Are chicken wings big over there?
I mean big as in popular, not big in size....
I mean big as in popular, not big in size....
Gordon's Progress
Posted: 10/4/2006 8:03:59 PM
Hi philipc, and welcome to thereminworld. Nope, not too late - especially because work finally officially commenced on our house extension and consequently my financial advisor has suspended all frivolous expenditure for the time being. The upside is that when I get my boy-toy budget back I'll be able to use it to equip a sound-proofed room and to buy a sign for the door reading "studio".
And also yes, very useful. Thank you. I have downloaded the free demo software (http://www.clavia.se/products/nordmodular/demo.htm) which seems a good way to learn about modular synthesis.
DD - Yes, absolutely massive, more than 8% of the UK population are members of the chicken wing appreciation society, there are regular chicken wing appreciation seminars in every large town, there are chicken wing rallies in London, Birmingham and Edinburgh on the fourth Saturday of every month except February and it is almost unknown to see a child not wearing his chicken wing beanie and singing the chicken wing song.
Well, they are on the menu in most steak-house style restaurants and at kfc and similar. I had some last week in fact, at the local bowling alley. What I can't figure out is why buffalo wings are so small. I think I must have been absent from that particular biology lesson.
And also yes, very useful. Thank you. I have downloaded the free demo software (http://www.clavia.se/products/nordmodular/demo.htm) which seems a good way to learn about modular synthesis.
DD - Yes, absolutely massive, more than 8% of the UK population are members of the chicken wing appreciation society, there are regular chicken wing appreciation seminars in every large town, there are chicken wing rallies in London, Birmingham and Edinburgh on the fourth Saturday of every month except February and it is almost unknown to see a child not wearing his chicken wing beanie and singing the chicken wing song.
Well, they are on the menu in most steak-house style restaurants and at kfc and similar. I had some last week in fact, at the local bowling alley. What I can't figure out is why buffalo wings are so small. I think I must have been absent from that particular biology lesson.
Posted: 10/4/2006 11:11:37 PM
I too had expressed skepticism on the walking bass issue and like you, Gordon, first witnessed it live a couple of days ago in Greece. Well, what I heard really blew my mind and made me think that it's underestimating to call it a "walking bass" technique. Pamelia herself uses the particular volume hand technique through a much richer and wider range. She's building chords, arpeggios and there were moments I thought I was hearing piano rolls. I, myself would call the technique "pizzicato" because that's what it actually is.
Apart from that, vonbuck has nicely put the bass issue. I've seen dozens of musicians playing solo with the help of looping and I recall Matt Howden, a British violin virtuoso, who, amongst other things, produces his own percussive accompaniament by tapping his bow on the body of his violin. It is an impressive and inspired add-on but I doubt that it'd ever be the focus point among violinists themselves, or even something worth teaching to anyone who hasn't already mastered the most common aspects of the instrument.
What I can say for sure is that seeing Pamelia Kurstin playing is one of the most inspiring and at the same time one of the most depressing experiences. It really made me wonder whether I do have any talent in theremin playing at all...
Apart from that, vonbuck has nicely put the bass issue. I've seen dozens of musicians playing solo with the help of looping and I recall Matt Howden, a British violin virtuoso, who, amongst other things, produces his own percussive accompaniament by tapping his bow on the body of his violin. It is an impressive and inspired add-on but I doubt that it'd ever be the focus point among violinists themselves, or even something worth teaching to anyone who hasn't already mastered the most common aspects of the instrument.
What I can say for sure is that seeing Pamelia Kurstin playing is one of the most inspiring and at the same time one of the most depressing experiences. It really made me wonder whether I do have any talent in theremin playing at all...
Posted: 10/5/2006 7:07:20 PM
I enjoy a neat coincidence as much as the next person, and here's a pretty neat one.
If you check back to the start of this thread you'll see that I wrote "My first theremin, a Kees Enkelaar, arrived today." on the 18th of October 2005.
Well, I'll be making my first public performance (as opposed to at a private party) on the 18th of October 2006.
So, I guess if you live in London and you have three pounds burning a hole in your pocket, do come along and wish me a happy first theremin anniversary! Details, as you might expect, at http://theremin.org.uk/.
And if you're not there, then you can be sure I shall be drinking the health of everyone who has been following my progress and encouraging me along the way.
:-)
If you check back to the start of this thread you'll see that I wrote "My first theremin, a Kees Enkelaar, arrived today." on the 18th of October 2005.
Well, I'll be making my first public performance (as opposed to at a private party) on the 18th of October 2006.
So, I guess if you live in London and you have three pounds burning a hole in your pocket, do come along and wish me a happy first theremin anniversary! Details, as you might expect, at http://theremin.org.uk/.
And if you're not there, then you can be sure I shall be drinking the health of everyone who has been following my progress and encouraging me along the way.
:-)
Posted: 10/6/2006 8:53:11 PM
Marble Fields - why depressed? All the people I admire, I could never do what they do as well as they do. But why would I want to? I admire them because they do what [i]they[/i] do, and they do it well.
Pamelia Kurstin will always be the best Pamelia Kurstin there is. It doesn't make me want to be the next Pamelia - it makes me want to be the best Gordon I can be, and in that goal I have a clear advantage over everyone else!
Now to today's bit of progress. I spent some time looking at the Nord Modular G2 demo program, and I like what I see.
At the moment it is almost totally bewildering - it's going to be a long, slow learning curve, but I've got plenty of time, so that's not an issue. And I spotted a line in the tutorial that made me very happy indeed.
"The G2 Engine is also the ideal sound box to use with all sorts of sensors and extraordinary controllers and is much used by the experimental ‘sound art’ avant garde."
Hoorah! That sounds like me, and they are actually recommending that I buy the cheapest product in the range - the one without the keyboard and all the knobs and switches. Well, doesn't that make a welcome change!
Pamelia Kurstin will always be the best Pamelia Kurstin there is. It doesn't make me want to be the next Pamelia - it makes me want to be the best Gordon I can be, and in that goal I have a clear advantage over everyone else!
Now to today's bit of progress. I spent some time looking at the Nord Modular G2 demo program, and I like what I see.
At the moment it is almost totally bewildering - it's going to be a long, slow learning curve, but I've got plenty of time, so that's not an issue. And I spotted a line in the tutorial that made me very happy indeed.
"The G2 Engine is also the ideal sound box to use with all sorts of sensors and extraordinary controllers and is much used by the experimental ‘sound art’ avant garde."
Hoorah! That sounds like me, and they are actually recommending that I buy the cheapest product in the range - the one without the keyboard and all the knobs and switches. Well, doesn't that make a welcome change!
Posted: 10/7/2006 7:27:10 PM
Hey, philipc, I found an even better thread on the electro-music forums, here (http://electro-music.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=92229).
It's a complete patch for a simple theremin controlled synthesiser.
Starts with feeding the audio signal into a Zero Crossing Counter. This measures the time between two positive zero crossings of the audio input signal. It needs a simple waveform - which a theremin has - and is very fast. (Simple maths suggests it will identify A0 in 1/440 = 2.3ms) The poster even suggests best settings for the waveform and brightness knobs on an etherwave!
Then he takes the output and feeds it through a Key Quantiser to provide auto-tuning and then a Glide module which smooths it out for glissing. This drives a synth with three oscillators, ending in mixers, drive and filter modules.
At the same time the original signal goes through an envelope follower which controls the amplitude of an amp fed by the synth modules, and finally for good measure he takes the output signal through a phaser, a flanger, a delay and a reverb.
It's all neatly laid out and understandable and generally looks like a textbook example. I don't think I could have asked for better. Not only do I get a working patch to analyse and learn from, it looks to me like when I eventually have the cash I could take it to a shop with my etherwave and test-drive it.
At the moment this is undoubtedly my option of choice. All the fun of analogue modular synthesis with the convenience of computerisation. Whizzo!
It's a complete patch for a simple theremin controlled synthesiser.
Starts with feeding the audio signal into a Zero Crossing Counter. This measures the time between two positive zero crossings of the audio input signal. It needs a simple waveform - which a theremin has - and is very fast. (Simple maths suggests it will identify A0 in 1/440 = 2.3ms) The poster even suggests best settings for the waveform and brightness knobs on an etherwave!
Then he takes the output and feeds it through a Key Quantiser to provide auto-tuning and then a Glide module which smooths it out for glissing. This drives a synth with three oscillators, ending in mixers, drive and filter modules.
At the same time the original signal goes through an envelope follower which controls the amplitude of an amp fed by the synth modules, and finally for good measure he takes the output signal through a phaser, a flanger, a delay and a reverb.
It's all neatly laid out and understandable and generally looks like a textbook example. I don't think I could have asked for better. Not only do I get a working patch to analyse and learn from, it looks to me like when I eventually have the cash I could take it to a shop with my etherwave and test-drive it.
At the moment this is undoubtedly my option of choice. All the fun of analogue modular synthesis with the convenience of computerisation. Whizzo!
Posted: 10/15/2006 8:37:46 PM
Got a bunch of diverse stuff to post relating to the upcoming gig. All kind of ties together in a weird way at the end. Start with Man From Uranus posts elsewhere that a Sun Ra documentary is coming up on BBC2. Hurrah. It's a name I keep bumping into so now's my chance to further my musical education in that direction. Ended up watching the documentary on YouTube. (link (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22Sun+Ra+-+Brother+from+another+Planet%22&search=Search)) But that's by the by.
Point is, went to wikipedia to bone up on him beforehand, followed a few arbitrary links and ended up at the Principia Discordia. Which I read when I was about 16 or 17. And there was Answer 5) Testy Culbert.
Something just clicked in my head, and I dashed to the theremin. Five minutes later I had my opening piece. Something short I can just warm up to. A "discordian anthem" - which means discordant is kind of on theme. And some banter to go with it...
"This is a theremin. Perhaps the most expressive of electronic instruments. It has a sadness, a mournfulness, a melancholy." (and I [i]don't[/i] say) "Which of course means it has real comic potential." Then straight into [i]For Testy Culbert[/i]. Which kind of reminds me of the Laurel and Hardy theme.
This is my aide-mémoire for it...
Rootdy do. Rootdy do.
Rootdy doodley doot de do.
Rootdy do. Rootdy do.
Rootdy doodley doot de do.
All comic up-strokes. Tee-hee! Playlist follows with My House Resounds. (I'm kind of doing a look-back over one year of thereminery. This is "I just bought a theremin." Then three of my musical influences, in chronological order.) Soup Dragon (clangers), Void Ship (radiophonic workshop), Unlit Airraids (Throbbing Gristle) and finish off with that rather saucy poem I wrote "A Hetero-Sexual Love Song (http://www.thereminworld.com/forum.asp?cmd=p&T=1540&F=715&p=2)", as a prelude to "In The Potting Shed." I figure that's probably enough.
Then a poster arrives by eMail from Diana advertising the event. I've been billed as "Eat Frequency." Could have been worse - I could have been "Beat Frequently". I was going to leave it, but the poster also lacked the date of the event, and Diana had gone incommunicado, so I corrected both problems is photoshop and re-circulated it.
So I'm feeling the need to reinforce the name. Especially after I spoke to Diana the next day and she insisted Eat Frequency was better. Perhaps so, but we know the point to the name, don't we.
I learned that the event was going to be filmed. Aha. That reminds me of jamming with Brucey et al. Video camera guy had me remove my big white sheet of paper from the music stand for aesthetic reasons. As a photographer I understand that. So I found some black card to hide my white notes behind for After-Glow. And here was my opportunity to reinforce the name. Found myself a thick metallic silver marker pen, then printed a logo on the card, black-on-black, and wrote over it in silver. Looks pretty good, even if I say so myself, given that I dashed it off in about five minutes flat.
[img]http://myspace-033.vo.llnwd.net/01293/33/03/1293923033_l.gif[/img]
(White on black is not quite so good, but you get the general idea.)
And I realised afterwards, the black and silver works really well next to the etherwave. So all in all I'm feeling good about the gig, just a slight gnawing in the pit of my stomach that will motivate me to rehearse tomorrow, which is also good, and I am feeling well in touch with my inner Fonz, which is fairly unusual for me.
So... settled back this evening to watch some Buffy on DVD. (Joss Whedon - good guy.) Seen them all before, most of them on TV and again when we got the DVDs. Or so I thought. Turns out we had somehow missed "The Zeppo" each time. Boy, that's a funny episode. It's the one where Xander (the dork of the ensemble), feeling his lack of unique identity within the group
Point is, went to wikipedia to bone up on him beforehand, followed a few arbitrary links and ended up at the Principia Discordia. Which I read when I was about 16 or 17. And there was Answer 5) Testy Culbert.
Something just clicked in my head, and I dashed to the theremin. Five minutes later I had my opening piece. Something short I can just warm up to. A "discordian anthem" - which means discordant is kind of on theme. And some banter to go with it...
"This is a theremin. Perhaps the most expressive of electronic instruments. It has a sadness, a mournfulness, a melancholy." (and I [i]don't[/i] say) "Which of course means it has real comic potential." Then straight into [i]For Testy Culbert[/i]. Which kind of reminds me of the Laurel and Hardy theme.
This is my aide-mémoire for it...
Rootdy do. Rootdy do.
Rootdy doodley doot de do.
Rootdy do. Rootdy do.
Rootdy doodley doot de do.
All comic up-strokes. Tee-hee! Playlist follows with My House Resounds. (I'm kind of doing a look-back over one year of thereminery. This is "I just bought a theremin." Then three of my musical influences, in chronological order.) Soup Dragon (clangers), Void Ship (radiophonic workshop), Unlit Airraids (Throbbing Gristle) and finish off with that rather saucy poem I wrote "A Hetero-Sexual Love Song (http://www.thereminworld.com/forum.asp?cmd=p&T=1540&F=715&p=2)", as a prelude to "In The Potting Shed." I figure that's probably enough.
Then a poster arrives by eMail from Diana advertising the event. I've been billed as "Eat Frequency." Could have been worse - I could have been "Beat Frequently". I was going to leave it, but the poster also lacked the date of the event, and Diana had gone incommunicado, so I corrected both problems is photoshop and re-circulated it.
So I'm feeling the need to reinforce the name. Especially after I spoke to Diana the next day and she insisted Eat Frequency was better. Perhaps so, but we know the point to the name, don't we.
I learned that the event was going to be filmed. Aha. That reminds me of jamming with Brucey et al. Video camera guy had me remove my big white sheet of paper from the music stand for aesthetic reasons. As a photographer I understand that. So I found some black card to hide my white notes behind for After-Glow. And here was my opportunity to reinforce the name. Found myself a thick metallic silver marker pen, then printed a logo on the card, black-on-black, and wrote over it in silver. Looks pretty good, even if I say so myself, given that I dashed it off in about five minutes flat.
[img]http://myspace-033.vo.llnwd.net/01293/33/03/1293923033_l.gif[/img]
(White on black is not quite so good, but you get the general idea.)
And I realised afterwards, the black and silver works really well next to the etherwave. So all in all I'm feeling good about the gig, just a slight gnawing in the pit of my stomach that will motivate me to rehearse tomorrow, which is also good, and I am feeling well in touch with my inner Fonz, which is fairly unusual for me.
So... settled back this evening to watch some Buffy on DVD. (Joss Whedon - good guy.) Seen them all before, most of them on TV and again when we got the DVDs. Or so I thought. Turns out we had somehow missed "The Zeppo" each time. Boy, that's a funny episode. It's the one where Xander (the dork of the ensemble), feeling his lack of unique identity within the group
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