so it took almost exactly a year to write and record and now my next album “with the moon alongside racing us home” is mixed! complete! done! finito! pung! bahoogled! i made a lot of those words up, feel free to use them (CC non-profit, attribution, share-alike).
now all this mixing’s done i’m focusing on my live show and getting axis out into the world. i’m also enjoying playing with max for live as an audio visual environment. getting sensors to the party is the next step i think… like some sort of reactive audio-visual “thingy”.
artwork for the album has to be done too… might start on that now.
this is the little video patch i’m working on for the new show. eventually it will do more fancy stuff like multiple layers, zoom, rotate etc. the live show will probably involve fewer aliens…. but more robots.
As promised/hinted at the first Zeal EP “This is how I hear your voice” is now up on . Click that button to make sure I’m not lying. I don’t like iTunes so I’m going to change the subject… right now, I’m busy playing with max for live and developing my new live show. Did someone say midi controlled video and animation?.. hooray for comprehensive video control from with in ableton! shall share shortly.
i know i haven’t been gigging very much this year. and i could forgive you for thinking i’ve not been doing much on the live music front but you’d be wrong. so very wrong. i don’t want to make you feel bad or anything, it’s just the truth. this is my new guitar hero to midi max app i’ve been working on. it turns the guitar into a playable instrument while keeping all the control functionality of my previous patch. here’s the hastily thrown together blurb i slapped up on my youtube.
An app i’m working on called AXIS. it enables an xbox usb guitar hero controller to output midi to control ableton or any other software or hardware that eats midi.
it has two modes – play and control.
in control mode the buttons, whammy and 3 tilt sensors send out midi messages. this is intended for interfacing with software.
in play mode any musical scale can be superimposed over a guitar hero scale built on the first four buttons. the up pick can be offset to allow rapid playing of fifths or whatnot. the orange button acts as a modifier key allowing change of key and offset on the fly. the D-pad changes scale and the back and start keys change volume (velocity). the three tilt sensors and whammy send out MIDI CCs to control what ever. the tilt sensors on this guitar are particularly awesome, they sit on three different axes and you can make the guitar really expressive.
there’s a little HUD you can sit on top of what ever you’re controlling to monitor mode, key, volume, offset and scale.
i’m sorting out some documentation and then i’ll release it as a stand alone mac app. if a max-head out there want’s to help me port it over to windows that’d be ace. mac and windows interpret the guitar controller differently. once finished, i’ll release the source so people can modify it for other system’s guitars too. I went for an xbox guitar because it’s usb and the tilt sensors and whammy work which is a problem for ps2 guitars/adapters.
at the moment i’m building up my new live show utilizing the guitar to simultaneously shred, trigger samples and effects, control the rest of the track and control the accompanying video. see, i have been busy! and not just on this. i’ve got a whole album of new material which i’ll be relentlessly plugging through out the near future.
this post is little a bit of a tease, now i think of it. perhaps this video might make it appear more substantial.
i had the chance to break in my new button box the other night with a VJ set for 1.1 Immermann’s fundraiser. the excerpt above is mashed up from various nature documentaries, a clip from flight of the navigator and a glitchy sega clip from internet archive. Continue reading →
so no gigs in.. what month are we in again?.. march. but soon enough. album is progressing. it’s been whittled down to 15 tracks and they’re all going to mesh together and reprise and be thematic and stuff. several guest superstars, probably including phil collins, are contributing. stars are mentioned several times. as are dragons.
for the last fortnight or so my efforts have been focused once again on the visual realm with a vj set i played for the baron’s ep launch (check em out!). it’s an exciting new world for me, being able to play video in a similar fashion to playing music. i wish to do more. and i hope to use this experience to incorporate video into the new zeal set. should be fun. and a massive amount of work. yay! anyhoo. here’s a slice of the baron set just for you.
Zeal is 25 year-old Adelaidien, Robert Jarvis. He makes down-beat experimentapop in his bedroom studio and animated music videos about cats in space on his bedroom floor.
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