www.jossmolders.nl

Blog continued elsewhere

2010-05-02T12:51:00.002+02:00

Starting from May 1, 2010 this blog is continued at [ jossmolders.wordpress.com.]
You are encouraged to visit me there.

A growing number of releases can be bought online through

Esprit Flottant

2010-04-28T15:41:00.000+02:00

This week I received the copies of the new release by Kaon. I composed the music based on the field recordings of Cedric Peyronnet. Recordings of the river Taurion. Good recordings, nice recordings. I really liked working with them. Today I relistened for the first time in a year to the composition. To my astonishment I was at first a bit taken aback by what I heard. It sounded alright but somehow the 'rhythm' or cadence of the work was not what I had expected. I played it a second time and then remembered how I conceived this composition as a circular work. It starts with the end and then works its way towards the end again. That way it feels alright if you replay it again and again. The second session was much better. I was adapted to the pace of the work and the coming and going of sounds and the transitions felt much better. Pheww!! So, I advise anyone to listen at least twice. Thanks to Cedric for making this production available.

please visit [ Kaon ].

Other than that, I have been working on several projects, as usual. I also have been preparing my live show in Cologne on June 9. More details will follow shortly.

I will also be present in a performance by the great Arturas Bumsteinas, who will do perform at the Kunstvlaai project in Amsterdam from May 16-21. It is called "My Own Private Bayreuth" which refers to both the state of Idaho and to composer Richard Wagner. I will be present there in the afternoon of May 20. Westergasfabriek Amsterdam. More info on this project at [ kunstvlaai ]. The site is a bit strange, but I guess more info will follow.

New archaeology: a graphic score

2010-04-19T21:12:00.001+02:00

What a week.
I did two trials for the mastering of a CD of commercial release. The material that was delivered two months ago are studio takes that lacked air, brilliance and sometimes good vocal parts. But still, the songs themselves (melodic development, structure, instrumentation) are quite good (nine out of ten). I have done a first assessment of the material and advised the artist. Some of the songs need new vocal parts. Some parts require new instrumentation. For the artist a lot of time has gone into doing a licensing deal and in the meantime for me it was mostly waiting for the ' go ahead'. Last week I decided to do a first touch up of the best of the songs. I'll give more details when I have them.

It's quite interesting for me as someone who works mostly with electronic music to dig into pop music. Believe me it is not easier to turn a decent recording into something that makes your head bop. To me, as a master engineer, both genres are appealing. Especially when I am challenged to add something experimental. :)

Two other things happened: I found a 20 year old score of a composition that I composed on the occasion of Frans de Waard's 30th birthday. As I knew that Lithuanian composer [ Arturas Bumsteinas ] collects graphic scores I sent it to him.

Finally: I received an offprint of an article that was published in [ Leonardo Music Journal ]. The article was written by Berlin based musicologist [ Volker Straebel ] and dealt with "From Reproduction to Performance: Media-Specific Music for Compact Disc". My release [ "Music for CD-player" ] is extensively discussed.

Archaeology

2010-04-14T13:52:00.000+02:00

Yes, this is a reel to reel recorder with a Black and Decker Firestorm drill. And a squashed dog. I did some r2r deck experiments last week and thought about how I could define more accurately the tape speed. My varispeed drill was able to do the job but surprisingly it wasn't that flexible. Actually it didn't work out that well with this drill but it did with another drill (a bigger one). It doesn't work for live performances because the drill makes too much noise (although that could also be an added value ;) ).

It DID yield some interesting results. For one, I noticed what a wonderful medium tape actually is. If you listen to the smooth relation it gives in the left-mid-right balance. That's just beautiful! It's so nice and soft and easy to the ears. The back side is of course that the sound quality itself is (well, at least on this baby) a bummer compared to what digital machines do.

The reason my r2r returned to the laboratory desk was that I found a small and very old tape. It was labeled "do not throw away" so I was of course immediately interested to hear what it contained. It appeared to be a tape cut up that I made somewhere in the mid 80s. At the time I worked quite frantically on pieces, always in a hasty mood so as not to loose the flow I was in. Consequently my operations were not very refined. Splicing and connecting tape parts was always done in a hurry, sometimes with too much overlap or tape parts that were not 100% in line. It was all just part of the process and the fact that the result was not technically 100% was not as relevant as that it captured the spirit of the said process.

As a result, though, I found that almost every splice had fallen apart. I had to reconstruct the entire tape (which lasted approx. 4.5 minutes). This too took place in the same spirit as in the olden days. Eager to find out what sounds had been stored on the tape I took simple tape and a simple cutter and connected the parts even without a splice bar (I had not used that in 20 years and it's gone lost). Then I played the tape and immediately recorded it to digital. I noticed that some parts have been published, scattered over several tape releases but I don't believe that this particular composition has ever been released. I will work on it and construct a new version of it.

(No real animals were hurt during this excercise)

Remixing and Remastering my own stuff

2010-04-02T18:09:00.001+02:00

Today I had some spare time so I decided to have a go at my own material. I have been working on two series of works that are quite old. The first is commissioned music that I composed in 1995. At the time I was asked to produce the leader audio, the audiobeds and the bumpers for an interactive learning course. The idea of the course was that it was following a crime plot. I devised a tune that could easily fit in with a typical early German crime series ("Inspector Derrick").

Anyhow, it shows quite a different side of my musical activities: applied music. The reason for my picking up this music was that I wanted to see how it could be remastered. Below a few samples, originals versus new masters.

leader [ original ] versus [ new master ]
soundbed 1 [ original ] versus [ new master ]
soundbed 2 [ original ] versus [ new master ]

Well, it also shows that I do not work only on difficult, experimental electronic stuff. The second series is from a 1998 release that was made specially for an exhibition by [ Alexander Korsmit ]. It was released as "Maybe One thousand Buddhas for One Dream with hidden Noise" and given away to visitors. The music was by me, with texts by Paul Auster a.o. Texts were spoken by Danielle Lemaire, Alexander Korsmit and a few other people, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten.

Strangely enough I don't have a copy of it anymore. I have started reconstructing the music because I did have the final mixes but they were made wit Cool Edit Pro and it appears to be very difficult to transfer sessions from one application (CEP) to Reaper. Some files are missing so some of the sessions cannot be reconstructed. The ones featured below have been painstakingly put together again, file by file, track by track, volume envelope by volume envelope, pan envelope by pan envelope. So, why go through all the trouble? Because I remembered the music as something really special. The cooperation with Alexander was that, as well. But I was very tired of that, after the exhibition was over. Alexander is very well-read and has a deep interest in the history of South East Asia, especially Indonesia and India. The knowledge gathered from his reading is included into the texts and into his art work which is very hermetic.

Below are a few examples of reconstructed tracks, both original mixes and remasters.

track 1 [ original ] versus [ new master ]
track 2 [[ original ] versus [ new master ]

I hope you enjoy these.

Kiefer again, but also Giacometti

2010-03-28T22:10:00.002+02:00

Was in Germany again, this weekend. We visited Bonn, the former capital of Western Germany and went to the Stadtmuseum. There were a few thoughts that kept spinning inside my mind for some time. First, it occurred to me that the Dutch museums are so tiny. The museums in other countries that I have visited are of fantastic architecture and they're big and feature large exhibition space. That allows for of course for large objects, like the Penck and Kiefer pieces, but it also offers the possibility of distance from the objects. The exhibition spaces in most of the Dutch museums are more of a living room size. What does that do to our Dutch audiences? What's cause and effect here? Let's mull this over some more.

On Sunday we left Bonn (a little disappointed about the quality of the exhibited art) and returned to Duisburg again to visit the [ Lehmbruck ] museum. This was the second pleasant surprise that Duisburg had on offer, after our previous enthousiasm for the [ Kueppersmuehle ] museum earlier this year. I sat down before Kiefer's "Die goldene Bulle", a work from 1995. Just like other works from this master painter this one is massive and awe inspiring.

So what about Giacometti? There was an exhibition at the Lehmbruck. Was it any good? Well, as far as Giacometti himself is concerned, yes. He was a great artist with a very specific goal, produce the ultimate sculpture. But the exhibition was a disappointment. It was not entertaining at all. Different pieces were placed quasi randomly in one big space. Visitors had to be warned (by security guards) not to trip over a platform that contained four statues. There were some letters of Giacometti to his family. There were just a few statues from each period. A documentary video about his life was placed in a different part of the building. Lehm bruck specializes in sculpture and other 3D work and so we didn't get to see his paintorial works except for one piece. In other words: you don't have to go if it is only for this Giacometti exhibit. Otherwise, it is quite nice and it features some very good works by Merz, Richard Long, to name just a few.

Recording the Port of Rotterdam

2010-03-25T10:10:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I drove to Rotterdam to do a field recording there. It was a first in a long time that I really went out to do outdoor recordings. Paul Baran asked me to do some recordings in a harbour a while ago and I thought it would be a good idea to go out and do this. I also used a more extensive setup. Normally I go out with my Edirol R-09 and OKM mics but this time I used a condenser mic as well to add more detail.

I went as deep into the docks as possible and found a spot that was quiet and gave a good overview of the sound environment. I recorded at two spots (A and B, the arrows show the direction). Another picture shows the google maps location.

Recording with the condenser mic was more difficult than just jump out of the car and press the record button. The condenser needs the 48volt pre amp. I got this from the cigarette lighter in the car. So I had my laptop running Reaper, hooked to that my Echo Audiofire (with cig lighter voltage) and then the condenser mic. Of course it took me 15 minutes to get this done properly since it was the first time and it was dark (between 8 and 9 PM) and connections kept breaking requiring several reboots. Other cursings weren't necessary The weather conditions were perfect (dry and very little wind).

I used both the OKM (binaurals) and the Rode NT2a and mixed them together this morning. The combination of the richly detailed condenser with the binaurals yields (in my opinion) a great result. I think I'll go back there later this year to record at other places.

Grotere kaart weergeven

Drone Gnome Review

2010-03-25T09:35:00.001+01:00

Finally a review of The Drone Gnome by someone who actually thought about it. There was a review on Foxy Digitalis but that one couldn't be taken seriously as the writer had not bothered to do so in the first place. This one was in a Dutch magazine called Gonzo Cirucs. The reviewer actually listened to the music and thought about the things that I wrote in the press text.

His comment is intelligent and boils down to this: "This disc doesn't make a smashing impression but it may serve very well as an introduction to drone music." I agree on both counts. The disc as a whole is somewhat off balance, although I think that both compositions in themselves are good. Otherwise I have been fighting with the 'genre' of drone. My goal was to 'do a drone piece' and this is as far as I got. But the final conclusion is that I will never be a 'droner'. Ever. In a peculiar way that's a relief.

Intro In Situ

2010-03-22T20:25:00.000+01:00

Performed at the Intro In Situ in Maastricht last weekend. I didn't make it to the end, but the first 30 minutes were quite alright. The sum total was positive. The more because the audience and the venue were good. A really attentive audience is a blessing for a performer. And afterwards several of them came to ask about the setup. And I sold a few of my releases. What else would I need? Oh, yeah. Afterwards a real nice guy came up to me asking if I would be interested in participating in a performance evening with Kapotte Muziek in October.

Next gig will be in Cologne, early June. I'll update you beforehand.

Intermittent activities

2010-03-14T20:54:00.002+01:00

There were quite a few things taking place at the same time last week. I have been working on an electronics and guitar works that was challenging but yielded "hurrays" from the original artist. I pulled an interesting trick by sidechaining the reverb on the guitar which worked out quite well. This is of course only possible when the original work is good. Unfortunately I have also encountered commissions where the original material was 'difficult' to say the least....

Next there was some final text work for my release in Kaon's [ Taurion series ]. I haven't heard the piece in more than a year so I am curious. Kaon (Cedric Peyronnet aka Toy Bizarre) is doing a wonderful series about this river and releases the works on a bi-monthly basis.

Please order the complete series!!

Then I received news about my work for [ Brombron ]. After more than three months I got an answer to a series of questions. Unfortunately I now have to dig deep into my memory to understand my own questions :)) So I will have to give this some more time.

There was a request for the mastering of a complete CD. This is quite a challenge as it consists of 10 songs (catchy tunes) which are quite different in sound quality as they have been recorded over a period of more than 3 years..... How am I going to bring it down to something coherent? Or should simple NOT make it into something coherent? Sometimes the answer is to do the opposite of what one aimed at first.

I have been preparing a new concert. Next Saturday I will be in [ Maastricht ] and on June 8 I will perform in Cologne (Koeln), Germany. These sets will be different from the earlier Extrapool concert. They will be twice as long and thus have more room for depth and detail.

Alive on stage

2010-03-03T21:41:00.001+01:00

Well, the crowd went wild as the artist turned the knobs, spun the reels and blasted his insane beats out of the speakers after a (quoth Radboud Mens) "almost Gothic" intro. Seriously, it was fun! I was the headliner (meaning I was the last in the line up, because the others wanted to get drunk asap and I don't drink (much)) and got a lot of shoulder bashing afterwards. So I guess I must have been doing something right.

The set (20 minutes) went well enough for the audience not to notice that in both occasions my connection of Audiomulch with the midi controller Behringer BCR2000 was broken and I had to resort to mouse scratching. What can you do? The show must go on, right? Anyway, the use of a real reel to reel deck was a huge success. The younger guests stared at a dinosaur, whereas the old geezers stood there mesmerized and thinking about the olden days.

Other performers were: Kapotte Muziek, Radboud Mens (really nice setup!), Asmus Tietchens, Howard Stelzer. I'm sure some photo's will pop up in the next few weeks. And: everything has been taped and will be released somehow (edited) in the near future by Korm Plastics.

EDIT: [ here's ] an mp3 of the Extrapool concert

Today it was also made official that I will do a performance in Maastricht at March 20. I will give more info when it arrives.

A score for Kapotte Muziek 2

2010-02-25T09:49:00.000+01:00

Have been tweaking the setup yesterday. As usual I also twoke the score. I was listening to the OST of The Shining (awesome work by Wendy Carlos and others!!) earlier yesterday and heard a little motive that will fit excellently into the score. More still: it fits excellently as a second leitmotiv for the performance.

I rehearsed and was able to add to the whole thing. Also streamlined the controller settings. Had some troubles with that old tape recorder, which at first refused to record......After disconnecting and reconnecting several times the thing did what it was supposed to do. That's one of the charms of working with ancient equipment! :)

Let's see if things go well tomorrow and on Sunday.

A score for Kapotte Muziek

2010-02-21T14:43:00.000+01:00

Working for the live performance (I had a new invite to come and play in the South of the Netherlands late March), it's been a long time ago. And I don't want to be a guy behind a laptop (alone) but also use different material. That's why that old timer of a reel to reel tape deck came in handy. I;ve prepared it for more creative use and started freaking around.

Now I've got several things ready for performance. I've worked on a score. This is basically it. It works around a single composition of 20 minutes that I worked on late 2009. It offers various possibilities for further treatment and additional instrumentation.

2010-02-18T21:12:00.000+01:00

It's been quiet this week. I am finishing up two projects. And I'm preparing the live session. I want it to be a misture of tape manipulation and a presentation of new material. In Nijmegen and Amsterdam the session will be some 20-25 minutes and I am setting up a score for it. What I want to avoid is that the music will just be a blast of noisewith a lot of incidents happening. Just like with my studio work I want to work with a defined structure in a live situation.

Mixing and mastering ambient

2010-02-09T23:03:00.000+01:00

Am currently mastering a work for a client who had two tracks. Both were dreamy, ambient pieces with a definite subaquatic feel. The first track had a lot of bass, which enhanced the total atmosphere but also inhibited a good sensation of the frequencies on top of that. Plus, I didn't really hear anything higher than 4 khz. The client liked what he had done but somehow had the feeling that it wasn't good enough.

I set to work and first cleaned the bass and after that enhanced the sound in the higher frequencies. This opened the sound up without pushing the bass away too much. Actually that was that and then I opened up the stereo field more. It sounds easy but it takes a lot of listening back and forth to get a grip on these things. I also used [ Schwa's Spectro ] to see the sound image. That helps to see where frequencies are excessively present.

The second track is a more difficult one. It is also of the same atmosphere but there is a loud sound at 500hz, a synth with a really round ringing sound. The problem is that it is out of phase. That is the reason that it is so loud and actually not sounding as good as it might. I have, again with the use of Spectro, cut this frequency out of the original track and manually set the phase straight. Now I can place it back and make a new mix that sounds much better.

Whole day mixage

2010-01-31T22:56:00.000+01:00

Today was a day in the studio mixing eight works of grizzly noise. I received all files (2 gigabytes) on Thursday. For every composition there were 24bit stemrenders and a reference mix.
I started by placing all of the files in separate projects and then listened all of them twice. A day of rest and an intense discussion with the client about what actually was the intention. This is very important, especially if you haven't heard other music of this artist. "What is the creative starting point?" "Are you aiming at a dense mesh of waves? Or should we regard every sound as an entity that requires to have its own position?" After some back and forth we agreed that the latter was the case.

This gave me a clear direction but also posed a problem with some of the compositions. Some tracks were trampling on each others ground. If you have track 1 working at 150hz - 300hz, track 2 at 250-350hz and track 3 at 200hz - 450hz then you have a serious problem. Mixing a rock band is much easier, believe me.

So today I did five compositions, tracks 1-4 and 6. I can't get track 5 to work properly. It's a beast with three ongoing noise/drone pads. I am thinking of suggesting to let one go, in order to get a clearer picture of the sound. But we're not there, yet. Tomorrow I'll do tracks 7 and 8. and then get back to 5. Sometimes you just have to let go for a while.

Short pre review

2010-01-27T10:02:00.000+01:00

I get regular questions about what a pre review entails. To give you an example here's a quote from a short pre review I did for a dark ambient release: "listened twice now and made spectrograms of both tracks (see dropbox). The atmosphere is quite suitable for the subject/theme. I see that the structural development is taking place in a very dense and small area of the spectrum.
In track 1 nothing much is happening over 6kHz and track 2 is even quieter > top frequency is 4kHz. Looking at it from that perspective the sound is still remarkably 'open' but that is primarily due to the reverb which creates depth.
Your material for track 1 consists of a basic reverberated layer over which you 'sprinkle' small sounds that sound closer (due to less reverb). They also stand out because of relatively higher frequencies.Your material fro track 2 consists primarily of harmonic sounds, most times low freqs and then layered with higher freqs (harmonic).

Personally I think the first track is more up to my alley because there are more 'actors' on stage and there is more entering and leaving the stage. There are a number of passages that I would mix somewhat differently but that is a matter of taste. As for track 2 you might consider bringing something new on board after the bass climax of approx. 6-8 minutes. Or taking something away, if you prefer. Just make that climax more meaningful.
It might be interesting to leave the reverb off the beat. That gives it more power (and so you can even take the volume down on that track).Here too, I have several thoughts about the mix (especially the spatiality and stereo image).
And check your phase linearity of track 2. There are various spots where the sound is out of phase."

Do I need a new business model?

2010-01-25T10:10:00.001+01:00

I had an interesting discussion this week about the future of the music business. I suddenly envisioned that we might well be at the end of an era. Music listening for millions of years was something that was dependent of the moment that the music was performed. Then, by the end of the 19th century someone invents a tool with which music can be recorded. This invention leads to an age where people listen to music through wax roles, lacquer discs, vinyl discs, tapes, cd's. A giant industry develops and millions are made. And then, 100 years later (a very short time when regarded in perspective of human history) we are done with that. The internet eradicates within a decade the necessity to distribute music on discreet physical carriers. Music is distributed without effort. The business model of the music industry has vaporized.

So, we're back to the situation where a musician earns his bread by performing his music. Music labels are forced to reconsider their role, their position. They are no longer needed by the artist to distribute the music, their role as producer/financer of the recording process has become obsolete or at least risky in the light of the vanished distribution channels (upon which their business model was based).

It is time that we take a close look at what the listener actually is prepared to pay up for. Obviously the listener is not interested in high quality recordings. The massive consumption of mp3's in favour of CD's shows that the listener thinks mp3 quality is fine enough when given the choice between paying (CD) or (free/cheaper) download.

Sooooooh, what does this mean for me and my music? If small quality labels are unable to sell more than a few dozens of copies of releases of artists that used to sell more than a 1,000 where does that leave me? I guess my days of traditional releases are over. I am forced to take a new direction. My primary drive is to make music, but to have it heard by other people adds a lot to that.

I guess that, together with me, a lot of musicians will be forced back from the professional into the semi-professional level and from that into the amateur level. A lot of artists will quit producing music because they have to take care of a family.

Nevertheless: I am convinced that new forms of musical production and distribution will rise. Small, fast, low budget. At this very moment someone is already working on the right concept for the future.

Preparing performance

2010-01-20T22:03:00.000+01:00

As some of you know I have invited myself to the Kapotte Muziek 25 year anniversary party. I shamelessly presented myself before Frans de Waard and offered my services. I support the ideas that are the basis of the KM music as long as I know about them (which is approx. 25 years) and also know Frans personally as long as that. Frans has also, through the years, slowly grown from being a groupie to kernel partner of THU20. So I figured I just HAD TO be in with the crowd there.

So, since I have not performed since that night in Eindhoven (which I think was 2007? any archivists around?) this is something exceptional for me AND the audience.

I am preparing material for this show. I am thinking of using quite a bit of the new material that I've prepared (percussive, heavy material), Audiomulch in conjunction with my midi controller and a Tape Recorder. I have gotten an old Akai GX 4400D which is about as old as Kapotte Muziek itself. So that's sort of appropriate. Dunno what I'm gonna do. Frippertronics perhaps?

Aside of this: reworking my Karawane material. Yes, again!! But the more I learn with the mastering skills (EARLabs.services) the more often I think that something or other could be done better. A pain in the butt, but also very gratifying.

There it is!!

2010-01-16T11:56:00.006+01:00

I've done it; I've put my small business online. As of yesterday all of the information about my services is public on the EARLabs site. If you go [ there ] you can read about the services that you can order from me. With a track record of 30 years of composition, 20 years of writing about music and 10 years as a consultant I thought it was time to combine this experience into a little business. The past six months I have actively acquired projects for other people and all of them were satisfied with the result. Take a look at the list of [ clients ]. All of these projects were for free, for the client to get to know me and for me to get a feeling of how things might work out.

In 2010 I have decided to step up to the next level: a proper catalogue of services and online information. The business model is still quite low profile. I have been thinking about prices and looked at what competitors in this market ask for their services. This put up a dilemma: I want to aim at artists and labels with a small budget but on the other hand I want to deliver professional quality. And no matter what: quality requires time and good tooling.

Contrary to what people in my environment advised me I have decided not to start with a list of rates, like so and so many euro's per minute of music and so many tracks, etcetera. I think this business is very personal and I want to leave it up to the client to pay a fair price.

What is a fair price?
A fair price is an amount of money that satisfies both our needs. It depends on what you can afford to pay and what you think is fair to compensate me for my work. Yes, that is more difficult than just say : 5 euro's per minute of music for mastering or 15 euro's per minute for a 24 track mixing job. I was juggling with figures until I thought "what the heck, this might leave out all these guys whose music I love and who have done a great job musically but are unable to pay".
If this still makes you feel uneasy, then please ask me what I think is a fair price.

So there we are and here I am, distance is not an issue
I live in The Netherlands. That can be far away, geographically. But that doesn't matter anymore. We can work out everything via the Internet. I have a large server space where we store all of the music stuff and where we exchange the original material and the edited material. We have free teleconference software which allows us to discuss the music real-time. I can let you follow exactly what I do when I do it.

I think this getting on the same level with each other is important. Although most times I can work at a fast tempo and deliver the master of a song within 24 hours, I really want to get on the right level with the client. Can you imagine that you have worked a couple of months and a total of 200 hours on a series of songs or compositions and then decide that you need the master within let's say a day? No, you want to hand over this stuff very carefully to someone you trust.

Live by the end of February

2010-01-11T16:28:00.000+01:00

After a very long hiatus I will be doing two solo live performances again. [ Extrapool ] in Nijmegen organizes an event to celebrate 25 years of Kapotte Muziek. Date is February 26. Two days later I will be in Amsterdam at the [ OCCII ] in Amsterdam to do something similar.

In the mean time: I have been doing a lot of mastering/remixing of works by Jeff Surak and Alexei Borisov. Noisy stuff that needed and received royal treatment.

The EARLabs.services will kick off by February 1st. There are several services. I have been in doubt about the business model, especially the financial aspect. I have decided that I will open shop on a 'pay what you think is reasonable' basis. Of course I have a price in mind, and I think I deliver professional quality services but I trust my clients. They will pay me what they can afford and think is reasonable. Plus, if I see/hear that someone is pulling my leg then I still have the right not to do perform.

My own work has been under cover for a while now.

Building up EARLabs.services

2010-01-05T22:54:00.000+01:00

During the past months I have started working for other artists. Mastering, remastering, alternative mixing, coaching. The idea behind this is to build up a more professional studio with professional services. This will all be published in a week or so.

In the mean time I have been working on an assignment by Howard Stelzer. I've done some tuning of a live recording. I actually started this already early November but for some reason beyond me I only got my arms around it this weekend.

Anyhoo, time to make a fresh start for the new year. I'm really looking forward to new developments. As for my own music: I've made great progress with the 'dub radio soundtrack'. I'm getting close to the point where I start putting all the bits and pieces together to get an image of the big picture. See where the holes are, where things have their natural place. I hope to be able to give you a closer look at the process next week.

The bad news: the label that agreed to release my stuff of Karawane 1917 sent me a message telling that they were struck by hard times in 2009 and that they had to reconsider their release schedule. It's postponed at best. Too bad but understandable never the less. We'll see.

Signing off.

Three days in Gent

2009-12-29T19:16:00.001+01:00

I've been to Gent in the past few days. Wonderful city, actually the best I've seen in Belgium. We stayed in a bed and breakfast, called [ design and breakfast ]. It was quite nice, just outside of the city center and not very expensive. As the name suggests the interior of the house was filled with in design furniture. I was afraid that the absence of the word 'bed' meant that the owner wasn't very proud of the quality of the beds, but it was quite alright.

We visited 2 museums (SMAK and MSK) and a wonderful exhibition of [ Stephan Vanfleteren ]. At the MSK the most impressive painting was one by Anders Zorn. I could only find a detail of the work on the Net. What I liked especially is not the nude but the way Zorn paints the water. It is so vividly painted that it appears to move. Look at the mirrored view of the woman in the water. Zorn is able to paint the difference in the oscillations at the front and the back of the legs. Really quite strong.

Vanfleteren also was fantastic. The venue of the exhibition was some old factory where it was almost freezingly cold. The images were portrayed at 120 x 100 cm prints. Black and white portraits. Also strong stuff. In the museum store I bought a good book on Umberto Boccioni. Fantastic artist and one of the best Futurist painters (saw his work in Paris in 2008). He made a stupid mistake by going to war in 1916. Already during training he fell off his horse and died at the age of 34.

Whole lotta snow.

2009-12-20T12:47:00.002+01:00

Yesterday a two week holiday started. Lots of snow outside; perfect weather for studio work. I'm working on the follow up to "The Long Haul". It's a very rhythmic set up. I worked with a groove and then extended that groove from 120bpm to 20 bpm. Not by simply stretching the original groove sample but by positioning the separate beats further apart. I did this more and more until the groove fell apart. The beats no longer formed a coherent loop. From there on I added other material.

I then re-used the [ Static Base ] composition at 2/3 tempo. This time I stretched the original file. This resulted in a very slow bassy groove that allowed for many many variations. This morning I have been playing with all kinds of treatments breaking down and building up. Next phase is to incorporate this section into the first [ The Long Haul ].

On a different note: Jeff Surak sent a new track with a request to update and master.

weekly report (december 12, 2009)

2009-12-13T21:57:00.001+01:00

Several interesting things happened. First of all I have been working on the track that I discussed last week. At the moment I am primarily working with the structure of the piece. I have elongated the 2nd section in order to enable things to quiet down more. I included a reversed part of the first disc of Dub Zap (tracks 16-21). I also worked on the final part that I showed last week and doubling the beats with samples from Alva Noto's Unitxt.

Secondly there was a request from Jeff Surak, to enhance a live recording. I was able to return a first result after a day, much faster than I (and Jeff) had expected. I think the quality was excellent.

Wednesday was the day that Franz Fjödor's CD (labeled as drone, experimental, dark folk) was launched. Since I had mastered the CD I was invited and had a pleasant night with Wouter Jaspers and Steffan De Turck and other people.

Today (Sunday) I had a second session with Steffan and Wouter. Their studio is housed in a derelict building that used to be a printer's office, with a large hall. We set up the Rode NT2-a and my binaural recorders and started recording the sound of thumping, clanking, scraping, screaming. After two hours we stopped and started discussing the following steps. We uploaded the material through dropbox and are thus able to work it during the following weeks.
We intend to release this material as a second installment of the EARLabs 3. As you may know Entr'acte released the first EARLabs 3 disc earlier. I think it is still available [ here ]. Disquiet's Marc Weidenbaum quote on this disc: "It's an investigation; painstaking in its rectitude and attention to detail". We strive to at least the same level of quality with this one.

The Long Haul

2009-12-06T13:50:00.000+01:00

Last week I have been working on a piece which is now 12 minutes long and requires a time out. Let me tell you about the route so far.

I started out with the following. After I had constructed two pieces that are quite rhythmic of nature, I decided to make a detour and go for something slow, without a constant beat, with pitched harmonics. I set up a soft synth (Crystal, a very nifty little thing) and my keyboard. After some trial and error I had the right sound and played a midi file of 2.5 minutes with only 3 notes that kept on ringing with overtones that kept coming and going and interfering with each other, etc. (told you, that Crystal is nice). Then I recorded my own voice singing the same notes a few times. Did two takes and layered those over the synth parts. In order to fill up the frequency space I included two takes of short wave radio. Now I had sound storm blowing for 2.5 minutes.

Listen to 30 seconds [ here ]

I decided that by the end of the first part ("the long haul") I would introduce percussive sounds (not necessarily rhythmic!).I had a sequence from another trial part (recorded in June) of some 1.5 minutes consisting of a gong and some bell sounds. I included this into the Reaper project and placed it behind the first part. That's the easy part, but to connect these two parts is much more difficult. Fortunately the first part could be 'shut off' with the sound of the radio being 'shut off'. The percussive part then immediately takes over. It kind of works but at the moment needs some more attention.

Listen to 30 seconds [ here ]

What next? I decided upon a second part of 'the long haul'. This time mutated of course. The voice, which in the first part plays a role in the background, now is more prominent after a severe treatment in Audiomulch using the Granulator.

Listen to 30 seconds [ here ]

This is an image of the project. I have indicated what regions are used in the samples.

As a side step I did a session whereby I constructed a drumloop (with house samples from a freebee dvd) and worked from there. I extended the drumloop with two different procedures. First I extended the bars by simply placing the samples further apart. Secondly I time stretched the original loop. Both now run at 20 bpm. The idea was to extend to a degree where the grooviness is completely gone. Because I was thinking of including this as a new part to the composition above (although I still haven't a clue where and how, that's why I decided to start a separate project for this) I underlined this drumloop with the mulched voice recordings. With a ducking compressor set up with a very slow release this yielded an interesting result.

Listen to 30 seconds [ here ]

The next step is to integrate this drumloop project into the original composition. This yields two important dilemma's:
1. the structure of the original 'long haul' piece is okay (although it still needs a lot of work), so how do I include the rigidness of the new drumloop part?
2. the 'long haul' piece is already 12 minutes long as it is; including the new drumloop part will extend it with at least another 5 minutes. The number of ingredients is rather limited so won't it get too long?

We'll see....

DTBFX

2009-12-04T20:28:00.000+01:00

There are thousands of VST plugins that concentrate on really traditional functions like compressors, reverbs, limiters. There are much less tools that take different approaches to sound editing.

This one, DTBFX, is such a one. I already got to know it in 2007 but hadn't really used it very much until yesterday when I wanted to do something entirely different.

So what is it? It is a tool that filters, smears, pitches up and/or down but it enables you to do so on a specific part of the frequency spectrum. Whereas most of the tools have an effect on all or most frequencies, with DTBFX you can limit the bandwidth rather precise. With surprising results.

In his own words:
DtBlkFx by Darrell Barrell is a freeware Fast-Fourier-Transform(FFT) based multi effect VST plug-in for Windows and Mac.

DTBLKFX V1.1 FEATURES

Precision parametric equalizing with sharp-roll off, adjust individual harmonics of a sound.
Harmonic based (or comb) filtering, including active harmonic tracking.
Various types of noise control, change contrast between loud and soft frequencies, clip frequencies or apply sound smearing.
Frequency shifting, harmonic and non-harmonic shifting, including active harmonic repitch.
Various methods of mixing left and right channels, standard and harmonic vocoding, convolution like mixing and more.
Frequency masking, set harmonic or threshold masks for any effect.
Up to 8 effects in series.
GUI graphics can be customized.

DtBlkFx is available for free as a VST effect plug-in for Windows and Mac (last update: 15 Apr, 2008, Windows version).

Go get DTBFX [ here ]

Too hot to handle

2009-12-01T22:06:00.005+01:00

I browsed through my collection of half baked stuff today and stumbled upon this thingie. It was done early 2008 when I wanted to go back to my MS-10 and start working from that machine. Although I think this is an interesting half product I doubt it will ever make it as a part of an official release. So here's an unofficial release. I baptized it "Too Hot To Handle". The centre is formed by an impromptu with the Korg which is backed up by 3 parts of steady frequencies that yield interference.

download "Too Hot To Handle" [ here ]

EDIT: something went wrong with the upload. To make it up I give you another file. This one's a really different cup of cocoa. A 14 minutes blast of techno, produced in 2005 and updated today. There's a weird reverb in a lot of the mix which I couldn't get rid of. I only had a very final mix at my disposition and no earlier ones to work with. Still, it's so funny. I couldn't believe it was me who produced this.

download "Staticbase2005" [ here ]

Getting somewhere, GLORIA.

2009-11-29T21:41:00.000+01:00

Three centres of activity this week. The 'dub radio soundtrack' has now two finished files. A lot of other stuff is slowly materializing. The finished pieces I have give you earlier samples of (see the Madlib post for one). Below is a snippet of the new mix of the other one. I really had a fight with myself with these compositions. Rhythm is such a strong aspect of music that I really had to force myself to cut them again and again. Because that's what these pieces are about: letting a rhythm, a groove, go for a while and then interrupting it, and then let it go again with a different filtering, or a different something extra.

Listen to [ this ] and [ this ].

The latter is a further development of [ this ], a mix from August when I just started.

Secondly I have uploaded my file for the 25th anniversary of Korm Plastics. Title: G-L-O-R-I-A.

Thirdly The Tobacconists have approved my mastering tracks for their next album. So today I burned it to disc and sent it to Frans de Waard.

KORM PLASTICS 25 year jubilee

2009-11-24T08:57:00.001+01:00

Having a very bad memory I don't recall exactly how Frans De Waard and I came to meet each other. I only remember that I was immediately impressed by his dedication to music. Writing, publishing, producing, talking about it, networking; Frans did it all and very much on his own conditions. There was (and still is) no one telling Frans how to do his stuff. He is like a locomotive rolling on his own track at full speed.

And suddenly it's been 25 years since Korm Plastics, De Waard's record label has started. That's worth a celebration and of course a record label celebrates by issuing a release that contains a selection of the label's stable. Frans has released a lot of my work and so I gladly help him out with a composition of 2'50". I don't know when it's to be released but I'm sure looking forward to it.

Writing a CD with cue sheet.....

2009-11-13T23:47:00.002+01:00

Today I finished the new Franz Fjödor CD. Been polishing, upgrading the sound and done some suggestions for different arrangements. Lots of work but really fun. Editing the cue sheet was a different matter. I really like it when in my car stereo I can see the track title instead of "track 01".
I had been using Nero for years to burn discs but that old version didn't produce cd text so I started looking for open source software that could provide me with the right material. In the end it was Burrrn, that did the trick.

Read about the new release [ here ].

In the mean time I got new requests from Frans de Waard to master his personal material (for Entr'acte) and the forthcoming Tobacconist release (Tourette Records). I listened to the latter sound material and really like it. Much better than I expected, actually (sorry for lack of confidence, there). Will do my best to produce an excellent sound.

My own material is of course lagging a bit. No worries. By the end of the year I will do a sprint and present you with niceties.

A slippery slope slides the best

2009-11-02T07:59:00.000+01:00

I have so many things going on at the moment that I don't know where to begin. I am working on soundmaterial by Roel Meelkop, Tore Honore Boe, Howard Stelzer and Wouter Jaspers, plus my own stuff ánd a contribution to an upcoming 25th anniversary compilation for Korm Plastics. And all of the material is tumbling one over the other. Let's see if I can walk you through:

Roel Meelkop
Roel presented a Reaper project with recordings from Helsinki which he had already structured and layered but which sounded too dull (his words). Actually I liked the basic structure which was formed by some kind of big organ sounds that played a short melody. As if the organ was placed outside on the streets. It had a dreamy atmosphere and so the 'dull' sound was actually appropriate. I touched this up by adding an extra layer (duplicating the original ongoing street sounds track) and eq-ing that so that the high frequencies got more power at some places. I also filtered other tracks so that they didn't get in each other's way. Roel was enthousiastic about it.

Tore Honore Boe
Tore sent me four old tracks that have been recorded from a live performance. The idea is that I enhance the sound. Difficult. I haven't really decided about the approach. I can simply polish it or try to deconstruct the frequencies and go deeper....

Howard Stelzer

Howard sent me the original file of "This Map Is A Gift" (2006). This, too, needs remastering. Same doubts. I have already given it a go, though. I have dissected the file and am working on the dynamics and eq. The work is quite dense so it's impossible to work on the individual sounds that are produced. But it's definitely getting in the right direction. I will finish this one on Wednesday, latest.

Wouter Jaspers
This is the most extensive commission. Wouter has given me the mixes plus the original tracks of his new -to be released- cd. There's a dead line, here. So I'll have to work fast. Hope I'll make it in time..... The original tracks are beautiful and I think I can make this into something special, but it needs Love Tenderness and Care. I hope I'll be able to give enough of that....

My own stuff
Have finished two tracks and am working for Korm Plastics compilation.To show you the variation of stuff that's under my hands here two extracts:

[ 4 loopers ]
[ cellogo ]

Loads of work underway!

2009-10-26T11:49:00.001+01:00

I skipped a week of reporting. Which doesn´t mean nothing happened! On the contrary: I've been very busy. First thing: I updated the discography and added a lot of my musical archive. Go check this out [ here ]. There's more to come but for the time being I think this will keep you entertained.

Next I have sent some personal invitations to people with an offer to do mixing and mastering work for them. This resulted in a few acceptances. I have been doing a mix of a composition (violin, trumpet, saxophone, synths) by Arturas Bumsteinas, and a work by Roel Meelkop. Wouter Jaspers (Franz Fjödor) announced a series of mixes and asked me to prepare them for a master. That job will take a while the next couple of weeks. A bunch of other composers have replied with enthousiasm and announced that they will make use of my services. I will keep you updated of any interesting progress, of course.

Otherwise I have worked out a composition based on a single cello sample. Am satisfied with it and will upload a version soon.

German art - Art in Germany

2009-10-11T22:50:00.003+02:00

Thursday we took off to Germany for an art fest. First day we visited the Isle of Hombroich and the Langen Foundation (in Neuss, near Dusseldorf). We had been there before, and were impressed by what we had seen. This time we were surrounded by students on a trip. This made things a bit noisier and the experience was less than before. Still, the architecture and the art itself in a natural environment was quite good.

The day after we went to Wuppertal, where we visited a sculpture park dedicated to the works of Tony Cragg. Astounding work in a wonderful environment again. Cragg has a very strong personal style and total control over the material. There was a temporal exhibition with material by John Chamberlain in preparation so we got to see his work as well.

The third day (Saturday) we were in Dusseldorf again, where we visited an exhibition by Per Kirkeby. Although his style ticks all the right boxes (abstract, large brush strokes, at times quite colorful) I couldn't connect to the work. That was strange. We had several discussions about this and we even went back to look at it again a couple of hours later but it didn't work out.

The last day was an unexpected surprise. We went to Duisburg to visit the Küppersmühle Museum. We had never heard of it before but read nice reviews. The museum is located in an old (industrial) mill looking over a harbour.

The collection (a private one) was overwhelming. The collector specialized in German art from 1960's to 2000. So there were Lüpertz, Baselitz, Beuys, Kiefer, Penck. The exhibition halls were big, big, big. So the large material by Kiefer and Penck (5 meters high) fit in quite nicely. I was blown away, something that didn't happen to me for years. Sitting and watching these works really captured me and I had to take a break from it all before being able to drive the way back home, taking the catalogue of the entire collection with me.
I will definitely visit this museum again next year when they have doubled the exhibition space so that the stuff that is now in their depots will also be displayed. When you're in the neighbourhood, treat yourself to a visit!

A weekend well spent!!

THU20, third session

2009-10-05T17:22:00.000+02:00

Sunday, October 4, THU20 once again visited the EARLabs studio. Aside from catching up with friends it was a great musical experience. After the previous session I had made some alternative mixes of the first part of the composition which were closely scrutinized. The first 15 seconds were slightly changed and was then left for the time being. We worked on the second part which was already half way through (more harmonic, rhythmical), and made some modifications there (of course). The middle/second part consists of loop-like sounds and back up with a.o. some bass guitar sounds (since Jacques/DMDN is now playing bass in metal band Bünkür, we were pleased with his contribution). Next it was important to get an idea about the finale. That would give us a sense of the length and forced us to decide about structure.

After some deliberations (see picture) we decided to do a tape cut up session. I rigged up my old Akai reel-to-reel. We recorded the first 5 minutes of the piece and then spliced the tape into five different sections, which in themselves were spliced into pieces of various length. Next was the recombining part. Purposely we worked quite roughly with blanks and overlaps. Unfortunately the result was a bit disappointing (not quite the Williams Mix all of us had in mind) so, after we transfered everything back into the computer we had to do some extensive extra editing. Still, it provided us with material to let the piece go out with a bang :). And it really bangs, I tells ya.

The current version takes approximately 12.5 minutes. We then decided to call it a day and go get some good Chinese meal. We exchanged discs and tapes and had a good laugh. That's what it's actually all about: having a good time together.

As usual I got some good ideas for the piece the day after, so our next session (to be scheduled) I'll have my proposal ready. Perhaps I'll upload some sketches this week, since I'll be gone next weekend for a trip into Germany, visiting no less than seven museums in the neighbourhood of Essen, Duisburg and Dusseldorf. If anyone wants to meet up: mail me.

New gear, phase 2

2009-09-28T07:01:00.000+02:00

Well, yesterday was the big day. I deconstructed the old rig (which was not bad but a little oldfashioned (AMD athlon, with ddr RAM) and built the new motherboard with Core2 processor and monstrous cooler into it. I had to run to the store to get two strips of ddr2 (oops!) and fired it up with my original sata harddrive. The 2 terabyte drives are already installed but not yet functional since we need to study a bit more on how to rig up the Raid system. All in due time. This week I will slowly build up the software part of things so we can get going next weekend, when THU20 will be in the studio.

In the meantime, [ here's ] a bite for you to chew on. I really like it.

New gear, phase 1

2009-09-23T15:31:00.005+02:00

I am planning to invest in my computer. Have been 'shopping' last weekend and will purchase a new motherboard, processor, RAM and a raid harddisk system (2 x 1 Terabyte). I will construct it this weekend.... Install a 64bit OS, multiboot, so the creative process will be on hold for a couple days.
Today I bought the cooler. A huge thing which received nice reviews. It's big, but big is most times also 'silent'.

On another note: this is an interesting poll.

weekly report (september 20, 2009)

2009-09-22T08:39:00.006+02:00

Been working on and off. Had to get rid of a kidney stone. Got into the stone crusher (3,000 sonic pulses straight into your abdomen) on Monday and got rid of the stone(s) by Thursday evening. So there were several painful interruptions. Been sculpting a few tracks. Nothing that is presentable, I'm afraid.

On Sunday I received my copies of the latest release. Sietse van Erve's Moving Furniture Records released "The Drone Gnome", a short series of works that can be regarded as my comment on drone music.

Please visit[ Moving Furniture Records ] and support Sietse (and me).

Extra snack:

weekly report (September 13, 2009)

2009-09-16T08:02:00.002+02:00

Been working on a composition for the RDS series. The whole project starts to get a 'Gestalt' of some kind. Now it's in the fase of collecting bits and pieces and slowly, in my mind, forming a construction to give those b's and p's a place. By clicking them together. At the moment it's all very collage-like. But I also heard the phenomenal cd by Erdem Helvacioglu which has many moments where he layers sounds by adding reverb to some thus creating a sense of enormous immediacy in others. It is a construction form that is often used by electroacoustic composers and Helvacioglu passed the test with flying colors.

I have also been checking out a demo of the Waves SSL plugins. They are indeed fantastically sharp and responsive and such but I find the price for this bundle ($ 1500 !!!!) much too high for a semi pro like myself. Pity.

Another nicety that I found this week has to do with Reaper (again!). It appears that in the newer versions I can keep the binding of my midi controller with the vst plugins that I have preset. Earlier it was possible to control a vst through your knobs and sliders but as soon as you closed the software you had to make the bindings anew. Now Reaper remembers the bindings. So I can now include my favorite plugs into a track and directly control them by hand and not by mouse. Of course it's also possible to store the changes you make in the track itself but that's old news.

And another thing I learned: Reaper features 'soft takeover'. Those of you who work with midi controllers know about the sudden leaping of settings when you touch a button on your controller. That's because you left your session with volumes at level 0 and when you open it again your midi controller button is set at level -5. When you touch the button the level on your computer jumps immediately to level -5. In Reaper the volume now remains at level 0 until your button reaches that point and then goes along with the controller button. Very nifty.

weekly report (September 6, 2009)

2009-09-06T19:51:00.005+02:00

Nothing much. I worked on a piece that is based on the first three bars of a song by A Certain Ratio (bass only). I have cut up each bar and slowed it down and then started building up a new song with several variations.

I had a very nice meeting with Steffan De Turck (below) and Wouter Jaspers (left), two young composers from my home town. Steffan works under the monicker of Staplerfahrer, Wouter is aka Franz Fjödor. We have been discussing the possibilities of a collaboration. As far as I am concerned: I would love to have people in the EARLabs studio recording stuff and then collating everything into compositions a la the stuff we did with THU20 (way back). That's why I invited these two guys: they're ready to give anything a try!!

Both Jaspers and De Turck are active in the Tilburg music scene of Vatican Analog. Currently they run a studio in a derelict office building. Very cool, all that. Their 'Sturm und Drang' is very catchy and I am very curious to see what will happen when the three of us start to play in the studio.

weekly report (august 28, 2009)

2009-08-30T11:44:00.004+02:00

[ Madmad liblib (in 7/8) ]

Take a listen. It's a bit primitive but it wojks, dunnit? All rhythm is brain candy and candy is addictive. I will work out this composition and it will definitely be more sophisticated.

That's about all for this week, kids. I've been experimenting with my studio gear and nothing really important was produced. See ya next week.

weekly report

2009-08-23T09:52:00.009+02:00

No real progress this week but a lot of tiny developments. I will share them here.

1. I have had five test runs with the final master before it was good enough for me to ship to the label. Main problem was volume levels. First I tried all kind of tiny corrections but couldn't get it done the way I wanted. After 3 test runs I decided to try with a limiter, but wasn't satisfied with the ones I used so far. There are millions of plugins (VST/RTAS) around for digital workstations but most of them use sloppy algorhythms that not only correct the problem that is bothering you but also affect other parts of the sound.

I decided to try the Event Horizon limiter that is developed by Stillwell Audio. After some experimenting that resolved the problem sufficiently. It not only works the sound like it should but it's also reacting lightning fast when you want a sudden change of threshold. It's definitely a keeper. Reaper has really dozens of small vst's under the hood and most of them are good (especially for a rock band) but in my case I need precision.

Oh, and by the way: I used Schwa's Schope as a master monitor for amplitude, frequency spectrum and phase linearity. It's brilliant in its accuracy.

Anyway, after test run 4 I decided to make a few changes in track 11. Can you believe it? You just keep hearing tiny things that weren't there before and require immediate fixing... I just stop listening now. It's all up to you, people.

2. I have invited Wouter Jaspers (Franz Fjödor) and Steffan De Turck (Staplerfahrer) for a chat. Perhaps we can start a project together. We will meet September 1. Strangely, after years of working online I'd like to work together with people in a room, again.

3. I have collected a lot of samples for the 'dub radio soundtrack' project. Nothing much of building, just collecting material. And thinking about the collage technique.

4. I am in the process of transfering a very old project from Audition to Reaper. You can hear the clips in [ these posts ]. I intend to rework them, do a complete sound overhaul and a add new material. Let's baptize this project 'mundohr' for all the obvious reasons. At the moment this is a tedious job. At the Reaper forum someone published a script for translating Cool Edit Pro sessions to Reaper projects. But unfortunately this only works for very simple and straightforward sessions. Which mine are not.... But the material is definitely worth reworking. Interestingly, the material is from 2002-2004 and I had not listened to it since 2006. There is also a video version of the music, but I haven't watched for so long that I am now able to judge the music completely anew.

5. Listened to my earlier tape experiments. They will get a place in both the 'dub radio soundtrack' project and the 'Mundohr' project.

6. Back to plugins, finally. Yesterday I saw that Jeroen Breebaart is working on a new plugin which looks quite interesting. It's a plugin which allows you to work with headphones on. Normally that is ill advised, because with headphones on you don't hear the indirect reflections of the room acoustics. On the other hand all studios have problems with these room acoustics, creating the ideal space for monitoring the sound. Breebaart is working on a plugin which emulates this ideal listening space. Quite a challenge. But Breebaart is not just your average joe the nerd. He works at the Philips labs as a researcher and product developer and has many patents to his name. He has also produced other plugins and sells them at ridiculously low prices from his site.

7. finally finally, I have been thinking about my activities for other musicians and composers. It is slowly taking shape. I intend to set up a 'business' where I mix and remix, master and remaster works for others and I will coach and consult in the creative process. If you like me to mix/master, remix/remaster your works, just contact me. If you wish my services to be done discretely (that is: without anyone in the world besides you and me knowing about it), this is of course possible.

Links

[ Stillwell Audio ]

[ Jeroen Breebaart ]

Drumming the beat #2

2009-08-13T19:47:00.007+02:00

Okay, I promised a few samples of what has come of my wanderings into the repetition galaxy. So I give you 3 things. They're all quite different and just sketches but I feel that I am getting into a part of the universe that I want to explore more deeply. It feels like anarchy now and again and that kind of freedom is what I am looking for.

[ sample 1 ]
[ sample 2 ]
[ sample 3 ]

RADIO DUB SOUNDTRACK
SOUNDTRACK DUB RADIO
DUB RADIO SOUNDTRACK
RADIO SOUNDTRACK DUB
SOUNDTRACK RADIO DUB

Well, that's about the words that flutter around when I am working on these pieces. And aside from the quotations from our recent musical history I like to concentrate on applying pop production techniques. Herrlich!!

Drumming the beat

2009-08-09T14:52:00.008+02:00

As I wrote a few weeks ago I have been working on stuff with beats and melodies. My first attempts were a bit lame, of course, due to inexperience on the subject. Recently things are working in a more acceptable fashion. Slow, minimal beats with sparse bass tunes. It sort of reminds me of Rhythm and Sound but then even more abstract.

I now have some 12 basics, which I want to expand. Expand meaning working out variation on the theme, both in rhythm and sound (:) ). A lot comes down to nifty mixing and fat (phat) production skills. It's quite rewarding work, since rhythm is brain candy and my brain immediately sucks up what comes out of the speakers. Juicing the sound up (phat!!) further enhances the experience.

I work with Reaper and Reaper's Reasamplomatic vst (a very nifty and lightweight sampler), with Reaper's Reasynth (yes, a very nifty and lightweight synth) and especially with e-phonic's Drumatic. The latter VST works a bit like the TR606 and has 6 channels out so that I can send each instrument to a different track for further production. I worked out a track template so that I can easily include this Drumatic setup into my Reaper session.

If you want to have the Reaper tracktemplate, [ here] is the link. (right-mouseclick)

Drumatic can be downloaded [ here ].

Soundsamples will included in my message next week.

Sounds from the past RETURN

2009-08-04T09:19:00.003+02:00

Blogger "The Thing On The Doorstep" re-releases ancient history. Almost every day there is another gem from the 70's and 80's available for download. Recently there was one on which I collaborated as well.

I remember very well, working on this stuff. It was quite exciting, especially receiving material from the other contributors and getting to work with that. Everything done by hand, no digitals. Quite nice to see it available again!

Read about it [ here ]

Get the files [ here ]

Gaussian Transient, 12th review

2009-08-02T22:46:00.001+02:00

A belated review of Gaussian Transient (Megaphone) which I found belatedly :) Squidsear reviewer Darren Bergstein wrote the following: "Some beautifully abstract pieces of sound art/processed field recordings from the always-reliable Jos Smolders, founding member of Dutch post-dadaist electroacoustic ensemble THU20. The fragmentary yet vibrant clutch of sounds embroidered on his small catalog of recordings are no less richer despite their minimalist bent; his works feel carefully chosen and smartly demarcated, musique actuelle that nevertheless derives a good deal of its staying power from the use of the most nourishing sample food. Smolders' own ruminations on how he arrived at the tableaux spread out over Gaussian Transient provides some welcome context. Self-imposing compositional limitations became his m.o. after his first (latter 80s) vinyl recording — because, as he states, "sometimes I needed to contain myself within certain boundaries, mostly because I had a subject of research in mind" — boundaries that make the listener sharpen their aural focus to glean the tiny non-events and small gestures Smolders buries deep within the mix. Paradoxically, Gaussian feels like the "busiest" of NVO's releases, its quiet passages suddenly upset by bursts of activity (a raging subway, a flurry of conversing passers-by) that would be jarring if they didn't adequately flesh out the dense physiognomy of Smolders' constructions. The sounds have their literary analog in Smolders' choice of track titles, penned by British artist Tom Phillips. Smolders notes that "I have always been intrigued by language, words and meaning... in the 70s, Phillips reworked existing pages of books...painting or drawing over the text he erased most of it but left certain word combinations intact." Smolders' own use of juxtaposition combined with abject Burroughs-ian cut-up/edit techniques yields just as fascinating sonic results. So much happens (even for such obviously well-considered sonic paucity) throughout the twelve works here — erected out of everything from vials of hiss, aberrant digital processing, strange quarks in the night, massed voices, the rhythmic banter of footsteps — that any literal dissection is a fool's gesture at best. Suffice to say that the closing eleven minutes of "The First Scenes and Feelings" illustrates fully Smolders' cinema pour l'oreille. Warbling skeins of moist static unfold in various layers, so that what is glimpsed in between are variable bits of microscopic activity — plastic balls impacting concrete, the distant hum of generators, flaccid raindrops — that colorfully sketch untold visual phantasms in the mind's eye. Author, author!"

Thanks. Buy the album (NVO 015) [ here ] at Nonvisualobjects

Piano, voix, presque fini

2009-07-25T16:11:00.006+02:00

I haven't been posting for a month now. That's rare, considering my posting history. There wasn't much news except that I have worked my nuts off during the final days of June. Then had a three week holiday in Italy (North). I recorded Italian Alps and a beehive. We stayed at the house of a guy who was a hobbyist beekeeper. So I recorded the incoming and outgoing traffic of a bee hive. Nice.

Then, when I came back I had another three days before going to work and I decided to try and finish the piano and voice series. And lo and behold!! I succeeded. As you can read in the previous posts with these tags I was already quite far. Still, relistening everything again (and again) I heard that the basis was alright but that some mixes needed touch ups and some parts could be deleted (I ripped out some 11 minutes) and some parts needed more space, et cetera. Some of the mixes weren't okay because the frequency balance was too extreme. So I corrected those.

I now define this series as finished. I have cut it into 11 tracks. Now I need to polish the final mix and see to it that the 24bit mix lands on a 16bit platform without too many glitches or loss of power. I have had brilliant 32bit compositions go dull when converted to 16bit. Thank god I can still learn things.

After that comes the coining of a good title. I want it to be connected to the early 20th century art movement Dada, the Cabaret Voltaire. Something in that region. I have been reading Hans Richter's book on Dada (Thames and Hudson) during the past months. That has given and is still giving me plenty of inspiration. Especially his descriptions of the Cabaret Voltaire and later soirees that were organised by the Dada movement have inspired me during the constitution of this series. Although the original text works were inspired by Gertrude Stein's poetry, the overall atmosphere is a psychologic interpretation (to speak with Pierre Henry) of the Dadaist congregations. Below a picture of Hugo Ball at a 1917 performance at the Cabaret Voltaire, most probably reciting the poem.

THU20, further progress

2009-06-24T21:46:00.007+02:00

Last weekend THU20 spent another day at EARLabs studio. We have been working on a piece that will be part of the Zelphabet series that is released by GX Juppiter Larsen. The first session (January 11, 2009 see blogpost there) we recorded live and input the result directly into the computer. This session we started to construct a composition based on the live session. We actually used a visual score for playing: a photograph of a part of my table cloth. How inspiring!!

So this Sunday we used Reaper to go through all of the tracks and decided where we want things out and where they come in and what needs to be shifted back and forth. By the end of the day we had a piece which you can hear in this section

[ Start ]
[ Middle ]

The end of the composition hasn't been touched yet.
On Tuesday I decided to give the start piece another go because I thought the start was sounding flat, despite the (intentional) chaotic atmosphere. The result of this session you can hear in the following sample

[ Start 2 ]

Mind you: this second mix is also just something provisional. It is definitely not the final mix!!! As we are extremely difficult to get in touch with having our own busy lives, I have no idea when the next session will be. It is our intention to make that the final one and finish it up. Stay tuned.

More of something else

2009-06-17T22:20:00.003+02:00

I haven't been writing at this blog for a while. That has to do with pressure on other fronts. In the mean time I HAVE been working on stuff, but it's all experiments in the same line as I talked about in my previous posts. I don't expect real works to be coming off it. As I am a project freak all of my etudes have gone in a folder called "easylistening". Funnily I am experimenting with easy listening stuff. I can tell you: it's definitely not easy to construct something that is easy to listen to.

For the time being I'm in the phase where I copy the works of other people (most notably that of Brian Eno, but also more modern stuff, and 80's stuff, etc). In the meantime I work with structure, schemes, chords, twiddling synthesizers, rhythm machines. I suppose that in due time I will find a version that feels like it's mine. And then the real work begins. Or it doesn't; if I'm fed up. And maybe I'll return to my difficult listening music.

Oh, before I forget: I also did some nice tape experiments. But the results have gone in the folder "tape experiments" and will be used in a future project.

Something entirely else

2009-06-13T22:18:00.003+02:00

I suddenly feel like I shouldn't make the usual things. I want to do something else. Because I'm reading this Eno biography (almost finished) I thought I'd do something in that ambient direction. So I hooked up my keyboard and dived into the softsynths that I have collected ( I made use of the Korg Polysix and Stillwell's Olga here).
Learning to deal with MIDI in Reaper was fun. Works like a charm, quick and easy just like the rest of this application. I have tried loads of rhythm (reasamplomatic5000), melody, ambience and today came to something that actually gets somewhere.

It's got no name, it's not nearly finished (needs sound balancing and lots of other stuff), but it's something that gives a hint about the direction I'd like to be heading for a while. It's got rhythm, it's got a melody, it's got atmosphere. Ha!

check it out [ here ]

A caprice from the past

2009-05-31T20:01:00.008+02:00

Sometimes I indulge myself and produce something rhythmic. This example below was produced in (I believe) 2005 or 2006. This one was never released. I played it today and liked the stomping stuff. I decided to do some tape experiments using this as a basic layer. Another reason for publishing is to let you know that a new version of Audiomulch is beginning to see the light of day. I have been beta testing it on and off for the past few weeks and I think you should know that it will be available from Friday June 5th 2009. This material was produced entirely with Audiomulch and only received a polishing with Izotope's Ozone afterwards.

Today I listened to it again and couldn't keep my hands still so I ran the mix through my Reaper postproduction setup. I downloaded Stillwell's CMX tool last week and ran two instance of it through the upper frequency regions, adding some stereo spice.

visit [ Audiomulch ]
visit [ Stillwell audio ] (really awesome vst's!!!)

listen to [ baaaa!! ] AND THE [ 2009 REMIX ]

REAPER goes DEEPER (again)

2009-05-26T08:52:00.010+02:00

Reaper 3 finally saw the light of day. I consider it as basecamp for all of the music that I produce. I find that the (sound)quality of my works has increased since I started using this because I have better control over the endresult. The first production I did completely with Reaper was Gaussian Transient (Megaphone). Later I remastered the EARLabs3 release as well with great results and fine reviews.

Reaper has a steep learning curve. It's not for the weak at heart. But if you have no or only a little experience with professional audio workstations you are being guided with a 400+ user guide (downloadable for free, can you believe it?). It took me approximately 6 months before I mastered it (at the same time recording and composing Gaussian Transient...). And I'm still learning. Much of this is due to the fact that the application is incredibly tweakable. Every one of us has their own prefered working methods. Reaper allows you to customize itself exactly the way you want it. Beside that it's fast, features 64bit pro editing, integrates with your studio hardware, can be completely controlled with your midi controllers.

There's a huge forum with active members who help mostly within the hour. Newbs are welcomed and not scoffed away. And, being Dutch, the price is an important issue. At $60 I am really sure I'm getting a bargain here. Or in the words of Sound On Sound Magazine (january 2009):"I suspect some would be more convinced of its excellence if Cockos significantly raised the licence cost, but those in the know (and I consider myself one of that number) simply regard it as a bargain." "Try it out and judge for yourself."

Go get it [ here ] !!

New project starting

2009-05-17T10:58:00.002+02:00

This week the new online project with Christopher and Sascha has been firing up. We have agreed upon the logistics: Reaper as the main platform, Dropbox as the exchange platform. We will work as much as possible with 24/32bit files and all files will be in FLAC format.. I think that's currently a good balance between soundquality and transportability.

The previous project, released as Helix by [ Entr'acte ], we worked with different platforms (Audition and ProTools) and we exchanged through a personal server. Most files were in 16bit format. Although we all love the result of that enterprise we think we should do better next time.

Of course we will keep you updated of our progress through these lines. today I am converting a lot of wav files into flac and placing them in our 'flea-market' folder. There is now one test project which we use to, well, test ;) .

One step forward, two steps back

2009-05-10T20:50:00.004+02:00

Was for six hours inside the studio today, but there was too much distraction. As usual I started fumbling with the insulation once I thought I heard some noise. It's because I work with these extremely silent parts that hear the smallest noises. Today a mattress in my doorway worked wonders....

As I said before I am in the process of glueing everything together. I am now experimenting with the indoor field recordings which I use as buffers between the compositions but also as an overlay (or underlay, a bed) for the existing stuff (piano and voice).

And almost everytime I listen to stuff that was supposed to be finished (or maybe not) I hear things that need tweaking. I know that these moments will diminish but still, it's annoying. Today I worked for hours on a beast of a project that's so heavy I had to reboot twice when it iced my computer. I decided to work with rendered bundles or groups of tracks in a new project and take it from there. Okay, so I (again) took out a lot of piano notes, leaving more space for other things. The work is now more smooth, not so bumpy. As an example there are two samples:

[ this one ] is the original, with lots of heavy notes
[ this one ] is the new version.

On the side: I'm reading the new Brian Eno biography. Give you details later. It's quite a detailed, but difficult read.

Blip Blip

2009-05-07T18:05:00.002+02:00

I have discovered Blip.fm. It's a sort of social network initiative which circles around the idea that it's always nice to share music with friends. Just check it out at [ blip.fm ]. I will try to blip three new compositions/songs every morning before I start working. There's also a widget to the right of my blog page, so you can also just click play and hear my selections.

silent composition

2009-05-04T21:28:00.003+02:00

Tried fruitlessly to compose 'presque rien'. An inhouse field recording with imaginary inhabitants. Terribly difficult. The stuff is supposed to be barely audible so I have to compose at very low volume. It's actually quite different from composing with your speakers really open. I have two of those landscapes here for your download/listening.

I started out with a basic recording of my living room. Recorded with the OKM mics (for binaural sound) together with the Rode (for extra detail). I then created a 3d reverb sound (in Reaper) and positioned other sounds 'in' the space.

In itself it's not bad, but when I tried two pieces to hear how they fitted in with the piano and voice pieces it simply didn't work. So, I have to go back to the drawing board. On the one hand the silent pieces need to be more silent. On the other hand, ....well, it needs to be 'music', doesn't it?

[ trial 1 ]
[ trial 2 ]

In these pieces the positioning of the different parts is still crude, just like the volume balances, and so on. It's really rough material.
Okay, so I'll try something different next time.

Face the facebook

2009-05-02T22:20:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I had some spare time and so I did what I wanted to do for a long time: add social sharing links to all of the reviews at the EARLabs.org site. Now, when you visit a review page at EARLabs you can directly share it with twitter, facebook, google bookmarks, digg, and delicious. Woohoo!

What gave me the most trouble was the Facebook link and so, in order to be able to test it, I had to open an account there. Oh well, might as well. So as a result I'm now hooked to Facebook and if anyone wants to come and meet me there, you're welcome!!

Nic Collins, after 20 or so years

2009-04-29T06:54:00.004+02:00

Yesterday evening I was at Steim, in Amsterdam, to attend a book presentation (well, actually the second edition book presentation) of [ "Handmade Electronic Music" ] by Nic Collins. I knew Collins when he was director of Steim in the 1980s. We corresponded and met a few times and I organized a concert in my hometown. Since then I went my way and he went his. So yesterday was a really fine re-encounter which was celebrated with a fair amount of humor (of which he has an abundancy), discussions about improvised music and 'handmade electronic music' and more alcohol than I am used to absorp (no accidents happened, though).

The book (which comes with a DVD) was immediately sold out (before I arrived, actually) but I got a glance at the contents. It's a really detailed manual for those who dare to open up the devices that we use in our daily lives and start tampering them. It also has many, many advices about how to construct sound producing circuits from scratch. I have always been very clumsy with soldering equipment, but it is actually quite fun to do and rewarding to build up your own 'synth'. It gets me away from my computer and vst's and such. I´m sure that I will get down to it, once I have this guide.

Collins, in the mean time, is a Professor of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. What a wonderful position: Professor of SOUND, wow!!

Read more about [ Nic Collins ]
Read more about [ STEIM ]

Dithering and noise shaping

2009-04-27T07:13:00.004+02:00

Always by the end of a compositional project I am in doubt how to transfer all my material from 32 to 16bits. I understand that if I want to chop 16bits off my samples this will/may lead to 'damage'. This is what Reaper tells me to help making a choice: "In (very) brief, when you render from a higher bit depth to a lower one, you lose some resolution, and the lost resolution leaves low-level artifacts in the resulting signal. Dither is a way of blanketing the artifacts with more natural-sounding low-level hiss. Noise shaping is a way of filtering the artifacts into parts of the frequency spectrum that are harder for human ears to (psychoacoustically) perceive.

Some people think you should always dither when rendering to a lower fixed-point bit depth. Other people think that dither doesn't exist. The first people and the second people like to argue with each other. (*shrug*) There are lots of discussions out there on the internet about whether or not to dither and when to do it and why. This post isn't meant to do that -- it's just to explain technically what Reaper does if you click the buttons.

The dither and noise shaping are independent (you can use either with or without the other).
The dither is 1.5 bits which is somewhat on the light/do-no-harm side. With noise shaping off, the dither PDF is triangular; with noise shaping on, the dither is high-pass filtered.
The noise shaping is a 9th order filter, which is similar to pow-R type 3.
Unlike pow-R (or almost any other method), the noise shaping coefficients are calculated on the fly for any sample rate analytically, based on a very smooth equal loudness contour.
The render dialog should only give you the option to dither when the target bit depth and format is appropriate. The calculation is done post-master-fader, so you don't need to do anything special except click the buttons.
There are a few JS dither plugins included with Reaper. These are for technical use or backwards compatibility. You don't need to use them. Definitely don't use any dither plugin if you're using the native dither options when rendering.

The dither and noise shaping options in Reaper are of very high quality."

But I've decided to take a listen myself, before going ahead. I have rendered three different parts of the composition, each with a different setting (dither, noise shaping and D & NS combined). I mean, it's all about what you actually hear, isn't it? The Reaper people themselves are more rock-oriented, which makes things a little easier for them.

bLOGtemplate FUCKED UP

2009-04-25T14:42:00.004+02:00

Trying to spice up the layout template and add a link to twitter (and other social media sites) I tore apart the template settings. Somehow. Can't get it back to its original state.... Will have to figure out what went wrong....

I'll get back to you, soon with a new template. I guess. Stay tuned.

edit: GOT A NEW TEMPLATE. WILL BE USING THIS ONE FOR THE TIME BEING. IT'S ACCEPTABLE, ISN'T IT?

Over to the final mix

2009-04-18T12:37:00.011+02:00

Yesterday I went over to a first session of collating the various parts for K146. I got to a satisfactory structure quite quickly but of course the various connective parts needed adjustment.

Overhaul
I did a complete overhaul of one part. It's the part that precedes the part that I published a few days earlier. Initially it consisted of recordings of the river which I placed one after the other, while shortening the parts on the way. So for instance, the first block was 20 seconds, the second one 15 secs, then 10, 8, 5, etc. The end result would be a tension that collapsed and then falls apart in the next part (that I published on April 15, 2009). The result was not good enough, though.

New approach
I have split some 12 recordings into 9 slices (0-75hz, 75-150hz, etc) and used the slices to built up a new, imaginary river. The build up structure is again going with an increasing speed, so the tension also builds up. Because the material is more detailed it is also more flexible for my use and the new result is much better.

Next step is looking at the right volume balance, the crossovers of the several parts and taking care of phase problems (which I can handle quite well with a VST plug called[ Flux, Stereo Tool ]). Then finally a mixdown from 32bit to 16bit and we're done.

Next weekend the cat will be in the bag. Below is a snapshot of my Reaper mix session (click on it to enlarge). The part that is overhauled is the first 1 minute of "T.wav".

Water run

2009-04-15T20:31:00.007+02:00

Constructed a part that will precede the bird dissolves into water part (see post of February 20, 2009). It's rather noisy, I;m afraid. That's actually because I was skipping through all the sound files with recordings of fast moving water. The idea was to create my own noisily running water by mixing very short snippets of the originals. What I have now is 45 seconds consisting of 0.2 second samples of water, connected randomly (so there are in total 225 snippets, that's right).
The second stage was to construct a head and a tail to that piece. Well, I'll leave that in the dark for the moment, but here's the provisional result of my labourings of today (while recovering from my kidney ailings).

Listen to [ sample ].

Hospitalized

2009-04-11T15:06:00.003+02:00

I've been taken to the hospital more than a week ago with terribly kidney stone troubles. Have been operated on two days ago. Still recovering. Music work is null. Sorry. Done some 'field' recording at the ward when I felt better but it's not much.

Social Media Comments by Disqus: Public Release Today!

2009-04-02T19:20:00.002+02:00

Social Media Comments by Disqus: Public Release Today!\I thought I might start entering interesting news that I stumble upon and that i digg. :). So this is a first try out to see how this works or not......

Posted using ShareThis

River works

2009-03-29T17:59:00.014+02:00

I finally got to work in the studio again. It's been quite a busy time lately and making music came last in line. Today I worked mostly on the K146 project. I now have some five parts that I work on and which I will or will not glue together later on. I am contemplating whether I should just present them as tableaux vivants in separate parts. That would make sense since each of those five parts concentrates on one (or two) original recordings. One particular place that I worked today was Combe au Moulin.

The original water recording was edited with a ducking technique and then reverberated with the special DFX Transverb. Think of it like a tape loop with two independently-moving read heads. There are a lot of parameters that can be controlled and a parameter randomizer for the impatient. I was able to extract a cool ringing sound from it. After that a second movement focused on further layering that recording with harmonized subchords. It seemed to magically come together.

Below are three short samples of the mix:
First is a sample of the first rework of the original. I have used a noise gate to cut out all of the more silent parts and thus enhance the loud parts of the running water [ listen ]
Secondly I added the transverb into the mix [ listen ]
Thirdly you can hear the transition from the first section into the second part where I start working with harmonic layers of the original recording. [ listen ]

Another work started with the recording of a bird. This recording was at the Dognon. There's actually no water sound in this piece but I guess it was recorded somewhere on a slow streaming part a bit off the bank. The call of the bird was isolated and then repeated. After a while a heavily filtered version of a river recording shows up. Interestingly in the original recording it's most of all the water that you hear. In this filtered version you can hear cows mooing in the distance.. funny.

Listen to a provisional mix [ here ]

Fieldrecordings in Zagreb

2009-03-26T07:31:00.001+01:00

I am on a business trip to Zagreb, Croatia. Yesterday I spent the afternoon walking with my Edirol and binaural mics. Although the people are pleasant (actually a woman started flirting so obviously that even I noticed...) the city is acoustically not very appealing. I attended a Catholic mass (in order to record part of it) and crossed an empty square later that evening (after a particularly depressing pizza) that had some interesting reflections. I'll upload some recordings later this week.

new horizon... or fata morgana?

2009-03-10T09:00:00.003+01:00

Slowly a new structure is emerging in my head...... I decided that the current setup is too dense for most. 90% of the listeners will not make it to the end in one go. There are too many notes, sounds, changes, dynamical changes, transients, pans....

.......................... .... .... .. ... . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I will construct a new series of (indoor) field recordings which will serve as empty rooms for the compositions that are already finished. They will allow the listener to take a rest. Smoke a cig and drink coffee. Chat a little with the friends that are also present at the table. In other words: enhance the cafe atmosphere.

Doubts, doubts, doubts

2009-03-08T17:24:00.004+01:00

Ow! I have fallen into doubt frenzy. Is this really it? Shouldn't I skip this work? It's too loud. No, that's not it. Not enough rest, it's too hasty. Take this out? No, layer it. Wait, cut it up and mess it around? No, revert.

In general I think the work is too dense, now. But how to solve that? Extend pauses? ...... ............ ...... ..... ....... ............ .............. .......................................

Almost forgotten voice work

2009-03-06T07:57:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I was again running a check on the pianovox work, which is really coming to an end now. Looking for a few snippets to insert here and there I came along a directory that I hadn't hear for quite a while. I listened and remembered why I had abandoned it. It was beautiful sound material but it lasted too long and I couldn't find a twist to make up for that.

But yesterday I did see that solution! I rendered a few tracks and started playing with the highs and lows. Then I added a recording of the original played in the studio twice. One with a bad mic and another one with feedback added. Then I had material enough to finish it up. A late night and an early morning session later I have the impression that it's finished.

Listen to the entire mix [ here ]

I will add this work to the mix of the whole piano and voice material. I now have mixes of all of the piano and voice works in one reaper setup. Listening again and again and changing bits and overlaying parts I am blending it all into a coherent work. I have been in doubt for months about this project. Man! Several people who heard the piano works thought they were not up to standards... which can make you doubt your own judgment. But it's all starting to come together now: the idea of a avant garde jazz pub, with lots of smoke and drinks and people reciting and mumbling and a piano player somewhere in the distance (and sometimes right inside your ear!)

Another go at the pianovox/S.A.T.I.E. project.

2009-03-01T10:00:00.003+01:00

I have relistened after 2 months or so. It's near complete. Just one piano part needed more attention. The 3rd one (3.7). There are too many piano notes. So I cut back a lot and mixed them back into the crowd that can be heard as well.

I have mixed voice and piano parts and cross-referenced here and there. It's becoming more coherent now: one sonic vocabulary. Later this week there will be more soundsamples of 3.8 (the follow up to 3.7) and first impressions on the final mix.

Disquiet on EARLabs 3

2009-02-27T14:42:00.005+01:00

Marc Weidenbaum, the omnivorous soundart journalist gave the EARLabs3 disc a spin and dedicated a review to it:

"There are ghastly, dead winds that rotate slowly in the distance, and sudden sounds that signify something happening, and just as quickly disappear. There are what could be muffled calls for help, and quick edits that make it easy to lose one’s sense of time during the five-minute recording.

And what there is, foremost, is a balance between calm and tension. This is not music to relax to, nor is it the score to a slasher film. It’s an investigation, painstaking in its rectitude and attention to detail, that commands attention — attention to every brittle cue, every choking gasp, every abstract fragment."

[ read all ]

and after that buy the disc at

[ entr'acte ]

The river sings

2009-02-24T22:39:00.003+01:00

Yet another blorp: the thought that the river has its own voice, which concealed by the never ending spattering of water on the surface. But it's still there. When I do a spectral view on the recording at very fine grain then I can see that certain frequencies are stronger than others and that they are continuous. I made a filtering, leaving only those frequencies intact.

Listen [ here ]
and the original [ here ]

It's almost like singing, isn't it?

Bird dissolves into water

2009-02-20T07:43:00.005+01:00

Working on some ideas and samples and edits. And as I promised at the beginning of the year that I would come forward with more samples, here's a large one. The call of a bird is slowly granulated and then flows into the sound of the river Taurion.

[ Listen ]

k146 started

2009-02-16T12:10:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon browsing through the hundreds of soundfiles that Cedric had sent me. I catalogued the files (loud and wild water vs. easy stream vs. no or hardly any water) and then re-listened to some of them.

I also tried some specific filtering (using a spectral interface) and running the files through compression settings. Some recordings are really beautiful (24 bit, stereo) and I'm tempted to use them in other compositions (but I won't, don't worry ;) ). It's your typical messing-around-with-the-material-fase.

Want to know more about the project ? click [ here ]

Moving Furniture is finished

2009-02-10T19:34:00.007+01:00

Today I did some final tweaking of the music for Moving Furniture. In the end I added a tail to the first part so that the transition into the second part is more smoothly and also fits better, timing wise. So, currently the stuff is being rendered to 16bits (see if there are no nasty glitches as a result from the transition from 24bits to 16bits) and then I leave the master disc for Sietse to come and get it.

There are now two pieces with a total length of some 25-30 minutes. They concentrate for the most part on droney layers of sound, sometimes harmonical, at other times noisy. Sometimes quiet, at other times loud. Keep checking the [ Moving Furniture Records ] site.

Below is a link to a special lo-res mp3 which gives you an idea of what the first composition is like. You get the picture of the structure :) and the cdr will give you the extremely brilliant soundquality 'en plus'.

[ movingfurniture1 - specialmix ]

Yay ! Ouch!!

2009-02-09T22:06:00.005+01:00

I can be such a goddamn calvinist. I feel a pique of pride and immediately some little devil stings me in the back of my head, telling me I shouldn't. But I AM proud. The first review of EARLabs 3 arrived today, from no less a magazine than The Wire. So why shouldn't I be proud? Here it is.

Yes, yes I know. We are just one of many. And I really am puzzled by the strange remark about the Northern European potting shed.

David Jackman gets a warning

2009-02-04T22:29:00.003+01:00

Further progress moving Sietse's furniture. I decided to add a tail to the new tail of the Nautilus (can you follow?). The first tail ends with an extensive reverberated and delayed loopyloop. I was in the mood of trying to get a very big reverb. But listening to the reverbed loop I heard noise. Reverb just blurs any detail and what you get is smudgy layer of coloured noise. With some details in it. Like peanut butter with little parts in it. Actually I like the parts better than the butter. And so it is with the reverbed noise.

Okay, so when 'noise' entered my inner ear I remembered that I still had a noise piece in my directory of unpublished works. It carries the ominous title "admonition for David Jackman" and those of you who know the works of this particular gentleman can see something coming. So, next to a 2nd rendition of Nautilus Pompilius we now also have a new version of the Jackman-inspired compo. There is also a Masami Akita admonition by the way. And Steven Stapleton and Andrew MacKenzie. It was just a series in which I addressed the sonic language of those 80s heroes.

But anyway, the addition of this noise piece really spices things up. It's not for the weak, but the end of this part yields some interesting sonic phenomena. So. Check it out.

2008

2009-02-02T13:23:00.003+01:00

Okay thanks, TJ. And others who put my GT(M) in their [ list ].

rather silent?

2009-02-01T22:53:00.002+01:00

Yes, have been busy on other topics this week. Have managed to finish the 2nd piece for Moving Furniture, though. Another one? Let's chew on that this coming week.

second piece of furniture moved

2009-01-25T13:31:00.007+01:00

This morning I thought it might be a good idea to make a new rendition of an old composition: Nautilus Pompilius. I construed this work a couple years ago as a contribution to a Bremsstrahlung Records compilation. Read all about this compilation [ here ]. At the time my approach was purely conceptual. Pitches and intervals were calculated using the golden mean. I stopped there and was quite happy with my daunt approach and an interesting result. But I wasn't quite happy with how it ended. The original ends with a bang.

For the new Moving Furniture release I decided to make a new rendition, this time with a different ending. The piece builds up exactly as before but after the big bang I have constructed a new part that is entirely intuitively constructed. The material I used is from the same period as Nautilus Pompilius. They are bits and pieces that fit nicely with the frequencies of NP.

As usual I let the material rest for a week or so and then return to it and make final arrangements. Below is a part of the original Nautilus Pompilius for [ download ].

k146 - preparing for new project

2009-01-24T18:05:00.006+01:00

Today a DVD arrived with basic material for a new project. Well, new to me anyway. Cedric Peyronnet who also creates music as Toy Bizarre has been working on the project for a couple years already. Cedric has been recording the river Taurion for years and mapped his recording using Google Maps. Now the idea is that, in order to complete the enterprise, other composers create a sound work using the basic recording material. You can read all about Cedric's project at [ this project site ].

I have a few ideas about what I wil do but it's all rather conceptual. One of the ideas is to filter each recording using the map coordinates. But that will certain not be all. Maybe it's a nice starting point. The real work still has to start.

Entr'acte releases Helix

2009-01-20T23:37:00.022+01:00

Finally, more than a year after its completion, the cooperative works with Sascha Neudeck (upper picture) and Christopher McFall (lower picture) have been released. This coop started when Christopher and I exchanged ideas about stuff that we worked on and had released. I set up a webserver which was used as an exchange platform. Each of us placed basic material on the server which the other guy then downloaded and included into a composition. This worked quite nice. Then after a while Sascha who also circled around in my EARLabs network proposed a cooperative project. We suggested that he joined our duo project which then became a trio.

We then decided to produce 6 pieces. Each duo producing 2. Each duo had one piece started by one with alterations and additions by the counterpart and another started by the other. Etcetera. This worked really fine as we all had approximately the same basic idea but also our own approaches to sound. That way we sort of meandered around each other. That was what lead to the idea of the title: Helix.

The production was finished by the end of summer 2007. Allon Kaye of [ Entr'acte ] decided to publish it but it did take a while. We were okay with it and moved on with our personal projects (like Gaussian Transient which was my immediate successive project). Then, early 2008 Allon requested a new master and so I remastered the original and sent that one off. That was, I believe May 2008. And now the result is seeing the light of day.

Marvellous!

[ Listen ] to a special mix I brew for Entr'acte!

Cheers, Allon!!!

First piece finished, new sample

2009-01-19T21:34:00.004+01:00

Finished the first composition for Moving Furniture. Here's another [ snapshot ]. Reverse the order and they are in the right one.

Working for Sietse

2009-01-17T16:33:00.007+01:00

I started work on two pieces that will be released by Sietse van Erve on his [ moving furniture ] label. Next to the driving force behind this label Sietse also regularly performs as Orphax AND has been the most important keeper of the house of EARLabs.

I haven't got a definite approach yet. Sietse is very keen on dronish music (which is really not my style) and I try to do something that fits his bill. I rummaged through my 'unpublished' section of works and found something that started as a study into harmony but has grown into something which could be labeled 'drone'. Unfortunately it was built up with Audition, so I have been transfering it (item by item) onto Reaper. I'm all set now and ready to finish it. Here's a [ sound sample ] of a very rough mix. It gives you an idea of what it is made of. Total length is 8.5 minutes. It starts with a recording of cars passing an overhead carriage way. This connects it to a piece I wrote for my friend Peter Knijnenburg as an 'in memoriam'. This work ends with the passing cars. Immediately after I finished that tribute composition (which I will publish during the summer, btw) I worked on this harmony study, August and September 2007.

I intend to combine this harmonic work with a second piece which will be all new. I have yet to figure out what that's gonna be. But you'll read about it here!

As yet there is no title and no release date set.

THU20 at EARLabs studio

2009-01-11T21:31:00.003+01:00

Today we had THU20 in the studio. We are preparing a piece for a compilation series, that is being released by GX Jupitter Larsen's Zelphabet.com. It was actually the first time Frans de Waard, who has been a member of THU20 for years and joined us during concerts, in the studio as a THUboy. The piece we're working on will be some 16 minutes long. Today we set up a score and played a couple of live improvs, recorded multichannel into the computer. Later these recordings we rearranged so that they fit better with the score. Next session is due on February 22.

I am not allowed to let you hear some provisional results but I can assure you it is first class THU20 stuff !!! The pictures here show Roel (left) and Sjak (DMDN) together during a break and Frans on the picture below. In front of Roel is his infamous Korg MS20 modification. It's a MS20 without the keyboards. It's got all the normal functions but this way it's much easier to take it on tour.

Crackle box revisited

2009-01-08T22:26:00.004+01:00

Ooh! I have done something bad! I opened up my crackle box sawing a part of the bottom off with a fine saw. I want to connect the output straight into my computer. That's whyh. It was actually forbidden by STEIM but what can you do with anarchist artists, right?

And after the sawing party, while I was looking for a shop to buy myself a plug thing (I actually don't know what they are called in English) I remembered good old THU20 and how we used to connect our analog gear with the boxes which are displayed here to the left. Guess what? A crackle box fits quite nicely inside such connector. So the next phase will be to solder the output of the cracklebox to connect it with the intestines of the THUbox and then (hopefully) rock on.

To make it all up I have ordered a second cracklebox which I will leave intact. Promise.

More tape deck

2009-01-08T22:08:00.005+01:00

More experiments with the tape deck. Mostly the technique I use is that I record base material (from the S.A.T.I.E. project and the poetry material) while pulling the tape along the eraser/recording/play back heads manually. While doing so I sometimes allow the tape to hit the eraser and/or the recording head. Then I rerun it and do another recording. The result is recorded into the computer again and will serve as new material for further development. I have already a few thoughts for a structure into which this will fit. It may also be good stuffing for the eventual S.A.T.I.E project.

Working outside the computer is very satisfying. I haven't been moving in my studio like this in years. But I have a new workshop now with a special desk for recording (new mic!) and the synth and tape manipulation. I also bought brand new pro cables because the old ones were a bit dodgy. There's another 200 bucks in my wallet waiting to be spent on something musical...... what shall it be?

Tape experiments

2009-01-02T23:52:00.008+01:00

I have been working with tape. Really interesting, getting back to the roots. That sort of feeling. I received a really old Akai (GX4400) reel to reel with a bunch of tapes a few months ago and decided that it would be fun to create new stuff out of the computer. There's a tendency: the crackle box, the mic, now this. ...

And it really is fun to work with your hands on a tape. Funny thing was that the tape that came with the deck was so old that the oxide layer just came off the substrate layer while recording. The picture illustrates this. You can see the stuff that came off in front of the deck. This process was enhanced by my manipulation of the tape. I recorded layer after layer by shutting off the eraser head. I did this with a small screw driver which I used to reroute the tape as I recorded. But because the screw driver was a bit sharp it tore off more material. With quite interesting results. To be and certainly will be continued.

New mic in the studio !!

2008-12-31T20:38:00.003+01:00

Today, on the last day of 2008 I bought a new microphone: the famous Rode NT2a. Ever since I got a new soundcard, with phantom power for condenser mics, I have wanted to do decent recording. I bought a relatively cheap condenser Marshall MXL990 a few months ago but it didn't yield the results I wanted. Then I heard a recording from the Entr'acte label, EVOL - Punani Rubber Ist, which featured acoustic recordings done with this mic and I was sold to it.

The past few weeks I did some market research and am convinced that this is (of course within this price range) the best mic to get. Soooooo, tonight I will do some recording of the new year's bonfires with both the MXL and NT2a. See how that will work out.

This weekend I will try to set up a nice recording cubicle in the studio so that I can record with unwanted reflections or outside sounds.

On to the next phase

2008-12-28T15:24:00.006+01:00

Well, I have gotten through all of the compositions of voice and piano once again and decided what can stay and what is to be abandoned (50%, mainly of the vocal works). I am currently rendering all of the (provisional) master mixes so that I can assemble them into one whole. There's some administration involved here. I have timed the parts that are to be incorporated so that I have an idea of the total body. Currently it's 50 minutes of material: 2/3 is piano related, the other part poetry.

The next phase will involve mainly deciding upon the order and what material I need to make to collage it all together. Most times this leads to new insights and thus more adaptation of the existing material. Other work is bringing all works in the right volume balance, working out small details (ticks, clicks, etc), polishing the sound, and create a perfect master mix. And I have been working on this for some 12 months already.... But I'm glad that I have been able to get a grip on the stuff again.

I still need to find a common denominator for all of this. When I started I had a smokey pub in mind where drunken poets recited their latest drivel, sometimes accompanied by weird piano playing. As a sort of physical metaphor to connect these two main soundsources. At the moment I'm open to other suggestions (by myself), though.

Other good news is that it looks like I've found myself a publisher for all this. I can't tell you what label it is, because it's not a signed deal yet. Later.

Back to the beginning

2008-12-27T13:40:00.007+01:00

Wow! I had a really interesting afternoon, yesterday. I was working on piano no.2 which was already in its ninth state (2.9). I listened for the nth time when I realized that it had become just too intricate. The structure had become dull and even, without any highlights. I made a bolt decision and decided to go back almost to the very beginning: version 2.2. I took a different turn by not working out and detailing further but cut away that part that I had a bad feeling about anyway. One part of the composition was based on a sample of Alexander Goehr's [ Nonomiya ]. Although the sample was alright, I didn't like that I blatantly used it, without any work from myself. So I skipped that whole thing. In its place there now is a piece of the vocal works. So now the structure is quite clear: A B A B which might become A B A C B to make it more interesting. It's not finished.

Anyway.

I also attacked the piano part which I had been struggling with all those months. I rendered it and took it into Audiomulch and used some granular discoloration (GRM). Then I placed it back into the structure. Below are two samples: one of the original piano part and one of its current state.

[ 2.2 original ]
[ 2.2 new ] (2.10)

This was certainly a lesson for me. Kill your darlings, once again.

2009: more audio examples

2008-12-27T13:33:00.002+01:00

I just (re)installed Autorender. It's a exe script that is fabricated in AutoHotKey. This one helps me encode samples to mp3 and upload them to my webserver. That way it's a piece of cake to quickly show you provisional results. I tested it today and works like a charm. It only works in conjunction with Reaper by the way. You can download from [ here ].

Now that I've got this one straightened out you will hear more snippets than ever before.

V.O.X. no.3

2008-12-25T20:59:00.004+01:00

Okay, so here's two shots of the vocal series. I refer to all of the other messages with the vox tag for further explanation.

download [ 2.1 ]
download [ 3.2 ]

S . A . T . I . E. No. 3

2008-12-25T11:06:00.006+01:00

Been working on a veiled piano piece, the third in row. I thought I'd have you people have a bite. It's Xmas, so why not? The piano part has been more or less stable for 6 months now. I have been doodling with the volume levels and such. The biggest addition is the 'veil' that has been cast over it. It's a three layer recording of people visiting a museum.

Listen to version 3.6b through [ this link ].

For once I wanted people to react to it, but it seems I can't get that option working. I will be working on this and other works for the next few days. I will also upload a snack of the vocal series.

Paris 2008

2008-12-23T21:53:00.005+01:00

Was in Paris this weekend. Visited Orsay (boring...), Picasso (overwhelming as well as confusing), Beaubourg (gruesomely expensive but with an exquisite exhibition of Futurist art) nót the Louvre. We díd visit the Grand Palais which featured a free exhibit of video art. The grandeur of the Grand Palais is shown in the video above. Enjoyed that very much and did a lot of recording at the metro, the Notre Dame, the museums and general city.

S . A . T . I . E

2008-12-18T21:15:00.006+01:00

Been working on two piano pieces today. Number 1, which is now at its 11th version and number 2, of which there are now 9 versions.

Thinking about the criticism that the earlier versions received I have been working on ways to get rid of that. And all the time keeping my personal artistic scope intact. This morning I started working on acoustic 'veils' with which I can 'cover' certain parts without immediately hiding them or cutting them out. This has led to a few interesting experiments which still have to be drilled down deeper.

So, what happened? I started with number 1.10 and covered that up with an acoustic veil. First trying that with a synth sound but soon that failed (too synthy) and so I started preparing veils that are made from granulated parts out of the original composition. I am not quite satisfied with it but it looks promising. I now have to experiment with cutting out parts of the 'veil' or bringing up double layers.

Number 2 is treated differently: the original piano sounds have been broken down so badly (with GRM tools) that they are barely recognizable (although still there). I have added some interplay with always rewarding dfx reverb.

And thirdly I have prepared a veil that consists of acoustic recordings that I made during my trip to Morocco. I haven't applied it to any of the other compositions yet, but I will. Later. First I will make a trip to Paris, this weekend.

I read a review about a Satie recital in the newspaper today which patly described his music as lateral, pointless and anti romantic (all positive criticism, by the way). In a sense, this can be said of my piano pieces as well and so currently the project has been baptized as a 21st century SATIE project. Naturally there's a lot that can be argued against it, but what the hell. I'm the artist, I can be anything I want. N'est-ce pas?

Salut!!

Studio days coming up

2008-12-16T16:49:00.005+01:00

I will be working in the studio more in the next few weeks. Of course. I will more spare time and that will for a large part be spent creating and finishing musical pieces. I will keep everyone updated on these pages. I think I will also publish a work that until now was very rare: "Maybe A thousand Buddhas..." which was composed as a sound component to an exhibition. Keep coming back.

Wander almost finished

2008-12-07T10:24:00.003+01:00

The Wander master is almost finished. Frans and Freek both approved the bits that I had thrown at them. That took a few days, but luckily (not!) my studio pc was broken down so I wasn't really waiting. The power supply of the pc stopped working. So I replaced it with a new, bigger one. Then my video card (DVI-D) started acting up. And after I got that working Windows simply told me that my configuration wasn't up to it. Bugger!

Anyway, I continued with the master yesterday. I added a sublayer of bass with the PV transposer VST plug. Just one octave lower in the background to add a bit of zoooommm. Now the sound is wider and deeper. I still have to work on the details in the higher frequencies. And then I am waiting to cut the whole into tracks. And go!

Scratch did it

2008-12-06T17:01:00.007+01:00

I have been listening a lot to one of the latest releases of Lee 'scratch' Perry, Repentance. By himself Perry is already legend, of course. A madman., age 70. But a brilliant one, or perhaps one of those figures who always get picked up by someone who takes care of them. Perry seems to be doing well, despite his juggled mind.

Anyway: Repentance is a masterpiece. Not only because of the lyrics and the grooves and such but because the production is really damn good! It rocks, it funks and it still is crystal clear. Every instrument is at the right spot with the space it deserves. Wow!! The producer is a certain Andrew W.K. who appears to have some fame but I don't know anything about him. Hmm, checking him out on the Web doesn't really give him a ticket for one of my parties. Jeezz, this is the typical overloaded, no headroom US rock. Read more about the production [ here ]. But you'd better just listen to the album.
This is Perry's 54th album release, btw. Considering the moroness of AWK's other music Perry's influence on the production must have been biggggg!

wander master tests

2008-12-03T20:58:00.003+01:00

I have been reconstructing the Wander master. Most basic: I split the file up into three frequencies: 0-200hz, 200-2,000hz, 2,000hz and up. The middle and upper frequencies have been split into a left and a right part. The middle is slightly off center, the higher again somewhat more. I have done this with the js/stereowidth vst that's natively present inside Reaper. The result is that I have more control over the track and that it all sounds a bit deeper and wider. The middle also has some reverberation, just enough to make it somewhat smoother (something that was requested).

There are two sections that I have given more attention. I have sent Freek and Frans the files for their scrutiny. You can taste them here (while they last :) ):

section 1
section 2

They are rather big, so be careful.