Charlie McCarthy’s “brushfire”, featuring “these dubious movements” by Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable, from the record “raindays“.
Simply stunning.
brushfire from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.
I’m pleased to present a nice piece of art from the Vimeo community. Charlie McCarthy, whose videos we’ve been enjoying for some months now, has used an excerpt from Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable’s “Raindays” in one of his latest videos on Vimeo.
Last Sunday around 10am from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.
Charlie’s been producing gorgeous slabs of color and texture on Vimeo for a while now, blowing us away each time. Thanks for including us, Charlie!
Also, there’s a nice little moody piece of downtown instrumental hip-hop video from the chromedecay sketchbooks:
chicago (as seen by car) from chromedecay on Vimeo.
Summer arrived with much anticipation of working on lots of music, but it didn’t materialize quite to expectations yet.
above: working on beats in full summer mode
Still, some music has been worked on, and a lot of guitar has been played (bringing with it a new appreciation for the instrument and its possibilities).
above: Bill Van Loo working on a guitar piece
Here are a few recent bits to check out:
By the end of the summer, I should hopefully have a new chromedecay release available; still not sure whether that will be a digital-only release via iTunes and the other digital distributors, a CD + digital release, or a free chromedecay digital release.
CHROMEDECAY SPRING SALE!
As spring slowly arrives, the overflowing shelves of chromedecay releases needs to get cleaned out. For a limited time, you can now pick up any two chromedecay releases for $15!
Check out our sale page here:
NEW DIGITAL RELEASE: BUBBLEGONE - RECORD OF MEMORY
I’m very pleased to announce the latest chromedecay digital release. I’ve played a number of shows with Ann Arbor sound artist Bubblegone, and cdigital011 marks the first release by Bubblegone on chromedecay.
“Record of Memory (live)” explores thought and memory through aural media. Like memory, the sounds and textures are sometimes clear, sometime muddy, often scattered, and always evolving.”
Bubblegone: Record of Memory (live)
BILL VAN LOO & J. SCHNABLE - LIVE AT SYNC08
The recent Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable live performance at the Sync08 performance was quite a success. You can check out photos and a full-length video of the performance below. Thanks to all who attended & supported us!
Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chromedecay/sets/72157604033684796/
Video:
http://www.vimeo.com/821575
On Friday, March 14, Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable will be playing a new music & video set entitled “memory, intention & evidence” at the Sync08 Festival in Ann Arbor, MI. The show starts at 7PM and is FREE! The show will feature new music from the duo and a brand-new visual set to accompany it, all on the gorgeous triple-screen setup in the Duderstadt Center’s Video Studio space.
To whet your appetite, check out video of last year’s performance on the chromedecay vimeo channel, as well as photos of the video work-in-progress for this year’s show.
The Sync08 Festival is held at the Duderstadt Center on the University of Michigan’s North Campus. If you’re coming out, you might want to look at a map or directions to the Duderstad Center.
Address:
Duderstadt Center
2281 Bonisteel Blvd.
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2094
I’ve been doing some work in Processing over the last few months, and was especially inspired after getting the Processing book by Ben Fry and Casey Reas for Christmas. Here’s a sketch from tonight’s work, exploring the rotate() and translate() commands.
I’m please to present two new videos, now available on both Vimeo and YouTube. The first is a full 40-minute performance from bill van loo & j. schnable at the Sync07 festival last year. The second is a short piece of timelapsed footage, with an ambient guitar soundtrack.
Enjoy!
bill van loo & j. schnable - live at sync07
Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable - live at sync07 from chromedecay on Vimeo.
forest ave timelapse:
forest ave timelapse from chromedecay on Vimeo.
I’ve been doing a lot of work in the studio lately on various project. I thought it would be good to post about a few of the things I’ve been working on.
First, I’m really pleased to show off a new video that I made, demonstrating a technique I use a lot in Ableton Live for programming melodic sounds in interesting ways. It’s my take on an MPC-style chopped-up kind of approach. Here’s the video:
Also, here are some pics of studio stuff going on:
I’ve started playing around with QuartzComposer in anticipation of an upcoming Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable live set in mid-March, and this is a test shot from tonight’s session. Here I have input from two different video sources (a built-in iSight and an old Logitech webcam, powered by the macam driver) running into QC, going through a few color control choices, then being rendered out.
I’m working on a remix for the band Canasta out of Chicago. My good friend J. Schnable is playing piano for the band’s shows now, and he shot me a DVD full of stems from their song “slow down Chicago”. I’m rebuilding it in Live as a new remix.
I am selling a large quantity of used records. All records are 12″ singles unless otherwise noted. All are used, many were used in DJing and some are more worn than others. Everything I’m listing plays fine; if you get it and there’s a problem, I’ll make sure you’re satisfied. I require payment via PayPal (strongly preferred) or money order.
Please e-mail me with any questions and offers at bvl@chromedecay.org
THE SPECIAL STUFF
The following are priced per item.
Innerzone Orchestra - Programmed 5×10″ box set (Talkin’ Loud/Planet E)
Features the full album on 5 10″ records. The spines on the sleeves are somewhat worn, but the box is in great condition. A very limited collector’s item.
Price: $50
Innerzone Orchestra - Bug in the Bassbin remixes (MX049X) (Mo Wax)
remixes by 4 Hero, Peshay, Carl Craig, Kirk Degiorgio
Price: $10
Innerzone Orchestra - Bug in the Bassbin (clear vinyl) (Planet E)
Features Bug in the Bassbin, Nitwite, Surreal
Price: $10
Kurtis Mantronix - Music for the Dusted (OMWE020)
Limited edition promo, one out of 200 - features “king of the beats”
Price: $10
Various - Techno: The new dance sound of Detroit 2×12″ (10 Records)
used, sleeve is beat up, vinyl is OK
Price: $10
THE GENERAL BIN
UPDATE: I currently have an offer for all 62 records, so I am not taking any further offers on the records in this list at this time. Thanks!
As promised in my last post (”Goodbye old Powerbook, Hello Intel MacBook!“), here are some further thoughts about the transition to my new laptop.
First off, my new MacBook arrived much earlier than I expected. I paid for 2-3 day shipping, and it arrived in two days, even though the FedEx tracking page said it came from Shanghai, China. Nice! It was quite a pleasant surprise to be awakened by the doorbell, with a cheerful FedEx delivery guy waiting to hand me a box containing the MacBook.
As expected, taking the new laptop out of its box was a joy. As countless people have said, nobody beats Apple at the unboxing experience, and this new laptop was no exception. I love the molded styrofoam inserts that have the word “MacBook” engraved in them. Think about that statement for a second - I just expressed affection for a piece of styrofoam. Now that’s identity design, and stirring up passion from the audience!
Once I got the new MacBook booted up and running, the next chore was starting to get all my data moved over, and all the programs I use installed. This was a pretty big task, since I had at least 20 different programs to install, and 25 GB of data to move over from various backups. On top of that, I decided that I’d finally consolidate my iPhoto library onto one machine instead of having it split across multiple CD and DVD backups - the new MacBook’s 120GB drive made that really easy. Many hours of importing photos later, I have about 5500 digital photos to sort out, label, and organize, but that’s 7 years worth of history - all 3 of my kids growing up, countless gigs, and all my more art-oriented photography. It’s going to be great to have it all in one place.
On to the software installation. There were really no big surprises here - I just kept plugging away at downloading the latest Universal Binary versions of the software I use from the Web, running installers, and so on. I don’t think I even had to restart more than once - the Cycling74 software SoundFlower required a reboot, but everything else just proceeded along smoothly.
Here’s a partial list of everything I installed at first:
So, that’s a lot of software! On top of that, I had to reorganize all my music files. On the Powerbook, I had my hard drive split into two partitions, one for my operating system, documents, and applications, and the other for music stuff. On this new computer, I decided not to mess with partitioning the drive, and just kept it as one big partion, so what had been an “Audio” partition now is an “AUDIO” folder in the root of my hard drive. I think it should work fine, but it does mean some tedious work in locating samples inside Ableton Live, and so on. Ah well.
As far as my music software goes, I’ve really only played with Ableton Live so far. Acting on a tip from J. Schnable, I downloaded the Bismark BS-1 SoundFont player, and the jRhodes3 SoundFont set, and it sounds great! I think I’ve found my new Rhodes electric piano sound, which is nice since that’s a core part of my signature sound.
Things I still have left: I realized today that I hadn’t gotten my e-mail backed up from the old laptop’s hard drive, so I had to order a new external hard drive enclosure that fits 2.5″ laptop drives, which I’ll put the old hard drive into and use to pull over all my old data. Everything else had made it onto the FireWire drive I used for backing it up, but somehow, I missed the e-mail. Ah well - at least I have it!
That’s about it for now - thanks for reading! If you read this and want to help me pay for the new laptop, order any CD from the chromedecay catalog and I’ll waive or refund the shipping charge.