Music has continued to be made whilst I took a short break from writing here. Now that I’ve hit upon the MO which I’m set upon exploring for the foreseeable future, talking about it seemed like an extravagance.
I also rediscovered a truth, that my methods, whilst occasionally interesting, are not important. Sure they shape the work and I have a degree of pride about the blood, sweat and tears that have lead to their development. However, they should only achieve interesting-ness once you’ve heard the end product and decided that you like it enough to want to know more. This, in my opinion represents a healthy relationship to music consumption; why imbue the music with any redeeming qualities associated with its production if it doesn’t appeal to you at all or you have even yet to hear it?
A fetishistic attitude to the means of production can function as an acid test of whether one has gained traction with the wider public. When journalists need to fill column inches, the ‘how’ of music production appears an easy source of copy; which artist wouldn’t want to wax lyrical over their unique / groundbreaking / somewhat-obscured-to-protect-IP ways of going about making music? The middle-class press love such stuff; this I remember from my parent’s having a Guardian subscription when I was a lad, at least they’d occasionally give away music and not just talk about how great it was.
I don’t know of anyone who is doing music the way I do at the moment. All tracks played in real time, using only pads and a pedal board as controllers of an array of hardware synths (with MIDIpal as the modifier between the pads and the synths). I’m not doing this to be different or more interesting. Setting my gear up like this allows me to play the synth using the only interface I can claim to have any skills with (drums), much in the same way as picking up an acoustic guitar and picking out the ideas that lead to a tune.
Through this page, I’m seeking to be as open as possible about what I’m doing – it helps me document how I got here and may give answers to questions that I hope my work raises (anything worthy raises questions, right?).
Here’s the music:

Much fun was had this week working on the tune below. Vid on the technical aspects above.
It did rather bring home the reality that getting your left foot to control the parameters which outline the form of a tune, whilst playing same with the remaining three limbs and possibly singing / vocalising too is quite the ask.
I am undeterred however and will continue in this vein.
Feedback welcomed.

Things are definitely hotting up when it comes to my rig. My remit has broadened somewhat; I’m no longer thinking of it in terms of a ‘live setup’ or even as a collection of components but as a single instrument which, if I get really good at playing it, will form the basis of future musical explorations.
The addition of the foot controller not only gets me working the funky possibilities of my left foot (that’s right, funky), but allows access to changing multiple MIDI Continuous Controller parameters simultaneously. You can only get so far, compositionally speaking, tweaking one parameter at a time. Particularly if in doing so, you’re tying up the valuable resource of one of your hands.
Factor in the gear previous additions (with a few more to come) and I’m an excited camper. And that excitement isn’t just about seeing this project come to fruition, it’s about the sheer fun I’m experiencing in doing it.
Making my electronica as performance based as anything else I’ve ever done wasn’t a conscious goal but it has forced me to leave aside minutiae to facilitate the outcome, the ‘take’. That brings together the work I’ve done learning about electronic music and the kinaesthetic relationship to sound that only ‘playing’ can engender in a way that is new, for me at least.
Everything I’ve purchased so far is small, light, relatively inexpensive, readily available / replaceable and fully controllable via MIDI. When it’s a complete outfit, it will be flightcased and I look forward to taking it on the road. As much as I’m up for driving home from Adelaide etc straight after a gig, travelling to shows via airplane will be a luxurious novelty..
Permit me one gripe – as cheap, reliable MIDI controllers proliferate, why would anyone release a percussion pad that only transmits on channel 10? I know it’s the trad MIDI perc channel but really, such a small addition to firmware would make Alesis’s *pad series soo much more useful..

The commodification of music is now entirely fait-accompli. I know this because of what transpires when I’m asked if I like pop music.
Instantly, I stumble at the question; somewhere in my brain, there is a part of me that knows the socially acceptable answer is to answer in the affirmative. To do so is to confirm kinship and belonging.
Instead, I fall at the initial linguistic hurdle. What is meant by ‘pop music’?
As a genre name, it is redundant. It makes no attempt to describe style, merely the intended commercial outcome of its creation. A pop hit that wasn’t a hit first time around is still (and always was) pop when it somehow achieves mainstream success years later, it was ever intended for shifting big units.
Other musical genre names can be descriptive of the sonic experience (‘noisecore’), of process (‘jazz’) or even refer to musics made at a specific time and place (‘classical’) but pop has exclusive dominion over capital.
So, there I am contorting my face, trying to answer the question truthfully, my attempts to avoid disingenuity looking more like intestinal obstruction and my interlocutor squirming at the scene playing out before them.
To buy myself some time, I’ll ask for more specificity – are they referring to the Andrews Sisters or Jessie J?
Now I’ve done it.
Any pity hitherto felt on behalf of my apparent awkwardness at this most-innocuous of interactions instantly evaporates – he’s a difficult sod, why didn’t he just say no?
Now I’m on the backfoot, desperately explaining that there’s plenty of pop I like. My previous unwillingness to proclaim myself a true believer without caveat mean that my claims to pop-cred are met with stern incredulity.
I’ve been had, done up like a kipper.
Still, at least it’s not a conversation I’ll have to repeat.
Note to self: just say yes in future. If only I could.

Given a direct choice between reality and artifice, I believe I’m most likely to choose the former. This concept has underpinned much of my creative practice. Even when beat cutting / pasting was at the height of its popularity, I’d be stuck behind the drums all day trying to get a take..
Similarly, the desire to expose both process and the actual, visceral emotions behind it indicate why I’m so taken with improvisation.
This website, in its current form, only exists as an attempt for me to expose the ideas behind what I make, the underlying metaphysic if you will.
We all have things we are willing to trade away when it comes to our practice, control vs. time invested is a big one, particularly in the digital realm, where the means by which one produces work may be far from intuitive. Don’t want to learn DSP to implement an FIR filter? There are a host of ready made plugins that will fulfill this function admirably. As one’s needs become more esoteric, so does the need to do it oneself and so begins a journey. The only remaining issue then is how deep the rabbithole you want / are prepared to travel.
I’ve spent plenty of time learning new stuff to facilitate the production of sound work, maybe less than you, it’s hard to tell.
What feels to me like a huge parabola of (mostly) self-instruction is not only dwarfed when compared to the trajectories of others, it’s not even the point of it all. I have to remind myself occasionally that making stuff is the point and that learning should serve to facilitate such an outcome.
I’ve only ever thought myself to have one ‘talent’ or ‘gift’ (rather dislike both those words) and that’s the ability to persevere.
Rather than stop when most sensible people would and turn their attentions to things a little more wordly, I keep going until I’ve learnt that sticking, figured how to get that code to run, finished that piece etc.
Such tenacity is hardly inducive to seemless social integration, so you could ask (with some justification) what the point of such industry is? I certainly have (and will again, no doubt).
May I direct you to re-read the first sentence of this missive? I believe that’s the answer.
This isn’t rock’n'roll, pre-packaged and readily digestible.
The work is a pre-requisite and isn’t, of itself, something you can trade as a commodity.
Assiduous effort over a long period will get you there. There being a Utopia with only one guaranteed inhabitant.
And that’s the real.

This evening, as I was cooking the curry (not a colloquialism), I thought I’d put on a modern popular film. Its title is almost irrelevant.
The film quickly sets up an improbable premise set in a land of polarised emotions / relationships in the not too distant past. Are they actual eighties toys? Oh, the attention to detail! And bonanza, it’s got an alien in it. Roswell isn’t mentioned but it doesn’t need to be. Provide enough crass cultural references and we can all fill in the dots, a lovely way to pass the time I’m sure.
Were the director to have joined me at the point I switched it off, I’ve little doubt he’d tell me that his milieu is story-telling. You know how the argument goes; there are no new stories (science-fact), so it is beholden on the creatives amongst us to recycle and re-’envisage’ our current stock for the rest of eternity.
It is true that people who create non-static art cannot escape the arrow of time – for us humans, it flows in one direction. Thus, from a suitable perspective, we will be able to detect a beginning, a middle and an end to most works.
To infer from this that we’re all doomed to endlessly repeat the same forms, whatever our intentions, is simplistic and lazy. Our lives all follow that same shape – beginning, living, then dying. Were we to live them as per the dictates of our time’s ‘Entertainment’, there would be no self-determination within our own stories, no questions that we have to answer for ourselves.
As for me, I’d love to collaborate with someone who makes experimental film. Where does one go to meet such types?
There’s something thrilling about the immersion made possible through the confluence of sound and vision and it is in that spirit that I offer the rather circular experience of the above and below.

Given my preoccupation with using a computer to generate streams of data which I use to make music, it may seem a little perverse that my current chimera involves removing the laptop from my solo performance rig.
As discussed last week, I think the laptop functions beautifully as a barrier between the performer and their audience, one I’d like to try and remove.
Ideally, my gestures during a performance would all demonstrably alter the sonic outcome; there would not be those awkward moments where the audience perceive you’re doing something but that could be preparing to execute a block of code or it could be emailing the folks back home. It’s a moment where the discourse between the performer and the audience is derailed – the performer is having a private moment with the technology, the audience’s notions of mutual fidelity in the shared experience are shattered.
Or, at best, subsequent to the keyboard bashing, something then happens to the sound which justifies this temporary disconnect between performer and audience. If this event-to-be is suitably gratifying, everyone may feel placated. My concern is that the performer is then establishing an expectation; the next performer/laptop interaction may not result in such elan. Without direct access to the performer’s interface (and the ability to interpret what is happening there), it is impossible for the audience to fully make the connection between what they are seeing and what they are hearing.
Projecting the laptop’s desktop is one way to have everyone ‘feel more involved’ but one which I feel recognises the issue and simultaneously admits defeat, akin to a TV studio manager having to hold up a placard telling the audience when to laugh.
I have some new small things to add to my rig to aid me in this quest for performative laptop abandonment – they may feature here in future weeks..

What makes for an engaging electronic music performance? As is usual on this page, a universal response is not forthcoming but here’s where I’m at with it:
I remember getting freebie tickets to see the Orb at RAH in 1998. I wasn’t expecting a Damascene conversion to their style of performance but thought it’d worth seeing what all the fuss was about. We lasted barely ten minutes before departing, plenty long enough to learn that watching some blokes start pre-programmed sequences doesn’t do it for me, no matter how good the light show is. I need a kinaesthetic relationship to the making of the sound, the moment of its creation, something beyond filter sweeps and riding fx return faders.
I don’t think it’s merely a matter of the physical relationship to the music making coal face; I’ve yet to see a Monome performance that really hits the mark. With that interface-du-jour, the relationship between physical movement and sound is apparent. All too apparent; the lack of phrase dynamics and expression cannot be compensated for by the performer’s exaggerated gestures, no matter how earnest. And there’s those flashing lights again.
I do grant, however, that a clear parallel between movement and the resultant sounds bestows performative authenticity that is nigh impossible to determine when staring at the back of laptop.
The problem is, as a performer, I want to both create and manipulate the data itself in real time, not just when that data is triggered or a particular facet of its sonification.
There are new (and old) pieces of hardware that aren’t laptops that seem to facilitate such an outcome, but most of them are expensive and not wholly reconfigurable in the way the software I like is.
Still, speed and reliability are paramount in performances involving technology, an advantage that many discreet boxes have over laptops. I may yet have to trade away some power and flexibility to make further gains in these areas.
I shall report back here as changes in my live work flow take shape.

I have preferences when it comes to how I do things. These emerge from the belief that the ‘how’ will profoundly influence the outcome (but not the extent to which anyone should care about same).
You may have noticed that my current solo output differs somewhat from that which preceded it. Technically, these differences are easy to surmise; I’m trying to get more out of generation & synthesis and use less audio buffer manipulation to produce pieces. Oh, and it’s all done in the electronic realm, abandoning the usual electro-acoustic tropes (hopefully not merely replacing them with new ones).
Underpinning this apotheosis is an aesthetic desire to move away from appropriative practice. That I never took/sampled/used any one else’s sound in my stuff isn’t really the issue; it’s still a simulacrum. Additionally, many of the standard things you-can-do-to-a-buffer (re-triggering, pitch shifting, standard fft manipulations etc) are so prevalent that, to these ears, they’re starting to grate like chorus in eighties production.
I don’t propose a moratorium on DSP mangling, just that I (we?) don’t base entire pieces around a given effect. Effect – see, the clue’s in the name. Use like salt, improve the recipe.
I daresay that as I write this, some bright spark is writing some DSP code that’s going to profoundly change the perceptions I’ve just described.
All well and good – subverting expectation is what keeps things moving on.
Example: I just found two artists who entirely invert what I expect to encounter when I read the words ‘analogue modular synth’.
It probably isn’t even important whether it was the artists intention to subvert or alter set / established forms, more the effort expended over a period of time in establishing one’s sound, regardless of discipline and exposure.

I’d long suspected that part of my enjoyment of music was based in nostalgia when I read Theodore Adorno’s 1938 essay ‘On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening’. There’s little I could add to Adorno’s commentary of how ‘the familiarity of a piece is a surrogate for the quality ascribed to it’. Although good stuff can definitely become hackneyed, a great work doesn’t diminish in quality by being well known and loved and therefore perhaps we can be excused for revisiting the comfort of the known.
There have been periods of time where my listening habits have been predominantly retrogressive in nature. It’s difficult to surmise why, but I think seeking out new music takes energy and you have to be in the right frame of mind, open and inquisitive. Furthermore, it’s no revelation that you’ll likely have to work through a fair bit of material to find something you connect with, does anyone have spare time to expend on this endeavour?
Still, there’s nothing quite like finding a new album you can devour, get to know every nuance of until it truly inhabits the realm of the familiar. Then you get to start all over again..
Recommendations have long been the way of spreading buzz about new music, particularly within scenes. I still use forums / blogs for getting (at least) information about decent releases I may have missed.
We live in a post-whatever utopia where artists can output directly to whoever may be listening. Do we, as music listeners, take advantage of this or do we continue awaiting the third person endorsement? Currently, I’m getting a real kick from exploring the artists on Soundcloud. I’m unlikely to stop finding music in the old fashioned ways but through Soundcloud and the like I am accessing output that is intensely idiosyncratic and fascinating – sometimes like a train wreck but frequently because of its unfiltered and singular intent.