This week I decided to play around again with the idea of a purely harmonics-based piece, using the iPad and TouchOSC to create a custom control interface that would let me play the piece like an instrument. Audio and video below:

46/52: harmonic study redux – iPad/TouchOSC overview from chromedecay on Vimeo.

46/52: harmonic study redux by billvanloo

To create this, I used the TouchOSC app on an iPad to control a rack I built in Ableton Live, and aslo an instance of the HarmonyBox plugin.

44/52: autumn piano music (rough sketch) from chromedecay on Vimeo.

I recorded a cleaner version with a condensor mic this morning, but it’s really just rough material still that needs to be composed and edited, so the rough sketch will suffice for now.

This piece was inspired by the autumn season. I captured a nice photo the other day of beautiful orange-gold autumn colors that were interrupted by a short, gentle rain. All this while the sun was still shining…it was a beautiful scene that lasted only a few minutes before the rain was gone and the colors changed.

43/52: a bliptronic day from chromedecay on Vimeo.

I started out on a beautiful, crisp autumn morning, with just the Bliptronic and a bench.

During my late-morning coffee break, I set up the Bliptronic on my desk and played for a few minutes.

Later in the day, I retreated to a great space in the school I work at to play for a few more minutes. Since my school used to provide a full range of services, including hearing tests, there are a pair of soundproof rooms, complete with ancient hearing test equipment!

After band rehearsal at church, I snuck in a few minute of playing volume-pedal guitar along with the Bliptronic.

I pulled over at a gas station on my way home and rolled down the window to get some night ambience along with the Bliptronic’s tones.

Upon arriving home, I propped the Bliptronic up on our piano and accompanied it with some dark minor-key chords.

I ended up in my studio, where I brought things to a close. This was a really fun video, made possibly by Kent Kingery’s generous donation of a Bliptronic 5000. Thanks again, Kent!

For starters, here’s a quick proof-of-concept track I made with the Bliptronic.

42/52: bliptronic 5000 test run by billvanloo

To make this, I ran the Bliptronic into Ableton Live, recorded a loop, and then processed that loop in a couple different ways and added some simple drum programming. For example, the bassy part is actually the same loop sent through one of Michael Norris’s excellent SoundMagic Spectral Plugins.

Here are some photos of the Bliptronic arriving and getting put into action. I was surprised at first by just how small it is – even in its box it was only 8 inches square, and the actual machine is smaller than that – maybe 6 inches square!

I started out by just using the internal speaker (a nice touch – lets you use it anywhere!) and then ended up plugging it straight into the mixer so I could hear it through my studio monitors.

Blinky lights!

Before long, I started itching for ways to process it and expand its tonal capabilities. It has 8 built-in sounds, and lets you sequence 8 notes in the key of C major across 8 steps. The limitations of this are actually quite good in many ways, but I wanted to see what I could do with some processing.

I ended up running it into Ableton Live and building a couple of Effects Racks to process the sound. I recorded the audio output of the Bliptronic into Live, then started playing with ways to filter, delay, and otherwise mangle the sounds. It was great fun!

I have a few things planned for this box already – a video project is in the planning stage, and there are lots of future possibilities, including turning it into a cheap Monome clone, circuit-bending it (as my friend Michael Una has done), and so on.

Thanks again, Kent! This was a great, fun project!

This was an outdoor event – here are some pictures of the stage and crew:

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos or video of the set, but I did want to post a link to one of the tracks I played. It’s a remix I did a few years ago from Village Thrift. My take on it pushes it into some kind of broken-beat/dub techno thing. Here it is, for your listening and downloading pleasure.

[audio:http://www.chromedecay.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Make-Me-Feel-bill-van-loo-remix.mp3|titles=Make Me Feel (bill van loo remix)]
Make Me Feel (bill van loo remix)

34/52: DIY bottleneck slide from chromedecay on Vimeo.

If you decide to try this at home, PUT ON EYE PROTECTION before you do anything else! I wear glasses, and I still put a pair of safety glasses over them so I’d have side shields and shatter protection in front of my eyes.

To make my DIY bottleneck slide, I took an old wine bottle, gently clamped it in a vise, and used a Dremel with cutoff wheel to score all around the neck.

After scoring it all around the neck, I gently tapped the body of the bottle with a hammer, and the neck broke off cleanly.

The edges are quite sharp still at this point, so I swapped a grinder/sander attachment onto the Dremel and went to work, smoothing and grinding down the sharp edges so it would be comfortable on my finger.

I made my first one of these on Tuesday night but didn’t take any photos to document the process, so I made another one this afternoon and shot the pictures you see here. I’m planning on giving one of them to another friend who plays electric guitar. Here are the finished products!

Along with moving into the new studio space, I spent some time working on updating, editing, and cleaning up some tracks that have been in progress for quite a while now. Here’s a set of 3 snippets from upcoming new tracks. I have not yet decided on how I’ll be releasing this, but it’s getting closer…

32/52: new music snippets by billvanloo

Here are some photos from the process of moving into the new space:

One of the things I wanted to make sure of is that I put some artwork on the walls, so I took 2 pieces by my friend Shawn Johnson, and 3 of my photographs, and quickly put them up. They’re not framed, but at least they’re there.

You can see the full set of photos on Flickr.

After 26 weeks of weekly projects, my creative space has been in pretty active use! For reference, take a look at what it looked like after a similar cleanup in May 2009. This week’s project, then, was to clean it up, organize, and take a few deep breaths in order to be ready for the second half of 2010 and the next sets of projects!

One place that was especially disorganized was my photo supplies. I have a metal crate that I keep small items in – old film cameras, gels for my flashes, spare parts, etc. This crate had gotten pretty out of control:

My philosophy for cleaning is to first empty everything out:

After sorting, throwing away, organizing, and generally cleaning, here’s what the crate looks like now:

Much better! Here’s a photo partway through the process. The studio desk is mostly cleaned off, but there’s still quite a bit of work to do:

Finally, I finished. There’s still a lot to do (old gear to list on eBay or craigslist, things to donate or get rid of, etc) but it’s much better than it was.

You can see the full set of photos on Flickr.

It’s nice to have a clean space to start out the second half of the year in.

This post is set to automatically go live on Friday morning, by which time I will be deep in the woods of Northern Michigan, on a much-anticipated camping expedition. Looking forward to the second half of 2010!

Here’s the overall rig, once it’s assembled:

My main role is as a guitarist, the main focus of this rig is playing guitar. You can see my guitar on the left – it’s an Ibanez Artcore A73 semi-hollowbody. It plugs into a Line6 PodXT Live, which in turn runs to a Fender Blues Junior amp. Both the PodXT and the Fender belong to the church, and stay there & are plugged in at all times, so setup is easy – plug in my guitar, turn things on, and I’m ready to play. A mic stand & wireless Shure mic are also set up full-time, since I sing as much as I can (sometimes I’m too busy strictly playing guitar!).

In addition to playing guitar, however, I’m also starting to slowly bring some electronic elements into the mix. As a solo musician, I typically play strictly instrumental electronic music, and finding an appropriate and musically valid way to integrate that part of my music into what I do at church has been a long, slow process. I feel like I’m finally making some progress, however!

On with the rig! As you can see, there’s a shelf under the amp that’s gaff-taped to a keyboard stand, to form a wide, shallow table.

Here’s a closeup. 2 USB cables and an Apple power cord also stay gaff-taped to the shelf, along with a custom audio cable I made up. It’s a 1/8″ stereo miniplug on one end, and stereo 1/4 plugs on the other end. The 1/8″ stereo end plugs into my MacBook Pro’s audio output, and the other plugs into 2 separate DI boxes that run into our sound system. One of the USB cables runs to the left-side of the shelf, and is used to connect an M-Audio KeyRig keyboard (a small, lightweight 25-key USB keyboard controller). The other USB cable runs into the PodXT Live, so it can be used as an audio input into Ableton Live.

Having all this set up permanently means that setup is extremely fast. I pop the KeyRig out of my bag, plug it into its USB cable, set my laptop on the shelf, plug in 2 USB cables & the audio cable, then connect my power supply to the cord. Done!

The bottom of the rig is a little messy. On the top left, you can see two separate DI boxes, which run my laptop’s signal to two separate channels on the mixing board. You can also see the way the PodXT Live fits into the space of the keyboard stand. This is important because it helps my rig take up a smaller amount of space, and keeps everything together nicely. We don’t have a lot of room on the platform (lots of musicians plus choir) so every inch counts!

Now that I have my 1/8″ to stereo 1/4″ cables, I’m able to split the stereo audio output from my laptop into 2 discrete channels. The left channel strictly carries a click track (metronome), while the right channel carries everything else, which might be loops, programmed drums, electric piano sounds, or whatever I choose to play from my laptop.

Here’s a look at my screen setup in Ableton Live:

As you can see, the rhodes electric piano channel (which is currently selected) is panned hard-right so it shows up separate from the click track. The advantage of this is that the click track can then be sent to the rest of the band’s monitors (via a send on the mixing board) without going to the main sound system, while anything else from the laptop gets sent separately.

I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to use this rig over the next weeks and months. The ability to drop in programmed elements, live electronics, and use a click track to lock in tempo will be a dynamic new element to our church’s worship music.

Floridan Rework by billvanloo

Well, there’s just a little process. Here’s a quick video I shot of my studio session the other day, when I added the melodic and chord elements.

18/52: Floridan Rework from chromedecay on Vimeo.