The app combines randomness and control in an intriguing way. I also like the fine microtonal control it gives you. You can also use it as a MIDI controller for other software, though I haven’t given that a try yet. If you want to try it for yourself and you don’t have an iOS or Android device, you can snag the desktop version, for free no less.

Aside from Nodebeat, the best three iOS music apps I’ve tried are:

• Animoog — a faithful reproduction of a Moog analog synth. Fascinating, wonderful, versatile, but very complex and I haven’t even begun to plumb its depths.
• Figure — a very stripped-down version of Reason with a beautifully minimalist interface, a sense of humor and wonderful sounds. It also has some maddening shortcomings, however, like not being able to save or export your work (unless you hook up a cable to other recording software from your headphone jack.) Also, nice though the interface is, it would be good to be able to more directly edit your patterns. I presume (hope) they’ll be rolling out more of this kind of functionality in future versions.
• Soundrop — more of a toy than a musical instrument per se, but an excellent toy. If you like quasi-randomness in your music, this offers you tons of gratification. Free, well worth monkeying around with.

I haven’t tried some of the big name iOS music programs yet. I’m told Garageband is pretty great, and the Electribe looks pretty interesting. For the most part, the apps I’ve looked at are too limited to seem worth the while compared to serious software like Ableton, Pro Tools, Reason and so on. But I’m keeping an open mind. If you have recommendations, please put them in the comments.

Subotnick has an extremely friendly dog.

The studio is cluttered in the manner of a creative person with a lot of diverse interests and a disinclination to throw things out. The shelves are strewn with software manuals, thick classical scores, computer innards, Mac peripherals of many generations, video and audio tapes, Rodney Greenblat CD-ROMs, books, business papers, and even a module from a first-generation Buchla.

Professor Subotnick shares my love of Stephen Mithen’s book The Singing Neanderthals.

The centerpiece of the studio, the Mothership, is Subotnick’s Buchla 200e. He has it patched with a bewildering tangle of cables. He knows what everything does, more or less, but even after a semester of studying and practicing on a similar Buchla, I still find this patch to be fairly impenetrable.

Check out the retrofuturistic touch keyboard on the right. While the Buchla can be controlled by regular MIDI, Subotnick is much more interested in the Buchla’s continuous-touch controls, which can be mapped to any parameter on the synth. Note that the “keys” aren’t rectangular, they’re hexagons and parallelograms.

Subotnick doesn’t just generate live sounds on the Buchla. He also deploys pre-recorded samples. They’re recorded off the Buchla, but then processed much more extravagantly than is possible live. Subotnick likes to create intricate swoops and dives via simulated doppler effects. Lately he’s also taken to using looped samples of his breakout hit “Silver Apples Of The Moon,” mixing them in with everything else. He triggers his samples from a groovy handmade Livid Block. If you look closely you can see his handwritten markings.

All of the sampled sounds blend together seamlessly, since they all have that Buchla timbre. Live remixing on the fly! Pretty hip.

So here’s Subotnick in action. He’s manipulating some Buchla parameters from the touch keyboard with one hand, and has his other hand on a little bank of sliders and buttons controlling yet more parameters via MIDI. The whole scene reminds me of Doctor Who operating the TARDIS — many of Subotnck’s sounds have that BBC radiophonic workshop vibe, which adds to the impression.

Here Subotnick plays samples from the Livid Block. Some are short, punchy attacks, and others are long and trailing. He can combine any attack with any decay to produce a wider variety of different sounds than the grid of touchpads would normally make possible.

The other key piece of the setup is a Mac running Max For Live. Subotnick uses Live for a variety of purposes: he stores his samples there, records his voice on the fly to use as an envelope controller for the Buchla, deploys effects, routes signal in complex ways, and occasionally even plays “normal” software synths with a conventional MIDI keyboard.

Spatialization of sound is a major preoccupation for Subotnick, and he has a pretty sweet quadrophonic speaker array set up. He also has a mammoth subwoofer, which mercifully he didn’t switch on while we were there, as he prefers listening to stuff LOUD.

To get a sense of what this all sounds like, here’s a recent Subotnick performance:

Let me reiterate the complexity of this whole arrangement. All of the Ableton sounds (the samples, synths and effects) can be processed through the Buchla’s filters and gates. All of the Buchla sounds can be fed through Ableton’s myriad effects, and the audio channels can be endlessly duplicated with different processing on different copies. The possibilities are staggering. And as if this weren’t enough to make me want to step up my game, Subotnick also has an electronic piano in the room, that he uses to practice classical repertoire. For four hours a day. Humbling! I have a lot to learn.

Hear some of my Buchla/Ableton music:

Guberman divides the history of recorded music into two distinct sections: the fidelity era, stretching from Thomas Edison through the invention of the compact disk, and the post-fidelity era, beginning with the iPod. He argues that, since about 2001, the listening public has come to value convenience, variety, personalization and curation over sound quality.

An emblematic image of the late fidelity era: the Maxell advertisement showing a wealthy young man in his home, sitting deep in an easy chair with a martini, getting physically blown away by giant, powerful speakers.

The emblematic image of the post-fidelity era: silhoutted people of both genders and diverse backgrounds, dancing with iPods.

During the fidelity era, publications and advertisements focused on the “realness” of recording media and playback. High-end stereo equipment became steadily more elaborate and expensive in the pursuit of ever-better clarity and dynamic range. Even the Walkman was initially promoted in terms of its sound quality. Guberman cites a 1980 New York Times article rhapsodizing about the “astonishing . . . fact that a pocket-size set plays true stereo sound with stereo-separation.” By the end of the twentieth century, though, even the most exacting audiophiles were no longer expecting much in the way of further improvements in recording or playback fidelity. While the compact disk was initially presented and marketed for its clarity of sound, its real selling point quickly became convenience: the ability to skip tracks, not having to flip records, not needing to replace needles and so on.

The MP3 format did not immediately challenge the values of audiophiles. The format was a technical curiosity mostly of interest to computer enthusiasts, and the first generation of portable players were considered geeky toys, not serious listening devices. When the iPod was first introduced, it was not met with much enthusiasm. The iPod was relatively expensive, worked with Macintosh computers only, and did not boast any major technological advantages. Certainly, no audiophile would have predicted that it meant the beginning of the end of fidelity culture. But the iPod’s attractive visual aesthetic and remarkably simple user interface helped bring MP3s into the mainstream.

In the past ten years, the iPod and devices like it have changed our relationship to recorded music. We now expect that we can carry a vast quantity of music wherever we go, that we can create playlists at will, and that we can access our libraries via intuitive and attractive interfaces. Furthermore, MP3 software and players introduced the shuffle feature. Some CD players were able to shuffle the tracks on a single disk, but the ability to randomly play from among hundreds or thousands of songs is another qualitative experience entirely. Fidelity has been so completely overtaken by convenience and variety that, as Guberman points out, CDs are frequently purchased just to be converted into MP3 files. Furthermore, elaborate and expensive home stereo systems that might once have centered around a high-end turntable and amplifier are now designed specifically for MP3 playback.

Record companies have been slow to embrace the post-fidelity mindset. They worked to stem the tide of MP3s while pouring resources into higher-end digital formats like the SACD and DVD-A. As recently as five years ago, I was employed to write marketing copy for these formats, and it was difficult to muster an enthusiastic tone for products I knew were of interest to almost no one. Technology companies like Apple and Amazon have been the beneficiaries of post-fidelity culture, while the record labels are in a tailspin.

Today, the audiophile community has largely been subsumed by the home theater and hardcore gamer communities. While these groups value good sound, they also value picture, engaging content, the physical appearance of their gear and various other considerations. Guberman cites the prevalence of speakers designed more for aesthetics than functionality, like the tall, slender towers popular in home theaters setups. He further notes that, even among audiophiles, discussions tend to center around actual music, rather than the technology used to play it back. He surveys the Audioholics forum and finds that “[t]he most popular discussion threads include ‘best female voice,’ ‘best male voice,’ and ‘20 albums you should own but probably don’t.’ All of these involve users recommending albums to each other for various reasons, rarely mentioning the sound quality. Instead users try to describe the appeal of the music itself.” This is for the best. Music technology exists to convey music, and it’s healthier to focus on the music than the technology for its own sake.

Even the MP3 does not represent the lowest-fidelity music experience. That distinction goes to the increasingly common practice of listening to music with the small, low-quality speakers in laptops, tablets and even cell phones. If you’ve taken public transportation in a major city in the past ten years, you’ve probably heard teenagers playing music for each other from their phones. The UK has a slang term for this practice: sodcasting (with sod meaning “inconsiderate jerk.”) This behavior is considered a nuisance by most non-adolescents, and in 2006, London mayor Ken Livingstone went so far as to call for a sodcasting ban. But social music sharing is a fundamental part of our social life, and we should expect kids to do it with whatever tools are at hand. Some scholars take a more positive view of sodcasting, which  technomusicologist Wayne Marshall terms “treble culture.”

Guberman observes that while we have lost something in the post-fidelity era, we have gained much from the access of vast digital music databases. When searching an online store or file-sharing site for a particular song, we serendipitously encounter other songs that happen to share a word their titles. Guberman gives the example of a search that turns up both Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and Blue Öyster Cult. This kind of effortless, semi-random encounter has been a source of inspiration for the current generation of musicians. For example, the wildly eclectic singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe has said specifically that she wants her albums to create the sensation of an iPod on shuffle.

Post-fidelity culture impacts the sonic qualities of contemporary pop as well. Smart producers recognize that their work will likely be heard in less-than-optimal listening conditions, and adjust their process accordingly. Hip-hop producers in particular design their mixes for real-life listening: in cars and clubs, and on noisy streets, buses and trains. In the 1990s, Los Angeles hip-hop producers were already in the habit of listening to mixes in progress in the car. Current pop and dance music favors fat synthesized bass sounds and kick drums with a lot of overtones. These sounds work well on tiny speakers, because the upper harmonics supply enough information that the listener can fill in the lower ones mentally. Similarly, high-pitched, crisp synthesizers bracketed by abrupt silences cut well through noise and poor speakers. By keeping the midrange relatively empty, producers can design their music to coexist with engine noise, people talking, humming air conditioners and fans, airplanes and all the other noise pollution we find ourselves immersed in. Music of the high-fidelity era fares poorly in such conditions.

Like most technological changes, post-fidelity culture brings both losses and gains. Consider again the two advertisements. The Maxell guy in the fidelity era has great sound, but he enjoys it alone in his home (aside from his butler.) The post-fidelity iPod people are dancing in a social context. Audiophiles lament the MP3 and treble culture, but these developments facilitate the social sharing and connection that is music’s true purpose.

My friend Andrew, who was at the show, said this afterwards: “I can’t decide whether hearing the president say ‘This is not class warfare, it’s math’ or the fact that this band could become popular makes me feel more optimistic about the possibilities of life in America.”

Merrill Garbus started receiving rapturous praise from the indie-rock press a couple of years ago. I read her adulatory New Yorker profile and was immediately skeptical — in the abstract, the idea of a white indie rocker playing African music on a ukelele is not an enticing proposition for me. But curiosity got the better of me, and when I listened to some tracks, I was immediately hooked.

Stylistically, Tune-Yards is an unlikely combination of Fela Kuti, Medúlla-era Björk, Reggie Watts and Primus. Merrill Garbus uses pedals to sample and loop her voice and drumming, and plays baritone ukelele. Sometimes she strums it like a guitar, but she also plays fingerstyle in a way that evokes thumb piano. She’s accompanied by a bassist and two tenor sax players, all of whom also play assorted percussion instruments. See the band in action:

Here’s an actual music video:

Why does this music excite me so much?

The most obvious pleasure is Merrill G’s tremendous talent as a singer. Underneath all the growling and shrieking, she has a legit voice, with a big range and precise pitch control when she wants it. She’s an electrifying stage presence, too, with a relaxed intensity and unfakeable confidence.

Merrill G’s writing is interesting too, though not as consistent as her performance. Her tunes are quirky, thorny and dense. They have a lot of abrupt starts and stops, and show clear signs of being assembled solo in a bedroom on Garageband. Merrill G is masterful with the rhythmic and sonic aspects of English, with a dense syllabic flow that leans toward hip-hop. (She also sings a bit in Swahili.) Her melodies are chants or simple pentatonics, but still manage to show a lot of personal idiosyncrasy, like her penchant for starting and ending on scale degree two.

It’s always politically tricky when white musicians imitate black music. There’s nothing more embarrassing than a bad white rapper, for example. White musicians have a very mixed track record with African sounds. I’m totally in favor of David Byrne and Paul Simon, but Vampire Weekend is painful. Merrill G has so far been a lot closer to David Byrne. Rather than imitating the surface sounds of African music, she’s internalized it and used it to express the truth of her inner self. Some of the technique might be borrowed from Africa, but the content is all about modern America, and it feels truthful and authentic coming from her.

Live looping

The most significant aspect of Tune-Yards’ music is Merrill G’s use of live looping. Anyone who wants to make groove-oriented music in the present moment faces a dilemma. Live drummers tend to fall back into tiresome rock cliches, which get lamer with every passing year. On the other hand, sampled and programmed beats aren’t conducive to dynamic live performances. It’s hard to get that feeling of excitement from watching someone press the space bar on a laptop and then just… stand there.

Live looping gives Tune-Yards the best of both worlds. Merrill G records her drum patterns into the loop pedal right in front of you, one instrument at a time: floor tom, rim shots, snare, cymbals. She couldn’t use rock cliches if she wanted to, since she plays standing up and doesn’t use a kick drum. Because she doesn’t always nail her patterns exactly, her loops have an appealing human quality. And she mixes it up, so some tunes use only looped drums, some use both looped and live drums, and some are played entirely live.

Merrill G’s looped vocals are even fresher-sounding than the drums. Sometimes she uses them to do conventional backing vocals with herself. Sometimes the vocals act as a rhythmic element. Sometimes they build into hair-raising noise collage. Most songs use some combination of the above. By stopping and starting the loops in unexpected places, the tunes are spiced with attention-grabbing silences, a much better way to snap the room into focus than boring fills and crescendos.

If you couldn’t tell from reading this blog, I’m not too wild about rock and roll these days. I enjoy the classics, but I don’t think there’s much juice left in the orange anymore. I like Tune-Yards because they rock, incredibly hard, without falling back on tired rock tropes. I’d like to hear more music like that.

Some wishes

One of the high points of the show was when Merrill G had us all sing a long sustained note, the fifth of the key, through a section of one song. There’s room for way more audience participation than that in the Tune-Yards experience. I’d love to see Merrill sample the crowd clapping a simple pattern, or chanting, and then build on top. Audience participation is one of the main things missing from most concerts, and when you do it right, it’s magical. It’s one of the great sicknesses of our society that we leave music-making to specialists, while most people just passively observe. Tune-Yards could create some truly ecstatic group music-making, without having to get all kumbaya about it.

I also wouldn’t mind hearing Tune-Yards slip a cover or two into the mix. Original material is all well and good, but it would have been really satisfying to hear the set close with a radical take on a classic eighties pop tune. Anna suggested “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper, which I think would be perfect — imagine Merrill G shrieking the lyrics over a raucous drum loop. Or how about some Michael Jackson? “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” would fit their style like a glove. Pop covers would be another way to bring in some more audience participation, since Merrill G’s knotty original stuff doesn’t facilitate much singing along.

My own preferred form of audience participation is the remix, so here’s a mashup of Tune-Yards’ “Bizness” with “Nobody Beats The Biz” by Biz Markie, “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” by Kanye West and Jay-Z, “T’ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” by Billie Holiday, “Taking Care Of Business” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive and “Strictly Business” by EPMD. Enjoy.

Bizness megamix by ethanhein

Update: really good article discusses Merrill Garbus’ complex gender politics. Recommended.

I think Reggie is one of the most exciting artists of our time, but it’s difficult to verbalize exactly what he does. His performances combine improvisational music and absurdist standup comedy into a free-associative yet oddly coherent and impactful whole. The best way to get an idea of what I’m talking about is just to see the man in action.

Reggie on Conan:

“Wax and Wane,” a video by Jake Lodwick:

See a video deconstructing the process behind songs like this. The delay/looping unit is a Line 6 DL4 delay modeler.

A ballad, Big Ass Purse:

A longer performance at Google:

Reggie’s most produced video blends his usual disjointed lunacy with a loving parody of hip-hop. It’s called F*ck Sh*t Stack, and obviously, the language is very explicit. And hilarious.

Reggie works well in purely audio form too: Thus Far (Alternate) by reggiewatts

Reggie on Radiolab:

Hear many more tracks on this Spotify playlist. I’m particularly awestruck by the fifteen-minute “My History Thus Far.” It’s a wonderful autobiography unto itself, but if you want more background, check out this New York Magazine profile.

Improvised words and electronic music belong together

Barbara Singer and I had a somewhat similar idea to do completely improvised electronic music, and to combine it with improvisational comedy. Reggie’s method is better. First of all, instead of using canned beats like we did, he beatboxes everything himself. Secondly, he sticks to a pretty strict hip-hop/R&B song form: eight and sixteen bar sections, intros, verses, choruses, breakdown, outtro. The structure gives his improvisation a solid skeleton, keeping the music tightly enjoyable while the words go off in whatever random directions.

I went through my free jazz phase, but Reggie’s approach is way cooler than free jazz. Reggie is accessible and pleasurable in a way that free jazz only very rarely is. Relatedly, I like improv comedy as much as the next guy, but combining it with singing and rapping pushes it onto a completely different level. Reggie feels less like an entertainer and more like a transmitter for the collective unconscious of the culture. In a prehistoric culture he probably would have been a shaman or a prophet. It helps that he looks the part.

Studies of musicians who improvise while having their brains scanned show a connection between melodic improvisation and speech.

[Improvising] led to a surge in activity in a variety of brain areas, including parts of the premotor cortex and, most intriguingly, the inferior frontal gyrus. The premotor activity is simply an echo of execution — the novel musical patterns, after all, must still be translated by the fingers. The inferior frontal gyrus, however, has primarily been investigated for its role in language — it includes Broca’s area, which is essential for the production of speech. Why, then, is it so active when people create music on the piano? The scientists argue that expert musicians create new melodies by relying on the same mental muscles used to create a sentence; every note is another word.

Given these results, it’s not surprising to me that the richest improvisation combines music and language. The best jazz solos have a speech-like aspect. Freestyle hip-hop makes the speech-music connection literal, but suppresses melody. By combining hip-hop with melodic singing and discursive lectures, Reggie is hitting every brain region at once. When we laugh at his routines, it’s not because his stuff is “funny” in the traditional sense (though it can be.) I think we’re laughing at the delightful surprise of having so many new connections between our own brain regions being lit up at once.

So, the show we saw

Apparently it was taped for a Comedy Central special, that’s something to look forward to. As you can see in the videos, there’s a whole dance component to Reggie’s act, which includes waving his fro around hypnotically. It had been pouring buckets before the set started and it was still humid, so Reggie’s hair steamed visibly under the lights.

The beauty of the live looping is how unpredictable and context-sensitive it is. Sometimes crowd noise got recorded along with whatever Reggie was singing or beatboxing, adding to the texture. On one of the songs involving piano, he overdubbed two layers that were slightly out of sync with each other. Instead of erasing one and trying again, he just let it run, giving the piece a nice organic lopsidedness.

While most of the content came straight from Reggie’s subconscious, there was some pop culture too. He did a flawless parody of Radiohead. He shouted out nerd culture several times too, making references to rolling for initiative and Seven Of Nine. He aimed a surprisingly earnest lecture to computer hackers, entreating them to find something constructive to do.

Reggie’s best material went from the ridiculous to the sublime. He started one of his hip-hop tunes by shouting out all the boroughs – “Is Brooklyn in the house? Is Queens in the house?” That led to a rapped discourse on New York City, its neighborhoods, the way the streets down in the financial district and the Village are all oddly laid out because it was before the grid system, then the Dutch, the native Americans, the wooly mammoths, the formation of the earth, and all the way back to the big bang, which he described as “a black hole emitting radiation.” Which: wow.

In general, Reggie’s act feels like he’s explaining to aliens how humans work. I sometimes feel like that’s my job with this blog. It’s a thing with people who grow up between different cultures. In my case, it’s the conflict between my Jewish and Protestant ancestors. Reggie’s case is more complex, because he has a French mother and an African-American father. His Obama-like chameleon quality is the result of an Obama-like upbringing. He probably feels like an alien himself most of the time — too black for white people, too white for black people, too European for America, too American for Europe, too musical for straight pop, too pop for the academy. He and I share a fondness for Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature,” which is all about the alien perspective on humans. I bet he likes Björk’s “Human Behaviour” too.

The crowd was heavy on the hipsters, but more varied in race and class and age than you’d think. The people around me were uniformly enraptured, laughing at the random nonsequiturs, bopping to the songs. The only exception was a woman standing front and center at the foot of the stage, who abruptly stormed out two thirds of the way through the set, angrily exclaiming, “This is not funny!”

Below is a diagram showing a computer that can add one plus one to get two. It’s made out of an XOR gate and an AND gate, each of which is a relatively simple bunch of transistors wired together in particular ways. Transistors are just on-off switches that can be flipped electrically, so they have no moving parts (except electrons.) The beauty part is that the output wire of one transistor can be used to flip another transistor on and off.

The “numbers” in the diagram are just voltages: “zero” is zero volts, and “one” is (I think) 2.5 volts. The numbers in a computer are encoded in binary (base two) because it’s the most convenient way to physically realize them — voltage that’s pretty close to zero can be read as zero, and a voltage that’s pretty close to 2.5 can be read as one.
This simple adder has two input wires and two output wires. The input wires each represent a single binary digit, and the output wires together represent two binary digits. If one input wire has a voltage and the other doesn’t, the equivalent of adding one plus zero, the adder returns no voltage in the “twos” digit and a voltage on the “ones” digit. If there’s a voltage on both input wires, the equivalent of adding one plus one, the adder returns a voltage on the “twos” digit and no voltage on the “ones” digit, the binary number 10, or as we know it in decimal notation, 2.

Here’s a diagram of a four-bit adder, capable of adding numbers as big as sixteen. The diagram shows how adding seven (0111) plus twelve (1100) to get nineteen (10011) would work.
Wire together enough adders and other basic logic devices, set up at the right initial voltages, and you’ve got yourself a computer.

Original post on Quora

Miles and Eno seem radical, but in a way, they’re just boiling the usual compositional process down to its raw essentials. Really, all composition and songwriting consist of improvising within constraints and then sequencing the best ideas into shape. Usually this improvisation happens in short spurts, inside the composer’s head or alone at an instrument. Using a recording device instead of a sheet of paper can make the process more bodily and immediate, and can help get at playful ideas that might not squeak past the mind’s internal judges and editors during the relatively slow process of writing stuff on paper. Michael Jackson wrote his best stuff by improvising into a tape recorder. There’s something about improvising a performance while being recorded that focuses the mind wonderfully.

Since 2004 I’ve been writing and recording with Barbara Singer in different configurations. The first version was her idea, a band called Blopop. She had some techno versions of pop songs programmed into her MC-909 groovebox, and the idea was that she’d sing and DJ, and I’d improvise guitar on top.

Both Barbara and I come from jazz training, and both of us felt boxed in playing standards. Free jazz wasn’t that interesting to us either; it felt too chaotic and self-indulgent, too disconnected from the musical world we live in. Babsy had the bright idea to use electronic beats and loops as the basis for improvising. Her original concept was to use pop songs as the basis for improv. We did a little performing that way, but then quickly moved into completely open-ended blowing over beats.

Brian Eno has all kinds of different systems for imposing order on his in-studio improvising. For us the system was to use the presets in Barbara’s groovebox. The generic techno grooves programmed into the box establish  a key and a vibe, so you just set the tempo and you’re off to the races. In a perfect world we would have programmed everything ourselves from scratch, but there was something wonderfully effortless and expedient about just dialing through the presets at random.

Babsy is an improv comedian, a veteran of various improv groups and a student of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. We talked a lot about the improv comedy bible Truth In Comedy and how applicable it is to music too. If you’re confident, responsive to the other performers, and genuinely focused on the present moment, you really can’t do anything wrong.

Constrained improvisation is a perfect meditation exercise. I learned firsthand what the Buddhists always say, that it takes a lot of practice and discipline to be maximally effortless and intuitive. I’ve enjoyed few activities more than freeform musical improv over techno beats. Completely free improv can be a pleasure too, but it can also be a pain, since it usually devolves into formless noodling. The beats give enough structure to make the process fun. Here are some of our attempts to put the Truth In Comedy principle into action.

See

mp3 download, ipod format download

Improvisation recorded during the first time Barbara and I were ever in a room together, in the summer of 2004. Babsy is in the excellent habit of recording pretty much every note she plays or sings. I was a little taken aback when she wanted to record our first session, but went along. This isn’t edited, or even mixed. I pick a starting note at random, which turns out to be the flat seventh of the synth loop’s key. That establishes the main riff I have to work off of. This element of harmonic randomness ended up being a big part of the band’s pleasure for me, having to puzzle out a good-sounding relationship between the note I picked to start on with whatever came out of the groove box.

Warmup

mp3 download, ipod format download

Another unedited improv, recorded a month later than the one above. As the title suggests, this was just to get limbered up at the beginning of a session. It fades out once I lose the thread.

Everything We Do Is Right

mp3 download, ipod format download

Maybe our best attempt at a longer-form improv.

Window remix

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Edited from over half an hour down to eight or so minutes. The original contains all these ideas, but they’re separated by some stretches of aimless wandering, and with looser repetition. I like it better this way.

Listening now, this stuff doesn’t nearly as tight or focused as our more pop and remix-oriented material we eventually moved into. But I admire the spirit of adventure behind it. My guitar playing certainly improved enormously under the pressure of all that recorded improvising. We never remotely found an audience for this music. It was too weird and avant-garde for the dance music people, not weird enough for the avant-garde, too unfocused and unpredictable for pop fans, too electronic for jazz fans. Still, I think it was a cool idea, one that I don’t think we came close to exploring completely. I’m still interested in pursuing this format further. Anybody out there game for some Eno-flavored freeform techno? Drop me a line.

A little background. I got my first Mac exposure in 1988, eighth grade, back in the days of System 6 and Pagemaker 1.0. It was love at first use. The mouse interface is old hat now but then it was a tremendous improvement on typing arcane DOS commands.

The first computer I bought with my own money was a blue and white G3 tower.

This computer was an amazing piece of industrial design. The side panel was a big hinged door so you could effortlessly open the computer up and access its innards. Not like I needed access to the guts all that often, but it was nice to not need a screwdriver or anything when I did. I also really loved having big sturdy handles on all four corners. It seems like such a no-brainer now, I wish all heavy, delicate and expensive objects had big handles on them. One of my roommates at the time said I shouldn’t buy this computer because, while it looked cool, it would be instantly dated – so late nineties. She was right, but I think the time-period specificity is part of the coolness, like the fins on a 1957 Chevy.

I resisted the iPhone for a long time because of the price and the lousy AT&T phone service. My mom generously bought me one for my last birthday, though, which was especially fortuitous, since a few weeks later, my laptop’s motherboard died. The iPhone turns out to be such an awesome computer in its own right that while I haven’t been able to replace my laptop, I’ve been getting along quite well without it.

The iPhone isn’t a perfect computer. The lack of multitasking is annoying (though this is supposedly about to change.) It would be nice to have access to the file system without having to go through the rigmarole of jailbreaking. But these complaints feel trivial given how fundamentally miraculous the iPhone is. It feels like it fell out of the future, and it hasn’t been far from my hand since I got it. And I appreciate the move away from the tired desktop metaphor.

So. The iPad.

On the one hand, you have fanboys like Steven Fry proclaiming the pad to be the second coming. On the other hand, there’s the well-documented Reality Distortion Field that makes people think they like Apple’s stuff more than they actually do. I fall in between. The most reasonable review I’ve come across is the one from Daring Fireball. After a glowing review of the user experience of Apple’s iWork office apps, there’s this caveat:

There is, however, a severe shortcoming inherent to the iWork suite of iPad apps: document syncing between Mac and iPad. It’s a convoluted mess. In short, the only way to edit a document on your iPad that was created on your Mac, or vice versa, is to go through a convoluted multi-step process of exporting, copying, syncing or downloading, and importing.

Ted Landau has copiously documented the entire situation in this article at The Mac Observer. Read it and weep.

What it boils down to is that there is no syncing really. Real syncing is something like IMAP for email, or the way MobileMe handles calendars and contacts. Certain of my favorite iPad and iPhone apps sync like this too. When I read a bunch of RSS items using NetNewsWire on my iPad, they’re marked as read on my Mac. Sitting at my Mac in my office, I can send a long article to Instapaper. I go downstairs, pick up my iPad, sit on the couch, launch the Instapaper iPad app, and a few seconds later, there’s the article I just added to my Instapaper queue. This is the sort of data flow that makes me feel like I’m living in the future — using multiple hardware devices to view, edit, and modify the same data. I don’t worry about where separate copies of my data exist. Conceptually it’s just there in the apps, and the apps do all the hard work of pushing and pulling changes made on other clients.

The data flow with these iWork apps isn’t like that at all, and needs to be for them to be truly useful. It doesn’t matter how good the user interface for viewing and editing spreadsheets is in Numbers for iPad if my spreadsheets aren’t there. Here’s an example. I keep the schedule for Daring Fireball RSS sponsorships in a Numbers document. What I’d like to be able to do on my iPad is launch Numbers and access the current version of that spreadsheet. But the only way I could possibly do that today would be if I went through the following steps every single time I made a change to the document on my Mac:

1. Before opening the current version of the file on my Mac, check to make sure there isn’t a more recent version of it on my iPad.
2. Open the file on my Mac and make changes.
3. Save.
4. Dock my iPad to my Mac via USB.
5. Switch to iTunes and go to the Apps tab for my iPad.
6. Add the newly-saved revision of the document to the file sharing list for the iPad’s Numbers app.
7. Sync.

Even after going through all of this, when I do want to open this file on my iPad, I have to remember not to open the last revision of it listed in the iPad Numbers app’s “My Documents” list, but instead remember first to import the latest revision from Numbers’s file sharing list to Numbers’ “My Documents”.

And, again, it’s effectively up to me to keep track of which machine, Mac or iPad, has the most recent revision of the file. To say the least, this is a recipe for disaster, and even if you don’t make a mistake and inadvertently make significant changes to an out-of-date version of the document on one of the two machines, you’re stuck with a preposterously, mind-bogglingly convoluted workflow each and every time you make a change to the document.

 

This sounds like a colossal drag and it’s reason enough for me not to be interested in buying an iPad. I don’t mind the klutziness of iTunes syncing on the iPhone, since I’m not doing a lot of serious document creation on it anyway. But on a full-sized computer, I’d expect to be able to do real work on it, not just watch movies and read magazines. I’d like to be able to easily print, too.

I use the computer for routine web browsing and entertainment like everyone else. But I work on it too, and what I love most about it is how it enables experimentation, mental adventure, self-expression. At its best, Apple knows how to encourage experiential learning and creativity. The last couple of Macs I bought came free with OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner, both of which I love to distraction. They inspired my sample maps and the macro-scale structure of my book in progress, respectively. I’ll bet the iPad version of OmniGraffle is a major delight… until it’s time to move your files to another computer, or print them, or do anything else with them.

I’m also disturbed by the iPad’s lack of USB ports. I can imagine a lot of awesome uses for the iPad in music, but if I can’t connect my gear to it except through a proprietary port that may or may not be supported by the makers of my other stuff, what good is it? There are plenty of intriguing music apps on the iPad, like Smule’s delightful Magic Piano. But if I make something cool with one of these apps, how do I get it out of the iPad? How do I make mp3s and put them on my web site, or export audio to Pro Tools, or do anything else with it?

Apple’s supposed concern with user experience only extends to a point. Right now, just about every video and most of the animation on the internet uses Flash. For reasons of corporate strategy, Apple has decided to not support Flash on the iPhone or iPad. So a huge percentage of web sites are missing their multimedia content, and instead show a picture of a mysterious blue lego block. I know the back story behind this functionality failure and can work around it, but most people will just find it mystifying. I don’t like Flash any more than Steve Jobs does, and I’d welcome a future without it. I guess I can understand the decision not to support it, but I’m mystified as to why Apple wouldn’t offer any onscreen explanation as to what’s going on.

Both the iPhone and the iPad are missing the most significant piece of interface friendliness that I can think of: an easy and obvious way to undo your last action. Novice users need undo even more than I do. The iPad’s Undo command is buried in the secondary onscreen keyboard and it’s totally absent on the iPhone. There’s a weird and not widely known feature of both phone and pad where you can undo by shaking the device. I rarely remember this exists and I can’t imagine how, like, my mom would ever think to do this gesture. Where’s the big red physical undo button? Come to think of it, why doesn’t every computer have one?

Apple’s handholding can be helpful, but when it interferes, it’s as annoying as Microsoft’s animated paperclip. Like, on the iPhone the automated typing correction changes “its” to “it’s” in every circumstance, whether it’s correct or not. There’s no way to create exceptions to the rules and I finally had to turn the autocorrect off entirely.

Finally, I’m concerned byApple’s less-than-stellar environmental record. I’d wish for them to get to work on that.

So. No iPad for me yet. But Apple is full of surprises, and I’m keeping an open mind.

From left to right, you’re seeing an Mbox, the audio interface that goes with Pro Tools. We plug the vocal mic into it so that the computer can perform its magic, like Auto-tune and compression. Next is a little mixer sitting on top of a headphone amp. Then there’s Babsy’s laptop running one of our Pro Tools files, showing some of the backing vocals she’ll be singing over. On the right is a Line 6 Pod, a guitar effects unit and amp modeler. It’s a lot easier to carry to gigs than a real amp. Using a fake amp modeler isn’t very rock and roll but it fits perfectly with the spirit of electronica. For the show we’re going to use two computers, Barbara’s to run Pro Tools, and mine for Reason synths and playback of ordinary audio files.

Using canned tracks causes me some residual philosophical angst. It lacks the risk-taking that jazz-trained cats like me associate with a good live performance. But sonically, accompanying ourselves with stuff we prerecorded and sequenced is a no-brainer. We want the tracks to sound a certain way. Doing our synth and sample-based sounds completely live would be either difficult or impossible. So our show is taking on the aspect of a highly skilled karaoke experience. This runs directly against the spirit of rock, jazz, country and most of the other music I’m trained in. But it fits in well with the music I’ve become most interested in lately, hip-hop, contemporary R&B and electronica. All of these styles use recordings in live performance heavily.

I’ve had a few different bands with Barbara at this point. We started out doing live techno remixes of pop and rock songs, mostly using preprogrammed beats. Then we entered our free improv period, combining a groovebox and live instrumentation to do a more electronic version of seventies Miles Davis. Now we’re back to pop, using very tightly structured songs with meticulous arrangements. We still use loose improvisation as a way to write during the recording process, but the finished product gets heavily edited, and most of the improv winds up on the metaphorical cutting room floor. I love improvising without a net in front of an audience, but the supply and demand equation for that kind of music isn’t too favorable. That’s as it should be. Unstructured jamming is more fun for the performers than the listeners, and our focus now is on making sure the audience has a good time. If you’re in NYC this Saturday night, come on down! We promise it’ll be fun on wheels.

Infrared Roses is a better idea in concept than execution. Freeform electronic improv is a great idea in the right hands, but sadly by this point in their career the Dead were just fooling idly around. Still, Infrared Roses has some moments of sonic intrigue, and I’ve pulled a few interesting samples out of the noodly morass. It inspired me to do some freeform electronica improvising of my own, though I preferred to do it over four-on-the-floor dance beats.

While the Dead didn’t do anything too musically exciting with their gadgets, just the fact of them was eye-opening for me. It was fun to hear Jerry play synth flute and such via MIDI guitar. His playing was a lot more adventurous back in the sixties by feeding back his regular old guitar Hendrix-style, but the MIDI sound had its own charm. Real guitar nerds will enjoy this exhaustive rundown of every guitar Jerry ever performed or recorded with.

The Dead’s actual music didn’t sound much like the hip-hop and electronica I mostly prefer now. But there were some formal similarities. One of my favorite aspects of DJ music is the seamless transitioning between songs. At their best, the Dead performed some nice transitions of their own, some planned, some spontaneous. These transitions became integral to the Dead’s repertoire, which came to revolve around suites like Scarlet Begonias -> Fire On The Mountain. The most exciting transitions were the spontaneous ones, as songs dissolved into a freeform jam that coalesced unexpectedly into new songs. My favorite of these is from 9/27/72 at the Stanley Theater, when they segued smoothly from Dark Star into Cumberland Blues.

The Dead were pioneers of PA system technology, especially with their epic Wall of Sound. Their system was more conventional by the time I went to see them, but it was still pretty slick. Because they used wireless in-ear monitors and foot switch controls for the vocal mics, there wasn’t any extraneous sound bleeding into the stage mics. The PA broadcast noise-canceling frequencies, the way fancy Bose headphones do. All the way around, the sound at Dead shows was crystal-clear, even in giant echoing stadiums, without extreme loudness. It was a huge disappointment to go hear other bands with lesser systems in the same venues. Like, after seeing the Dead at Giants Stadium a few times, I saw U2 there and it was like having a bucket over my head. Techno-hippies for the win.