ale{atori}c

in case you’re wondering why there haven’t been any updates recently, i’ve been busy with a variety of different things: rehearsing for a chef menteur live show, finalizing mixes and getting CDs together for the alternative music expo, updating the BPR site with new functionality and new music, overdubs and mixing on the new chef menteur album (still in progress), and now also preparing for an archipelago show. archipelago is opening for sir richard bishop (sun city girls) at the zeitgeist on june 6th. his solo album polytheistic fragments is recently one of my favorite acoustic guitar albums of all time, even though my favorite track on the disc, “saraswati” is a piano track.

i hope to get back into the groove soon, though; for example, i sampled just about every note on my mom’s old harmony banjo and i’ve got a nifty little thing going with that and the monome that i need to make a proper song out of.

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

#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.

From 1939, a Bell Labs demo of an early voice-synthesis machine.

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

banksy graffiti art on st claude ave

again, using the monome and boiinngg, a quick improvisation.

it’s frighteningly easy to make get a terry riley / steve reich type thing happening.

so much fun, i could do this forever…

inseaish (6:56) mp3 9.6MB

here’s a video of me having fun with the monome. i am using a Max patch called boiinngg to trigger the drums in Ableton Live, using the Impulse plugin.

 
monome 64 + boiinngg from aleatoric on Vimeo.

can a video be “song of the week”? sure!

… how can something that has no capability to make sound on its own be so inspiring and useful to a musician?

above: the monome64, a totally configurable input/output light/button box that works with Max/MSP, chucK, OSC (Open Sound Control) and MIDI. 

designed and built by hand by a couple in the catskills who are committed to open-source and sustainability (as well as a refreshing minimalistic aesthetic). with a really friendly and creative user community, there are loads of free applications for it that you can edit or add to. search vimeo for “monome” on to see what i mean.  

image from monome.org.

I thought that this week I might record an upbeat song to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama.

My free time got eaten up by an unexpected work call, but I was still able to get together with friends and had a hell of a time and a rockin’ jam.

And today, the plumbing backed up (I’ll spare you the details) so instead of doing any of my more elaborate ideas, I thought I would do what comes most natural to me. Without further ado, here is a simple one-take electric guitar improvisation in A, a bluesy ambient kinda thing, no edits or overdubs. 

Blues for the American Health Care System (9:00, 12.4MB mp3)