Akai MPC FLY

24. Mai 2012 Szenario

Tags: akai, iPad, mpc fly

Turn off the options, and turn up the intimacy.

19. Mai 2010 BNCKD

i stumbled upon this nice article by brian eno after watching the introduction quote of this brandnew minidocumentary about the legendary roland tb303. worthy to watch, so first let´s learn something about the machines!;) below you´ll find the whole article, which is highly recommended as well…

http://www.vimeo.com/11139923
via synthgear

The Revenge of the Intuitive

Turn off the options, and turn up the intimacy.
By Brian Eno

I recently spent three days working with what is possibly the most advanced recording console in the world, and I have to report that it was a horribly unmusical experience. The console, which has more than 10,000 controls on its surface and a computer inside, was designed in such a way that music-making tasks once requiring a single physical switch now require a several-step mental negotiation. My engineer kept saying “Wait a minute” and then had to duck out of the musical conversation we were having so he could go into secretarial mode to execute complex computer-like operations. It’s as though a new layer of bureaucracy has interposed itself between me and the music we want to make. After days of tooth-gnashing frustration, I had to admit that something has gone wrong with the design of technology - and I was paying $2,000 a day in studio fees to discover it.

Years ago I realized that the recording studio was becoming a musical instrument. I even lectured about it, proclaiming that “by turning sound into malleable material, studios invite you to construct new worlds of sounds as painters construct worlds of form and color.” I was thrilled at how people were using studios to make music that otherwise simply could not exist. Studios opened up possibilities. But now I’m struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. This transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse. Musicians enjoy drawing on that finesse (and audiences respond to its exercise), so when muscular activity is rendered useless, the creative process is frustrated. No wonder artists who can afford the best of anything keep buying “retro” electronics and instruments, and revert to retro media.

The trouble begins with a design philosophy that equates “more options” with “greater freedom.” Designers struggle endlessly with a problem that is almost nonexistent for users: “How do we pack the maximum number of options into the minimum space and price?” In my experience, the instruments and tools that endure (because they are loved by their users) have limited options.

Software options proliferate extremely easily, too easily in fact, because too many options create tools that can’t ever be used intuitively. Intuitive actions confine the detail work to a dedicated part of the brain, leaving the rest of one’s mind free to respond with attention and sensitivity to the changing texture of the moment. With tools, we crave intimacy. This appetite for emotional resonance explains why users - when given a choice - prefer deep rapport over endless options. You can’t have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits it keeps becoming something else.

Indeed, familiarity breeds content. When you use familiar tools, you draw upon a long cultural conversation - a whole shared history of usage - as your backdrop, as the canvas to juxtapose your work. The deeper and more widely shared the conversation, the more subtle its inflections can be.

This is the revenge of traditional media. Even the “weaknesses” or the limits of these tools become part of the vocabulary of culture. I’m thinking of such stuff as Marshall guitar amps and black-and-white film - what was once thought most undesirable about these tools became their cherished trademark.

The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn’t just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one. A responsible designer might try to overcome this limitation - probably the engineers at Marshall tried, too. But that sound became the sound of, among others, Jimi Hendrix. That sound is called “electric guitar.” Or think of grainy black-and-white film, or jittery Super 8, or scratches on vinyl. These limitations tell you something about the context of the work, where it sits in time, and by invoking that world they deepen the resonances of the work itself.

Since so much of our experience is mediated in some way or another, we have deep sensitivities to the signatures of different media. Artists play with these sensitivities, digesting the new and shifting the old. In the end, the characteristic forms of a tool’s or medium’s distortion, of its weakness and limitations, become sources of emotional meaning and intimacy.

Although designers continue to dream of “transparency” - technologies that just do their job without making their presence felt - both creators and audiences actually like technologies with “personality.” A personality is something with which you can have a relationship. Which is why people return to pencils, violins, and the same three guitar chords.

via

Tags: brian eno, roland bassline, tb303

what the future sounded like

5. Mai 2010 BNCKD

marvellous 3 part mini documentary about the legendary EMS (electronic music studios), a british synthesizer company founded in 1969 by peter zinovieff. they developed a pretty nice and back then revolutionary range of gear.
famewise i´d mention the vcs3 and their vocoder, heavily used by artists such as tangerine dream, the who, ala parsons project, david bowie, giorgio moroder and others.
you´ll find loads of additional info bout their products and team above, and here, just give it a click…

Tags: electronic music studios, ems, vcs3

shoe bending…

19. April 2010 BNCKD

if you know how, you can bend almost everything to a working midi controller…
this here was realized with ableton´s max for live - some good looking audible and nice stuff from japan and according to the original site, absolutely real and not a fake.
well, nike´s always been pretty keen on innovative commercials..enough talkin, let´s watch this..

“Lovers of experimental sound art will immediately recognize one of the Shoe-Js: it’s Daito Manabe, a bleeding-edge sound artist and alternative interface guru with a background in turntablism. I spoke to Daito, and convinced him to share the software that makes the project tick. Daito says he used flex sensors (see examples) and accelerometers to make the shoes interactive. He then processed the control signal and converted it to sound using the modular visual programming environment Max/MSP and Ableton’s Max for Live. (For another example and other resources, you can check out the article I wrote for Make Magazine issue 8, in which I stuffed flex sensors into a sock monkey and connected it via MIDI.)”

read more

Tags: bending, nike, shoe, shoe midi controller

the man behind the chime

29. März 2010 BNCKD

ich bin zwar alles andere als ein mac user, das iphone mal ausser acht gelassen, das hier trotzdem nicht uninteressant für die apple heads out there…

http://www.vimeo.com/9370716

nice little interview with the man behind the famous chimes sound you hear, every time you startup your mac…
onemorething.nl visited him in san jose: jim reekes, who worked for apple for over 12 years, during which he left his mark on everything sound at apple. here´s some more info on the man behind apple´s sounddesigns.

via

Tags: apple, chime, jim reekes, mac

SUPERCITY SERVERPROBLEME

24. Februar 2010 BNCKD

hi folks

die letzten tage fällt immer wieder der server aus, wo unsere schöne geschichte hier draufliegt.
tut uns natürlich furchtbar leid und sorgt für verwirrung und frust…ist aber ein generelles problem von unserem webhost silverserver und scheint ziemlich komplex zu sein, da es zeitweise zb bei verschiedenen usern auftritt, gleichzeitig bei anderen gar nicht. ähnliche probleme dürften selten bis noch nie aufgetreten sein, die jungs sind ja sonst ziemliche cracks was das netz betrifft, aber server haben nun mal ab und an ihre macken.
anyways…sie versprechen eine baldige lösung des problems, bis dahin hilft leider nur alle paar stunden wieder reinzuschaun und herumprobieren, falls es mal nicht gehen sollte!

9th wonder and the art of sampling..

19. Februar 2010 BNCKD

nice docu shorty:

Tags: 9th wonder, samples, sampling

nexus..unboxed

19. Januar 2010 BNCKD

nettes stop motion vid von patrick boivin  zum neuen (und eigentlich ersten richtigen) google phone namens nexus..

Tags: android, google, nexus, patrick boivin, smartphone, stop motion

science (non) fiction

7. Januar 2010 BNCKD

ob interessant, bedenklich, futuristisch, oag, gut, wie auch immer - think for yourself..

via

The History of the Boombox

12. Dezember 2009 Manuva

wie in keinem anderen genre hat das tape im hip hop wahrscheinlich seinen grössten einfluss gehabt. und im gleichen atmenzug natürlich auch die boombox. nicht nur, dass damit mixtape die runde machten, es wurden damit auch blockpartys aufgezeichnet und verbreitet… this kleine doku is pretty awsome…

Before iPods (or even CDs) there were boomboxes. It’s been 20 years since they disappeared from the streets, but the nostalgia they evoke is about more than stereo equipment. We’ve changed the way we listen to music — and to each other. Watch a video about the history of the boombox. Learn more about the boombox at A Eulogy For The Boombox
via

Tags: boombox, history, Tech, Video

stylophone beatbox

1. Dezember 2009 BNCKD

ohne worte
brett domino und der/die/das stylophone  beatbox

gefunden beim xmas shopping. auch zu empfehlen: das michael jackson medley!

Tags: beatbox, brett domino, nerd hop, styolphone

i want one of those: carhartt handy trax

23. November 2009 BNCKD

Some say that buying vinyl discs these days makes you a romantic. Others claim that music pressed on vinyl is a cultural asset worth preserving. Carhartt says: vinyl just sounds better.

For the Fall/Winter Collection 2009 Carhartt is cooperating exclusively with Japanese company Vestax to bring a limited edition of the Handy Trax USB turntable into the shops – a portable record player for all-round use.

This vinyl player is the perfect pulse generator for picnics that turn into cosy open-air parties. It is also the perfect listening device for every dyed-in-the-wool vinyl enthusiast during extensive excavation trips at fl ea markets and record shops.

A tough plastic casing and the capability to operate at angles of up to 90 degrees make the Handy Trax player fit for universal use. On top of this, a stereo line-out makes hooking it up to your hi-fi system at home easy and a mini line-in jack also allows you to connect external devices such as MP3 players.

If you prefer to listen to your music digitally but own a large analogue collection, you can easily transform your vinyl into binary code via the newly integrated USB port. A transformation that results in loss of sound quality, of course…

That’s why Carhartt recommends using your Vestax Handy Trax USB turntable for nothing else but vinyl.

more infos here

Tags: carhartt, handytrax, turntable, vestax

neurosonics audiomedical

26. August 2009 BNCKD

http://www.vimeo.com/6223439

production stills & more infos here

Tags: scratch perverts

Moonwalker PRO/CONTRA

18. Juli 2009 Manuva

vs. onkel lesch:

nach dem click gibts den rest…

(weiterlesen…)

Tags: mond, Video