Falty DL’s “Love is a Liability” is the latest in a long line of Planet Mu releases that show there’s no record label currently doing a better job artistically.

Sonic Router presents a mix and interview.

Somewhere in all the re-mixing and remastering, something screwy crept into my original version of the Sergeant Ridiculous track. So if you downloaded either the Zip or the original track, you can get the new improved version without the drums cutting out inexplicably. Sorry for the very unprofessional fuck up. As it happens, I am an unprofessional fuckup.

Thanks to Stefan Robbers, the sideways namesake for this release for letting me know about this.

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-SergeantRidiculous.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/sgtridiculous/Chaircrusher-SergeantRidiculous.mp3

The zip of the entire release is updated as well. Go to the Sergeant Ridiculous Page to grab it… and tell your friends and enemies and frenemies.

Sergeant Ridiculous, Tumescent In Repose

Guy taps and bangs on stuff in his laundry room, releases sample set.

It’s worth listening to the audio examples. It sounds exactly like you’d imagine — washing machines getting tapped, thumped and slammed. I sampled the water sloshing in my washer years ago for a track; this is precisely the sort of thing you should be doing for yourself, not buying a sample set.

Though I wish this guy well. Everything sounds very well recorded and he spent extra time with Kontakt programming to make them cool. But really, isn’t it a REQUIREMENT that you sample junk around your house for yourself?

In that unwritten book of rules for electronic musicians, that is!

This is Dave Smith Instruments’ Mopho playing some patches generated randomly by the Mopho Pro Editor.

The Mopho Pro Editor is like any other editor for external MIDI instruments: It’s kind of buggy and ill-documented, and half the time something about it doesn’t work and you can’t figure out why. But when it does work, two features make it extremely valuable: The random patch generator and the ‘program genetics.’

The former is what it sounds like — it generates random patches, and you can control which parameters it randomizes. The ‘program genetics’ starts from two existing Mopho patches and ‘breeds’ them to generate new patches. The cool thing about these two features is that it generates sounds you’d never program on purpose; and in fact, I’m frankly mystified about how the Mopho’s fairly straightforward architecture could even make the sounds it does.

Example #1 — an assortment of generated patches, one after another, with tweaking:
Download audio file (mophorandom.mp3)

http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/mophorandom.mp3

Example #2 — One of my generated patches, playing itself. I have no idea where all the crackly stuff comes from.
Download audio file (mophorandom2.mp3)

http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/mophorandom2.mp3

Feel free to use these samples however you like.

GO HERE FOR LATEST AND GREATEST

It has links to a more recent build, the PPC build, etc.

Yesterday I couldn’t spell OS X Developer and now, I are one!

With some help from my friends on the CMake mailing list I finally got a running standalone OS X application built out of the Paul Stretch source. As I wrote yesterday, it’s free, it’s easy, and it makes hours of freaky soundscapes out of any audio file.

Except for mp3 files. If you try and load an MP3 file it locks up. Oh, and it wants WAV or OGG files — as far as I know it can’t load AIF files. But it’s free, right?

http://www.cornwarning.com/xfer/PaulStretch-OSX.dmg

Sorry for repost, but apparently, this post got trashed in my Blog SQL database. Eff me silly, computers suck. Apparently the post showed up long enough for MKB to comment on it, but then went to the great bit bucket in the sky.

The quaintly named Paul Stretch is a program that does extreme time stretching of digital audio. It’s free and open source, so anyone can try it. I even was able to build it on OS X, but not yet in a way that permits redistribution — you can do a lot of Unix-style programming on OS X and never build up the knowledge that building a native application requires.

Anyhow it turns any audio into pleasant ambient textures. Exampla gratia:

Bitone Troupe “All Is Full Of Love”
Download audio file (BitoneTroupe-AllIsFullOfLove.mp3)

The first 30 seconds or so, timestretched to several minutes

Download audio file (BitoneTroupe-AllIsFullOfLove-Stretched.mp3)

Rolling Stone still thinks Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music is Controversial?

Really? Hasn’t it always been blindingly obvious that “Metal Machine Music” is not intended as listening music for general audiences? I thought this was all settled canon law a long time ago.

I am especially puzzled by all the people showing up and then leaving. Did they think he was going to play them lullabies?

There is an audience for noise music. Not a huge audience, but a genuine, enthusiastic audience. One that responds viscerally and emotionally to the music, in addition to the people who have intellectual, academic reasons for why it’s valid. The point is, there are many writers Rolling Stone could have sent to the MMM show that would have brought some sympathy and understanding to the event. Instead, they sent someone, apparently, who just got done sucking Fall Out Boy dick or something.

If you ever wanted to know why Lou Reed is so rude to US music journalists, this review is exhibit A. They aren’t even fucking pretending to try.

I spend more time than is probably healthy (financially or otherwise) exploring new music on Boomkat. They seem to have fairly no-bullshit reviews for music, and they seem intent on hyping things they actually like, for actual musical reasons. As opposed to a site like Beatport, who seem to hype stuff based on who has the best cocaine this week.

I know, totally unfair dig, but a visit to Beatport conjures visions of Guidos in fake Hermes sunglasses bro-hugging each other in the DJ booth at WMC, and a visit to Boomkat makes you feel like you’ve been cornered by a scruffy British college student chain-smoking rollies, drinking tea out of a paper cup, telling you how mental the latest Pinch dub plate is in a thick Mancunian drawl.

But the recommendations they make based on the release you’re currently looking at seem a bit weird. I mean if I look at Appleblim and Peverelist “Over here” remixes, the “also bought” column contains 12 releases out of 21 that I’ve bought myself. And looking through the ones I’ve not bought, at least 5 or 6 others I’d probably buy if money was no object.

This seems strange to me — could there be some grouping of Boomkat customers out there whose taste is that closely aligned with my own? Or is Boomkat’s algorithm somehow just reflecting back to me what I’ve already bought, along with a bunch of roughly similar releases?

I’d like to think that I’m genuinely part of some phantom cohort of people who really like dub techno, house music, and dubstep without the wibby-wubby basslines. I’d like to meet up with them, preferably at a club with a good sound system in Brixton.

If you slept on the Delia Darbyshire T Shirt, here’s your chance to be ahead of the curve. Analog Industries is going to do a Pierre Schaeffer shirt that’s every bit as swank.

Just watch the Analog Industries blog; next week they’ll be taking orders.

Pierre Schaeffer, Pioneer of Musique Concrète

Pangaea is a producer in the Dubstep vein that I like quite a lot for being one of the guys who resists the siren call of the obnoxious wobble bass.

He’s not about a bit of appropriation, specifically the chopped, screwed, and pitch-shifted R&B Vocal thing that Burial employed to great affect on his long player Untrue. He also share’s Burial’s love of ElB’s chicken scratch 2 step beats. He’s not a complete Burial clone though, but he definitely scratches some of the same itches for me.

But whether or not he’s original or derivative is irrelevant to this post; what I’m wondering is if my suspicions are true and his track “Router” contains a vocal sample of comedy punching bag Michael McDonald, of the Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers, and Ya Mo B There fame. It sure sounds like it, though I can’t identify the particular track. Furthermore, tracking it down would require listening to the Michael Macdonald oeuvre, something that could put me right over the fucking edge.

Download audio file (Pangea-Router.mp3)

The most unfortunate Michael Mcdonald picture I could find.

UPDATE

I found the track Pangaea sampled: Baby I’m For Real. God what a slab of shite.

Here they are, hot off the presses. Turn your speakers DOWN before you play them because I noticed in studio that the bass on these is huge. Something I’ll watch out for on future mixes. Doesn’t sound distorted or bad, just HUGE.

Download audio file (Chaircrusher-04112009-Techno-Mix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-04112009-Techno-Mix.mp3
Download audio file (Chaircrusher-04112009-House-Mix.mp3)
http://www.cornwarning.com/chaircrusher/Chaircrusher-04112009-House-Mix.mp3

Track Listings

Mix 1

Congos – Congoman (12″ Mix)
New World Aquarium – NY
Stinkworx – Coelacanth
Patrice Scott – Do You Feel Me
Chaircrusher – Sergeant Ridiculous
Deadbeat – Sun People
East Island – Master of Servir
Ame – Sun Sugar
XDB – Descap Live
VoomVoom – Sau Verought
Stewart Walker – Stundenzimmer
Serge Gainsbourg – New York USA (Chaircrusher Edit)
Bochum Welt – B2
2562 — Moog Dub
Raymond Scott – Toy Typewriter (Chaircrusher Remix)

Mix 2

Omar-S Luv U Alez
Rick Wade I can’t Take It
Patrice Scott Sunrise Dub Mix
Mike Huckaby Fantasy
Reggie Dokes Missing You
Moodyman Sweet Yesterday
Osunlade 139th Street
Ian Pooley In Other Words
Tyree Acid Crash
Steve Silk Hurley feat. M Doc — It’s Percussion
Cerrone Paradise – Joey Negro Remix
First Choice – Let No Man Put Asunder
Terrence Parker vs Joe Smooth Love’s Got Me High/Forever My Love
Derrick May vs Octave One Strings of Love/Blackwater

You can listen here: http://krui.student-services.uiowa.edu:8200/listen.pls

I have recorded 2 new mixes to present, because I’ve had bad experiences trying to mix live on radio, I’ll post them up with playlists later tonight….

I’m putting together a set for a radio show on Saturday night on KRUI FM, so it was my first time playing with Ableton Live 8 and DJing. What’s it like?

Short answer — not different enough to have a lot to say about it but there’s a few topics worth covering:

Warping Tracks

Live 8′s warping is backwards from previous versions. Instead of grabbing a beat division on the timeline and aligning it to audio, now you grab an audio transient and drag it to the beat. Conceptually I can see why they did this but I can also understand the howls of pain from people used to the old method.

The good news is that it only takes a few minutes to adjust. I did 15 tracks for a mix tonight, and only the first one or two were a PITA. Then I had the hang of it.

The bad news is that Live is still kind of crap at tempo detection. Sometimes it gets it, but more often than not it gets lost and you have to junk everything it did. It doesn’t even get the transients right some of the time, which is theoretically an easier computational problem.

The best method I’ve worked out goes like this:

1. Find an unambiguous downbeat by listening to the track without the metronome to distract you. If there’s a transient at the downbeat, right click and set 1:1 to the downbeat. You can actually start the track earlier than 1:1 marker, so you can look through a track until the kick hits, and then drag the start marker back to the beginning of the widdly intro part.

2. Turn on looping, and set the loop to one measure starting at 1:1. Drag the transient corresponding to the beginning of the next measure to the ’2′ measure marker. This will give you a reasonable approximation of the track tempo.

3. Turn on the metronome, and start playback. Then use the up arrow key to skip forward to bar 17. Drag the transient closest to the downbeat to the ’17′ measure marker.

4. Skip forward through the file, dragging transients to measure divisions, if it looks like the downbeats are drifting away from the measure start.

When you’re done, turn off looping, and click save, so that the warping follows the audio file around between projects.

This works great if the track was made with a computer, or clocked by an accurate drum machine. If not, you’re going to have go through a measure or two at a time and pin the downbeat transients to the bar markers. This can’t be helped. It’s best to do this by ear — skip forward a measure at a time listening to the track against the metronome and only pin transients to beats when it drifts off. It will save time if you don’t sweat the small drifts in tempo.

EQ8, Instrument Racks, and Phase Cancellation

I’ve been dissatisfied with the EQ3 as a DJ EQ, but haven’t really found anything else that seems to work. I thought tonight I had a good idea of how to do a better EQ, but I was denied — undone by phase cancellation.

My idea was to use an Audio Effect Rack and 3 EQ8s in parallel. Set up a lowpass for the low band, bandpass for the middle, and highpass for the high end. Then automate the volume level of each EQs signal lane. You have to read up on the Audio Effect Racks in the manuals to get what I just said, but trust me on this for the moment.

The idea was this: isolate each band, and then control the level of each band as though your were running each one into a mixer channel. This should have solved the problem with trying to use one EQ8 as a DJ EQ — the bands interact in hard-to-control ways.

This didn’t work because the 3 separate EQ8s aren’t anywhere NEAR being in phase, at least when you try and mix a Low Pass, Bandpass and Highpass together this way. There were all sorts of weird behaviors, like the midrange apparently getting louder when you turned that band DOWN. Long story short, the 3 EQ8s are so far out of phase from each other they cancel out frequencies in weird and undesirable ways.

Oh well.

Macro knob mapping

I don’t know if this is new in Live 8 — I think it is though: If you have nested Audio Effect Racks, and you map an outer knob to control an inner knob, it picks up the name and range from the inner knob. I seem to remember having to rename the outer knob to match the inner one in Live 7. It’s the little things that count!

Well it took 4 days, but my shiny new Pluggo is authorized. In honor of this I put together a sort of fake techno jam:
Download audio file (Chaircrusher-Pluggotest.mp3)
Pluggo Test

All sounds are from Pluggo Instruments — Analog Drums, Analog Percussion, Deep Bass, Additive Heaven. Pluggo FX are Feeback Network and Chamberverb. Other than that I used a limiter on the channel playing the Feedback Network.

Of course, Pluggo is wacky, and one unusual wackiness is that the instruments can stumble rhythmically. You can hear this happening at 1:16…

I can see why a lot of people don’t think very highly of Pluggo; compared to a lot of other plugins they’re kind of difficult to control and they can sound really raw, even ugly. Of course those are the things I like about them. They’re a nice compromise between the
low level monkeying you have to do with Reaktor or Max, and the limited sonic possibilities of more straightforward plugins.

Oh and ‘Pluggo’ is also, apparently, the manufacturer of of machines that put the rubber caps on sterile blood sample vials.

I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, so here goes. This is a collection of unreleased songs from my back catalog. There’s all sorts of genres represented, but in choosing the tracks, I tried to pick songs that were the best example of I was doing at any given time. I haven’t dated them here, but some of them date themselves. For example, when was it a big deal to do an Amen break track? When were 90BPM hip hop instrumentals something people made a million of?

These tracks are lousy with uncleared samples; consequently if anyone actually recognizes a sample of their work and objects I’ll remove the file.

If someone takes a particular shine to a track and wants to remix it let me know. Most of these only exist as mixdowns of long-lost percursor files and sequences, but if I can provide individual sounds, I’d be happy to.

So Far So So — one zip file

1. NYEDownload audio file (01%20NYE.mp3)

2. Morton’s Shadow (samples from Morton Subotnick “Silver Apples of the Moon” and DJ Shadow) Download audio file (02%20Morton%27s%20Shadow.mp3)

3. LucasDownload audio file (03%20Lucas.mp3)

4. Noise DubDownload audio file (04%20Noise%20Dub.mp3)

5. Grandiose (with Lucas Williams on Guitar)Download audio file (05%20Grandiose.mp3)

6. Sweetness (samples Lush)Download audio file (06%20Sweetness.mp3)

7. WindchimeDownload audio file (07%20Windchime.mp3)

8. Monked (samples Theleonius Monk and Weather Report)Download audio file (08%20Monked.mp3)

9. The Wrong Trousers (with Axy Jeeb)Download audio file (09%20The%20Wrong%20Trousers.mp3)

10. MaydayDownload audio file (10%20Mayday.mp3)

11. Little Miss (samples Raymond Scott and Elaine Elias)Download audio file (11%20little%20miss.mp3)

12. Inna (samples Inna & the Farlanders)Download audio file (12%20Inna.mp3)

13. Hubert (samples Hubert Laws)Download audio file (13%20Hubert.mp3)

14. Honey (samples (samples Sweet Honey In The Rock)Download audio file (14%20Honey.mp3)

15. Gee WhyDownload audio file (15%20Gee%20Why.mp3)

16. Busy SignalDownload audio file (16%20BusySignal.mp3)

17. AD Remix (based on samples from Andrew Duke)Download audio file (17%20AD%20Remix.mp3)

18. Labor DayDownload audio file (18%20Labor%20Day.mp3)

19. Nativity (samples some crazy bible story 7″ record)Download audio file (19%20Nativity.mp3)

20. Redux Download audio file (20%20Redux.mp3)

SO FAR SO SO by Kent Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.cornwarning.com.