i've got a miniature secret camera.

i've been playing around for a while now with a $14 digital camera from wal-mart. it's supposedly the smallest digital camera in the world, and naturally one of the worst. there are whole pages on the internet devoted to how completely awful it is.

but i have to say, my experiences with the camera haven't been as bad as some. even though the drivers are windows-only, and i had to install virtual PC on my powerbook to even see the pictures, with enough light and some patience i've been able to get some interesting images with it. at 'high res' it's only 352 x 288, but the weird almost old-polaroid type color it gets is pretty nice, sometimes. forget taking pictures indoors, though. and forget actually being able to correctly frame a shot. but for $14 it's not too shabby.

Stolen Buchla Music Easel

reposted from matrixsynth. feel free to spread the word. anyone who steals something like this from a school needs to be shot. it's hard enough to get a decent education in music and the arts these days without some lowlife making it harder just so he can sit home making this thing go "beep, beep. boop."

read on:



Someone stole Evergreen State College's Music Easel (pictured). If you know anything please contact pbr. To the person who stole this: if you managed to sneak it out of there, sneak it back in. You suck. This is the one Easel, that those of us who can't afford, can actually hope to see one day; I was hoping to see it. Other bloggers and site owners out there who read this site, please feel free to post this as well. Maybe someone that reads your site can help.

"Yes indeed we had our wonderful easel stolen this week. I am heartbroken as it was one of my first instruments here at the college. They did not get the top, so someone has an easel without the top in their possession. We have a possible suspect who I will release his name once the cops finish their initial investigation.

Please circulate this information as widely as you can.

Thanks.
pbr"

now is time on shprockets when ve dance.

i guess it is cheating, when instead of posting some interesting prose on your weblog, you just look for cool stuff on youtube.com and stick it on there. still this is fantastic and i just thought i'd share.

remember when you're watching this kraftwerk footage, this was 1975. NINETEEN SEVENTY-FIVE. think back to what the mid 70's were like. staduim rock, 90 minute long drum solos, playing a guitar with a violin bow, lyrics about hobbits and sorcerers and dragons etc etc.

now watch kraftwerk performing autobahn. this song could be released next year, and it would still sound completely up-to-date. we still haven't caught up to these guys. my question is, someplace in this world there has to be a guy or girl or some combination thereof that is making music right NOW that we won't understand for 30 years or so. where are they? i really want to hear something new that makes me go 'i don't get it' but a few years from now i'll say, "ohhhh, i see."

i'd like to think i'd recognize it on sight, but who knows? if i was a teenager in the mid 70's i probably would have been waving my lighter around during stairway to heaven like everyone else, while ralf and florian et al. were busy changing the world.

Mellotrons on the BBC

Anyone who knows me knows i'm obsessed with the Mellotron. I'm pretty excited to hear this show.

The bbc usually does a great job with stuff like this, they're not afraid of scaring folks off with the technical stuff, they have a little more respect for the intelligence of their listeners, and assume that they're tuning in to a documentary because they actually want to LEARN something. what a concept, eh?

here you go, thanks to Matrixsynth for alerting me to this one:

Upcoming on BBC Radio 4. Should be available on Listen Again via the
interweb (www.bbc.co.uk/radio4):

BBC Radio 4 Saturday 3 June 2006
Sampledelica! The History Of The Mellotron
10.30-11.00am BBC Radio 4


"Launched in 1963, the Mellotron was the first music sampler - an
instrument that could capture and play back other sounds. In this
fascinating feature, which contains new interviews with Sir Paul
McCartney, Paul Weller and Tony Banks from Genesis, Mark Radcliffe
examines the history of the Mellotron and the part it played in British
pop music history.

The programme examines the history of the instrument, investigates its
impact on the music business as the earliest sampling technology and
particularly how it was adopted by bands in the early Seventies
progressive rock era. Tony Banks, the keyboardist with Genesis, talks of
his love/hate relationship with the instrument, which proved notoriously
difficult to take on the road. Other contributions come from Andy
Partridge and David Gregory of XTC, Ian McDonald, the keyboardist from
King Crimson, and Justin Haywood from The Moody Blues, who famously used
the instrument on Nights In White Satin."

just in case you can't wait, here's the wonderful 'mellotron promotional film' ca. 1965. courtesy of ken leonard.

click to open movie

ken is a bigger mellotron fanatic than even i am. but he has the added benefit of owning more than a few of them, the lucky bastard. check out his site it has everything you'd ever want to know about the mellotron, and then some.

to say it has a lot of sliders is an understatement.

i love that tagline: "to say it's polyphonic is an understatement."
actually, no. to say it's polyphonic would be an exactly accurate
statement. kind of like when people refer to things as 'extremely
unique.'

but enough of my problems with the misuse of the english language
(don't get me started on 'guesstimate,' 'irregardless, ' or my
personal favorite, 'taking a different tact.')

sorry, im going to stay on this for another paragraph. try it
yourself; do a google search for the phrase 'taking a
different tact' and look at the websites you are shown, now
replace the word tact with the correct word 'tack.' instead of a
meaningless sentence, you now have one that means 'to go in a
different direction.'

sorry. back to the
polymoog. mmm, lots of switches. mine generated enough heat, it
allowed me to get rid of my space heater. oh wait. i suddenly get
what they meant by 'understatement.' the poly used a divide down
oscillator, alot like organs in the 70's did so basically it had 71-
note polyphony. ok. and it was a little bit lighter than the cs-80,
but it didn't have those swell screw-on chrome legs like the cs. the
moog did stay in tune a little better though.

anyone out there remember what it was like to
tune a yamaha cs-80? the music store in my hometown used to offer
the service for $175, Butch, the repair guy would take a whole day to
get it in tune, and it might last you a few gigs, as long as it
didn't rain, snow, or the temperature didn't fluctuate more than 5
degrees F. i do miss the old days.

not just polymoogs in this clip of gary numan on SNL back in 1980.
looks like they cleaned out the entire R.A. Moog Co. warehouse for
this one:

speaking of radiohead...

Reading Graham's behind the scenes with Radiohead blog got me to thinking about the story behind the recording of their song "idioteque," off of Kid A.

I always loved that song, built around that very odd synth riff, which i assumed was done by jonny greenwood on his analogue systems rs 8000, or something equivalent. but the true story about where that sound came from is much much cooler. it was sampled from a computer music piece called 'mild und leise' written by composer Paul Lansky in 1973 on an IBM 360/91 mainframe computer. (trust me, you want to click that link and take a look.)

i could go into specifics, but you'll learn much more by following the link to paul lansky's site and having him tell you the story. it's fascinating the amount of work that went into composing electronic music in those days.

take a listen to the piece, mild und leise (mp3 file).

and once you've absorbed that, how about checking out what radiohead did with it, almost 20 years later:

thomas dolby, radiohead, sigur ros, and whatever.

over the last couple of months i've been really enjoying Thomas Dolby's weblog. he's been documenting his one-man-show tour across the US, and i have to say it's very entertaining.

I've seen lots of big artists try and do 'tour diaries' and it usually comes off like something they got their publicist's intern to write for them. you get the feeling you're reading a press release. Thomas comes across as a real guy, though, and definitely a synth and technology geek, who doesn't talk down to his fans. the posts are chock full of details about his live setup, his equipment, and all kinds of stories about how he goes about writing and performing songs. as a musician it's fantastic stuff to read, and i'm sure even non-musicians will be entertained.

his last post was about the tour coming to a close, but a really hope he continues posting, it's great to hear what he's up to.

there are definitely some other good tour diaries out there. from sigur ros to the fascinating diary being kept by radiohead's audio engineer of their recording and tour rehearsals. as a musician myself who's looking at an upcoming US tour in a couple of months, it's very informative stuff to hear stories from 'the road.' you notice that whether you're playing big stadiums and arenas, or clubs for 15 people, life on tour is definitely a different kind of life.

little phatty?

no, im not going to add to all the chatter going on about Moog's new synth. it looks like it's going to be pretty damn cool, it's affordable, it's still hand made in the USA (albeit with chinese parts) and it looks suave. i won't even bother making fun of the name. apparently the late Bob M. liked the name so that's good enough for me. it's just another cool thing i could really use that has a dumb name (MacBook Pro?) but i'd buy one anyway, had i the funds.


instead of just stealing info and commentary from the same 3 or 4
really good blogs that already have all the bases covered on lil' wee phatty, let's just take a moment to think about how damn fine those Moog 24dB/oct. filters sound. and be glad that there's still someone out there making them by hand for us synth dorks. let us do it by watching this video, shall we?