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This new original series “The Dewarists” featured a creative moment in the lives of composers Imogen Heap and the dynamic eastern duo Vishal-Shekhar. It is inspiring to watch how these enthusiastic musicians came together to create the “Minds Without Fear” song, based on a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. They start out sharing stories about how they decided to become musicians, for this unique collaboration, Imogen set up a portable recording studio in the beautiful 475 year-old Samode Palace, just outside of Jaipur in Rajasthan, India. Imogen brings many strange instruments used to create sounds and one of my favorite scenes is when Imogen and Shekhar visit an antique music store which sells some musical instruments over 100 years old, they play around recording sound samples to be used in the song.

“Where The Mind Is Without Fear” by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

OK, I’ll admit I did have a crush on Kate Bush when I first heard her music circa 1979. Singer, composer, performer, one of the pioneers in pop digital music exploration, I think she was one of the first Fairlight CMI (Computer Music Instrument) owners, along with Richard James Burgess, Peter Gabriel, Thomas Dolby, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran and othes…

One of the things I like most about creating music in Ableton Live is it’s dual mode interface. Being able to quickly lay down a palette of musical ideas as clips or loops in “Session View” mode, allowing me to mix & match sound clips, triggering them in a non-linear fashion. These clips are the foundation for the song. Once I am ready, I can record my session into the “Arrangement View,” the linear tracks view that most of us are familiar with in DAWs. Here is straightforward video by Dennis DeSantis, demonstrating this simple process of creating music with Ableton Live. I will be posting more videos on elastic audio and other innovative features found in Ableton Live.

Just posting this 3-part video interview by MacAddict (2002) of BT so I’ll have them all on one post. It is a cool insight into how organic electronic musician BT (Brian Transeau) works in his studio, using his Mac and audio software such as Apple Logic and Propellerhead Reason. He mentions that he uses Steinberg Time Bandit for time stretching vocals to fit particular beats.

Peter Gabriel announced his new album entitled “SCRATCH MY BACK.” The concept is that he does a cover of one of his favorite artists and the artist hopefully will return the favor by covering a favorite Peter Gabriel song. You can listen to this album at THE GUARDIAN UK.

Ever since the days of being the mad scientist/sound wizard with “Roxy Music” the English art rock band, Brian Eno (Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno) has been an inspiration to many artists, musicians, sound engineers & composers. His experimental approach is in the line of composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen & John Cage, challenging the way music was perceived, written and recorded. Well known for his “sound treatments” modulating instruments with electronic devices and synthesizers, he has collaborated with artists like Genesis, Ultravox, Television, Talking Heads, , John Cale, David Bowie, Robert Fripp, U2 and many others. Wiki has an good bio on his work.

Artscape – Brian Eno In Conversation 2009 from Johnny Darko on Vimeo.

LAUNCHPAD is the new dedicated controller for Ableton Live music software by the guys at Novation. Yes you could say it is styled after the “monome” but with waiting lists and the expense to get a monome, the LAUNCHPAD is a great option along with the AKAI APC 40 MIDI controller. Take a look:

The Reactable is a fun collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. Sevral performars can gather around the table and place objects on the luminous round table surface. These physical objects represent classic modular synthesizer components, users can turn and connect these objects to create multiplexed sonic landscapes combining oscillators, filters and modulators. Here’s a video of the Reactable experience:

The race is on to create the most ergonomic and user friendly MIDI controller. For those who don’t know, a MIDI controller is used to send performance signals to any MIDI enabled computer, hardware sequencer or electronic musical instrument. There are many types of MIDI controllers, your common (piano style) MIDI keyboard, a MIDI guitar controller, a MIDI wind controller and many bizarre MIDI controller experimental designs. Leading the race are cutting edge MIDI controllers using multi-touch screens with user-friendly software like the Lemur (by JazzMutant).

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is the industry standard communications protocol (started in 1982) which allows (MIDI capable) electronic musical instruments and sequencers (or computers with MIDI interface and music software) to communicate with each other. A typical use in the early days would be to use a sequencer to record and play one or more hardware synthesizers. Nowadays, musicians are using a variety of MIDI controllers and computers with music (sequencer) software to record or write musical ideas and play them back on software (virtual) instruments (installed on the computer) or through external hardware synthesizers, audio samplers or drum machines.