More live music in Birmingham

Well, yes, there’s plenty to choose from but we’ll pass on the news from Radio Black Forest that their next gig night will be on Monday and will feature Bleeding Heart Narrative and (from the U.S.) Darsombra.

Find out more on RBF’s Myspace page.

Live Music in Birmingham – Online and Onstage

Internet radio show Phantom Circuit finished its run recently with a double-length edition showcasing a diverse range of music and featuring an excellent live set of improvised electronic music by Fonik, recorded live in Birmingham at a festival organised by Radio Black Forest. For the time being, you can still listen to the show and all previous editions online.

Radio Black Forest tells us that the next event will be at the Sound Bar in Birmingham on Friday 18th September. It will feature Evol, Joe Gilmore and Lee Gamble. You can find out more about this and other gigs on RBF’s Myspace page.

Analogue Cheese Flavour

The San Marco brand bills its margherita pizza as a “deep pan pizza base topped with tomato sauce, analogue cheese flavour and mozzarella cheese”. So, does “analogue cheese” contain highly resonant filters that might make pizza-loving synthesiser owners “phat”?

“Analogue cheese” is in fact listed as being “water, vegetable oil, milk proteins, starch, salt, emulsifying salts (sodium citrates and sodium phosphates), colour (beta carotene)”.

Oh.

HTML time

The Earthrid site is being streamlined and improved. The new version will be more concise and a little prettier and will integrate better with future developments.

The upshot of this is countless hours of debugging HTML code and donkey work like that. Oh well. We will get there… and before too much longer!

Welcome to Earthrid’s weblog

This weblog section announces news about Earthrid’s music releases and other activities and also features some topics of tangential interest and slight relevance. Opinions expressed will come from various sources and will not necessarily reflect the collective aims or policies of Earthrid.

Carry on…

Cousin Silas – Uncertainty

Just Not Normal has just released a new album by Cousin Silas, entitled Uncertainty. It’s an MP3 release, available as a free download and dedicated to the memory of one of Cousin Silas’s favourite authors, J. G. Ballard.

Find out more at the Just Not Normal Web site

Logic 9 announced by Apple

Apple has at long last announced a new version of its music workstation software: Logic 9 (as before, you can choose between the Logic Studio and Logic Express packages). Shipping time for UK customers is declared as “4 – 6 weeks”.

There was a time when a whole-number release indicated a complete rewrite of a program. Perhaps the test of that will be whether Logic after all these years finally allows the use of long file names.

Those who have requested better multichannel sound support will be disappointed that Apple has ignored their requests. Logic 9 still offers nothing above 7.1 support, so users who need eight channel support (admittedly a small minority) will need to stick to rival products such as Nuendo.

We are told that “now you can quickly perform complex edits, like correcting timing errors and bending time, that took dozens of steps before.” Let’s hope that Arrange page navigation as a whole has been made less fiddly to use.

Logic 9 is likely to be an irresistible upgrade for most Logic 8 users, who will have been reassured of Apple’s commitment to Logic and know that the long-awaited upgrade can be theirs within a month and a half.

Korg’s Nano range

I’ve never been impressed by Korg’s MicroKontrol MIDI controller, with its horrible spongy keyboard and unyielding drum pads, so I was wary of Korg’s Nano controller range. Eventually, however, the weight of positive reviews for the Nano range of compact controllers swayed me, and so I jumped in and ordered a NanoKey, NanoKontrol and NanoPad (which, by the way, are now available in black, in addition to the original blue-and-white colour scheme).

None of these devices make a sound (unless you count the way in which the NanoKey produces quite a loud, yet somehow satisfying, click when you press the keys!) and are intended purely as controllers for use with your MIDI-enabled software. The devices can be plugged into a USB port on your computer (using the sensibly long USB leads supplied) and be used immediately, although Windows users are encouraged by Korg to download and install its drivers (to provide multi-application support for such devices, or some such thing that Microsoft omitted to include in its unmusical OS), and both Mac and Windows users can download software and configuration files that allow the default settings on the units to be tweaked for use with just about any piece of audio software (Linux users would have to supply their own software – just the way they like it). Korg is a big corporation and doesn’t waste its time telling you exactly where you should obtain the software: you are given a URL to a list of its distributors, and then it’s up to you to go to your country’s Korg site and look for it. That won’t be a major task for most computer-savvy musicians, but a single, direct download link would have been courteous.

The NanoKey is a miniature keyboard with two octaves of miniature touch-sensitive keys plus buttons to raise and lower the current octave, bend the pitch and send modulation. It’s responsive and easy to play, although the keyboard will feel more familiar to typists than to concert pianists. Most users of computer software will be happy enough.

The NanoKontrol features nine faders, 9 knobs, 18 buttons plus transport controls. Korg supplies templates to help you use the device with its Legacy range of software synthesisers, in addition to Logic 8, FL Studio 8, Traktor and Cubase 4: these templates can be written to the NanoKontrol using the software editor available for free download. As a Mac user, I tried, as you might have expected, the Logic template, which sets the NanoKontrol up to control volume fader and pan positions. This in itself is rather limited but the NanoKontrol’s many buttons make it very suitable for use with the third-party LC XMU software, which will persuade Logic that it has a Mackie Control attached. I tried it, and found that this little fader box was then even more versatile (yes, of course it lacks motorised faders and other features, but it takes up a lot less desk space!).

The NanoPad has twelve pads for use by those who like to drum using their fingers. Flam and Roll buttons, when used with the track pad, can be used to provide the expected drumming effects and these make the results of triggering drum samples sound just a little more like the real thing. When neither Roll nor Flam are being used, the track pad outputs controller messages when you use it, providing another way to interact with software plug-ins, provided your music software allows you to tell it how to respond to such control messages. Using Logic’s “Learn” function, I quickly assigned the X axis to the cut-off frequency of a low-pass filter on a software synthesiser, and the Y axis to the filter’s resonance. Fun ensued. The track pad won’t compete with more upmarket offerings, but this functionality was an unexpected bonus, and one more reason not to buy a Kaoss Pad.

The three units (one of each type is the only allowed permutation: don’t expect to be able to store three Nano Kontrols this way without risking damage to them) can be stored and carried in an optional fold-up case made by Korg, which is sold together with a neat USB hub which has four ports and a short, integral lead. There is also a pouch in the case which I found could accommodate the three USB cables – but there then seems to be no room to stash away the USB hub too without risking damage to the controllers (the hub would be pressing against the Nano Kontrol’s plastic controls, which I would not expect to be especially robust). You can fit the USB hub in the case if you remove one of the USB cables. What’s the sense in that? If you are going to have great ideas, such as these cases, and then ruin things by lack of attention to detail, you might as well print “Apple” on the case, not “Korg”.

The Nano series is affordable, if not dirt cheap, reflecting perhaps a sensible balancing on Korg’s part of build quality against manufacturing costs. The controllers are pleasing to use and invite experimenting. Laptop owners will find them to be valued travelling companions (provided they don’t forget the USB hub which they will have to pack separately, remember – how stupid), but the units are fun enough to play with on a personal computer of any size.

Bloggers in Biofeedback Baloney Backlash

The synthesiser world was sent reeling yesterday (and the day before that, and the day before, and indeed last week) when dozens of music blogs published a photograph of a man wearing a hat.

But this was no ordinary hat: it had electrodes, and its wearer claimed that he would use it to control his synthesiser.

But this was no ordinary synthesiser: it was an old synthesiser, with patch cables.

“Look,” explained the Artist, “at me”.

But last night the synth community reeled in shock from suggestions that they had been the victims of an elaborate hoax.

One heartbroken blogger, who wished not to remain anonymous, was driven to tears.

“The intensely self-satisfied yet faintly ironic look on his face convinced me that this was a serious sound artist who had taken to wearing electrode hats. If this photo is part of a hoax, it is a very cruel and irresponsible one”.

Twitter Tragedy – Who is to Blame?

Hope is fading for the Twitter users who disappeared recently in perilous circumstances.

The twittering pot-holers – or “twotholers”, as they are known – were believed to be trying to find the fabled north-west approach to Stephen Fry’s Passage when conditions took a turn for the worst.

A spokesman for the rescue patrol said that there was still a slight crack of hope, and that there could yet be light at the end of the tunnel.

“Millions of twitterers a year try this difficult sport without incident”, he explained. “Usually the attempts are unsuccessful but safe, but in this case it is unfortunate that a particularly tight crawl was attempted”.