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If you’ve watched any of the current World Cup, you have an opinion about the plastic horns that the fans use to blare on and drone throughout the matches. Surprisingly, all of my friends seem to like the background noise they provide and find it somewhat soothing. Others, or so I’ve heard, find them extremely annoying and liken them to the sound of attacking hornets. Okay, I will admit that they do sound like a swarm of bees, but I actually like the sound of bees. I am not sure, but I am pretty sure that it’s not a coincidence that the word “drone” is used both for male worker bees and the droning sound that bees make.

So whith that in mind, here is a Vuvuzela-heavy remix of the US-England game this past Saturday, or at least the last 14 minutes of the last half. You can hear the US score the “winning” goal at 5:15 (thanks to British goalie Robert Green, who I offer my sincerest condolences to).

Vuvuzela (mp3)

What a cool idea.

Take a short sample, and give anyone the chance to dice, slice, layerand mangle it into a new composition.

And give them only two hours.

I found out about this just today, hours before today’s friendly competition. You can hear my entry and others’ here: http://ironchefofmusic.protman.com

an IDM track put together on the day in mid-december when this photo was taken.

#13 Orange Clouds (7.6MB mp3)

composed with monome 64 and ableton 8 using stretta’s polygome (for max for live).

I’ve been pruning my digital music collection in preparation of moving hard drives, and coming across lots of old Chef Menteur mp3s that we had intended to do something with, or were otherwise interesting, but never saw the light of day for one reason or another. Some are unfinished tracks, some are live versions of tracks, and some are finished but just didn’t make it on a CD for one reason or another. At one point we thought there might be a reason to go back and release some of these on some kind of official compilation, but since we have two full albums of new material we’re still working on, it’s not likely going to happen, so I think it’s time to set these free to the world. I am going to upload them as I come across them on the Chef Menteur blog here:

chefmenteur.org

this is a simple west-african/carribbean sounding blues riff on the 12-string acoustic that seemed to suit the lovely spring weather we were having in new orleans a recent saturday afternoon.

listen also for: the sound of a distant train and christy petting marlowe.

#12 Marlowe Rides the Rails (3.7MB mp3; 2:41)

The Guild is tuned to open G, I believe.

This was not a “song”, at least insofar as I did not rehearse for it other than to check my equipment that morning. (This will very apparent to you after listening to any portion this.) But it was noizefest, so there ya go.

Sign by Ray Bong, who through the miracle of the internet knew about my other life as an Apple developer and a certain pissy email that I got from the CEO-emeritus Steve Jobs. I don’t really think that makes me his “enemy”, but it was good stagecraft, and was probably the most interesting part of the set.

So here’s the recording of what turned out to be my first completely solo set ever, clocking in around 12 minutes, and titled thanks to Ray Bong. You can hear him shout out at the very end!

#11 “Enemy of Steve Jobs” (Noizefest NOLA 2009) (17.6MB mp3, 12:49)

Thanks to Phil of Slobodan for letting me use his amp (that’s his feet in the picture above). Setup was 6 string electric through overdrive, looper (Boomerang), then echo (Memory Man) into the amp. Most of the noise is the Memory Man delay loopback.

Here’s one using Stretta‘s inspirational polygomé on the monome as an arpeggiator for both the bass synth and the vibraphone. 

#10 “Your Future, Mule Armadillo” (7:05, 9.7MB mp3)

#9 Hopping Over Shadows (5:24, 7.4MB mp3)

Four tracks: (1) 12-string acoustic guitar, (2) sine wave drone*, (3) tabla, (4) rhodes electric piano through electro-harmonix hog.

you will recognize this as a revisiting of (although re-recorded from scratch) and developing upon idea no. 1, “12-string open G rag #2.”

* for the drone i used the rather simple “potpie simulator” max patch (v4), which you will read more about later.

raga on the farfisa mini compact, with moog phaser.

#8 Persepolis In Ruins (4:44, 6.5MB mp3)

here’s the third in this week’s song of the week series using the monome and boiinngg. 

for this one i used a synth called automat which is really nice (and free).

this setup happens to do a great Krzysztof impression (apologies to mike) although some might say it’s more Raymond Scott or Terry Riley-like.

i have video for this as well, which i may upload later.

krzsztfsh (5:20) 7.4MB mp3