Results for festivals

Some interesting things I found on September 10th, 2008:

# minitek electronic music festival

here it finally is: new york’s electronic music + innovation festival! minitek is going to be slightly different from other festivals you know, even very different at times.

first of all because the festival combines two aspects: electronic music and innovation. while it seems pretty straight forward at first, you’ll see soon that we’re going to explore innovation not only in respect to music but also to other forms of art, science and technology.

Electronic music talents from around the world, a range of experimental art and technology installations, new consumer technologies that have never been applied in a festival context – such as RFID wristbands, and lots more.

Also check here and let Peter Kirn know Who Do You Want Interviewed At Minitek?

# More Cowbell.DJ – More Cowbell is the online spin off of the Saturday Night Live special featuring Will Ferrell as Gene Frenkle, the cowbell player, and Christopher Walken as the music producer, Bruce Dickenson. More Cowbell.dj allows you to cowbell any song you want and even add some Walken to the mix. I got a fever and the only prescription is cowbell.

# Making Music with the Arduino: Wires, Solder, and Sound Round-Up

Michael Una writes:

I received my Arduino Diecemila in the mail last week and have started to experiment with using it to synthesize audio and video. I’m not very experienced with programming microcontrollers, so I’ve been doing a lot of research to see what’s out there, and it’s greatly encouraging to see that people are taking this little kit in fun directions.

# Pipe Organ Chair – This is a pipe organ chair that plays a tune when you sit down (insert your musical furniture joke here).

# Advanced Mega-Round-Up: Going Microtonal with Synths

Peter Kirn writes:

Digital software instruments give you opportunities to explore new sounds and timbres, so why not add tuning to the list? Kore@CDM contributor and sound designer Eoin Rossney helps us navigate the potentially intimidating world of microtuning. Microtonal sound simply refers, generally, to tunings beyond the now-standard 12-Tone Equal Temperament we find on modern pianos. First off, microtuning doesn’t have to sound dissonant or “out of tune” – like other choices with synthesis, it can simply give you some new sonic abilities. Native Instruments’ synths are well-suited to the task, as many having tuning capabilities built-in. If you’re using plug-ins to assist your microtonal voyage, Kore is a natural with its plug-in hosting capabilities. But the most important thing is just to dive in somewhere and see what happens – with no physical instrument to retune, it’s something anyone can do.

Some interesting things I found on August 13th, 2008:

# Circuitastrophe Symposium – Cincinnati Sept 4-8th 08. Circuit Bending, Robotics, 8-bit Music, Hacking & Electronic Design

From the anti-theory website:

From September 4 through 9, 2008, Cincinnati, the birthplace of circuit-bending, will host its first circuit-bending festival, Circuitastrophe! The dream child of Professor Mark Shafer and the noise music artist Nebulagirl, Circuitsastrophe! will presents 20+ performers and groups from around the country appearing at some of Cincinnati’s most unusual and historic venues such as Northside’s vintage Masonic Art Damage Lodge. The lineup is included at the end of this press release. Circuitsastrophe! also features workshops and talks, including a rare public appearance by Reed Ghazala on September 6, presenting “The Folk Music of Chance Electronics,” or “How to Start an Art Movement Without Really Trying.”

# The Strangest Synthesizers In The World – You haven’t seen weird, until you’ve seen some of the bizarre synth contraptions that keyboardists and electronic musicians have come up with. In fact, some of these instruments are so weird, we’re not even sure if they are synthesizers! Take a look at this twisted synthfest, and you be the judge.

# Reaktor Inspiration: Visual and Audiovisual Art – Reaktor user sonictwist made a gallery with visual stuff made only with Reaktor 5.

# Ableton Live – Intro to Slicing and Drum Racks – A step by step walk through the process of slicing a loop while giving you an introductory overview of Ableton's Drum Rack features. The video also covers simple sound design ideas for changing your existing slices so you get more mileage out of the loops you've already created!

# How 2.0: Digital Wall Harp – Use infrared sensors to make off-the-wall music!

This is a pretty simple Infrared Harp. The sensors work like on/off switches to trigger various sounds when they are plugged into your computer's music program. With the MidiTron you can use any type of analog or digital input device, from temperature sensors to regular switches, to trigger your sounds. Get creative, it's really fun to think about all the things you could play!

# Hacking a toy guitar to make a “Frets on Fire” controller – Step-by-step instruction on how to hack a standard computer keyboard to build your own Guitar Hero-Like controller for the free, open source Guitar Hero clone "Frets on Fire".

Some interesting things I found on April 15th, 2008:

# Casper at LA & NY bent festivals – Casper will showing off and demoing his new product at the upcoming bent festivals in both LA and NY.

Casper writes:

After years of working on the Texas Instruments Speak&Spell I have come up with a design that incorporates the best bends into a rugged, utilitarian and affordable design.

Casper’s mod comes with an atari controller port, guitar strap pegs, locking 1/4″ audio jack, pitch adjustment body contacts, sound activated LED, 3 glitch switches, LOOP switch and adjustment, HOLD switch and adjustment, pitch adjustment, industrial reset button… what more do you want?

# Bent Festival – The Bent Festival is an annual art and music festival celebrating DIY electronics, hardware hacking, and circuit bending.

# Cheap Mic Shootout #1 at Audio Geek Zine – A quick shootout with some budget mics: Shure PG-58, GLS Audio ES-57, Shure PG 52 & Audio Technica AT-2020.

# RulesofThumb.org – Tons of useful and less useful Rules of Thumb. I quite like this one:

PLAY MUSIC YOU LIKE
You will get farther and be happier playing music the way you like it than by changing your sound to please others.

# The Analog Synthesizer Ensemble – Listening to The Analog Synthesizer Ensemble is like taking trips through outer and inner space. Black hole tripping.

# Thomas Margolf Modified BOSS VT-1 – Thomas Margolf (aka: firestARTer, Frau Holler) is working on a new circuit bending project; he's added MIDI capability to a BOSS VT-1 voice transformer pedal changing it into a vocoder-like instrument. Check Thomas’ website for more info.

# ChibiTracker – A portable IT (Impulse Tracker) clone. It is not a 100% clone though, as it adds more features, such as chorus and reverb, stereo samples, an advanced sample editor and more.

# LittleGPTracker – the little Tracker for GP2x, Windows, OSX and Debian – LittleGPTracker (a.k.a 'The piggy') is a music tracker optimised to run on portable game consoles. It is currently running on Game Park's GP2x but there's a version for windows & mac too.

Moogfest is the annual festival honoring Robert Moog and his groundbreaking achievements.

B.B. King’s Blues Club in New York City will once again open its doors to Moogfest, the annual festival commemorating and celebrating the groundbreaking achievements of maverick inventor Robert Moog and his namesake synthesizer. Slated for 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 22, the fourth annual Moogfest will once again be a synthesizer fan’s dream.

Already scheduled to perform are renowned keyboardists and long-standing Moog users Thomas Dolby, Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater), Adam Holzman (Miles Davis), Spiraling, Don Preston (Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention), Gershon Kingsley, Herb Deutsch and Erik Norlander, among others. In addition to performing, Gershon Kingsley and Herb Deutsch will be receiving the Bob Moog Legacy Award, recognizing their unique, lasting artistry as expressed through Moog instruments.

In addition, Moog has released a DVD of Moogfest 2006, available through Moog’s Web site. The DVD sells for $17.95 and includes live performances by Keith Emerson, Jan Hammer, Roger O’Donnell (The Cure), DJ Logic and many others.

B.B. King’s Blues Club is located at 237 West 42nd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues. Tickets for this special event, produced by Charles Carlini of the Carlini Group, are $45 and are available through B.B. King’s box office ((212) 997-4144) and all Ticketmaster outlets.

Check here for more information on Moogfest 2007.