liz revision » Music resources

May 2008
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Electronic Musician Gift Guide

December 14th, 2007

If you’ve got an electronic musician on your gift list but are clueless as to what would make them grin with delight on Xmas morning, I and the other staff at Create Digital Music are on hand with our suggestions for gifts for electronic musicians. Among them, a Ground Loop Isolator (for killing that annoying hum when you’re playing live), an excellent Laptop / Gig Bag (shown), and the Korg Kaossilator, a battery-powered synth that combines the touch interface of the Kaoss Pad with a bunch of Korg sounds and effects. Unfortunately the Kaossilator isn’t available in the US yet, but if you’re overseas you get first shot at playing with this cool toy.

Read the full guide: Our Favorite Things: Music Technology Holiday Gift Picks from CDM

Posted by Liz | Comments (0)

Gustavo Bravetti’s custom interactive music controllers

September 22nd, 2007

Check out this interview I did with Gustavo Bravetti, an artist who is really pushing the envelope in terms of what can be done with live laptop performance. Specifically, he wrote a custom driver for Ableton Live that allows you to “nudge” the tempo in a way similar to DJing with records, created controllers to affect playback with a glove or a light, and rigged up an electronic drum kit to play back synth lines realtime. The stuff he’s doing is truly amazing.

… Uraguay-based Gustavo Bravetti is a master of live laptop performance with alternative controllers. (See previous video of him from Colombia.) He talks to Liz (aka Quantazelle, a laptop virtuoso herself) about the scene on the other side of the Americas and how he’s able to fire up crowds with unusual performance techniques, via three-axis light control and the P5 interactive glove….

Interview: Gustavo Bravetti, Playing Music with Light and Interactive Gloves

Posted by Liz | Comments (0)

Interview with Liz Revision at Gearwire

September 10th, 2007

Check out this interview I did with Bill Holland / Mr. Automatic over at GearWire. It’s half super-technical gear talk and half about live performance. If you read closely you’ll learn the secret source of some of my “crunchier” sounding samples.

“Native Instruments Absynth, Kontakt, Yamaha PSR-85 And Quantazelle’s Live PA Rig“

Posted by Liz | Comments (0)

Get yourself a musical robotic exoskeleton

July 31st, 2007

Here’s an interesting art / performance project byMaywa Denki. Based on the simple remotely-triggered servo action of “knockers” (not in the sleezy sense)–which are direct percussive controllers that can be used to pound on various things including boxes, pipes, and guitar strings. In the above video, these knocker modules are employed to make a switch-based drum-machine-like instrument that you assign a sequence of remote knockers to, and then control the playback speed manually with a crank. It has the surreal effect of being a very nerdy guitar, with the thrashing accomplished via said crank.

Seeing as performative elements are key in this particular project, the “Wings” project shown about a bit past half way is more showy than useful, with the musician sporting spreading mechanical “wings” with knocker modules that hit hollow wooden balls that can be played via controllers on the fingers.

The video is particularly amusing in its Devo-esque tongue-in-cheek humor during the actual demonstrations, as well as the inclusion of vintage educational filmstrip dings to demarcate a new instrument being showcased. While having a direct, realtime controller of percussive sounds created remotely may be interesting for its novelty / humor value, so much more can be done in the field of musical interfaces that this sort of thing just begs to be improved upon. However, the vision and sheer performative nature of these instruments is inspiring to all who focus on creating innovative interfaces for music creation.

Posted by Liz | Comments (0)

Splice: Myspace for musicians

July 30th, 2007

Just out of beta, Splice is a burgeoning community of music producers and DJs that goes beyond the capabilities of a general networking site like Myspace or Facebook. It’s an online niche community with all kinds of Web 2.0 buzz-concepts including social networking, user-generated content, user-rated data, collaboration, online applications, AJAX and digital media.

After you join and create a profile, things start to diverge from a normal social networking site when it asks you to upload samples or record a sound directly on the site. There’s no place to upload your own music, and they warn that they’ll delete any pre-mixed tracks if they find them. Then you go browsing around the Sounds section and add samples you like to your case. Next, it’s over to the online sequencer application where you drop in the sounds you’ve found and get creative. When you’re done, you save your song and it shows up in your profile and under Songs.

Read more… or Read more right here… »

Posted by Liz | Comments (3)

Creating a successful demo: Electronic musicians: Here’s how you don’t screw it up

July 14th, 2007

Promoting yourself with a demo can mean all kinds things, from selecting a couple of tracks to help connect with a collaborator to getting yourself a composing gig or record deal. Producer/musician Quantazelle herself has seen plenty of demo discs and has assembled some tips for how to make them work. If youâ€™ve got ideas or questions of your own, be sure to sound off in comments. But the best idea of all may be getting people together for an in-person event to share music and visual reels. -Ed.

A demo is short for â€œdemonstration,â€ and its purpose is to show others what you can do, musically. In the past, a band with major-label aspirations would scrape together a bit of cash for a few hours in a studio and crank out a few copies of their best songs on a tape or a record and then send it off to various A&R departments, hoping for a record deal and a contract with a fat advance. These days, technology has made the concept of a demo and its applications somewhat different, but weâ€™ll always need to share what weâ€™re capable of with others.

Posted by Liz | Comments (0)

Best geek, gadget, and gaming blogs & websites

June 23rd, 2007

Here’s a list I’ve compiled of the best websites, blogs, and forums:

Best geek, gadget, and gaming blogs & websites (click!)

he page will be updated constantly. If I’ve missed something worthwhile, drop me a note and let me know: Contact.

Posted by Liz | Comments (0)

The 5 Way Path: Create a track out of only five audio samples

May 24th, 2007

The rules are simple: using only 5 base samples, create a song. The hard part: no other audio may be used. This means no other digital audio, no synthesizers, no vocals, no instruments of any kind–just the 5 base samples. The fun part: you can process, chop up, fry, freak, and tweak the 5 samples in any way you want, using any tools you need.

Here’s the first set of tracks created by enterprising musicians: http://www.daevlmakr.com/Pages/5ways.html. It’s amazing to listen to how all the different artists created completely new tracks from the same sources.

So download the sample pack here: 5ways_baseloops.zip (8.2 MB), and get transmogrifying (I had to rename the two .aif files to .aiff to get them to play in Windows). When you’re done, email your track as 192kbps mp3s to

daemon@daevlmakr.com. Include information on your track plus a link to your chosen web presence and they’ll put it up on the 5 Way page.

And you should definitely check out the Daevl Plugs VST effects to help you–Peter and I from CDM gave them a very good review.

Posted by Liz | Comments (1)

Categories

Search Posts

Post Archives

Electronic Musician Gift Guide

Gustavo Bravetti’s custom interactive music controllers

Interview with Liz Revision at Gearwire

Get yourself a musical robotic exoskeleton

Splice: Myspace for musicians

Creating a successful demo: Electronic musicians: Here’s how you don’t screw it up

Best geek, gadget, and gaming blogs & websites

The 5 Way Path: Create a track out of only five audio samples

About

Comments

Blogs / Zines

Friends

My other sites