carry one's monome - and it seems to be a recurring theme. So, here's to you, monome community!

I gave up on this little musical track that I used as music for the slideshow a while back. This project was the result of my Apple Store One to One sessions. I grew tired of it, but it was really instructional for me; so I don't regret it. It turned out to be a perfect sound track for how to turn an old pillow case into a brand new monome case. Enjoy.

Production principles

2009-01-19T13:06:00.015-06:00

I have two reasons for writing down my current account of my avocational "production principles." The first is that, being the first month of the year, it just seemed like an appropriate time to "officially" get these out of my mind and out there to read. The second, and probably most important, is that I've felt some unnecessary pressure with regards to my avocation recently. I've felt unproductive. And I have been disappointed in what I have made. I realized, however, that I was comparing myself to professionals and folks with more training in music, production and the arts. I had to remember that this is my avocation - not my vocation. So it is okay for me to expect amateur results from myself. So, here goes.

Keep joy central

Joy (or, vulgarly, "fun"), after all, is the whole point of pursuing anything avocationally. So this is my whole purpose in returning to music and (sacred) art as a "hobby" (what a horrible word).

use presets shamelessly
when frustrated, always ask myself: "why am I doing this?"

It is okay to use presets, especially in my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, which is to say, musical production software). I am not an engineer or producer. The presets do what they are supposed to do. I will not make something stellar, or "unique." But I will make something that sounds acceptable and allows me, in some way, some artistic expression. Good enough (see the principle "No perfectionism," below).

Minimalism

A general aesthetic philosophy of minimalism needs to be the main principle driving my approach to composition, whether musical or iconographical (or architectural). And this for several reasons, both philosophical and practical. Philosophically, I just have an appreciation for and a loose commitment to (sacred) minimalism. I will write a commentary or theoria post on why some other time. Practically, these artistic pursuits are not my vocation. I will only stress myself out expecting professional or virtuoso results from my amateur and self-trained capacity, skill and time.

simplicity
unimportant / non-serious
limits = paramaters for creativity (a good thing)

My old roommate, Tommy Falby, taught me the importance of the word "non-serious." Brian Eno says, "regard your limitations as secret strengths. Or as constraints that you can make use of." The very fact that he ends his sentence with a preposition is a case in point.

No perfectionism

The principle of "non-perfection," literally "in-completion," is obviously related to and a corollary of the previous two principles of "keeping joy central," and "minimalism." "No perfection" is my principle for recording, and for using and knowing my DAW for audio capture in general.

record without fear
snappy / quick
take the 1st take
"mistakes" = "hidden" intentions

Again, Eno: "honor thy mistakes as hidden intentions." That is, when it generates something new and unexpected. Not simply because you've played off beat or you've screwed up the sound irreconcilably!

Explore sounds and timbre

The exploration of sound generation and timbre manipulation is the goal behind any creative use of synthesis in general. So this is nothing too profound. Expect for one thing. It is amazing, as an amateur synthesist, how often I will forget this. I forget the central joy of exploration and go for perfection, where perfection is understood as finality. It is amazing how often I will get stuck with a crappy sound because I keep trying to get it ready to "save" as a preset. Now, this is in no contrast to "use presets," above, under "keep joy central." No, I use presets in areas I don't care or haven't had time to learn, e.g. setting up a track to record vocals. Logic Express sets it up for me good enough for now. No, I mean presets with regards to synthesizers. And even there it is OKAY. So long as I remember two things:

play with synthesizer presets shamelessly and without fear of "loosing it"
don't leave my prophet 600's knobs in the same place between two sessions

In general, I really don't save presets. I treat my synthesizers as if they don't have memory. But that freaks me out when I like a sound. I have to kiss them goodbye and let them go.

Best quality gear (that is moderately priced)

Clearly, this principle is about gear acquisition and the avoidance of "gear lust."

analog synthesis (in the main)
digital control (sequencing, arpeggiating) and capture (DAW)
not modular
not "better," only "different"

I learned the distinction between analog "hardware" and digital "software" from Stretta on his bio page. I liked it so I am adopting it too. I have to set (even if artificial) boundaries for myself to keep this thing an avocation and not pretend that this is my vocation. So, as cool as modular synths are, they eat money and require a level of skill and theory in synthesis that I would only frustrate myself in trying to achieve. Instead, I'll go for the best quality poly analog synths and enjoy other people's use of their modular systems without envy (this is a principle, of course, we'll see how well I put it into practice!). More knobs, gears, and choices do not necessarily equal "better." But if I see something that would really help me create something new altogether, well, then maybe I will allow myself to consider it!

Thanks for reading the post. If anybody reads this out there and likes it or has anything to add or suggest, let me know and please comment. Other musicians, what do you think? If you are professional or otherwise virtuoso, what do you think of these as principles for a non-virtuoso amateur? Thanks!

Monome theurgy

2009-01-12T15:46:00.030-06:00

When the Neoplatonists combined Plato and Aristotle in their mystical philosophy, they fully intended to synthesize the best of all the available western philosophies of the day. What they did not know was that one of their own, Iamblichus, would "defect" from their pure theoretical vision and get his hands dirty doing things like justifying (pagan) sacrifice. In a last ditch effort to save dying classical paganism from the new religion, Julian the Apostate used theurgical Neoplatonism in order to justify and promote the pagan sacrificial religion of the crumbling empire.

So much for the history. Theurgy means god-work, or god-action. As opposed to thaumaturgy, which means wonderworking. Thaumaturgy is just straightforward "magic," or sorcery. Theurgy is "magic" for spiritual, transcendent ends, rather than material and immediate ends.

The Neoplatonic myth was that of emanations from the One. The goal of the philosopher was to meditate back to the one and escape the illusion, ugliness, evil, unreality and multiplicity of the emanated world. Iamblichus and the theurgist agreed with this synthetic vision, but used the apophatic theology of Neoplatonism to create a paradox requiring physical ritual and transformation in order to return to that primordial unity. If the One were incomprehensible, inconceivable, etc., then how could a mere human being actually meditate his or her way back to the one? The answer for Iamblichus and the theurgists? You couldn't. But what you can do is use the rituals revealed by divine hierarchs in order to retrace the steps of creation and, as a physical being, in the world of the physical, using physical objects and offering them in sacrifice to the gods, return to that primordial and blessed state.

Through theurgy, the adept imitates (mimesis) the Creator (the demiurge) in a ritual reenactment of the creation of the cosmos. This imitation takes the form of pagan sacrifice and other amalgams of superstition and magical rituals in imitation of the "sacrificial" means of bringing about the material universe on the part of the one through emanation. These sacrifices aren't necessarily the "gross" kind. It could be libations of wine, burning of grain or incense, you name it. But something is usually lost, emptied or consumed (by fire). These ritual actions are means of both personal meditative return, and, eventually, the return of the entire material cosmos, to the One. (If this sounds a bit Hindu at this point, you should not be surprised. Yogic and Tantric Hinduism on the one hand, and pure and theurgical Neoplatonism on the other, are both parallel Indo-European religious systems.)

Well, this is all very interesting stuff. My own Christian commitments make me want to tell this story a bit differently. But what about monome?

Perhaps the main reason why I love the monome interface for making music is that it allows real-time manipulation of sequences, patterns, samples, data. This manipulation of patterns in "real-time," and not just in meditative thought - like an old-school MIDI-sequencer - makes the monome thus a kind of musical theurgical device. Just as the theurgical adept imitates the demiurge in following the patterns of emanation in ritual performance, so too the conductor of the monome creates new patterns and manipulates them in real-time just as the Creator, although creating from pre-existent patterns, nevertheless reacts to and manipulates those patterns "on the fly" as per-necessary. Creation "ex nihilo" is creation out of nothing previously hanging around, not simply out of "nothingness" at all. The patterns pour out of the infinite mind of the Creator.

So conducting the monome is like a ritual performance or mimesis of the divine act of creation itself! That is why the monome is so obvious a musical tool to those who are attracted to it. It causes the (new to be) conductor to exclaim: it is so obvious! Why hasn't it been around longer! (See Antimon's comment on the monome community's discussion thread "So I have this ponderage . . . ")

The monome as theogony: Orpheus was the greatest musician because he sang the birth of the gods. When you see something like Edison's fingers at work, you see someone tapping out the birth of the gods (perhaps I am pushing my fortuna?). The monome, in its minimalist and pattern driven simplicity, allows the artist a kind immediacy to the creative moment - both in him or herself, and, I believe, thereby, to divine creativity that is channeled through our human sub-creativity. (Just look at some of the divine creations made possible by this device, for example, on the Vimeo Monome Group.)

So I am getting increasingly more theological. But I haven't quite gotten there yet. More to come. Thanks for reading!

Polygomé pop song project

2009-01-02T21:20:00.003-06:00

I've been fooling around with Stretta's polygomé for a while now. I've been enjoying some of the bizarre, and (to me) unpredictable behavior of its "gomeizer" function. Playing with it in this mode, I came up with this little pop song. I call it "Only One" (as in, "you're not the"):

I plan on working it up into a full blown (but minimalist, of course) pop song with vocals. I want to work on the drum bed and add some kp3 effects and fills. I want to work in a few other synth bursts, effects and sporadic melodies. I can't figure out whether I want it to be silly, sarcastic or just weird. But I just can't take pop too seriously, so it will have to conform to one of those adjectives.

Please let me know what you think, any comments or suggestions. Thanks for listening, and thanks for the encouragement.

Joyous Noël

2008-12-24T15:19:00.002-06:00

Merry Christmas, all! May you find joy as we remember the Word (Pattern) made flesh (stuff).

monome kling glöckchen from occular on Vimeo.

Celebrate Christmas the monome way!

Occular posted this little German Christmas carol using the lucid musical qualities of the first draft of Stretta's tintinnabulome app, developed in response to a brainstorm I started in the monome community. Stretta wrote this initial version without even having a monome around! I started the brainstorm inspired by my post of respect with regards to Arvo Pärt's work. Much thanks to Stretta, occular, and the monome community.

Christmas Peace

Loving the Prophet

2008-12-21T20:47:00.010-06:00

When I pulled out my old synths and decided to return to music as an avocation, to keep me sane, etc., I realized that, although I loved the sounds produced by both my Sequential Circuits Prophet 600 (P600, 1983) and my Korg Wavestation EX (WS 1993), I did not like programming both of them. I simply did not (and still do not) care to learn the sound architecture and endless paging through endless menus that it takes to program the (supposedly technologically better) digital WS. But I love to program my P600.

The good news for an old school analog guy like me is that analog suddenly became cool again in the late '90s and that hasn't changed. Analog is still cool. They've come up with all sorts of "softsynths" (computer generated software synthesizers) that (attempt to) emulate the old analog sounds. Heck, I don't need that (you young music-store whippersnapper) I actually have an old synthesizer! (Although I love the softsynths that come with my DAW, Logic Express.)

Before I left the high school garage-band scene in the early '90s, I used to have to apologize for having an "old" analog synth like the P600 - I just couldn't afford better. But my heros were analog programmers and I secretly resented having to apologize in the first place! I loved my P600 then as I do now and knew it was a good synth. But I had teenaged gear lust and so was in conflict with myself over it. Now I can go into music stores and say "yeah, I've got an old P600 that still works (more or less) and hasn't even lost its presets!" and they all just say (if they even know what I'm talking about) "wow, cool. you'd better hold on to that." I intend to!

For over-all descriptions of these synthesizers, check out the links on their names in the paragraphs above (they link to articles about them on Vintage Synth Explorer; Google is good, of course). Here is a youtube video of a P600 in action. (The guy has somehow figured out how to sync this ancient beast to midi clock - yes, I am jealous.)

Here is why I am posting about this synth: I started to feel small and inferior to all the programming heros out there on the net now. Especially all the ones using their own RAD modular set ups. I started to think: if I were really cool, I'd ween myself away from the mere milk of hard-wired analog and start biting of chunks of the real meat of modular patch bays.

I mean I really started feeling the limitations of my little P600. It represents (one of the best of) the very first synths that were not only hard-wired rather than modular, but also designed to be economical and to remember patches in a little built-in dedicated computer. Not only that, but my P600 was THE first synthesizer on the commercial market that sported MIDI. Not bad. But to some, not good. Digital patch memory, MIDI, and the like, tended to pave the way for the "keyboards" to come. What I mean here are those electronic instruments with speakers built in to them that you can pick up at Mart or Radio Shack. Okay, so maybe I am still a snob about some things. Anyway, they weren't synthesizers - you couldn't program them.

Now, the P600 is programmable - but not fully. It already lost "patchability" by being analog rather than modular. That's okay, so did the Minimoog. But, I am guessing in order to enable digital patch recall, even the pots that it has are far more limited in scope than those you would find on the older early analogs. I mean, I just can't do as much with my little LFO as you can do on some of the other analogs and modulars! Not only is routing limited, but I can't go super slow or super fast - I can't push the edge of audibility like a "good" LFO should. That is because the P600 was kind of an early "keyboard": a cheaper, more portable, user friendly, factory preset presentable synth for those that wanted to gig but couldn't program or carry around a Rhodes or an organ. "Nothing funky or weird here please, I just need to bang out some chords." Humph.

Anyway, these were where my sad and gear-related self-deprecating thoughts had been meandering for a while. Until I returned to the roots. Among those who program synthesizers (at least the circles with which I care to associate) if you can ground your thought or practice on something Brian Eno has ever said or done then you are good to go. Quoting or referencing Eno is like quoting the Bible or the constitution in other circles. (Check out his site.)

I remembered how Eric Tamm in his book about Eno described how Eno hated synthesizers with lots of options. And that for all sorts of (good, in my mind) reasons. It violated some of Eno's notions of the value of minimalism. When you lower your options, that is, create creative boundaries for yourself as an artist, you actually boost creativity, productivity. Eno also eschews gear-lust: the notion that newer features and more features always means a better instrument. Eno used his EMS AKS almost exclusively for over a decade. Then he switched to his DX7 for at least that long, and, as far as I know, is still using (several of) them. Limiting possibilities, learning what you know intimately well = good. So too having six amazing sounds rather than 6000 mediocre ones.

So, I defer to the master. I am no Brian Eno, but darn it, my little P600 is my DX7! And I am sticking to it. (Another example: I have a Korg Kaoss Pad KP3. It is rad. I have left it on the same effect, "Talk Filter," pretty much since buying it. I still haven't exhausted how cool that effect is, so I'm shamelessly and unapologetically sticking to it for a while!)

Another example: I've recently decided that I can never tire of filter sweeps. As far as I am concerned, from now until I die (unless I should change my mind, to which I reserve the right) I'm going to have a filter sweep in every piece I produce (that is, assuming I ever actually finish something).

Future posts: commentary on some of my ground rules and practices for musical productivity and some theoria on the notion of limiting possibilities in order to unfetter creativity as a parallel to ascesis.

Thanks for reading, thanks for the support, and three cheers for my Prophet 600!

Monome dabble and prospective piece

2008-12-12T10:32:00.005-06:00

Slow 64 dabble from Tetramorph on Vimeo.

I came home one evening and decided that I wanted to try something a bit more slow and meditative. So I set Stretta's Polygomé down from its preset 120 BPM to 60 BPM and started dabbling. The above is a sample of it.

I like it so far and really enjoyed myself while producing it. I think it has potential as a recording project, so I welcome any helpful comments. I especially wonder about how to work in extra, overlapping material, themes and sections in order to give variety to pieces such as these that would otherwise be quite repetitive: a productive of this kind of electronic music production. The goal would be theme and variation while keeping the whole feel seamless and (fairly) minimalist.

Technical: As I said, I am using Stretta's Polygomé driving my Prophet 600 and signal processing both the Prophet and my little DR-550 drum machine through my KP3 Kaoss Pad. I actually like the cheesy beats from my old drum machine better than most of the loops in Logic. Logic is currently my (only) DAW. The wave-sequenced pad I add is from my Wavestation.

Apology: Okay, so I apologize again for how low-tech this production quality is. I still have "wife-camera-person" on our digital camera for both video and sound capture. I plan to upgrade, but it is hard to spend money on a camcorder when I want to spend money on gear! So I ask for your patience, etc.

Thanks for following, and thanks for the support.

Behind the name

2008-12-12T09:43:00.016-06:00

In St. John, as in Ezekiel, these four animals, or rather, these four "living creatures," are the epitome of creation, because of all creatures they are the noblest.

-- Louis Charbonneau-Lassay: The Bestiary of Christ

Theology and teaching are my vocation.

My current career focuses on the worship of the church.

I have always been musical and I have some basic visual artistic talent and interests.

I love music and art that points beyond itself, that participates in the sacred.

I have sung in many choirs; I dabble with keyboard instruments and the guitar. I enjoy synthesizer programming, especially analog. I enjoy attempting to write traditional icons and other forms of sacred images.

I love minimalism, sacred minimalism, ambient and popular music with synthesizers (but not synth pop).

I was inspired to maintain this web log when I received my monome 64.

I appreciate the monome community and consider it a privilege to be (even a minimal) part of it.

So why "Tetramorph"? There are several intersecting reasons:

An angelology of forms and patterns participating in ever overlapping hierarchies that generate almost infinite unique concrete manifestations inspires my meditation on the "decoupled grid" that is the monome.

Tetra = four (64, 128, 256); Morph = form, pattern (application, sequence, progression).

Music, art, creative work, theurgy as means of meditating on the transcendent within creation, and that, in turn, as a means of contemplating on the Source of creation, all gives me the desire to contemplate the Tetramorph.

Not too much good stuff about the Tetramorph on line, but try Wikipedia.

Thanks for reading, and encouraging! Peace.

Another hour (or two) with monome and Logic

2008-12-04T22:40:00.008-06:00

This is a follow up on the project I began at an Apple Store One to One session I had a couple of weeks ago. Here is what I was able to do to that project in yet another hour session at the store and about one more hour at home:

I placed a new rhythm bed under it all and worked in a bit more variation. Most significantly, I've added a "B" part that shifts the feel and adds a simple melody from my Prophet 600 through my KP3. Underneath that I lay down a treble rhythm using my monome 64 running Stretta's Polygomé in the "goméizer" mode. I like that track, but it seems too punchy. Over the course of making these new sections, I managed to erase or loose some of the cool midi data from the previous session. Bummer, but I'm not so invested as to do the work to try to recover them. This is just experimentation to get familiar with recording and composing music again.

I like this new piece in general, but the transitions from A to B and back to A need some clear work. I'm also having trouble "bouncing" from Logic to iTunes. I'm not able to get the ending to turn out as I would like it. It cuts of too abruptly. More to work on at my next One to One, I guess!

I would love any comments or criticisms. Thanks for listening, and thanks for the encouragement.

Arvo Pärt and tintinnabulation

2008-11-29T22:08:00.007-06:00

My experience singing in choirs, my love for jazz and 20th century harmony, always led me to love some of the more, shall we say, difficult 20th and 21st century choral composers. Arvo Pärt is certainly one of them. Every composer gets criticism, especially those who are recognized before they are dead. I don't really care much about such controversy, I just love his sacred choral works.

It is not often that something described as minimalism gets across such intense passion. And it is not often that such intense passion actually enables genuine meditation. So I just have to do a little bit of praising this man's work. Pärt is an Estonian composer living in Germany. Do a google search for more, but the Wikipedia article on him is helpful.

Right now I am listening to his setting of St. John Chrysostom's Litany for the hours for monks. First of all, you simply have the awe-inspiring words of the saint himself "even if I had not done anything good before Thee, do Thou help me, in Thy grace, to make a good beginning." It reminds me of St. Benedict's Rule, "always we begin again." Moreover, "O Lord, implant in me the root of all good - Thy fear in my heart." Finally, I am just struck by:

O Lord, shelter me from certain men,

from demons and passions,

and from any other unbecoming thing.

I love the possible play on words with the adjective "certain" modifying "men." I love the patristic angelology here clearly and analogically (organically?) linking the fallen angels to the vices (passions outside of rational control). I love the simultaneous domestication of the demonic and the archetypal amplification of simple, human bad habits.

But then it is not just the words, of course, but the kind of powerful pulsating choral phrasing that Pärt devises for setting them. He rolls eastern, Byzantine and Russian-style chant with 20th century harmony through the focusing lens of his minimalist "tintinnabulation." I couldn't find a public mp3 of the above piece, but the following should give an idea of the general technique, and will, hopefully, convey some of its power:

Check out this website, Arvo Pärt Website, dedicated to Pärt and the free mp3 samples available there.

So, "tintinnabulation" is this great word that Pärt invented to describe a technique he stumbled upon to generate, in a minimalist fashion, these kinds of simple chant-like patterns that achieve meditative (in their simplicity) emotional depth (in their harmonic complexity). Here is how the Wikipedia article about it describes it: "tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voices, the first of which (dubbed the "tintinnabular voice") arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion."

I practiced this the other day with my wife. I sang the arpeggiation of the tonic triad in solfège and she simply went up and down the scale in solfège. The result was suddenly "Pärt"!

There is so much to say and medidate on with regards to Pärt and tintinnabulation, but I'd like to end this accolade by relating it back to another major focus of my web log: the monome. I am not a programmer (yet), but a dabbler. I simply appreciate and make use, in my minimal way, of the great wealth of monome applications shared among the monome community out there. But it seems to me that this technique of tintinnabulation is just perfect for mapping to the "decoupled grid" that is the monome! (Sacred) minimalist technique meets (technological) minimalist interface! I've even got a name for it: "tintinnabulome," of course. It seems that something like Stretta's Polygomé, blended with his Cygnet could pull this off: set up the tintinnabular chord voicing with one"hold," then, with another "hold," or, perhaps in another "frame" set up the undulating scale. Of course, different modes and chordal possibilities could be offered, like tritones and the like.

I am serious: is there anyone out there in the monome community who can program and would like to take this on? Creative commons attribution on the name, "tintinnabulome," and then share it with all! Anyone? Stretta? And, Stretta, if you are interested, don't forget that I only have a 64! Thanks for reading and thanks for the support.

Aristotle meets the monome

2008-11-22T19:27:00.004-06:00

Aristotle's metaphysics, like Plato's, and like the basic world-view of most of the ancients, assumed that there were realities that transcended the material and human. And for both of them, forms, or, what I want to call "patterns," were more real than matter, or "stuff." The key difference between these two thinkers being that, if a certain pattern was not currently found actually shaping something (some stuff), then, for Aristotle, it simply no longer existed.

Now, I am more a Platonist myself; and I like the idea of patterns, as higher ontologically than stuff, actually somehow existing whether or not they are currently shaping anything at all, or not. Nevertheless, when it comes to the monome, I love the beautiful and kind of melancholy seriousness of Aristotle's ephemeral patterns.

Now here is the question: which is the pattern: the monome grid, or the given software application running with the monome at a given time? I think there is an analogy from Aristotelian metaphysics to working with the monome and I want to draw it out. Same question from the other side: what is the stuff, the mater (the prime material): is it the actual physical equipment of the monome, or, again, is it the application?

One thing I know, the concrete instance is the resulting music, design, or what-have-you output of the artist's creativity. Which, I suppose, makes the artist or musician a kind of demiurge. Is this poesis or mimesis? Oh, boy, I need to slow down.

Look, here is what I am really meditating on right now that I think is so cool. It seems to me that at least a significant part of the beauty of the monome as a minimalist interface is the way in which it so clearly embodies (at least analogically) this Aristotelian paradoxical intuition of both the primacy of pattern over material and, nevertheless, the fleeting nature of the pattern. The pattern, for Aristotle, although higher, has this kind of dependence upon stuff, material, the lower.

A recent discussion in the monome community asked this question: which is coolest about the monome: the interface itself, or the amazing user-developed and community-shared applications? Now, someone commenting in this discussion quite definitively stated that it was the interface, giving the example of a certain program (mlr) and saying that it would be horrible, on, say, a traditional keyboard. True enough. And yet, if I remember my monome history correctly, Tehn invented the monome to realize certain musical ideas that he had envisioned. So now which is it?

Here is where I want to loop back to my previous theoria post and remember that the monome, without an application and its creative user, is really nothing. But not "nothing" in the sense of absence; rather, "nothing" in the sense of possibility. The monome as interface is the possibility (literally, the matrix) for the artist (demiurge) to forge new pattern possibilities. So now we have pattern (pater), matrix (mater), and creator (demiurge). Wow, this is starting to move beyond Aristotle, and get kind of theogonical. Cool.

At least in terms of its musical application, being "freed from the comfortable tyranny of the piano keyboard where . . . hands fall into comfortable patterns" (as sagely stated by Stretta while describing one of his early and beautiful applications, fourths), means the freedom to generate music in new directions, directly exploring the nature of music as itself beauty in pattern formation, dissolution, combination and reformation. The beauty of the monome is that of a minimalist interface that enables maximalist results (if desired).

So, I still haven't answered any of my above questions. But I have begun a fun line of meditation. Thanks for following and thanks for the support.

Some initial dabbling with my monome

2008-11-15T14:57:00.008-06:00

Some initial dabblings from Tetramorph on Vimeo.

Okay, here are some initial dabblings with my new monome 64, driving my Prophet 600 through Stretta's polygome application on max runtime. The audio is then processed through my KP3 Kaoss Pad.

This improv represents exactly why I wanted to get back to music and rebuild a project studio. Real time modification of a sequence - so that my hands are free from the synth keyboard, real time effects processing and analog synthesis. This video concentrates on the monome and the KP3, so when I am not active there, that means I am probably doing something on the board of my Prophet.

Okay, so I'm still pretty low-tech: sorry! This is just my dear wife volunteering to capture me on our pretty decent little digital camera acting as a pretty poor tiny camcorder. So, of course, the sound capture is horrible. I know you all can insert a little imagination and hear how great it really was (I hope).

Problems I've got to work on: recording quality audio when I capture this kind of video, and taking video that neither glares the surface of the KP3 nor is so dark that very little can be discerned (as is the case here).

Oh, well. I still wanted to share this joy of mine. So I hope you enjoy. Thanks!

One hour with monome and Logic Express

2008-11-14T15:29:00.013-06:00

So here is what one can do in one hour at an Apple Store "One on One."

I have signed up for the Apple Store "One on Ones" and, not to be an endorsement or an ad, but, wow, I am glad I did. I'm really slowly gaining facility with Logic Express after not having been a garage band synthesist for almost 15 years! It is a joy to be back in music again.

So I met the teenager that was going to tutor me and I said: "Okay, here is the goal, by the time we are out of here we will have laid down tracks, we'll have an intro and a vamp and we'll bounce it to iTunes so I can share it on my blog." The kid was great and took me right through it. He was a little trepidatious when I pulled out the monome, but was relieved when he discovered that I had done my homework and had already set it up to sync with Logic, etc. At any rate, he could recognize "cool" when he saw it!

Now the piece, admittedly, leaves something to be desired. But, at least for me, it bears the hope of future glory. I am using a generic rhythm bed from Ultrabeat. I've got a bass tone from the ESM and I'm triggering it with Stretta's Press Cafe. The treble tone is from the ES2 and it is being triggered by Stretta's Polygome. The result is not unpleasant!

I plan to go back in, add some variation to it (ABACA), and choose a better matching rhythm bed. I'll post it when I've bounced it.

Thanks for listening and thanks for the encouragement!

Towards a philosophy of monome, or, how I learned to stop worrying and love minimalism

2008-11-12T23:07:00.015-06:00

What is the monome? What does it do? What sounds does it make?

These are questions I get when I try to explain the monome and my love of it to most folks: friends, family, etc.

How can I explain how cool it is?

The monome 64 is a box. It is approximately 6" X 6" X 1.5." Without a computer that supports USB, that is all it is.

But not exactly. The monome is beautiful. It is itself an example of minimalist design done right. Very mod, it is made of handcrafted wood with a Mondrian-like grid of translucent silicon buttons placed within a punched grate of brushed metal. So it is art. You could, in the right place, hang it up on the wall.

Let's say, however, that we do have a computer that supports USB. Now what? The monome is now a box with the electronic capacity to send digital data regarding the pushing of its buttons to the computer. It is also capable of receiving, independently from such button pushing, signal to illumine the LED lights that back-light the various translucent silicon buttons.

And that is it. That is all the monome does. Which is just short of saying that it does nothing. And that is exactly where possibility enters.

The monome makes no sounds (intentionally); is not, of itself, a musical instrument, etc. What it makes, in the minds and hands of those capable, is possibility.

To those that would like the concrete before I wax philosophic, the monome is an interface or alternative controller, that allows for a near infinite possibility of user-designed and community shared software applications. If you want it to send MIDI data (info from a computer that triggers a synthesizer) then you can. If you want it for graphic design, there you have it. To trigger and modify sequences of musical patterns in real-time. To generate arpeggios, undulating recursive patterns - its up to the programmer.

In an important sense, the monome is neither the almost numbingly simple hardware, nor is it the near infinitely possible software - monome - is what happens when a creative mind brings the two (hardware and software) together in order to bring something new into the world. In order to generate unique (and sometimes unrepeatable) patterns of beauty.

So before this gets theological I will conclude by saying that I need some Aristotelian metaphysics at this point. And end it now with the intention: more to come . . .

The monome arrives!

2008-11-11T15:54:00.002-06:00

The monome arrives from Tetramorph on Vimeo.

The UPS van could not have arrived any later. But arrive it did. Here is a little slideshow to share with you some of the joy of receiving my monome 64. Even the packaging is art! Music by one of the monome community's pillars, stretta (creative commons).