Tag Archive for 'noise'

Sonar Chicago Reviews on Gapers Block

Published on 17 September 2010 in events, music, photography and reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

It wasn’t long after returning to Chicago that I found myself wanting to shoot gigs again. Whilst living in London, I had the pleasure of reporting on a wide range of music events, including the Melvins, Fennesz, Dan Deacon, Gravetemple and Philip Jeck. Some of these I covered in words and all of them I covered in pictures. The main focus of my photography isn’t gigs by any means, but as a life-long music lover, it inevitably became a part of it.

I’ve always been a fan of the venerable Chicago blog Gapers Block, so when the opportunity arose to join the staff of their music section, Transmission, I jumped at it. Technically I’m part of their photography staff, as I joined to shoot gigs and let others write about them. When there are, however, events about which I’m so passionate that I also must say a few words, I wear both caps. Such was the case with the first annual Sónar Chicago this past weekend, where in the end I produced three reviews and a handful of snaps. They are all up on the site now, so please do have a read and a look. Cheers!

The reviews:

Sónar Chicago, Day One @ Pritzker Pavilion, 9 September 2010
Ben Frost @ Chicago Cultural Center, 11 September 2010
Rangda @ Empty Bottle / Appleblim, Cosmin TRG @ Smart Bar, 10 September 2010

The photos:

Sónar Chicago 2010 – a set on Flickr

Tweet-a-Sound Ticks All The Boxes

Published on 25 April 2009 in music and software. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

If you love electronic music, Twitter and OS X, you need to download Tweet-a-Sound immediately. It’s a MAX/MSP-based synthesizer for OS X that’s tricked out to tweet! It’s a not sonic Twitpic, either. Rather than simply turn your creation into an audio file and linking to it, it sends it as text. If someone wants to hear the sound you’ve made, all they have to do is copy it from their web browser or Twitter client and paste it into Tweet-a-Sound. The application uses this long and rather cryptic string of numbers to set the appropriate parameters on the synth and play it.

You can produce sounds that last anywhere from 0.1 seconds all the way to a full minute. When you’re finished fiddling with frequencies and your waveform is ready for transmission, you can either send the tweet straight from Tweet-a-Sound or copy it and paste it into the Twitter client of your choice. Messages are prepended with #tas so that other synth geeks can find your work easily with a simple search.

I made a few sounds with it, the source of which you can also find with a Twitter search. I’ve also made mp3s of two of them if you’d just rather listen here.

The first sound is exactly how Tweet-a-Sound plays it, I only boosted the volume slightly in post-production.

Forecast For You From 127a

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For this next one, instead of making the sound and then playing it back once to record the direct output, I used Tweet-a-Sound to restart its playback periodically. I also changed parameters on the synth whilst it was playing. This audio file cannot be expressed in a tweet, of course, as only its initial settings can, but it shows that you can use the application for more than its main intended purpose.

The Dragon Kills St. George

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