This image collection..
From an 1895 french ‘magicians calendar’, is pretty fascinating…
links for 2009-03-27
Really sexy video from Zeitguised..
Room Zoo from zeitguised on Vimeo.
Gives me some excellent ideas for todays addition to my file..
knew I couldn’t wait all day…
Excellent Idea..
Before work the other day I was browsing the latest issue of Computer Music (or it might have been the new special, I can’t really remember), whichever it was, there was an interesting interview. The artist had been generating daily renders from the same 3DSMax file for a really long time. The renders were pretty neat, all very abstract, he commented ‘people recently keep asking me if I used processing for these’. It got me to thinking, crazy extra dimensional 3D renders really inspired me (in 2000 or so) when I began learning Maya, etc etc.. that and the fact I needed it for work. I’ve had some experience with generative environments (mainly vvvv) but have been getting deep into Blender. The neat part about doing 3D in a generative manner are the cool design elements that come out of the chaos.
I like the idea of doing this exercise, so here is day 1:
Mouse Update
Finally I was able to get used to using the MX Revolution.
Left/Right clicking simultaneously makes a middle click. It registers the clicks so quickly that it’s not annoying.
links for 2009-03-19
Weekend report
This weekend was all over the place, hurriedly got ready for my show saturday night. One important thing to remember when making a live set for a show, try to avoid changing it alot at the very last minute. Fortunately it was a place where experimentation was welcome and there wasn’t a lot of pressure. None of the set was pre-sequenced, it was designed to live loop, however there was a hole in a last minute decision regarding percussion looping that really broke the whole set up.
Taking advice from a good friend, I’m going to make a ‘fun’ set I’m thinking something I can pull 2+ hours of techno from and linking it up with VVVV.
Otherwise, I ended up purchasing a new mouse, still on the fence on whether I like the mouse or not. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time doing 3D modeling and I wanted something that would be both more ergonomic and allow for more precise control (laser). I settled on a Logitech MX Revolution which I do enjoy quite a bit, except there’s no middle mouse button. The clicking is so precise though that it’s pretty easy to click both left/right buttons at once to trigger a middle click. Works fine that way in Blender and Firefox. Reassigning mouse buttons in Ubuntu is not very elegant.
Here’s a pic:
Really Excellent tutorial over on CGTalk
Live Set for Saturday
So I’m here at work just thinking of some ideas for my live ableton set on saturday.
Really I think a short term deadline is the best option for me. It’s always been that way, when I shut off the inner critic and just start to try to get something done. My skills come out and the constant bickering about what is good, does it fit, just go away.
My basic way of thinking about a live ableton set goes a bit like this:
- Avoid unstable plugins, once I had dblue Glitch on a send it decided to mess up so my audio buffer made loud ass noises and I had to end the show. Test plugins with a play around live set for about an hour, or research bugs before comitting them to your set. You can build a nice rack for live buffer jackin’ by stacking some very basic plugins up and have a lot more control. Think a stack of Stretcher, Crusher, Instajungle all rolled into one rack with pertinent parameters assigned, this is live show gold mine, even for atmospheres.
- Keep your set simple but infinitely customizable by thinking in sound layers, Drums, Mids, highs. Use Instrument and Drumracks to make these layers even more complicated. Simplers stacked in an instrument rack with a knob to switch between them is a great solution to this, you can use more complicated devices than simplers but remember keeping the set lean and mean is the ideal.
- A good trick is to make some basic midi drum loops and use that channel to drive another channel that actually contains the sounds. Set the drum rack channel to ‘in’ and then make a second drum rack channel that takes midi in from your drum controller. Now you can have basic loops going and add fills by hand.
Just making some notes now to keep track of what I might do for the party mix when I get home.