It seems to be a bit quiet here at the moment but the truth is I was just travelling around like crazy in the past few weeks. Many things happened, good and bad - as always in life, but I definitely had some time to think about my next move and about what is probably most interesting for you - my next release.

Well, I have just finished a bunch of environmental recordings, sneaked through LA with my micro, grabbed conversations and noise from streets to hotel lobbies, from the Getty Center to Saturday night life in Venice, from Sunset to Mulholland, from my TV to a nightly drive through the vast side street tentacles of Laurel Canyon or Beverly Glen - pretty much everything that came along my way.

Another puzzle piece will be own interpretations of songs which have accompanied me for a very long time. You know this sort of music that will always stay in your head and will always mean something to you, no matter if you’re 14 or 63. I hope it’ll work out to get the special ‘voice support’ I planned to utilize already in earlier audio concepts… let’s see. At least I’ll have ‘noise support’ from new tiny robot like machines [watch out for special news on this] and from the ones already introduced here.

You may now ask, what is this serious eclectic mixture good for? Well, I wanted to create something more epic this time and I wanted you to become an audio witness of my life in this city reflecting on an overall timespan of 4 days, condensed down to a 60 to 90 minutes audio concept. So yes, this release is going to be a very private one.

Last point - will it be for free or not? Well, I might follow the infamous Radiohead model. If you don’t want to pay anything, get it for free. I can’t live from what I am doing here anyways, so why bothering you with Paypal if you’ve got nothing to donate or if you are not willing to donate. However, at the end of the day it feels great to know there are a few folks out there listening to my stuff and just have a good time.

Stay tuned and watch out for more news on ‘LA Machine’ to come soon!

It’s a fact that music has become an ordinary commodity and completely lost value. Thanks to Radiohead most don’t even see why to pay for music anyways. The big survive through sales, the small need to tour their asses off but what is the roadmap for projects like this one?

I guess the ultimate question is how to give back value to music. My particular interest is focused to investigate if exclusivity of music can increase its value, because exclusivity [in the broader context of art] means, people are basically willing to pay for something rare. However, this principle seems to work perfect i.e. for concept art like dead fish floating in formaldehyde. And for music?

The YPF experiment will explore this question. Idea: A [the consumer] defines a piece of sound, noise or music [according to the rules below] and B [the artist] will produce the desired sound, noise or music for A. The result - a unique piece of exclusively produced audio - will be solely owned by A.

Now, let’s have a look at the 8 golden rules of this experiment!

1. Define number of tracks.
2. Define track length: between 5 and 60 minutes.
3. Define style: experimental, ambient, minimal, radio play, field recording.
4. Define [optional]: mood, tempo or any other musical characteristics.
5. Download format: wav [16bit, 44.1kHz] | mp3 [16bit, 320k] | stereo.
6. Process: email order, specification, Paypal, production, delivery.
7. Customized cover art if ordered track length exceeds 15 minutes.
8. Prizing [per minute]: radio play - $1.50 -$2, track - $1, field recording - 50 cent.

The YPF experiment will run until 31 Oct 2008. If you’re interested, just get in touch! You will see [and hear] there is nothing more exciting than owning your personal Fairbanks sound.

And it’s also cool.

Picture found at: www.flickr.com

Time for the final part of Love Your Tenori-On folks! This last issue should be something special and so I have completely ‘anatomized’ one of my TO tracks, collected all necessary programming hints and tips together with the entire TO LED structure, so you can start to re-program this track step by step on your own.

The track I’m talking about is Cash Flow from 7 Days Microsleep, interestingly the track with the highest download numbers, according to overall statistics from the past weeks. The track seems simple but the underlying sequence structure is exactly the opposite. It’s a complex piece and ultimately a track with some random sequences difficult to re-program just by pure listening. So here you go!

Before we start with all the details, here is the basic TO setting for this track,…BPM: 60, Reverb Type: Plate 1, Reverb Param: 65, Chorus Type: Chorus 2, Chorus Param: 20. As you can see (and hear) later, using panpot is quite important. The more complex a track is, the more you should utilize this function - but that’s certainly not a special TO trick :).

Important: if you program this track, switching back and forth between random and score modes, the TO might loose its sync which can lead to some general strange sync behaviour. In this case there is only one thing to do: stop the TO, switch to a score mode layer and set the locator back to step 1, by pressing any LED in the first column.

> Start with Block 1
left) Random Layer: 8, Loop Speed: 4, Sound Length: 300ms, Sound: 14/8
[Make sure to program the LEDs exactly … more » »

Sorry for the silence throughout the last weeks but I am still in the process collecting a few interesting pieces for my next release. Despite my focus on computer based stuff, the new release won’t contain a single sound produced by software. As soon as I have received the last 2 items, I’ll start working. Thanks for your patience! TO users: The final part of Love your Tenori-On will be online within the next couple of days. Again sorry for the delay!

Picture found somewhere on the internet

+++ Voice Recording Excerpt
+++ Observation Drone USS Flashdance | Secret Mission Test Flight
+++ Date: 12 July 2008
+++ Time: 1:43 pm
+++ Location: somewhere over Nevada or maybe Archangelsk

Captain John: “Any terrorists on the radar, Officer Smith?”
1st Officer Smith: “No Captain, I tried hard but,…nothing so far.”
Captain John: “Nuclear weapons?”
1st Officer Smith: “Nope.”
Captain John: “Amazing,… since we’re told this territory is the epicenter of evil.”
1st Officer Smith: “Seems our new bord computer is crap. We need to call Microzoff.”
Captain John: “The Russians?”
1st Officer Smith: “No, the helpdesk.”
Captain John: “Dammit!” [looks out of the window]
1st Officer Smith: “Well,…at least I could spot a new hair salon!”
Captain John [mentally absent]: “Ah.”

A few seconds silence.

Captain John: “Officer,… why would a terrorist go to a hair salon?”
1st Officer Smith: “Maybe to get a shave after all these months in the desert.”
Captain John: “Don’t believe so. It’s mandatory for terrorists to wear a beard.”
1st Officer Smith: “Well,… to be honest Captain,… it’s not so much about terrorists.”
Captain John: “What do you mean?” [turns around to Smith]
1st Officer Smith: “It’s about me.”
Captain John: “You?”
1st Officer Smith: “Yes. It’s a personal issue.”
Captain John: “Can you be a bit more specific please? This country is at war.”
1st Officer Smith [starts to cry]: “You don’t care,… the army doesn’t care. Nobody cares!”
Captain John: “What the hell are you talking about, Officer?”
[Smith takes off her space cap and points to her head]
1st Officer Smith [now extremely emotional]: “Look at me! I just need a fucking haircut!”

A few seconds silence.

Captain John [starring at Smith, calm, sarcastic]: “Officer, you’re so fucking unfocused.”